How a man living with Parkinson’s is using art and music to ease his symptoms

Geoff Bennett:
Art and music have long been used as therapy to help alleviate psychological and neurological disease, but there has been little study on its use by Parkinson’s patients.
There’s hope for those living with Parkinson’s that art and music may help with some symptoms of the disease.
Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spent time with one man who shows why an active life with arts is helping him push back.
The story is part of our ongoing look at the intersection of health and arts, part of our Canvas coverage.
Man:
You want to juggle?
Larry Ravitz, Patient:
Sure.
Man:
Yes.
Jeffrey Brown:
Juggling isn’t part of most medical visits, but it is for 73-year-old Larry Ravitz, who’s been living with Parkinson’s disease for the past 18 years.
Man:
And you’re able to play your instrument also.
Jeffrey Brown:
And why not? So is some Charlie Parker on the sax, all part of the routine when he goes for regular checkups with the doctor who’s been seeing him from the beginning.
Marika Partridge, Wife of Larry Ravitz: It’s a very tricky Charlie Parker.
Dr. Ejaz Shamim, Kaiser Permanente:
OK.
Jeffrey Brown:
Ejaz Shamim, a neurologist with Kaiser Permanente in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
So how important is music for you now?
Larry Ravitz:
It’s real important, maybe just as important as the art.
Jeffrey Brown:
Music and art have been part of Larry’s life as long as he can remember. And at age 55, he looked forward to more as he transitioned toward retirement, amid a successful career in real estate, to spend more time with his wife, Marika, and their family.
What were you painting back then?
Larry Ravitz:
I painted realistic paintings, what is right in front of you. I was a street portrait artist for a number of years.
Jeffrey Brown:
But his abilities with brush and paints began to wane as tremors came. In 2006, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Larry Ravitz:
This is our shopping list.
Jeffrey Brown:
In the years since, Larry and Marika have worked hard to find ways to limit the disease’s effect on their quality of life. Marika leans on a team of family, friends and caregiver Emerson Adams-Jackson, who shares many of Larry’s interests, including the tenor sax.
Larry Ravitz:
Superman, here I come.
Jeffrey Brown:
He helps him through his daily routine of exercising, juggling and making art.
Marika Partridge:
It’s like taking a yoga class. It’s like deep breathing. It’s very relaxing to hold a brush, and that’s part of the magic of the process.
Jeffrey Brown:
You have had to live with this a long time. What’s been the hardest part of it for you?
Larry Ravitz:
Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to paint the way I loved to paint, the loss of the desire that I had. It makes me sad.
Jeffrey Brown:
You had to learn to paint again, or to make art again, in a new way?
Larry Ravitz:
I had to paint from the inside out.
Jeffrey Brown:
That’s what Parkinson’s did to your art, to your painting?
Larry Ravitz:
I didn’t have a choice. It was to do that or stop painting.
Jeffrey Brown:
So these are paintings that you started doing about 10 years ago, you say?
Frustrated by his inability to portray reality, but yearning for a new way to express himself with a brush.
Larry Ravitz:
The right hand is the most affected hand by Parkinson’s.
Jeffrey Brown:
Larry embraced process painting, an approach that prioritizes experience over outcome.
Did you like the process painting?
Larry Ravitz:
I love it. The first time, I was in tears. I never cried about my realistic painting. I remember I had one dream about a yellow bird that came out of the ground. And I said, how do I paint a yellow bird? What do they look like? I just painted it.
Marika Partridge:
You made it up.
Larry Ravitz:
I made it up, yes.
Marika Partridge:
What a liberating experience.
Larry Ravitz:
I hadn’t done that.
Jeffrey Brown:
Did you see painting become something different for Larry once he was dealing with Parkinson’s?
Marika Partridge:
It’s a therapy now. It’s a good night when Larry’s literally got a brush in hand and is painting something.
Jeffrey Brown:
More recently, Larry has switched to working on a tablet.
Larry Ravitz:
It’s new for me. It’s difficult for me to paint the way I was.
Jeffrey Brown:
So you choose the colors. Oh, so now it’s like a real brush. I see.
Larry Ravitz:
And you never have to clean a brush.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
You never have to clean a brush?
About seven years ago, Larry was given deep brain stimulation, a surgical therapy in which electrodes are implanted to treat some Parkinson’s symptoms. That greatly helped his tremors, but also eventually led to infections and had to be removed.
Larry Ravitz:
This is really good.
Marika Partridge:
Is that good?
Jeffrey Brown:
The many drugs he’s taken and his advanced stage of the disease have also led to a new symptom, visual hallucinations, something he experiences regularly without fear, including during our talk.
Larry Ravitz:
I will look for just a second.
Jeffrey Brown:
And you’re seeing something now?
Larry Ravitz:
Yes. I see probably about 10 people out there.
Jeffrey Brown:
You see 10 people out there?
Larry Ravitz:
Yes.
Jeffrey Brown:
Do these images that you see, these visions show up in your painting?
Larry Ravitz:
I paint them into my process paintings. I’m taking control over the — what I’m seeing.
Marika Partridge:
The painting is a calming place. The music is a calming place.
Jeffrey Brown:
That’s tricky.
Dr. Ejaz Shamim:
Yes, this is tricky.
Jeffrey Brown:
Larry’s doctor, Ejaz Shamim, has been studying Parkinson’s and working with patients, some 400 currently, for nearly two decades.
He says that, while experiencing and making music and art can help retrain the brain, the precise impact on Parkinson’s is unclear.
Dr. Ejaz Shamim:
Now take a couple of steps.
Jeffrey Brown:
But he loves working with Larry and is fascinated by what he sees and its potential as complementary therapy.
So what is the role of the arts and the music?
Dr. Ejaz Shamim:
Yes, nobody really truly knows because this is a new phenomenon, but there are additive benefits. And we have been encouraging patients, the patients who have artistic prowess within, to actually explore those things.
If you do activities which help your mind kind of connect different parts of the brain, you stimulate those different parts of the brain, then your Parkinson’s symptoms actually get better, especially while you’re performing those activities.
Jeffrey Brown:
Do you prescribe art and music?
Dr. Ejaz Shamim:
Can I prescribe that? No, there’s no prescription for it. That’s actually a sadness of the situation, because there should be. There is a lot of therapies that are out there that patients can utilize that make them feel good.
And when they feel good, the Parkinson’s disease is not controlling their lives and they are in control of their lives.
Jeffrey Brown:
And so 18 years after his diagnosis, Larry and Marika continue to work to ease, but not stop an inevitable worsening of Larry’s disorder by keeping him active, surrounding him with friends and family, and making music and art.
What’s the most important thing you have learned?
Marika Partridge:
I would say one thing I have learned is don’t try to do Parkinson’s by yourself. Make sure you have got a good team. You have got to go with the flow. Like Larry’s art goes with the flow, our lives have to go with the flow.
How do you stay positive after all these years?
Larry Ravitz:
You don’t have much choice. You want to be having more fun, a reason to continue living.
Jeffrey Brown:
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Takoma Park, Maryland.