Homage to Oliver Sacks
July 9th would have been Oliver Sacks’ ninetieth birthday.
On this anniversary, I find myself reflecting on him not only as an important figure who had, almost improbably, a profound influence on the world, but as someone I deeply admired and whose life’s work serves as something of a north star for me.
He was an exceptional and original thinker, clinician, and philosopher. He was a force of nature; a man who brought the breadth of himself and his life experience, not just his scholarship and expertise, to his astute, empathic, and poignantly humane observations and commentary on any number of afflictions and conditions — neurological and quotidian — and on the human condition generally.
And, of course, he was a remarkable writer.
In 2007, I had the wonderful, and surprising, privilege of spending a little time with him. He was charming, erudite, deeply inquisitive, funny, gracious.
Dr Sacks had contacted me as he was preparing the manuscript for his then forthcoming book, “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.” He’d read some of my writing on psychoanalytic perspectives on music, trauma, and loss. He was especially interested in “Music and Trauma in Polanski’s The Pianist” (International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2004) and “Music, Mourning and Consolation” (Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2004), and planned to incorporate aspects of my work in his book in the chapter focusing on lamentation, trauma, and depression.
He arranged to have an early print of the manuscript delivered to my office to give me the opportunity to respond and suggest refinements or corrections to his citations of my ideas.
But he was also characteristically interested in more than just extending professional courtesy to ensure accuracy; he wanted a dialogue and invited me to come to his office for a conversation.
Our scheduled time together flew by, as is said in musical terminology, molto vivaci (very quickly) and, once having talked about the book, he ordered in Chinese food to carry us through a rich meandering discussion on, of course, playing and listening to music (he had a grand piano in his office!), and the astonishing intricacies of emotions and the mind. We also touched on culture, aging, love, parents, and the ongoing struggle with personal history and the drive, sometimes against all odds, to fully be one’s self, a topic that suffused all of his books and informed his special talent as a clinician. We might well have continued for hours more if a member of his staff hadn’t gently nudged him to say goodbye and send me off.
It was a moment unlikely to be duplicated. One I will always cherish.
Oliver Sacks was and remains an important role model for me as a scientist-writer. He writes, as New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani put it in her review of Musicophilia, “not just as a doctor and a scientist but also as a humanist with a philosophical and literary bent.”
His body of works present an ideal balance, in my estimation, of insight and erudition with wonderful story-telling and, most importantly, deep compassion for individual human experience.
While I don’t attempt to emulate him, I do continually aspire to accomplish something he did very well — to illuminate dizzyingly complicated and disquieting aspects of the human condition without being reductive or pedantic, and always endeavoring to be accurate, respectful, compassionate, and humane.