Category: Memory

Children, Ethics, Family, Fathers, Love, Memory, Music2 Comments

Memories of Dad

Gary Furr

There were times as a young man when I complained to myself A memory of Dad…where do you start?  I have pictures in my mind.  First, of looking up at this tall, silent man.  Looking up in fear sometimes, in awe most of the time as he went about life.  He was strong, good, quiet, rarely angry with us.  I looked up when I read his scrapbooks, hook shots flying through the air, frozen forever as the ideal athlete.  Playing catch in the backyard or playing basketball while he watched, always the same.  You were the mount Everest of my … Continue reading Memories of Dad

Aging, Brain, Christianity, Culture, Economics, Ethics, Faith, Family, Family, Gospel music, Memory, Modern Life, Music, Oliver Sacks, Physiology, Spirituality, Suffering, Theology, Theology and Life4 Comments

The Songs Remember When Part II by Gary Furr

Gary Furr

…there are aspects of humanity that are not reducible to particles, chemicals and rational analysis. In my last post, I reflected on the interesting work of Oliver Sacks on memory.  A few further thoughts about the whole notion of science, faith, and humanity. Sacks has been criticized roundly for his “anecdotes” that don’t meet all the rigor of some scientific requirement, especially by the radical reductionists.  Some believe that  “there is no self or soul.  We are merely the product of our acculturated experiences and brain physiology and when it’s gone, so are we.” But there is something instinctive that … Continue reading The Songs Remember When Part II by Gary Furr

Art, Brain, Creativity, humanity, Love, Memory, Music, music therapy, Oliver Sacks, Physiology4 Comments

The Songs Remember When: Part I

Gary Furr

“The Lord…gave me these sounds.” 

Oliver Sacks is a British-born neurologist whose maverick investigations inspired the Academy-Award winning movie, “Awakenings” and who gained notoriety for his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a collection of unusual cases of mental and emotional issues.  He is, as his website puts it, “physician, a best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center,” even being named the first Columbia University artist forhis contributions to the arts.  In his book Musicophilia, “Dr. Sacks investigates the power of music to move us, to heal and to haunt us.”

In his “Music and Memory Project,” Dr. Sacks collected and investigates the power of music on memory.  It is tempting, and I have even said this sometimes myself in thinking about identity, that when memory goes, so does our sense of identity and self.  Who am I when I can’t remember any more.  So often in my vocation I hear people say, “Mom left us long ago.”  In Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, an individual descends into a solitary cocoon of long-term memories, and then finally into silence before death.  Where did what we knew as “the person” go?

A friend recently shared a very moving video posted on YouTube of Sacks’ project.   CLICK HERE TO VIEW    It is a remarkable record of a man named who has debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease which rendered him inert and lifeless most of the time.  They learned from his family about some of his favorite music from Cab Calloway and others early in his life and put it on an MP3 player and put on the ear phones.  The transformation is remarkable.  He is alive again, eyes bright and he begins to move to the rhythm and sing along.  A glow of life continues after the music is taken away.

He says, at the end, “The Lord…gave me these sounds.”  There is something remembered in our bodies, our minds, our selves, deep and irreplaceable.  Human beings and the earth God made are sacred, all of it.  We should treat it that way. Continue reading “The Songs Remember When: Part I”