The DRM Guide to Disability Resources on the Internet: Sponsors

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	Updated 5/2010
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One Man's Music: The Life And Times Of Texas Songwriter Vince
by Vince Bell
University of North Texas Press, 2009. Softcover, 261 pages, $14.95
When I began writing for the disability press about thirty years ago, the terms "TAB" or "temporarily able-bodied" were much in vogue as the burgeoning disability rights movement sought to make its point that disability is an equal opportunity life changer. Anyone who lives long enough will undoubtedly become disabled in one or more ways as age and disease take their toll. As disconcerting as that fact is to most people, they do recognize the inherent logic. More disquieting, however, is the fact that disability can be acquired through chronic illness or, as in the case of author Vince Bell, in the blink of an eye after which life is never the same.
A rising star in the Texas singer-songwriter circle that included Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, and Townes Van Zandt, Bell had just begun recording his first album in the early 1970s when a traffic accident for which he was not at fault cut short his career by leaving him critically injured physically and with a traumatic brain injury.
In One Man's Music, Bell takes readers along on his long journey of healing what can be healed and fashioning a life from what remains. At the core of this memoir is Bell's struggle to build a new life as a TBI survivor while attempting to hold fast to his musical gifts and career. How he manages to accomplish both, despite almost insurmountable odds, makes for compelling reading.
Clinicians or family members looking for a guide to TBI recovery will find few hard and fast rules in this work. What they will take away from this excellent memoir is that life, while often unfair, is, nevertheless, what we make of it. In thirty years, I have read hundreds of first-person accounts of disability, but Bell's stands out for its crystalline prose and hard-won wisdom.
-Reviewed by Sally Rosenthal

About the reviewer: A former college librarian and occupational therapist, Sally Rosenthal is a contributing editor and frequent writer for publications and websites on the subjects of disability, companion animals, and working dogs.