My Grandma passed away recently, slipping away in a care home, and diagnosed with Covid-19 a day later. She’d developed dementia over the last few years after her husband of fifty-nine years died, so a care-home was our last resort towards keeping her healthy. Over the past year she mended. She wasn’t as cognitive as she used to be but she was lucid, able to still recognise and talk to us, and she looked a lot healthier, finally being taken care of by professionals who knew how to handle her. The community really seemed to be helping her respond to others in ways that being alone in her old house just couldn’t achieve.
Then 2020 happened, and a place usually considered one of the safest for the elderly suddenly became a death trap under a government that said simply “if…some pensioners die, too bad”. As I write this, care homes are still being inadequately protected, and a recent report came out detailing the way in which patients with the virus were being placed in care homes to free up hospital beds. All that mattered was the hospital death numbers, to report the real figures would embarrass the government.
It feels absurd to bring my own experience into a discussion about a computer game like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, but when I started to consider the way that music, masks and memory all intertwine with each other within it, I couldn’t not write about it here. This is an absurd example of 21st Century grief, elucidating my feelings through a children’s game made in 2000. Then again, gaming has become such an integral part of so many lives, that maybe it’s more appropriate now to show how games have intertwined with our consciousness. It’s my grieving process, I’ll illustrate it how I want.
Majora’s Mask tells the story of the questing hero, Link, who has just saved the world in the previous game, Ocarina of Time. After some time travelling shenanigans, Link, as an adult, saves the world, and is returned to his childhood so he doesn’t miss out on the seven years he had to sleep to face the villainous Ganondorf. As a child, his fairy friend Navi flies away into the Lost Woods, where Link gives chase. True to its name, he gets lost, and is assailed by a thief called the Skull Kid, who steals Link’s horse Epona. When he confronts the Skull Kid, the sinister masked thief transforms Link into a worthless “Deku Scrub”, a small, defenceless creature easily defeated in Ocarina.
Link, still in Deku form, travels to “Clock Town”, where he discovers that the Skull Kid has caused the Moon to very slowly but surely fall towards the town. He has only three days to stop it. Except, he doesn’t. When you finally confront the Skull Kid, you are still powerless to stop him. All you can do is play the magical ocarina of time, which transports Link back to the beginning of the first day. From here, Link exists in a time-loop, and must repeat the three days over and over until he’s found lots of masks, useful items, and freed four Giants, who have the strength and size to hold the Moon at bay.
It’s disturbing to think about Majora’s Mask with dementia in mind. Link is trapped, both within the bounds of the aptly named land of Termina, and within a specific time zone, doomed to repeat things over and over again until the end. They said of Grandma that she would sometimes think she was a child again, amongst her old friends and family. She too was repeating things over and over.
Link isn’t just trapped within a place and time, he’s trapped in his own body. He is a grown adult, a questing world-weary, sword-wielding adventurer, trapped in the body of a child. That Link even loses this child-body at the beginning when transformed into the Deku Scrub is indicative of the fluidity of his identity. His mind was in the wrong body to begin with, and here he is even further removed within an entirely different one!
The whole scenario reminds me of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, how the protagonist is trapped in the body of a monstrous beetle, with a body so large that he can’t even leave his bedroom. He scuttles round and round, on the ceiling and under the bed, unable to escape and, even worse, unable to communicate his condition to the world. Link, being a silent protagonist, and trapped in a world entirely foreign to him, has little chance for communication with others. It’s a cruel and peculiar kind of reversal, that Link, as a child, should be forced to go on a dangerous quest similar to the one he undertook as an adult.
The masks represent the fluidity of the body, how it can be so easily changed and disguised. When each loop passes, the people that Link meets forget they ever met him, but he can use various masks as a means of identifying himself to them in some way. The masks mean something to them. With one quest, a mother looking for her son gives you a mask of his face. Walking around town wearing it is a way for townspeople to recognise that you’re looking for him. Visual cues are an important method of communicating with dementia patients, and helping them develop routine. There is a lot of routine in Majora’s Mask.
Every character is on a set routine that they strictly follow unless the player interacts with them. It’s an ingenious way of explaining why characters would be following set paths, which normally looks robotic in video games but here makes sense. The only way to navigate this world is to memorise certain visual cues for any given time. For example, there’s a man hiding in the bushes of the outskirts of town. If you watch him, you’ll see he eventually robs an old lady. If you time it right, you can stop him, not unlike Phil Connors in Groundhog Day timing a robbery exactly.
