Radiolab - Oliver Sacks: A Journey From Where to Where

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

There’s nothing quite like the sound of someone thinking out loud, struggling to find words and ideas to match what’s in their head. Today, we are allowed to dip into the unfiltered thoughts of Oliver Sacks, one of our heroes, in the last months of his life.  Oliver died in 2015, but before he passed he and his partner Bill Hayes, in an effort to preserve some of Oliver’s thoughts on his work and his life, bought a little tape recorder. Over a year and half after Oliver’s death, Bill dug up the recorder and turned it on. Through snippets of conversation with Bill, and in moments Oliver recorded whispering to himself as he wrote, we get a peek inside the head, and the life, of one of the greatest science essayists of all time. The passages read in this piece all come from Oliver’s recently released, posthumous book, The River of Consciousness.  Special thanks to Billy Hayes for letting us use Oliver’s tapes, you can check out his work at http://www.billhayes.com/    

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. Hey, I'm Chad. I'm Rob. I'm Robert Krollowicz. This is Radio Lab. So, Robert, one of my favorite sounds of all time is the sound of hearing people think. You know, of hearing a mind kind of formulate a thought that wasn't, there until it clicks in. Yeah, and that's just a beautiful sound, especially when the mind that you're listening to

is a person who has shaped you, has shaped the show. Sure. So today, a little bit of a departure. A couple of months ago, I got connected to a guy named Bill Hayes, a mutual friend, sort of put us in touch. He wrote a really good book, actually, about anatomy, really good. I gave it to my son. Really?

Yeah. He is a writer and a photographer. And I was the partner of the late Oliver Sacks. And together we made tapes or recordings of conversations in the last year of his life. Now, Oliver Sacks, one of the great, great writers of science ever. Yeah, masterful, masterful writer. You know, we here at Radio Lab have grown up with him. And his style of combining sort of clinical scientific observation with deep humanity and poetry.

I feel like we're always trying to walk in his footsteps in some way. Mm-hmm. Do you do? We do. And certainly we know we've had him on the show many, many, many times, so his voice will be familiar to a lot of you. But what you hear on these tapes is an altogether different portrait. And why did you start these recordings?

Well, Oliver got his diagnosis of a terminal cancer in mid-January, 2015. He had had cancer about nine years earlier, dealt with it. But it was back and spreading through his body. The prognosis was six to 18 months, and it was shattering. Shortly after, Bill says they were sitting at the kitchen table talking. Like, I knew that he had things on his mind that he wanted to write, and I said, well, what are you thinking about writing? This was about four days after he got his diagnosis.

And he paused, and then he looked at me and he said, something like a month ago, I felt that I was in good health. even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day, but my luck has run out. And I said, stop right there, and I grabbed a pad and a pen, and I said, start over, and I began writing as fast as I could as he dictated virtually the entire essay. Wow. Just sort of spilled out like that? Yeah. And so we had the idea of getting a little audio recorder, a digital recorder, so that it could be on hand at any time, whether to record what he wanted to write

or reminisce or to collect stories. After his death, I put the recorder in a drawer and didn't pull it out again until over a year and a half after his death. I didn't even listen to any of it to write my own memoir. I had been kind of very nervous about listening to them because I thought it would be very sad and just so that it would just make me depressed and sad.

But I took the recorder out of the drawer where it had sat for 18 months, and I pushed play, and of course it didn't work because the batteries were dead. So I had to scramble to find batteries when I did and then pushed play. Okay, this is a recorded conversation between OWS and Billy Hayes. I mean... On February 6th. the hairs on my arms went up. It was as if he was alive.

This is the first recording you made with him? It was during dinner we were eating at the time and he began telling me about his dreams. Dreams. I've been having a lot of strangely art of type of dreams of a journey I have to make. Yeah.

