ROBYN JACKSON

Forget the stereotype of doctors playing golf to relax. When R. Scott Anderson, MD, wants to get away from the pressures of his job as a radiation oncologist at the Jeff Anderson Regional Cancer Center in Meridian, he sits down to compose music, write or paint.

“I started painting at seven years old because I was dyslexic and couldn’t read,” Anderson, 52, said. “My mother thought that if I could learn to see the world in three dimensions that I would be able to overcome the problem. She was right. I stopped painting when I married Charlene. She converted my painting studio back into a kitchen so I didn’t paint from 1992 until 2003, when I started taking lessons from Greg Cartmell. The painting kind of led to the first novel. It’s called ‘TimeDonors Wanted,’ and it was shopped at this spring’s Book Expo and we have had interest from several major publishers, but have not come to an agreement yet.”

“TimeDonors Wanted” asks the question, “If you could have a one-time affair with someone you would never see again, and no one could ever find out, would you?” Then it points out the consequences of answering yes to that question.
“When a friend who happened to have an Emmy and a couple of ACE awards offered to help convert the novel to a screenplay, we were off in that direction,” Anderson said. “Like the novel arose from a painting and the screenplay arose from the novel; formally writing music arose from hearing what should be playing during certain parts of the screenplay.

Anderson, who also writes a regular column for the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association, started writing music by making up lullabies for his two daughters when they were babies.

“I don’t really play any instrument, I bang on a guitar or bass guitar while I sing, badly,” he said. “Luckily, I’ve had access to talented musicians who then play what I just played, only right. Then I tell them yes or no, and we lay down the tracks in a recording studio.”

The first film from his Cloud Chamber Productions LLC, “Teary Sockets,” premiered at Jackson’s Crossroads Film Festival in April. It was written and directed by one of his partners in the LLC, Jackson Anderson. Scott Anderson wrote the soundtrack.

“It’s about an emo band from L.A. that comes to Mississippi to get funding from the band leader’s father, and the clash that results in the band getting arrested as domestic terrorists. It’s available at www.tearysockets.com, or on Amazon,” Anderson said.

Emo, for the uninitiated, is a term loosely used to describe any band playing guitar-based music that is emotional, but had its beginning in the punk rock movement, according to About.com.

“I’ve also written a screenplay for hire for the Williams Brothers called ‘Still Standing Tall,’ about three generations of gospel singers in Mississippi,” Anderson said. “We have six or seven other screenplays in various stages of completion and I have another novel about halfway finished.”

Anderson’s side job as a composer and writer is interesting enough, but the path he took to becoming an oncologist is equally as interesting.

“I am from an academic medicine background,” he said. “I grew up wherever my dad was teaching - Kentucky, Virginia, Alabama and Louisiana. I graduated from the University of Alabama, and went to the University of Alabama School of Medicine, then I did my first year of residency training at one of the outlying hospitals in Birmingham. I was able to do four months of ENT when the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut was bombed and the Navy invited me to come and play, so I went to dive school to learn hyperbaric and diving medicine, SCUBA, surface supplied, mixed gas and saturation diving. Then to submarine school, which included training in radiation health and safety, the nuclear power program, and the nuclear weapons program.

“I was assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group Two, and when their physician was injured in a parachuting accident to support Special Warfare Group Two (SEALs), I deployed in operations in both the Middle East and Central America. After five years of that, I asked to be assigned to residency training in radiation oncology; due to my background in physics this request was granted and I spent my residency at Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine in Norfolk, Va. This was followed by an assignment as a Radiation Oncologist at Naval Hospital San Diego. I resigned my commission to pursue a civilian career in 1992 and moved to Meridian to start practice. I married my wife, Charlene, the same year, and we have raised seven children here in Meridian.”

Anderson said he is excited about the opportunities to take his knowledge of fighting cancer further.

“Oncology is a very exciting field right now, and one we need a whole lot more people in,” he said. “With the aging of the baby boomer population, it’s estimated that we will need three times as many practicing oncologists as we have now, in 10 years. As much as I love my job, you only get to cure 60 percent of the patients that you see in radiation oncology. That means that 40 percent are going to die, and that does get stressful. Doing these other things lets me move on emotionally, to create something. Creativity is like a reverse transcriptase that comes along and fixes up all of the dings and nicks of the day. Otherwise, I guess I’d end up lying on the floor of my closet talking to my shoes.”

Anderson said his patients aren’t really aware of the music, novels and paintings, “they have enough on their minds.”

He plans to continue his medical career, and he is proud that his team at Jeff Anderson Regional Cancer Center was recently featured by Philips as an example of the kinds of basic research that can be done at a community cancer center.

“Finding time to be creative is hard, and a lot of times if I’m writing, I don’t paint, or if I’m painting, I don’t play guitar,” he said. “You just pick what you’re going to do today. The other trick is to include your children in your activities. I can’t sit down at an easel without three of the kids in there painting with me, or we all bang on guitars and sing badly together, who cares if nobody else likes it, we do.”



August 2008