Oliver sacks, p.7
Oliver Sacks,
p.7
SACKS: Indigo, which Newton had inserted between blue and violet. And no two people seem to agree as to what indigo was like. And, um, so I built up a sort of chemical launch pad.
Meaning he took a lot of drugs.
SACKS: A base of amphetamines for general arousal, then some acid, and a little cannabis, and when I was sufficiently stoned, I said, “I want to see indigo now!” As if in reply, and as if thrown by a giant paintbrush, there appeared a huge, trembling, pear-shaped blob of what I instantly realized was pure indigo, on the white wall in front of me. It had a wonderful luminosity, and in particular, I, although I’m not a religious person, I thought, This is the color of heaven. And I limped towards it in a sort of ecstasy, and then suddenly it disappeared.
And he says he had one more moment like that. This time, no drugs. He was at a museum staring at an Egyptian artifact. He sees this radiant color back again, just for a beat.
SACKS: I was given five tantalizing seconds of radiant, ineffable beauty.
And then, again, it vanished.
SACKS: And that was in 1965, and I’ve never seen indigo since.
But, who knows, you know? Someday, I like to think, Dr. Sacks might get to see that color again.
OLIVER SACKS was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings. Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. Over the years, he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. He died in 2015.
TERRY GROSS is the host and co–executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview-format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by NPR.
CHARLIE ROSE is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991, he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS.
STUDS TERKEL was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. His well-known radio program, The Studs Terkel Program, aired on WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985. He died in 2008.
LISA BURRELL is a senior editor at Harvard Busines Review.
TOM ASHBROOK is an American journalist and radio broadcaster. He hosts the nationally syndicated, public radio call-in program On Point.
ROBERT KRULWICH is an award-winning journalist and cohost of Radiolab.
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Oliver Sacks, Oliver Sacks