Getting lost and getting found full of surprises there may be going through a door which I think will be a door into another room

but it's a door into a mountain landscape and sometimes frightening ravines or having to edge along very narrow ledges

but then finally coming to some gracious heavenly mountain meadow and then waking dreams about journeys

an approaching end and it's a journey from where to where this was February 6th 2015 so about three weeks after Oliver got his diagnosis of a terminal

cancer and his immediate impulse was to write and yet beneath this balance has been forced into my mind by the events

The past two weeks. Oliver was quite deaf, even louder than he realized, he would whisper words to himself as he wrote them down on the pad, and he wrote with a fountain pen. For Oliver, writing was a form of thinking and the primary activity for a human being. My normal, my normal health,

normal state of health and energy, health and health. energy as a fit, as a fit and active 81 year old, old and hope to enjoy. And this, despite having, I know in the previous month, a liver full melanoma testesies. Do you have new pages? Yeah, I hear. Things are out. This is from this. From there, out. What I'm going to do is just leave that all there so you can look at it again. Good, yes, no, nothing must be destroyed and I'm a creature of multiple grafts. As you know, symptoms, that was of the general feeling, the general feeling of disorder,

which goes with them, which goes with them, and which may be totally severe, totally severe, totally severe, totally so severe, so severe. Patience, patience, be long for death, be long for death. My other magnifying loss. Yeah, I haven't had.

Oliver was the kind of guy who would take dictionaries to bed to read, to read with a magnifying glass. Can you bring my James Dictionary or look up a word for me? Sure. You may need a magnifying glass, and I have one here. Aha. I also feel the missing magnifying glass. There it is.

Can you see if there's a word of reciprocence? R. Yes, there is. Change to a better frame of mind, to be wise. to be wise Can you pull out the big dictionary and see if you can find any examples in particular I want to know whether a return to health Okay

Here is a man with a huge vocabulary and love of writing But still every day he would be struck by a word That he wanted to look up Well it immediately says Repentance for Misconduct What did you say Repentance for Misconduct

recognition of errors committed return to a better mind or opinion but what's the origin of the word to recover one's senses come to oneself again yeah come to one senses I think that's not quite the word I want

debilitating debilitating time disappeared a little turn of energy and the stasis is coming back is coming back the fucking body

a fucking body which I had so cursed who's some ginsay thank you very much meaning yourself gratitude and falls forth continually and the unexpected

had happened the hope for health the hope for health of a real wake and faith him so long. Please. Okay, Billy. Yeah. Should I read something to you? Yes. A general feeling of disorder. It is especially when things are going wrong internally, when homeostasis is not being maintained, when the autonomic balance starts listing heavily to one side or the other, that this core consciousness, the feeling of how one is takes on an

intrusive, unpleasant quality. And now one will say, I feel ill. Something is amiss. At such times, one... Indeed, everything comes and goes. And if one could take a scan or inner photograph of the body at such times, one would see vascular beds opening and closing, peristalysis accelerating or stopping, viscera squirming or tightening in spasms, secretions suddenly increasing or decreasing,

as if the nervous system itself were in a state of indecision. Instability, fluctuation, and oscillation are of the essence in the unsettled state, this feeling of disorder. We lose the normal feeling of... The procedure, their relatively benign, would lead to the death of a huge mass of melanoma cells. These in dying would give off a variety of unpleasant and pain-producing substances. Soon after waking from the embolization,

I was to be assailed by feelings of excruciating tiredness, improxisms of sleep so abrupt they could pull ax me in the middle of a sentence or a mouthful. Delirium would seize me within seconds, even in the middle of handwriting. I felt extremely weak and inert. On day 10, I turned a corner. I felt awful as usual in the morning, but a completely different person in the afternoon.