The AgingCare website talks about, “Familiarity, distinctiveness, accessibility, legibility, comfort and safety” with regards to people with dementia. They refer to the way that someone with dementia can even navigate themselves around neighbourhoods if there are enough visual cues for them to follow. It’s not so much about memory as it is about familiarity, that where they are is distinctive, accessible and safe.
It lends to the inertia of the game that so much in Majora’s Mask is familiar, but certainly not accessible or safe. When you’re the Deku Scrub you can’t even leave the city. It’s not safe for an unarmed child to go out there. For those who played Ocarina of Time, they will notice that everyone in the land of Termina is an exact replica of those they met in OoT‘s Hyrule. The reason for this was Nintendo’s reuse of the engine assets, but a thematic point was deliberately being put across about the nature of memory and familiarity. These people are familiar, but unfamiliar to both Link and the player.
Dementia distorts perception. The eyes begin to interpret what they see with regards to expectation rather than reality. Misidentification is common amongst many dementia sufferers who may mistake their son for their husband or whomever else. The last time I saw Grandma, and actually spoke to her, was in a video call on Mother’s Day, to wish her well. She didn’t understand what she was seeing. She didn’t recognise a mobile phone, didn’t comprehend that people could be communicating through it, and didn’t seem to recognise any of us. The last time I saw her in person, she was a lot more cogent and perceptive, but even then it wasn’t easy to know if she saw me, or a past version of me. It felt like I was still a child in her eyes. Maybe I was.
When you meet Romani in Majora’s Mask, it’s hard not to conflate her with Malon from Ocarina of Time. Both are in farms outside of town, the Epona music plays, and they look the same. Except they’re very different people, and even stranger than that, Romani’s older sister Cremia looks like the adult version of Malon. It’s with Romani that the game is most declarative with its thoughts on dementia and misperception.
When we first meet Romani, she’s an upbeat and energetic young girl practising her archery skills. She’s preparing for an alien attack, as every year around Carnival time aliens appear and try to steal the cows (a fun reference to cow abductions by UFOs). However, if Link does not help Romani or fails in helping her during the night of the attack, she too is abducted, and doesn’t reappear until the next morning. When you meet her, she is trembling and holding her hand to her head, unable to speak. If you meet to her again the next day, she has gained some cognition, but only to say, “Who are you again?” It’s a sobering moment in a game where you stop cows from UFO abductions. Not only is she familiar but unfamiliar, she doesn’t recognise you at all.
In Majora’s Mask, there are two key mechanics that help you progress throughout the game. The first is the masks, a visual reference point, but the other is music, where you’re able to play various tunes with the magical ocarina that Princess Zelda gave you in Ocarina of Time. An aural reference point, like the masks in being able to communicate with characters in unique situations, both being signifiers. They are representative of something or someone, the original or creator being dead or gone.
One of the last times I saw Grandma alive, was in a video sent by the care home. They were playing music to her, and you could see her lips following the words. A spark of recognition. It reminded me of my great-aunt, who is still alive but also struggling with dementia, who was a pianist throughout her life. Sometimes she’ll forget that she said or did something, but the one thing she hasn’t forgotten is how to play the piano and perform for us.
Music is recorded in what is termed procedural memory. They are the aural and kinaesthetic versions of visual cues. Activities that are learned at a younger age can be done instinctively. Concert violinist and academic Professor Paul Robertson said of music that, “We know that the auditory system of the brain is the first to fully function at 16 weeks, which means that you are musically receptive long before anything else. So it’s a case of first in, last out when it comes to a dementia-type breakdown of memory.”
Familiar music has been shown to have a positive effect on cognition. Musicians have been shown to have improved auditory and comprehension of speech, where even basic music training at a young age will have improved their neural responses. This is certainly the case with my Great Aunt, where she’ll be able to pick up and play any sheet of music, but will sometimes forget that she even played the music minutes before. Her being a pianist is tied totally to her identity. Majora’s Mask reflects both of these details, that music is a healer, and a part of someone.
The Song of Healing is infamous for its haunting melody, but it reflects the bittersweetness of the “healing” found throughout the game. Link’s specific use of the song is to heal troubled souls, including himself, but that doesn’t mean that they’re healed completely. Music can be a comfort and help to those with dementia, but it is not a cure.
