The Music of Holiday Hospice

Easy Listening Music and More Anchor Holiday Hospice in the Here & Now

    Throughout Holiday Hospice, the revolutionary health care facility plays easy listening radio stations on their overhead speaker/public address system at normally a quiet volume.  When I visit businesses as a customer, I find that those establishments that play some sort of background music usually give me a better shopping experience.  Just a few qualifications:  The volume should be audible but far from loud; if it sounds as loud as movie theaters go & I cannot hear someone speaking from a chair next to me or across from me at our table when dining at a restaurant, then I won't be a repeat customer.  The kind of music selected must overlap general musical tastes, or cast a wide net in other words, to yield the best benefits.  So when buying groceries, I want to hear the music of easy listening, rock and roll or jamming oldies not heavy metal, country or rap.  I've been on the wrong end of playing music at my place of employment previously & most certainly offended my co-workers (but they were too classy to bring up the issue).

    At Holiday Hospice, music helps the workers keep their productivity levels high, improves morale & integrates with their festivities.  For the patients, the easy listening songs serve as distraction, relaxation & entertainment.  Personally I love a wide variety of music genres especially easy listening (after losing no fewer than three beloved radio stations with unique rotations to bankruptcy, buyout or format shifts) on two or three other stations.  Could radio & music play a role in my story?  Absolutely!  Initially I intended to have the killer sing a different song every time he committed a murder beginning with "Uptown Girl" as he strangled the victim to death... a singing killer?  Where that idea had some merit, I opted to downplay that characteristic & up-play the music speaking as conscience, narrator & mood indicator--sometimes through contrast.  Of course, during the process of publishing, I learned about fair usage in regards to copyrighted material & hopefully fixed any errors on my end which meant erasing some apropos lyrics.  The songs & musicians included in Holiday Hospice are mostly contemporary & popular--stuff you can listen to today, 20 years ago or probably 20 years from now--this is the Earth-based present era in time setting.

    But today's health care lags behind Holiday Hospice with preoccupied workers stuck on their smartphones, absentee doctors, too many extraneous testings & little to no attempt at providing patient comfort.  Perhaps current hospitals, nursing homes & hospice facilities could benefit their patients by adding soft playing easy listening music to their community areas.  That would be a good start.