PHILIA :
1. fi¬li/-a , Ion. -i/h, h( , (file/w ) affectionate regard, friendship
2. friendliness, amiability, f. a)/neu tou= ste/rgein Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1126b22, cf. au=Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1108a28.
3. later, of lovers, fondness, LXXPr.5.19, Lyr.Alex.Adesp.1.8, AP5.266 (Agath.).
4. c. gen., of things, fondness, liking for, ke/rdouj Plat. Rep. 581a; [tw=n a)rxw=n ] Arist.Cael.306a12.
5. the natural force which unites discordant elements and movements, opp. nei=koj, Emp.18, al., Isoc. 15.268.
II. Pythag. name for three, Theol.Ar.16 (not for six, Iamb. In Nic. au=Iamb. =lr P.).
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Music friendship can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat.
But the power of music goes much, much further: it occupies more areas of our brain than language does. Humans are a musical species.
Music like friendship can also go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day.
Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.
Excerpted from Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks Copyright (c) 2007 :
Tony Cicoria was forty-two, very fit and robust, a former college football player who had become a well-regarded orthopedic surgeon in a small city in upstate New York. He was at a lakeside pavilion for a family gathering one fall afternoon. It was pleasant and breezy, but he noticed a few storm clouds in the distance; it looked like rain.
He went to a pay phone outside the pavilion to make a quick call to his mother (this was in 1994, before the age of cell phones). He still remembers every single second of what happened next: “I was talking to my mother on the phone. There was a little bit of rain, thunder in the distance. My mother hung up. The phone was a foot away from where I was standing when I got struck. I remember a flash of light coming out of the phone. It hit me in the face. Next thing I remember, I was flying backwards.”
Oliver Sacks Musicophilia, a New York Times bestseller, has been named one of the Best Books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the editors of Amazon.com.
