Musicophilia is another “popular neurology” book by Oliver Sacks centering around, of course, music. From people who have a loop of three notes continuously playing in their head, to people for whom music makes colors, to people who are emotionally detached from music, this is an interesting book. I found the chapters to be shorter than other books by Sacks. This gave the book the feeling of being a collection of mini case studies. Instead of treating one case in depth, he summarized a myriad of them.
Chapter 15 really caught my interest. It discusses Clive, a man with severe amnesia who retained his musical abilities, still playing the piano and organ and even regularly conducting his old choir. I found the description of his type of amnesia moving.
“His ability to perceive what he saw and heard was unimpaired. But he did not seem able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. Indeed, if he did blink, his eyelids parted to reveal a new scene. The view before the blink was utterly forgotten. Each blink, each glance away and back, brought him an entirely new view” (188).
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