Ask Lemmy

A word of caution: do whatever you can to ascertain the actual tastes of the person for whom you are setting up this media access, because you could easily make things worse. You are setting up media for them to consume for hours on end that they will not easily be able to change or to stop. Done wrong, it is the stuff of nightmares.

I don't want to discourage you in any way. I just want to make it clear that your FIRST task, should you choose to do this, is start with asking around that person's friends and family about what music and media they actually enjoy, and then get them that, specifically, avoiding anything that differs from it too widely because they will not be able to change the channel or turn it off. What you love may sound like screeching gears to them, so don't add that. Stick with what you can verify that they like.

A good place to start is their own media collection. If they're my age, which is to say old, they may have physical media you can flip through, like CDs and books, as well as what is lying around the house, like magazines. What was on their nightstand when they went into the hospital? What was in the player when they last listened to it? When you talk to their adult children, what movies do they remember their mom loved? What song would light her up when she happened to hear it? What era of music does she love best? Was she a radio listener before she became disabled (likes variety, can stand anything that gets played) or an album/playlist listener (like curated content, and perhaps one artist or style of music in a sitting).

If you can't find any of this out specifically, go for soothing, slow and quiet, but not melancholy, played at LOW VOLUME. Like Bach cantatas on lute, for example, or ambient guitar, not least because neurological conditions can make what used to be pleasant listening actually painful. This vanilla pudding of music may not be your taste, you might even find it repulsive, but it's a pleasant enough change from silence, and anodyne enough at any volume that it won't make her worse off if there's something going on in her brain you don't know about yet because she has not been able to communicate.

So be careful. Because again, you are about to subject this person to hours of sound on end with no reliable way to switch it off.

You're doing a wonderful thing. But you've got your work cut out for you first. If you get stuck, find out her age for me and I'll put you together a short, safe list to start with.