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Listen, Soak Up and Enjoy...Behind the Music is a Living Whole Online podcast series that spotlights the stories of musician composers. The more we deepen our understanding and appreciation of the creative process from which music, art, writing, photography, filmmaking, energy practices and family connections emerge, the more we can embrace those creative energies within our own lives, and enhance our health, healing and relationships with ourselves and others.

Listen to this light, humorous conversation between Kathryn Hayward, MD and award-winning composer and musician, Neal Barnard, MD,. Neal wrote his song Marie Osmole when he was a medical student at George Washington University Medical School, and he was also studying jazz guitar at the time. As a contrast to the intensive, progressive jazz that he was playing, he wrote this raucous rock song, but instead of writing male, testosterone-driven lyrics, he wrote about a nerd who was in love with Marie Osmond.

Neal nods to our nerd hero’s chemistry class and the unit of measurement called an osmole, which relates to the concentration of particles in a solution that contributes to its osmotic pressure.

I think we all have a big nerd inside ourselves. I have to say that, among all my medical colleagues, I believe that every doctor is an introvert inside. They may pretend to be extroverts when they need to, when they are trying to speak authoritatively, but in their hearts they are retiring introverts who really just want to study and think.

-Neal Barnard, MD

Lyrics

Marie Osmole

Marie says when I married her

I promised her chinchilla furs

And silver shells and cockleburs

And short little babies wearing shoes

But I got no vision, no ambition

I can’t handle competition

Growing back my circumcision

Now I’m ugly, you don’t love me

Peut-être demain, peut-être demain, Marie Osmole

Something there beneath the surface

Sex relations make me nervous.

Peut-être demain, peut-être demain