This was delightful and wholly unexpected. I suddenly found myself full of physical and creative energy and euphoria almost akin to hypomania. Exuberant thoughts rushed through my mind. How much of this was a reestablishment of balance in the body, how much an autonomic rebound after a profound autonomic depression, how much other physiological factors, and how much the sheer joy of writing, I do not know. But my transformed state and feeling were, I suspect, very close to what Nietzsche experienced

after a period of illness and expressed so lyrically in the gay science. Gratitude pours forth continually, as if the unexpected had just happened, the gratitude of a Convalescent, for convalescence was unexpected. The rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are open again. Where's the microphone on this bloody thing? Well, okay, you're recording this, right? The time is 920 in New York.

be five hours difference with Greenwich meantime, and it is Monday the 9th. That's to say the 20th day after my embolization, and just 48 hours till the next one. End of recording. Pause. On March 11th, Oliver had the second ambulization surgery, which would cut off blood supply to the tumors growing in his liver, with the idea that it would give Oliver more time, more energy. We'd been together six years. I knew him well, and yet I'd never seen him with such focus. Believe. Just constantly writing. I don't know what to call this piece. They can title it. Ninth Avenue on the glorious forest. Well, I like the future I shall never know.

Oh, that's excellent. Yeah, that's it. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, think I need to put in. Otherwise, just to indicate why I should... Have some insurance. And I say to Billy, who is a good deal younger, who is younger, who is a good deal younger than I am, originally I put who was two-thirds my age. So I have to be precise. I like that. I mean, that's really precise. Okay, who is exactly two-thirds my age. Okay, so that's that. A little piece. For the New Yorker. Yes.

Okay, have some insurer and I'll heat your suit. Thank you. Sure. I like the idea of saying, Billy, who is exactly two-thirds of my age. It's not a fraction you expect to see. Three-quarters, yes, half-yes. But not two-thirds.

I like the idea of putting a tiny arithmetical conundrum. Ninth Avenue Reverie, published March 20, 2015. driving down 9th Avenue, choking on diesel fumes from a truck just ahead of us, I say to my friend Billy, he's exactly two-thirds my age, I wonder whether you will see the end of internal combustion engines, the end of oil, a cleaner world. The thought zooms me away from 9th Avenue to a forest world. In particular, to the one described in that glorious forest,

Sir Gillian Prance's book about his 39 visits to the Amazon in the past 50 years. He sees what we are doing to the Amazon and its many peoples. He speaks for conservation, sanity, reason, before we destroy it all. I went to that glorious forest in 1996, 11 days of botany, study, and hiking, seeing hundreds of different species of trees in a single acre. I had planned, before I became ill, to go to Madagascar to see its forests and its unique fauna and other wildlife,

especially the lemurs. I love lemurs. One has to see them, study them, to grasp the origin of our primate nature. But most of the forests on Madagascar have already been obliterated, and not unnaturally, the lemurs are dying. Honking horns bring me back to 9th Avenue. I seem to have spent hours lost in reverie, thinking about the Amazonian and Madagascan forests, lemurs, the time machine.

But we have scarcely moved, are still behind the stinking, lung-destroying truck. Not in my life, Billy answers. I Yes I've been reading a lot of it aloud to Billy This is recording where Oliver is talking on the phone to Lawrence Westler or Wren Weschler

But anyhow he I was due to have a A CAT scan Follow up on Thursday I was terrified of this In fact what it did show was that 80% the metastases and the liver had been destroyed by the embolization. With luck, I should have two or three good months after this.

Well, I just hope that I can see friends and write and maybe travel a little. Yeah, and I think next month if I'm up to it, I'm going to go to London to say hello and possibly farewell to friends and family. friends and family. And, um, I can't think ahead beyond that. Nine, six, seven, it's still one short. Oh, well, so, um, semantics, use of elementary units, phonies, and it's inseparable.

Intimate relation. Who I want to hear, I want to hear. Over the years, I filled upwards of a thousand notebooks. Their contents are very various, but three of them have had a special function to record abnormalities of perception during times of sensory impairment or deprivation. The current notebook is a very modest affair. It is quite small and slips easily into a pocket, crucial because I need to have it with me at all times.

with increasing deafness I am more and more prone to mishearing what people say but mishearing deceive one entirely you accept what you hear you accept what you see every mishearing is a novel

surprising concoction one never gets used to them the hundredth is as fresh as absurd and as thought for roping as the first misherring became a mishearing take the car for spin

became Take the Carver Swim. I've noted that. Your hummus. It became your hymice. Therapist, invertebrate. Tarot cards. Terrapolns. Big-time publisher was heard

as a big-time cuttlefish. Did you say a poetry bag? And you said, no, I said a grocery bag. I love the idea of a poetry bag. Yes. I'm inclined almost to put them all in. I think they should all be in. Yeah.

