WEBVTT

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Is it time to wake up the
whole building? Alright.

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[music]

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[music]

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See if you can find one word that describe
how it feels to sing together like that.

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[music]

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Peaceful. Peaceful. Friendship

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All this friendships. What\'s your
word Maureen? Cheer. What else.

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Togetherness. Togetherness. Love.
Love. Sharing Sharing.

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My name is Lior Tsarfaty and I am going
all over the San Francisco Bay Area

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and playing music with
Alzheimer communities.

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I go to about fifteen sometimes
twenty venues a week.

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What happen during the session is,

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is the moment where we
drop in into this place

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for me it\'s a place of connection and
belonging and some of it is something

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that I\'m doing and some of it is
something that the music is doing.

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He meets with us every once in awhile

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and charges up our batteries.
I\'m Joy Voytek

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I don\'t know how old I am I do know
that I was born in nineteen forty nine

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I struggle with energizing myself

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to sometimes just to get
through another day.

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[music]

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One of my goals in those classes is
to create that deep togetherness

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which I think lot of those peoples are belonging for it
so I think at some level because that\'s of a loneliness,

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because something about getting
old and about not remembering

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is spending a lot of
time inside by yourself.

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It\'s not all calm and wonderful

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I feel a lot of loneliness

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and I look forward to being with people

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particularly my wife, she work

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so she isn\'t able to come
very much turn a week.

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What they want the most
is not to feel alone,

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they want to feel like there\'s someone there for them,
they want to feel connected to people around them

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and that\'s the most important thing
is not to feel alone or abandoned

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at the final stages of their life.

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What I want is

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just the calm

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friendship of other people.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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If I look back in time and all the songs I wrote
it\'s kind of stepping stones of parts of my life

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if it was a time of sadness or
depressed or joy or happiness

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there\'s always a melody from that
place always a song from that place.

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Music is like it\'s always
there in different ways.

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It helps finding all those places in me

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and there\'s something important about
that and something healing about that.

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[sil.]

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When I come to the venue

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where I am most of the time the energy is very
scattered and people are doing different things.

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They remember me but not because it\'s me but because
what happens when we sit together in that circle.

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[music]

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Take your hand put it on your heart
that miracle that heart that

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you have that personal drum that you have

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and notice the sound of your heart,

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the rhythm of your heart.
So we tend to forget this

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but your heart is a reminder
that you are not alone.

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You are connected to other hearts
and other hearts and other hearts.

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We\'re all beating together
just like a big, big drum.

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[music]

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I see people changing right before
my eyes with Lior and the music

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and all of us working together it\'s, it\'s amazing
the way that people want to be part of it

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they want to participate, people
start smiling they get in the mood.

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They dance, they\'ll start tapping their feet, they
forget about what it was they were worrying about.

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The music kind of brings
you odds still who you are

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but suddenly you feel like, \"oh, I don\'t have to do
this by myself, I don\'t have to get old by myself,

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I don\'t have to carry all this confusion
by myself I can use the music

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and use that circle around me to hold it together.\"
I don\'t think we have budding stage stars

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but we have people who
put themselves out there

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and try to encourage rest of people

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where lot of us it\'s a
central part of living here.

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They remember the feeling, they remember
the ecstasy, they remember the joy,

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they remember the place where they get connected to
others so they remember that which is interesting.

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Everybody take a big breath altogether.

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Imagine well when you exhale when you
make that sound you\'re saying goodbye

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and you\'re letting go of everything you don\'t need
any more. If its pain or suffering or worries

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to say goodbye to it with a
very, very loud long sound

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ready one, two, three here we go.

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[sil.]

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Got it,

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from what I see lot of them are struggling
with the fact that they are they\'re dying yeah

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and the culture that we live in
doesn\'t really know how to hold that.

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Almost every month I have somebody who passed
away it\'s magnifying the circle of life.

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I get sad about it and it touches
my heart and it\'s a practice for me

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to learn how to just be in this
role almost like a train station.

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New people are coming, some people
are dying and becomes this lazy life

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where I\'m showing up and you
never know who\'s gonna show up

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and really who\'s good alive and who\'s dying. So being
a part of this place of transition for them is a,

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is a unique place that I\'m
learning a lot about.

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[music]

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Go inside for a minute and
just study your experience.

