On the Move: A Life

by Oliver Sacks

When I took on the subject of hearing, I got so excited by this, did so much reading and thinking, that I did not actually have time to write my essay. But on the day of my presentation, I brought in a pad of paper and pretended to read from it, turning over the pages as I extemporized on the subject. At one point, Carter (Dr. C. W. Carter, my tutor at Queen’s) stopped me. “I didn’t quite follow that,” he said. “Could you read it again?” A little nervously, I tried to repeat the last couple of sentences. Carter looked puzzled. “Let me see it,” he said. I handed him the blank pad. “Remarkable, Sacks,” he said. “Very remarkable. But in future, I want you to write your essays.”

I am very bad at factual exams, yes-or-no questions, but can spread my wings with essays.

The Perception of the Visual World, and was happy to let us experiment with special glasses that inverted (in one eye or both) what one normally saw. Nothing was more bizarre than seeing the world upside down, and yet, within days, the brain would adapt to this and reorient the visual world (only to have it appear upside down again when one took off the spectacles). Visual illusions, too,

I think in narrative and historical terms.

My A was not some attempt to affirm a spurious equality but rather an acknowledgment of the uniqueness of each student. I felt that a student could not be reduced to a number or a test, any more than a patient could. How could I judge students without seeing them in a variety of situations, how they stood on the ungradable qualities of empathy, concern, responsibility, judgment?

The players are connected. Each player, interpreting the music individually, constantly modulates and is modulated by the others. There is no final or “master” interpretation; the music is

collectively created, and every performance is unique. This is Edelman’s picture of the brain, as an orchestra, an ensemble, but without a conductor, an orchestra which makes its own music.