Uncategorized : Idiotion


Oct

4

Music and the brain.

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 12:10 | Filed In Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Wired has an interview with Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain about the experiences of different people in response to music. He has some amazing stories.

Let me play something for you. This is Woody Geist, who I describe in my new book. He’s had Alzheimer’s for 40 years, and is profoundly disabled in almost every way, but is a member of an a cappella group called the Grunyons. After I’d written about him, he sang professionally again, and it was beautiful, though people were afraid he’d be lost before the performance. Ten seconds afterwards, he had no memory of it.

He’s a bit of an advocate for music and art, for the flowering of creativity that seems to get lost in a consumerist, corporate world. Here’s his take on smelling the roses:

All of us are apt to get a little desiccated if we don’t make a point of holding on to the delights of art and music and landscape. It’s very easy to become preoccupied with theorizing and the activities of daily living and stop noticing the beauties of the world.

What’s locked deep in your brain beyond your conscious control?

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