Musicophilia

I finally finished Musicophilia, an amazing book by Oliver Sacks. A neurologist, music lover and writer, he discusses the pathologies of his patients (and himself) as they relate to music. This leads to fascinating insights about our brains and our relationship with music. It is an especially good companion to Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music and Hawkins' On Intelligence.

Sacks writes about people with enhanced musical abilities and people with musical "impairments", such as an inability to connect emotionally with music, or a shift in one's pitch perception enough to make all music sound out of tune. He writes about professional musicians and how their maladies affect their livelihoods; but more often the subjects are musical "civilians". Music is such a pervasive component of the human condition that an impairment could affect a listener as much as a performer. But Sacks also writes about music's ability to connect to some people when nothing else can, to temper a Parkinsons patient's tremors, or to animate otherwise silent Alzheimer sufferers. Brilliant.

That it took me so long to read it is not a commentary on the book, but rather the relative insanity of my life the past couple months.