Tag: music

Review: Musicophilia

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Musicophilia by Dr Oliver Sacks is one of those books that I picked up and put down again over the course of years. First published in 2007, I used to fondly tap on a copy whenever I saw one in a bookstore. In part because of my love of Oliver Sacks. As a former neuro-whatever, the psychology equivalent of the muppet Gonzo, I’ve been reading case studies by Dr. Sacks for as long as I can remember. Musicophilia combines some of Sacks’ most keen interests, music and neurology, perception and creativity, and human perseverance into a book that feels inevitable.

It is a fingernail scratching at the surface of an iceberg, but it is the only book like it that I know of.

Dr. Sacks was, among other things, fascinated by music and keen pianist though he always lamented not being as adept as others; he was a very joyful man who pursued knowledge and understanding, conceptualizing things in a uniquely precise way. What sticks with me aside from Sack’s usual attention to detail and science, are particularly the opening chapter discussing a man struck by lightning who after developed keen musical intuition and writing ability. Other chapters which struck with me of particular interest were use of music therapies with individuals who have impulse and tic disorders. I think the applications of musical therapies are barely understood and so promising.

Dr. Sacks writes as he always does with keen, pointed interest. He doesn’t muck about, ever, he had far too much to discuss and learn, yet he was thrilled to talk about what he had learned with you.

The book is an excellent toe-in-the-water for learning about music therapy and musical disorders as well as music’s place in neurological development.

Review: The Mayor of Macdougall Street

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I like Dave Van Ronk. I have forever. Still, the book took me forever to read. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, I very much did, but because, as always, Dave Van Ronk is surprising.

I wasn’t expecting a chapter devoted to anarchy, activism, or the confiscation  of the term and re-appropriation of libertarian-ism quite so early on. This was stupid of me. I know who Dave Van Ronk is, after all. And I know he had things to say.

My favorite answer to that question is: Dave Van Ronk was a folk singer who was out to dinner the night of the Stonewall Riots, saw people throwing bricks and heard the commotion, and excused himself from the table to join. Famously quoted, “…I figured, they can’t have a riot without me!”

If for whatever reason you doubt Van Ronk’s intelligence, you needn’t. Everything discussed shows a highly intelligent, curious, thoughtful man who carefully plodded through his politics and his craft. These are perhaps his two most comfortable topics. He, like so many men laboring against patriarchy long before it was popular or even a term, runs into that barrier of having to define what patriarchy is without many allies. He knows that there is injustice, that he seems to be somehow benefit from the status quo, yet he wants to raise up the others around him. He believed in true equality —which is goddamn hard when you’re getting started in the 1950s as if it isn’t still hard today.

There’s a cancer of hyper individualism that sees people with amazing work lives or intellectual lives who have very turbulent personal lives. Van Ronk is one of them, a proud race of people trying to navigate the society he’s in and the values he has.

Also, his descriptions of music and honing his skill leaves me jealous. He was someone who put his head down and learned, meticulously, leaning heavily on the influences around him to be a school and not something he merely took from.