In college I learned about Patient H M. Two Fridays ago I watched his brain be dissected. Patient H M, who, in his twenties, lost his ability to form memories, died this December 1st. His brain was immediately flown across the country to a lab of research students ready to undertake what amounted to a 53-hour procedure at UC San Diego. The slicing was broadcast over livestream. I sneaked peeks at it while at my desk job – muted my music when I did. One camera focused on the slicing, another on some lab equipment and a third was a wide shot of the space. At first, watching the slicing of the brain was profoundly inconsequential, like a successful gulp of too much water. With no music, later, like watching someone wipe a kitchen counter from the vantage of another room. During the occipital lobe, toward the end of the surgery, a hand appeared in the upper right frame and put a Post-It on the lab equipment – “STAN GETZ”. (No screen shot, mea culpa). Nodding. Yes, I would have rather liked to imagine everyone in the lab listening to Biz Markie or something. Second thought: At college again, a leading research biologist gives our graduation address and says the thing that my hippie parents argue long afterward, the only thing impressed on my memory of the speech to this day, it has been found most people’s music tastes stop evolving after their twenties, that most continue through their life listening to the same music they listened to around that time. Twenty…
In appreciation of Twenty Favorites and all the music posts at Big Other of late, online dissections and empirical studies, I ask you,
How has your taste in the music you listen to while writing evolved?