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[music]

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Knowing that we all go back and we all
come from the same thing together.

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I learned from them that it\'s okay

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it\'s okay to be in those places and you
know when you look at the tree rottening

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or you look at nature is the all those thing
dying and we can see how beautiful they are.

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We all know this is a society
we are crazing their beauty

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and we are crazing their youth and we are crazing
beautiful skin. I had to really change the way

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I think about those things that I can love them
and I can be with them and I can hold them

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and not get away from it. And I\'m going
to think how important it is for them

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to hold them into love them even though they
are falling apart even though they are ending.

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May we all be together?
May we all be together,

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may we all live for many many more months.

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Maybe years.

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[music]

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I was born in Israel

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I was a very grandfather child (inaudible).

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I was a confused twenty years old
looking for what to do with his life

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but something happened to me when I came to the state,
I came here to school to study music and healing

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and how those two things meet together

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and there was a moment there when I realized
that what Music did for me was so important

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how music helped me and supported me

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there\'s a lot of learning about
yourself through music. By doing music,

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by being a part of it not just to listen to
it but is an active participant in music

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and been as wild as a real gift for me and
when I was thinking of what ever I do in life

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I, I hit that moment being very
clear that disciple I wanna do

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I wanna create a place for other
people that they can be musicians

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and play music and be a part
of that and bring that healing

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thing that happened to me to them.

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Mostly what really, really start working
and started to be a business was the music

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and the Alzheimer\'s and music and the
elders in about a year or year and a half

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I had a full-time job doing this. So I have
many, many friends over ninety years old.

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There was a need for there was a need
for it of all those people are in there

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end of their lives how music
can come and help them.

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[music]

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You got it I can quiet I\'ve done my job.

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What is it that we do when we sing
together? Expand. Expanded right.

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[music]

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Good job guys. That\'s you cased us a lot of
magic you tweet thank you. Brother Thank you.

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There\'s something special about music

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and its ability to get to those deep and important
areas of somebody\'s existence as a human being.

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There\'s some recent studies suggesting
that people who sing together

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might have a similar respiratory
rate or similar heart rate,

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so there might be some of the synchronization of both
the body movement and emotional expression and feelings

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and that happened in a group that you don\'t
get when you\'re creating music by yourself

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and there\'s a body of literature
that goes back about thirty years

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suggesting that persons who have Alzheimer\'s
disease might have a preserved ability

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to both perceive music
and also create music.

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There is some spirit, there is some
life it\'s a matter of trying to

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help people reconnect to that. You see
those people who has no memories,

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who have no history, who have
no story to tell anymore

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but you can see how the music really helps
them share this precious moment together.

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You think all those ancient technology
about singing, dancing and drumming

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which (inaudible) since the beginning
yeah it still worked, it still worked.

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I don\'t think we really
understand what happens

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in this very elusive creative expression and
it\'s something that\'s very difficult to study

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but you can see it with your eyes right.
Life is stronger than anything.

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[music]

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What lights them up like that is music and children are those
two things that just brings an big smile to their face.

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Is it gonna be a boy or a girl?

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Do you know the baby\'s gender? We don\'t know the
gender, we don\'t know it, we don\'t know (inaudible)

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I\'m having a baby so they are excited they all want to
know when and how and what so they have a very involved.

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Maybe your baby will sing Thank you.
Along with you

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Hope so or maybe he\'ll just tell me Lior
shut up with all your music, probably.

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At the end of your life you will become
closer to being a baby in some level.

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Besides that helpless part of giving support
(inaudible) things that makes sense to baby like

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making weird sounds and weird
gestures and funny faces (inaudible)

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way to communicate into way to be in relationship
with the world. What\'s happening outside?

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It\'s sunny. Sunny so let\'s sing a song just
to welcome the spring and it goes like this.

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[music]

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It\'s feels like the space of dying
space of the end of the life

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it\'s a very, very similar space towards
space of birth and the beginning of life,

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that energy feels very familiar the place
with no rules the place on (inaudible) trust.

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There\'s a sacredness in a
there\'s a place of a ritual.

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[music]

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It\'s amazing to see how
much support we need

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how much we need that (inaudible)

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and really how much we need each other.

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[music]

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One, two, three

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and so shall we go in the row together now.