The Patient Who Named the Weather (Oliver Sacks)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You sat
with the patients
the other doctors
walked past
because the patients
the other doctors
walked past
were the ones
whose brains
were doing
the interesting
thing
and the interesting thing
had the warm
camphor smell
of a filing cabinet
whose drawers
open
onto rooms
the owner
did not know
the cabinet
contained.

[Verse 2]
The man
who mistook
his wife
for a hat
was not
a clinical joke.
The man
who mistook
his wife
for a hat
was a musician
whose visual agnosia
had rearranged
the category system
in his temporal lobe
so that
the hat
and the wife
occupied
the same
drawer
and the drawer
was not
broken.
The drawer
was
organized
by a principle
no other brain
in the building
was using
and you
were the only doctor
in the building
who thought
the principle
was worth
learning
before
the drawer
was corrected.

[Chorus]
You swam
every morning.
You lifted weights.
You rode
your motorcycle
through the canyons
above Los Angeles
at speeds
the prefrontal cortex
of a neurologist
should have
known better
about
and your prefrontal cortex
did know better
and you
did it anyway
because the body
that carries
the doctor
who sits
with the patients
needs
to be reminded
occasionally
that it is also
a body
and not just
a chair
beside a bed.

[Outro]
You found out
you were dying
and you wrote
about finding out
you were dying
in the same
warm
curious
unhurried
sentences
you had used
to describe
the man
who mistook
his wife
for a hat
because
the dying
was
the last
interesting thing
the brain
was going to do
and you
were not
going to
walk past it.

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