The power of rhythm

This will be my fourth consecutive year participating in the American Heart Association Twin Cities Heart Walk, happening on May 20th at Target Field in downtown Minneapolis. When I started to put a plan together for building a team of walkers, I was suddenly overcome with a new sense of gratitude and appreciation for the amazing support my companies 美敦力 and Veranex have shown towards the AHA over the years.

It might come as a surprise to some, but one of the running threads throughout my healthcare career has actually been a drive towards creative expression. There have been times where I paint, draw, write, or even make my own music to scratch my creative itch, and I do my best to stay active while encouraging my own healthy habits like exercise, diet, and a positive well-being. Like many, I sometimes find difficulty in determining the space that my creativity ultimately belongs - however, I frequently look for opportunities and reminders to appreciate myself on a job well done. In short, I'm always looking for new ways to thrive.

My great-grandfather was a natural behind the piano. After they retired, Mac used to play piano for my great-grandmother Nam every single day. And my grandma, who worked for Ampex in San Mateo, California, during the heyday of magnetic tape storage, gifted me several cassettes of these performances over the years. On them, you can hear Mac playing energetically and enthusiastically, and Nam sometimes joins in with some vocal accompaniment.

Most of the songs he played were classic 1930's and 1940's love ballads, replayed lovingly by memory and by heart. And while I've aspired to follow in Mac's footsteps, to try to learn to read music and play piano classically, I think Cass Elliot's adage rings true: I have truly learned to make my own kind of music.

I was fortunate to be close with that side of the family as a child, but there was a piece missing from the family tree growing up. In 1986, my grandfather, Edward, suffered a massive heart attack while working and passed away very suddenly. He was not yet sixty years old.

Losing a loved one certainly leaves an indelible mark on the heart, but I've also found throughout my life so far that it can actually affirm your purpose. I was only five years old, but I already felt naturally curious about health and science, and grounded myself in reading, discovery, and creativity.

My grandma is now over ninety, a paragon of elder health. She logged over 250 miles on her bicycle last year, and I'm so fortunate to still have the ability to write each other letters. Sometimes, I'll look for creative ways to make her smile, usually by writing letters with a different Sharpie color on every different page.

She deploys the same creativity for me; it's highly likely is a hint as to where I acquired this trait from. A care package from her arrived several months ago, and had a lot of her "goodies" inside, including a small, lumpy envelope. The outside read, "Look inside and see who I've been thinking of!" When I opened it...out slid the top half of a circular makeup mirror. Unsurprisingly, my reflection was already smiling back at me.

This past Thursday night, I was honored to be invited to attend the 2023 AHA Go Red for Women event in Minneapolis. Symbolically, it was both a spotlight on the tremendous support our community has for the AHA, as well as a call to action to further empower and uplift the public. We can emphasize the importance of CPR training for everyone, and also ensure that women can be advocates for their best physical, mental, and emotional selves.

The inspiring stories that were shared showed how we can help build better heart health awareness for the women in our lives, including friends, family, and co-workers. It made me believe achieving health equity will happen when we can remove barriers like the social determinants of health, eliminate structural racism, and address threats to rural health.

One prevailing perspective I've gravitated towards in recent years is the belief that we each keep a record of sorts within ourselves - of the things we are impacted by every day, as well as the ways our life interacts with the world around us. This is a fun metaphor for me to explore, particularly as it relates to musical creation. Sometimes, we are fortunate to have an opportunity to rewind the tape a bit. Other times, we might want to pause things for a while, to just enjoy the silence of the moment. Certainly, we all need to have the ability to fast-forward, switch tapes, or to even upgrade your stereo system.

But there is a persistent rhythm we should always be aware of: our heartbeats. Listening to, following, and understanding more about the strongest muscle in our body helps keep our rhythm driving forward. The rhythm of our heart can ignite our creativity, restore our purpose, and grow our connections with the world around us. It can give us more opportunity to wonder, discover, reminisce, and inspire.

How do our heartbeats adjust to the innovations the healthcare industry has made towards heart health? We are incredibly fortunate to have amazing technology in modern implantables, wearables, pacemakers, defibrillators, and cardiac/catheter ablation devices. Caregivers and patients are able to use digital applications to help humanize their experience, to help assuage anxiety and doubt over their condition. Healthcare professionals can now utilize ML algorithms to more accurately identify Afib and other cardiac irregularities in their patients. And societally, we are trending towards a common understanding of how to best define a well-rounded, heart-healthy lifestyle, with lifestyle, fitness, and diet acting as major pillars of support.

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Innovation continues to blossom all around us, even in the hobbies we've grown to love. I shared with my family recently that I had gotten back into vinyl record collecting, with many key albums added to my ever-expanding collection over the past couple of months. (To be more accurate, I suppose I'm getting back into music in general, which for me tends to be a natural ebb and flow, and is usually based on what inspires me at the moment.) However, listening to classic albums end-to-end will require you to put in a bit more work than just adding songs to your playlist. Similarly, the face of music production has changed with technology. In some ways, it is far easier to make your own music these days, and I have found myself waffling between the nostalgia of a favorite dream pop record and the thrill of discovering new sounds and layers on my own.

This year, I'd like these avenues of mine to coalesce in some amazing, unique ways. So I'm sharing my idea with people, and I encourage you to spread the word if it piques your interest. This is something I've wanted to do ever since beginning my Heart Walk volunteer efforts. I'm calling it "Heart Beats".

In an effort to help raise money for the 2023 Heart Walk, I'm going to offer anyone who decides to join my team, or chooses to donate to my AHA team, an opportunity for me to make you your very own song. You'll be able to choose from a few different genres as starting points, inspired by some of the themes of the Heart Walk ("Happy", "Fierce", "Purpose", "Proud"), and I'll partner with you to add some character and personality into the mix (now could be your chance to break out an epic kazoo, guitar, operatic, or accordion solo)!

These are probably going to end up being instrumental tracks between 2-3 minutes, but I usually end up with a blend of real and synthesized instruments. If you want to hear a sample song, please click the "happy heart" image above to check out a preview song on my SoundCloud page. I'm aiming to have all of my donor songs produced in time for all walkers and donators to walk with me in person on Saturday, May 20th at Target Field. More details about "Heart Beats" will be following in March to donors and team members.

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In 1987, Derrick May founded Rhythim is Rhythim with Michael James in rural Detroit. A shared love of music (and the eclectic playlist of a local radio DJ) had propelled May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson to create what's considered the earliest Detroit techno music, which culminated with the May/James track "Strings of Life". Uplifting, thrilling, and vibrant, it eschewed the traditions of dance music at the time and still sounds incredible today. Like my grandma's mirror, it's hard to keep from smiling when the beat finally comes in.

One of my favorite performances of this track is when it was performed at the opening of the 2015 Weather Festival in Paris, France. In the festival replay, Derrick May remains center stage, but is surrounded by nearly three dozen classical musicians, transforming the synthetic anthem into an eight-minute grandiose celebration of the power of music. The conductor, Dzijan Emin, is overflowing with joy. Emin dances and conducts simultaneously, wholly successful at accomplishing both with a huge grin. Like the original performance over thirty-five years ago, there is no quantization or trickery involved. The rhythm of the music remains natural, just like life. And the heart guides the way to its' thrilling conclusion.

The rhythm is why I walk.