I mean, the sheer mass will make the point. Mm-hmm. That sound trumps. everything. One's surroundings, one's wishes and expectations, conscious and unconscious, can certainly be co-determinance in mishearing, but the real mischief lies at lower levels, in those parts of the brain involved in phonological analysis and decoding, doing what they can with distorted or deficient signals from our ears. These parts of the brain managed to construct real words or phrases, even if they are absurd. And yet, there's often a sort of style or wit, a dash in these

instantaneous inventions. They reflect, to some extent, one's own interests and experiences, and I rather enjoy them. Only in the realm of mishearing, at least my mishearings, can a biography of cancer become a biography of canter, one of my favorite mathematicians. Tarot cards can turn into tarot pods, a grocery bag into a poetry bag, all or nunness, into oral numbness, and a mere mention of Christmas Eve, a command to kiss my feet. Oops, no wonder I couldn't write anymore. I must get more cartridges. I'm going through these too quickly.

I want to reassure you, all of these thoughts are already in the draft. Oh, are very good. Okay? So I think it's time to let your weary mind rest. Yes. Okay. We'll see each other in the morning. Okay.

If you could just kiss me whenever I had a dry mouth. I have them. Do you want some more water? Yes, I better raise my head a little. Hello, this is David from Berlin. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.

Would you like to pour out some wine for your elderly laffer? Sure. You want some of this? Yes. you look very happy which one of these jackets appeals to you if you're going to pick one let's go to the start yeah well of course I have to take my own unfortunate shape

no no no I want you to respond to them which one is oh I see I'm not I think as fond of this sort of routine jackets with its pockets and flaps functional though it is I don't know where I got that jacket.

It's so hot, Oliver. Sorry? It's so hot. Hot. Hot. Do you know that word? Sexy. Oh, yes, right.

You're very handsome. You haven't had anything to eat. You should have something to eat. I might go out. I sort of enjoy that on Sunday night. Yes, I know. I get a little stoned and I go out into the neighborhood. Do you mind?

No. I don't know that I'm good for much company anyhow. at the moment. Yeah, go rejoice. I wasn't counting. How many did you hear? I didn't count. Oliver had enjoyed a couple of really good months of feeling well and fit and getting lots of writing done. You had completed not only a general feeling of disorder. The short piece, Miss Hearings, his autobiography on the move was published. He worked on a piece on the evolution of the eye, and he'd completed a major case history. on the performer Spalding Gray. We'd made this wonderful trip to London for 10 days.

After we returned from the trip, he knew that he would have to get another CAT scan to see how things were going. And I would say that we kind of had a feeling and optimistic feeling. He seemed to be doing well. So he went into that hoping for the best, but it was exactly the opposite.

The cancer had spread beyond the liver to other organs that it was looking very, very bad indeed. Oliver, more than anyone, I think, knew that time was running out. Billy, I wonder if I could ask you to look up something on the little box. Sure. The Ten Commandments. Yeah, in particular, the one about Keevi, the seventh, very holy.

I'm not sure what this exact wording is. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? That's right. Keep me just right at that time. Exactly what I want. Surgical identity. He was having a lot of discomfort and had to have a catheter implanted in his abdomen to drain off fluid that was accumulating from the tumors,

which was around August 4th or 5th. It was really the only solution, and it was quite uncomfortable. and it had to be drained daily. And it also unfortunately ended his swimming. He was a great swimmer and he loved to swim. But he didn't complain. Swimming had come to an end, so he put his head down basically

and began working on this essay Sabbath. What did you think I was doing? I knew what you're doing. I just wanted to talk to you. Good morning. Did I miss a dramatic reading? He just started a little while ago. How are you? His longtime assistant editor Kate. What are you writing about?

