I love audio because it can touch you so deeply. There are times when I listen to shows like This American Life and I just can't stop driving because I so want to hear the whole story. And sometimes I just cry along with the characters. This story (MP3 link) was one of those times.
It's the story of a man who was lobotomized as a boy in a practice that was fairly common at the time. The way he describes it is so evocative it really draws you into the story.
The end of the segment is the toughest to take. A woman sits with her grandmother (?) and sings her a song as her grandmother, in her lobotomized stupor tries to follow along. It's heartbreaking. Even more so for me as it's the same song that Lori often sings to Megan before she goes down for the night.
No other medium can touch you the way audio can. It's the simplest act of story telling. It's the way that we all learn to communicate in this world. By relating stories about ourselves. It's primal. It's moving. That's why I love it.
Posted by jherr at November 17, 2005 03:48 PMMy ex, Daniel's grandmother was labotomized when she was a young mother. She was institutionalized until she died.
Yeah, I agree, audio is powerful.
This reminds me of an episode of PrimeTime I saw a while back about John Of God, a Brazilian faith healer. Most of the time he lays hands on his (I don't know what to call them - people travel from all over the world to see him to be cured). He has no medical training, but performs surgeries on some of the "pilgrims". They showed him performing one. He's in a trance-like state and the believer stands before him. He places forceps inside her nose, thrusts them deep up into her head, kinda jiggles them around and pulls them out. There was a little blood, but not as much as you'd expect. She walked off the stage and went on. I don't remember if she was healed, but a lot of the people they interviewed felt that they had been.
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