![]() ![]() They feel it's part of their creativity - they're doing it for you. You can't go to a restaurant without music, and they get offended if you ask them to turn it off. ![]() But I can't help wondering if the incidence of earworms and musical hallucinations is higher now, with background music in every public place. ![]() Darwin might have had to go to London to see a concert. Sacks: At first it would seem to be a wonderful gain. But iPods make music ubiquitous, like mental air-conditioning. Wired: When you were growing up, hearing music often required going to see it performed. You can be blind without being musical, but there is a correlation. A third of all musical savants are blind. But in those born blind, musicians or not, it's nearly 1 in 2. Absolute pitch is pretty rare in the general population - maybe 1 in 10,000 have it. People who are born blind seem to develop extraordinary auditory, tactile, and olfactory sensitivities. Sacks: When one is born without a sense or loses it early, one turns to the other senses to construct the richest possible world and identity. Art Tatum, JoaquĆn Rodrigo, Blind Willie McTell, Stevie Wonder - why are there so many great blind musicians? Ten seconds afterwards, he had no memory of it. After I'd written about him, he sang professionally again, and it was beautiful, though people were afraid he'd be lost before the performance. He's had Alzheimer's for 40 years, and is profoundly disabled in almost every way, but is a member of an a cappella group called the Grunyons. This is Woody Geist, who I describe in my new book. ![]()
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