But if I must choose, there is always that one which involuntarily pops into my mind. It would be unfair and incorrect to narrow down to a single book. There had been good books for a good time, great books which were read too young, okay books but came at a right time and left deep impressions. For me, every book that had affected me was a favourite at some point. “Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.The question a lot of people had asked me which had puzzled me to no end is: “What is your favourite book of all time?” I mean, how do you even answer that? Impossible to answer such a question. Music can pierce the heart directly it needs no mediation.” - Oliver Sacks It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. “Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. “Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.” - Oliver Sacks Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.” - Oliver Sacks We are attracted to repetition, even as adults we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. “There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.” - Oliver Sacks “The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.” - Oliver Sacks But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. “Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. “We have, each of us, a life story, whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives.” - Oliver Sacks
I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.” - Oliver Sacks I have loved and been loved I have been given much and I have given something in return I have read and traveled and thought and written. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
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