Greg F
Greg F. grew up in the 1950s in a comfortable Queens household, an attractive and rather gifted boy who seemed destined, like his father, for a professional career—perhaps a career in song writing, for which he showed a precocious talent. But he grew restive, started questioning things, as a teenager in the late ’60s; started to hate the conventional life of his parents and neighbours and the cynical, bellicose administration of the country. . . .
Increasingly he fell out with his parents and teachers; he was truculent with the one, secretive with the other. In 1968, a time when Timothy Leary was urging American youth to “tune in, turn on, and drop out,” Greg grew his hair long and dropped out of school, where he had been a good student; he left home and went to live in the Village where he dropped acid and joined the East Village drug culture—searching, like others of his generation, for utopia, for inner freedom, and for “higher consciousness.”
[Greg later joined the Hare Krishna and went to live in their temple in New Orleans, where his parents found him, very ill from a brain tumor, and brought him to a hospital in New York. I met him in 1977, shortly after his brain tumor was removed.]
Questioning him about current events and people, I found the depths of his disorientation and confusion. When I asked him who was the president, he said, “Lyndon,” then, “the one who got shot.” I prompted, “Jimmy . . . ,” and then he said, “Jimi Hendrix,” and when I roared with laughter, he said maybe a musical White House would be a good idea. A few more questions convinced me that Greg had virtually no memory of events much past 1970, certainly no coherent, chronological memory of them. He seemed to have been left, marooned, in the ’60s—his memory, his development, his inner life since then had come to a stop.
Dr. Sacks writes more about music and music therapy in his book MUSICOPHILIA, including this passage from the preface:
While music can affect all of us—calm us,
Increasingly he fell out with his parents and teachers; he was truculent with the one, secretive with the other. In 1968, a time when Timothy Leary was urging American youth to “tune in, turn on, and drop out,” Greg grew his hair long and dropped out of school, where he had been a good student; he left home and went to live in the Village where he dropped acid and joined the East Village drug culture—searching, like others of his generation, for utopia, for inner freedom, and for “higher consciousness.”
[Greg later joined the Hare Krishna and went to live in their temple in New Orleans, where his parents found him, very ill from a brain tumor, and brought him to a hospital in New York. I met him in 1977, shortly after his brain tumor was removed.]
Questioning him about current events and people, I found the depths of his disorientation and confusion. When I asked him who was the president, he said, “Lyndon,” then, “the one who got shot.” I prompted, “Jimmy . . . ,” and then he said, “Jimi Hendrix,” and when I roared with laughter, he said maybe a musical White House would be a good idea. A few more questions convinced me that Greg had virtually no memory of events much past 1970, certainly no coherent, chronological memory of them. He seemed to have been left, marooned, in the ’60s—his memory, his development, his inner life since then had come to a stop.
Dr. Sacks writes more about music and music therapy in his book MUSICOPHILIA, including this passage from the preface:
While music can affect all of us—calm us,