Watch the full interview above.
“I think when you see someone you love diagnosed with something like dementia ... you’re confronted with mortality,” Jess told The Feed's Marc Fennell. “It’s very confronting”.
In addition to dementia, Jess and Lisa's mother, Colleen Origliasso, is also living with another neurological disease: progressive supranuclear palsy.
Progressive supranuclear palsy is a disorder with similar symptoms to Parkinson’s, caused by damage to certain nerve cells that results in stiffness, walking difficulties, lack of coordination and cognitive dysfunction. Dementia is a deterioration of mental processes like memory, personality and reasoning.
It is hard for any family to deal with a relative suffering from the symptoms of dementia, but for The Veronicas they have found a silver lining in their art.
The documentation of their youth through videos and music helps their mum remember feel things that she would otherwise struggle with.
“So with people living with dementia, music is processed through a different part of the brain. And so someone even in the late stages of dementia, if they hear music they can still experience certain things that have direct memory or feeling recall to those songs,” Jess told Marc.
For a generation that’s supposedly grappling with over-sharing the Veronicas are more philosophical about the personal content of them that exists in the public sphere.
“We love it,” Jess said, “sitting down with [mum] and being able to look back through it all recently was one of the most beautiful experiences."
“And she’s the one who actually said, you know: Where’s your music? Get back in the studio I want to hear new music,” Lisa said. “I was like, OK it’s time.”
The Veronicas released their latest single Think of Me in May and ‘Jess and Lisa: The Veronicas’ an all-access reality show is coming to MTV later this year.
