Unfortunate associations

As I sat in a Barcalounger, feet up as instructed, watching the little drops drip through the clear plastic container, and head into the canula in my hand, I was still lucid. As such I noticed the music playing was radio, rather than satellite and it had the nicely generic WASH-FM, a sort of light pop cum 70s/80s/90s kind of air to it that really put me at ease. Even though the saline solution was cold, and making my whole right arm cold, and its later cold dribble into my bladder didn’t bother me. The familiarity of the music, even Barry White mixed with discussions of Tony Snow’s death and the constancy and assurance provided by regular colonoscopies for the gentleman on the other side of the curtain, was calming. It was just above a low hum, clear enough to pick things out, like Barry White (which made me think of Isaac Hayes and South Park and miss that I’d run out of saline solution and that a huge air bubble was sneaking its way down to my hand) or Sting or your usual 90s thing without the depression.

It was so different from the silence of the waiting room, punctuated by a man with an Egyptian name typing furiously on his Blackberry, even with intermittent coverage in the basement we were in. The silence, mixed with outdated magazines about skiing and branches protruding from the eye had driven me to read InStyle and Rhianna’s interview; not hell but purgatory, or at minimum like flying through ORD.

Usually I think doctors and dentists go for music without words, to avoid tripping some mental panic button, but that seems to not work for me. My dentist always plays classical music, from XM or Sirius and the wordless music, with the supposed to be soothing but not voice of the presenter makes me silently wish for NPR. It’s never especially happy music either. There’s no Handel (even his overplayed Messiah would be fine during a cleaning), no Mozart, though now and then there are some of the Italians, like Joe Green. Still worse are the Russians, whose music is almost always “Sturm und Drang” and angry, and really not pleasant to hear when being poked by sharp instruments by the hygienist who is accustomed to working on people who won’t flinch when stabbed. If Wagner is ever played I will try to complain, much as one can when lying with head lower than feet and full of hands.

Dentists ruined classical music for me. The one I had in England had pastel pink walls and a taste for the Germans and Austrians, though again no Mozart. Given that he didn’t have to do the painful extractions I had to have done at the University of Manchester’s dental wing, you would think he could have perked up somehow. Usually though he was remonstrating me so much I missed most of the music. In Saudi the anesthetic was so strong and tasted so strangely of peanut butter (I licked the insides of my cheeks trying to find said mysterious substance afterward, between drooling and trying to keep my eyes open) I don’t know that they played anything at all.

When I have gone to have touch ups done on my tattoo I have found the hardcore heavy metal to be soothing for the most part, and I wouldn’t want to bring my own music lest it be tainted by association with the pain. It’s not the sort of thing I would ever listen to by choice, so it has no associations except with that.

The one thing I know I have never heard are the Strausses. Is it because my feet might move along with the waltz, drilled into my lower spine by high school and the indignity of having to dance with our lush (and I mean REALLY a drunk, to the point that Swedes pointed it out) headmistress for a few laps of the gym?