When travelling throughout Termina, you come across a solitary house, surrounded by creepy-looking mummies. When you try to enter, a voice shouts from within, telling you that nobody is allowed in. If you do eventually get in, you discover that the inhabitant guarding the house is a young girl. If you enter the basement, you discover a terrifying half-man, half mummy creature, hidden inside a cupboard, that lurches towards you. If you attack it, the little girl stops you, and tells you to leave the house. If you play the song of healing, however, the man is cured of a curse that was slowly transforming him into one of the mindless mummies outside. It turns out that the girl was his daughter.
It’s hard to know what to do with someone with dementia. We didn’t lock Grandma in a cupboard in the basement obviously, but we couldn’t provide the 24/7 care that she needed. We tried to keep her safe, out of harms way, even as her condition worsened and worsened. Pamela (the little girl) and her father are an example of the old way of treating dementia patients, just putting them away out of sight and out of mind. I like to think we did better for Grandma, and tried to give her a safe and healthy environment. In the end though, both in the game and in real life, it didn’t matter. The three days reverse, Link is returned to the first day and the mummified man returns to being cursed again, and in real life 2020 happened. Music heals, but only for so long.
Majora’s Mask is about loss. Link loses his way, his horse then his body. Romani loses her memories, Pamela’s father loses his body and his mind. Some characters though, lose their lives. Link can obtain three masks, each of the various non-human races of Termina: the troll-like Gorons, the aforementioned tree-like Deku, and the fish-like Zora. The masks each contain the spirits of the dead, ghosts with unfinished business in the world, who each need Link to act as their avatar in Termina. When Link wears the masks, he shape-shifts into their forms. He takes their identities, and is mistaken for them when he meets those close to them.
All we have now are photos and videos of Grandma, digital and celluloid signifiers. They’re not much comfort now that she’s gone, just as it isn’t much comfort to those who meet Link to realise that he is not who they thought he was. That is natural though. We have to accept what comes to us, and a photo, or a mask, is better than nothing to remember someone by, even if it is horrible that they slowly become more that thing than a real memory. Maybe that’s why people are so disturbed by the masks in the game. They take on a character of their own, growing apart from the things they used to represent.
There is one good thing to consider though. It’s called the song of healing. Link plays it when he encounters the ghosts, which in turn creates the masks, but it also frees their spirits. They can move on. As sad as it is that people go, we can take comfort in knowing that wherever it is they go, they find healing, and peace.
To end on a slightly more upbeat, though damning note, one of my favourite details in the game is an argument going on in the Mayor’s Office. The Clock Town festival organisers are arguing with the soldiers over the crisis, with the festival organisers wanting the festival to go on ahead, despite the fact that the Moon is very obviously falling towards the town and very few tourists have come to visit, whereas the soldiers are arguing for a full evacuation of the city, to save everyone from the impending disaster. The Mayor sits there useless, unsure of what decision to take.
The argument goes on throughout the course of the three days unless Link steps in, and even then the Mayor’s action is pretty worthless, saying that those who wish to flee can go, while those who wish to stay, can stay. Basically, what everyone had already been doing. We only have to consider the British government’s allowance of the Anfield match in March, where 3000 supporters travelled from Madrid to Liverpool, to see the devastating effects government inaction can have in a crisis. The death toll has exceeded 40,000 in the UK, with 10,000 (recorded) deaths in the North-West alone.
It’s important to remember that Majora’s Mask is a children’s game. It is more like a dream than a fairy-tale, with Link entering Termina by falling down a rabbit hole like Alice, but it is a children’s game nonetheless. What highlights this is the theme that the game focusses upon the most. That theme is friendship. It’s why the game has you spend so much time with the characters. It wants you to get to know them, to remember them and empathise with them. Link develops friendships despite the impending doom above all of the characters’ heads. Even the Skull Kid, once freed from Majora’s Mask’s influence, is forgiven by the Giants, even though he had imprisoned them. He asks Link to be his friend, despite everything that had happened. This is a dark time for us all, but it’s also important to remember that, though things are bad, those of us who are still here, are still here. We have each other.
I’ll be singing at Grandma’s funeral next week, even though I don’t really want to. I want to grieve, not perform. As Majora’s Mask shows however, music is as entwined with memory as the past, and if I need to be the surrogate for those memories, then so be it. I will take comfort in knowing that I have comforted others in their moment of quiet reminiscence. Music removes the masks, and reveals the human.
Brooking The Vault 