Street Photos; The Chair Pictures, 2015-2018; News; Events; Contact; New book from Bill Hayes, “How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic” A poignant and profound tribute in stories and … "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life," documentary film, opens in virtual cinemas across the U.S. on September 23rd!
Every now and then, a little request comes, always phrased politely: “If you would be so kind: look up something for me on your little box?” “Little box” is his name for an iPhone, a name he finds too ugly to pronounce, to speak.
So: am taking him to see a radiologist at Sloan Kettering.
He could not look more delighted, and it’s not because of the alcohol. We pulled into the driveway at the back of Björk’s home and I saw her through the kitchen window. He tells me he is writing out all the elements that are NOT present in the human body: He U B Be Al Si Ar Sg Ti V Ni Ga Ge As Br Kr Rb Sr Y Z. 15 January 2015 O’s doctor phoned: “peculiar findings” re: Cat scan yesterday. But I did know that I was intrigued and attracted.
O did not feel well much of the time – nauseated, tired, slept a lot. “I’ve been reading you since way back. In passing, she said something about having been a model – “The only reason I did it was so I could make enough dough to travel” – but otherwise didn’t say anything about that part of her life.
As the ground was snow-covered, white, the floor of a cloud. “Well, let’s see…” He paused.
What made you publish your diaries? He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before. She told us that she’d recorded Biophilia (its name inspired by Oliver’s Musicophilia) in the lighthouse I’d spotted the night before when I was chasing down the sunset. This was when people still wrote letters regularly and when one got a letter, sat down and wrote a letter back.
Maurine, who has been at the side of many patients as they die, tells us this is the last phase, but that it could go on for many hours, days maybe.
Oliver took a breath as we headed west and home. But it wasn’t an act. And when I suggested something sweet – some ice cream? I am quite amazed and impressed, and I clap. I open it for him. “No,” I shook my head.
A portrait of Sacks taken by Bill Hayes titled Back Home, March 2015. He did not know popular music, rarely watched anything on TV but the news, did not enjoy contemporary fiction, and had zero interest in celebrities or fame (including his own). Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Billy Hayes (born April 3, 1947) is an American writer, actor, and film director. “What is Michael Jackson?” he asked me the day after the news – not who but what – which seemed both a very odd and a very apt way of putting it, given how much the brilliant singer had transmuted from a human into an alien being. “Even better.
Now, clouds and stars, and what sounds like a hymn: “Craving miracles…” Björk sings.
Recurrences such as this were considered extremely rare, yet the consensus seemed to be that the preliminary diagnosis was most likely correct and that treatment options were few. Conversation was lively. He asked Oliver if he’d like to see the Cat scan. Björk smiled and helped Oliver up.
He was very funny and liked wordplay and puns. Hayes is also a photographer, with credits including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times. He could only eat three bites. It was as if he was expecting it, as perhaps he was. Both had been modified somehow through instructions from a programme on her Mac. 13 July 2015 Very, very tired, I did the dinner dishes quickly, gathered my things, and earlier than usual, told Oliver I was heading to bed and said good night. He serves as a co-editor of Dr. Sacks’ posthumously published work. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. She wandered into an upper room, and we followed.
It was then that I went back to my journal, which I had started at Oliver’s urging a few weeks after I moved here in 2009. Elsewhere, a few books by his heroes – Darwin, Freud, Luria, Edelman, Thom Gunn – and photos – his father, Auden, his mother as a girl with her 17 siblings, his aunts and uncles, his brothers.
Lauren leaned across the table and listened intently.