Here and There

The October 31, 2005 issue of The New Yorker contains an article by neurologist Oliver Sacks (author of Awakenings) about aphasia. Aphasia is a neurological condition, often brought on by stroke, head trauma, and brain tumors, in which the patient loses his or her ability to speak in language.

But I’m not here to give a science lesson. I’ll leave that to Sacks’s article and Wikipedia.

Instead I want to talk about something Sacks touches on in his article. Singing.

Sacks’s main character, whom he calls Patricia H., acquires aphasia late in life, but over the course of several years of being institutionalized, starts developing certain ways of communicating. One of them is singing.

Sacks writes, “Pat was able to get the feeling of the music, and some of the words, in a sing-song fashion. She started carrying a tape recorder with a cassette of familiar songs, so she could get her language powers working…

“Music therapy is invaluable for some patients with expressive aphasia, who, finding they can sing the words to a song, are reassured that language is not wholly lost, that they still have access to words somewhere inside them.”

This point isn’t huge for Sacks, but it immediately brought to mind my own experience with songs and music. I’ve always wondered why I have perfect pitch inside my head, but once I open my mouth, glass shatters and people cringe? Why are some people able to make a perfect translate between the melodies in their brains and the sound their mouths produce?

Why will I be able to always, always remember the words to obscure ’80s songs, and even some of the most random guitar and saxaphone solos from the same era, but I have no idea what I ate for lunch two days ago?

The answer is clear: songs and music occupy a different part of our brains than do language and representational thought. I’m so curious about how our brains work, so I promise after I’m out of school, I’ll look more into that difference, and I’ll report on it here.

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