Tony Cicoria
Looking down on himself, Cicoria recalls thinking "Oh, *beep* - I'm dead!"
Near Death Experience
You're never too old to start playing piano, at least for your own pleasure.
But as the remarkable story of Tony Cicoria shows, you can begin as late as 42
and, within a few years, be performing and composing music to a
near-professional standard, writes Frank McNally.
There is one slight drawback to the Cicoria method, however. It involves being
struck by lightning.
His case is one of those featured in Musicophilia, the new book by neurologist
and best-selling author Oliver Sacks, who was interviewed elsewhere in this
paper recently.
Sacks specializes in explaining complex neurological conditions to a general
readership, and his previous writing on the subject includes a candidate for
catchiest book title of all time: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. But he
had his work cut out to demystify his latest subject - the relationship between
music and the human brain - and in particular the strange case of Dr Cicoria.
The
story began one day in 1994 when the man in question, an orthopedic surgeon in
upstate New York, called his mother from a pay-phone. As their conversation
ended, a storm was closing in. And he was still holding the phone, about to hang
up, when a bolt of lighting came through the receiver and hit him in the face.
What followed was a classic near-death experience, with extras. First he saw his
own body from above. This is straight from the textbooks, according to Sacks.
Near-death experiencers typically find themselves observing events from "eight
or nine feet" up. Neurologists call it "autoscopy".
Looking down on himself, Cicoria recalls thinking "Oh, *beep* - I'm dead!" Then
he watched as a woman who had been queuing for the phone (a trained nurse, as
luck would have it) attempted to revive him. He also saw his children and felt
certain that they would be all right without him.
He was surrounded by "bluish-white" light. He watched an edited version of his
life - highlights and lowlights only - in blissful calm. He felt "pure ecstasy".
And then - "Slam!" - he was back in his body, with a burning pain in his face
and left foot, where the lightning had entered and left. He was not quite filled
with gratitude for the nurse.
Part of the mystery about his later condition was the apparent lack of brain
damage in the immediate aftermath. He felt sluggish for a time and had some
memory lapses. But an MRI scan and other tests revealed nothing amiss and within
weeks he was back working as a surgeon, all his skills intact. Soon his memory
was fully restored too.
Cicoria developed strong spiritual feelings in the wake of the incident. But
perhaps more surprisingly, two months later, he suddenly experienced "an
insatiable desire to listen to piano music". First he took to buying Chopin
records. Around the same time, in a happy coincidence, a regular baby-sitter
asked if she could store an upright piano in his house, so he also started
teaching himself to play. And then he began hearing music - original music - in
his head.
It should be noted that Cicoria was raised both as a Catholic and a pianist. But
he lapsed from piano lessons early and had never practiced religion much either.
Now, he believed his life had been saved for a purpose, namely music. He played
and wrote obsessively, in all the hours work allowed, starting at 4am and
resuming in the evening as soon as he came home.
His wife did not share his enthusiasm. In 2004 he suffered two further traumas -
divorce and a motorbike accident - the second of which left him with serious
injuries. But neither stopped the "torrents" of music he heard and which he was
tempted to say, as Mozart did, came "from heaven".
Whether the critics would agree about its source is a moot point. Until
recently, Cicoria's music remained - according to Sacks - "a solitary pursuit,
between himself and his muse". But last spring, he made his semi-public debut
during a musical retreat for students, gifted amateurs, and young professionals,
playing a piece by Chopin and his own composition: Rhapsody Opus I. The author
quotes a concert pianist who attended praising the "great passion, great brio"
of Cicoria's performance, and adds that he played "if not with supernatural
genius, at least with creditable skill, an astounding feat for someone with
virtually no musical background who had taught himself to play at 42."
Sacks keeps a professional distance from the case throughout, with the help of
such sentences as this: "There is some evidence that both the visuospatial and
vestibular aspects of out-of-body experiences are related to disturbed function
in the cerebral cortex, especially at the junctional region between the temporal
and proprietal lobes." Respecting Dr Cicoria's right to regard his inspiration
as spiritual, he nevertheless holds to his own belief that even exalted states
of mind must have "some physiological correlate in neural activity". He also
notes that there are much subtler tests of brain function now than there were in
1994. But although his subject initially agreed that it might be worth
investigating the condition anew, he changed his mind, preferring to accept his
gift, however mysterious, for what it is.
His is a fascinating story, by any standards. It may or may not inspire those of
you starting out on the piano. I would just say one important thing in
conclusion, however. Please don't try it at home.
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Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who has taught at Harvard University and other prestigious schools, says he now believes in the afterlife following a near-death experience in 2008.
Alexander describes heaven as he experienced it in his new book “Heaven is Real: A Doctor’s Experience of the Afterlife.”
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Personal Near Death Experiences
One most extraordinary aspect of NDE's is that the underlying pattern seems unaffected by a person's culture or belief system, religion, race, education, or any other known variable, although the way in which the NDE is described varies according to the person's background and vocabulary. There is no evidence that the type of experience is related to whether the person is conventionally religious or not, or has lived a "good" or "bad" life according to his/her society's standards (although an NDE often strongly affects how life is lived after the experience).
Quotes
Dr. Raymond Moody--Thanatologist, psychiatrist and author of many books, including the ground-breaking book, Life After Life.
- I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my
personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into
another kind of reality.
--Dr. Raymond Moody