The Sabbath? Yeah. It was going to be quite a long piece. It's going to fill an entire pad. My mother, why didn't you get a chair? I don't know you looming. I like standing. Okay, fine, stand then.

I'm back. Should I loom over here? Okay. Okay. My mother and her 17 brothers and sisters had an Orthodox bringing up, all photographs of their father, show him wearing a young worker.

And I was told that he woke up if it fell off during the bite. That's that funny. I love that. My father too came from the Orthodox background. But they were very conscious of the Sixth Commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and Shobos, as we called it, by our bitfuck way,

was entirely different from the rest of the week. When Shobos came in, my mother would light candles, cupping their flames with her hands, and murmuring a prayer. And I gradually became more distant or indifferent. I think it's just more indifferent to Jewish life, the synagogue, the Sabbath,

and the synagogue in particular. Though there was no particular point of rupture or alienation until I was 18, it was then that my father inquired into my sexual feelings compelled me to admit if I liked boys. I haven't done anything. I said it's just a feeling, but don't tell Ma. She won't be able to take it. He did tell her.

And the next morning she came down with a look of horror on her face and shrieked, You're an abomination. I wish you had never been born. The battle was never mentioned again, and her cordiality, even love was rebuilt. But her brutal, hateful words, her curse made me hate Judaism, all religions in their capacity. for inhuman bigotry and cruelty. And it turned me in part to a self-hating, self-accusing, closet, homosexual.

I'd felt a little fearful, visited by Orthodox family with my lover, Billy. My mother's words still echoed by mind, but Billy too was warmly received and was no hit at the terrible bigotry of 60 years earlier. This was made clear by Robert John, and he invited Billy and me to share a Friday evening with him and his family. The peace of the Sabbath of a stopped world,

a time outside time was palpable. infused everything, and Billy, I think, was as conscious of this as I was, that I'd been able, for the first time by life, to make a full and frank declaration of bisexuality, that I was finally out of the closet, facing the world openly, the game of guilty secrets locked up inside me. and now weak shorter breath by what's

firm bustles melted away by cancer and my thoughts increasingly not of the supernatural this has never made sense to me

but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life achieving a sense of peace within itself I find my thoughts gifted for Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh of the week, and perhaps the seventh of life, when one can feel one's work is done, and one day in good conscience, rest. On August 14th, Sabbath was published in the New York Times. That same day, he began to dictate the table of contents for the River of Consciousness.

the collection of essays which he knew would be published posthumously. It was getting his house in order. I don't know that I'm capable of much writing, nor that I want to do any writing, but I hope I can, as it were, think aloud to you and to Kate, the recorder. Home Hospice. I think that I will require an amount of care including interveners, nursing things,

beyond what you and Kate can provide or should. And this in turn should release you, you know, to be just my friends and comforters. One last go at tempting my appetite. Can you bring me in a little bit of cagery? Just to mention, there is also chicken soup. Yes.

I probably should have some liquid. I'll just do a little of each. Two weeks later, on August 30, 2015, Oliver Sacks died at home. In the last seven months of his life, he wrote and published nine pieces in their many, many more that he started but wasn't able to finish. And some of the essays he wrote are now in a new collection published after he died, called The River of Consciousness, and that's just out. The readers that you heard in the story were Radio Labbers, Annie McEwen, Simon Adler, and Bethel Hoppe.

Thanks also to Mike Pash Cash for Engineering Help, and this piece was produced by Carla Murthy. This is Emily Calling from Houston. Radio Lab was created by Jad Eben-Rod, and is produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Maria Matisse Arpidia is our managing director. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Rachel Cusick, David Gebel, Bethel-Hobty, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kilty, Robert Krulwich, Annie McEwen, Latif Nassar, Melissa O'Donnell, Aryan Wack, and Molly Webster. With help from Amanda Oronchik, Shima Oliali, David Fox, Nigra Fattali, Phoebe Wang, and Katie Ferguson.

Our fact checker is Michelle Harris.