It was a spring day in 2019 when my co-researcher Amanda Couve and I walked into the Wimberley Community Center, clipboards in hand and minds full of questions. We were working with a group of graduate students on a study about music and memory specifically, how music weaves its way into the daily lives of older adults living with dementia. Our hope was to uncover stories, stir old songs from deep memory, and perhaps even see how music could act as a bridge across the gaps left by age and illness.
We weren’t naïve, but even so, the early conversations were tough. Words floated away mid-sentence, and recollections - when they came - were often brief, foggy. Yet, one thing rang clear: several of the women told us, without hesitation, that church music was their favorite. The hymns of their youth had stayed rooted in a way pop songs and radio hits had not.
Fifteen clients sat around a large square table playing games, working puzzles, chatting with volunteers. Amanda and I stepped aside to talk with the lead coordinators. That’s when something caught my eye.
Two elderly men sat across from each other at the table. We had tried talking with them earlier, but their words, like so many others that day, were sparse and scattered. Still, we had gathered they were both veterans, likely of the Vietnam War generation.
I watched as one of the men began to tap lightly on the table - an unmistakable rhythm, precise but playful. He was smiling. A few seconds later, the man across from him returned the pattern with a tap of his own, his eyes brightening in recognition. A quiet rhythm began to pass between them, back and forth, across the table like a secret handshake, like Morse code of the soul.
It was music, but not in the traditional sense. No melody, no lyrics just fingers and memory. I leaned in, straining to place the pattern. My best guess? The opening beats to “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” the Allman Brothers’ 1972 anti-war anthem from their Eat a Peach album. A song steeped in loss and defiance, written by Gregg Allman shortly after his brother Duane died in a tragic motorcycle accident.
One verse from the song had always struck me: “Well, by and by, way after many years have gone And all the war freaks die off, leavin’ us alone We’ll raise our children, in the peaceful way we can It’s up to you and me brother to try and try again”.
Later, I described the encounter to several Vietnam veterans I knew. One of them leaned in and said quietly, “That wasn’t just a rhythm. That was tap code.”
I had forgotten about the tap code – an ingenious system used by American POWs during the Vietnam War. When locked in solitary confinement, they tapped on walls to communicate, letter by letter, through the silence. It was a lifeline. A resistance. A form of connection that defied the isolation their captors tried to impose.
In that community center decades later, it may have been the same thing. When language failed, when dementia clouded the mind, the body remembered. Through rhythm. Through music. Through code.
That quiet moment of finger-tapping across a folding table did more than entertain or distract. It revealed music as a lifeline, a language that endures when all others fall away. It was a portal - a sunbeam of cultural meaning, as vivid and powerful as any spoken story.
Music had helped Gregg Allman process grief. It helped listeners like me face fears of conscription and war. And now, in a small Texas town, it was helping two veterans wounded not by war, but by time - reach across the silence.
(Joe Kotarba teaches the sociology of culture at Texas State University, with an emphasis on popular music, science and health. His recent book is Music in the Course of Life (Routledge, 2023). Joe received his doctorate from the University of California at San Diego. He resides in Woodcreek, Texas, with his wife, Polly. Joe is a Member of Wimberley Arts.org. [email protected] )
