Upon reading Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, he journeys through the minds of people who have experienced firsthand the nirvana of music, from those with inborn synesthesia to those who have undergone medical issues. Sacks also discloses his own perception of music and how it has influenced his life. When recounting his two music-infused dreams, he describes one as a soothing Mozart horn experience and the other as an unrecognizable, alarming sound (225). Expanding on the latter dream, it was discovered to be Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder — a song cycle that mourns dead children. Sacks was stunned when the connection was made because the day before the dream, he resigned from working at a children’s unit in a hospital and burned some of his essays; his dreamlike state conjured this connection despite his disliking for Mahler’s music. After making these links between dreams and music, Sacks described music as “both completely abstract and profoundly emotional… express interstates or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation” (245). Music allows emotion to be internally analyzed and then freed into the real world, acting just like a language interpreter.

Another story that fascinated me was Tony Cicoria and his lightning accident. Dr. Cicoria spoke on the telephone during a thunderstorm, resulting in him being electrocuted and reaching a tranquil state surrounded by a “bluish-white light” (13). To understand the cause of this mysterious light, this experience likely caused a drop in blood pressure and an intense surge of noradrenaline, indicating alterations to the amygdala and brainstem — the emotional parts of the brain (22). After the incident, he faced difficulties with his memory, but interestingly enough, became infatuated and possessed by the elements of music. Music gave his life a new meaning, and he found ways to integrate it into his daily life of being a surgeon. Even through the tribulations of divorce, composing and playing music was a passion that never subsided for him. 

Before reading this book, I never realized how much music helps us in remembering and retaining certain concepts, such as singing the alphabet or any mnemonic patterns. Sacks relays a story that a neurobiology professor told him about a student who would recite his lectures word by word on exams. Suspicious of cheating, the student actually had an insane photographic memory — one that allowed her to remember anything as long as it was transcribed into music (194). She sang back his lecture notes from memory musically, leaving the professor in shock. The catchiness and rhythmic nature of music stimulates unremarkable retention of knowledge in everyday life, capturing the beauty in the mundane world.

As a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, which enabled me to view music as not just an enjoyable art form, but rather a catalyst for transcendental thought and immersive education.

 

Resource:

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Revised and expanded, first Vintage books edition. New York, Vintage Books, 2008.