CLIVE’S CROSSROAD

CLIVE’S CROSSROAD
In 1988 WNET in cooperation with the BBC-TV, produced a series called The Mind. It aired on PBS and is available through the Educational Broadcasting Corporation. One of the episodes is about Clive, a man of extraordinary intellect and talent who in the onset of middle age contracted a form of influenza which attacked the lining of his brain rendering his cognitive skills and information retention abilities to be destroyed. His wife was told by medical authorities that there was no way he could ever function in any degree of thought process or memory again. He was given a diary in which he was asked, every 15 minutes, to record what he had done within that time. All the entries were identical: 5:45 p.m., I just awakened; 6:00 p.m., I just awakened; 6:15 p.m., I just awakened, and so forth. Though Clive was experiencing stimulus and experience, he was not able to retain the information and call upon it again. His wife, refused to accept the diagnosis given her by two doctors, believing that given the fact that her husband was a genius in the discipline of Renaissance Music, one of the most complex and orderly forms of music in history. She insisted the music must hold a key to his recovery. She took him to the church where he had worked for years. Upon entering the church he was greeted by throngs of people in the chorus who knew him and had missed him. This caused Clive a great deal of concern, because he recognized that he should have known them as well, but since he didn’t it frightened him. This is a common reaction of people who are experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Clive’s wife took him to the organ which he had played since his childhood. She told him to play. He became very disconcerted, saying he did not know how to play the organ. She insisted and placed his hands on the keyboard. A miraculous event then took place. Clive began to play the organ with great facility, his hands flew across the numerous manuals of the organ and he began to cue the choir into a Palestrina Mass “et incarnatus est”...”et in filio sancto”. It was astonishing to witness the facility that Clive possessed, especially given the state of disfunction we had become accustomed to seeing. When the song concluded, Clive fell into a grand mal seizure, where all the electrical systems of the brain seemed to short out, causing violent twitching and uncontrolled movement throughout his body. When re recovered from the seizure, his wife helped him to the organ again, and the same phenomena repeated itself, this time with the music of Orlando Lasso, another highly organized, complex composer of the Renaissance. A doctor appeared on the video describing in medical terms what we have just witnessed. He explained that the ravages of the virus had eliminated the order in Clives brain, rendering it incapable of cognitive and retentive function. Music has so much order, it superimposed it’s own native order onto an “orderless” brain, causing it to function again. That is an amazing statement, because if it is true, it could revolutionize the way in which we can optimize the educational process. We will explore this potential.