JAD ABUMRAD: Ready?

ROBERT KRULWICH: Mm-hmm.

JAD: This is Radiolab, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Krulwich. And on this show, we've been talking about ...

JAD: Memory.

ROBERT: Remembering and forgetting, yeah.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: And this next story is about the most drastic version of this particular back and forth that I can think of. It just can't get any worse than this. This is a story of a man named Clive Wearing. It was told to me by the famous neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks.

ROBERT: Okay, first of all, who was Clive Wearing when he was well?

OLIVER SACKS: He was a gifted musician and musicologist, who was really a pioneer in Renaissance music, especially the music of Orlandus Lassus.

DEBORAH WEARING: And he had a group called the London Lassus Ensemble.

ROBERT: This is Deborah, Clive's wife.

DEBORAH WEARING: And in every concert, his signature tune was "Musica Dei donum," Music, the gift of God.

ROBERT: Boy, music, the gift of God. That's sort of interesting.

DEBORAH WEARING: Exactly.

ROBERT: And then what happened?

OLIVER SACKS: Then rather suddenly in March of '85, he became ill.

ROBERT: It began, she says, with just a headache.

DEBORAH WEARING: And he often had headaches because he often overworked, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

ROBERT: But it didn't go away.

DEBORAH WEARING: We called the doctor, and the local doctors pronounced that it was a very bad flu bug.

OLIVER SACKS: The nature of the illness was not clear, nor its gravity.

DEBORAH WEARING: Yes. On the—phew—fifth day of the headache, he was suddenly out of it.

ROBERT: Suddenly, he couldn't remember things.

DEBORAH WEARING: He didn't know my name, didn't know his home address.

OLIVER SACKS: When the diagnosis was made of a herpes encephalitis, the damage had been done.

ROBERT: He was left, says Oliver, with the most severe amnesia ever documented.

OLIVER SACKS: This is a man who, at least when things were very severe, would forget something in the blink of an eyelid.

ROBERT: It's very hard to imagine what this must have been like. His wife Deborah wrote about it though, in a book of her own. And she says his ability to perceive what he saw and heard was unimpaired, but he didn't seem able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. The view before the blink, utterly forgotten. Each blink, each glance away and back brought him an entirely new view.

DEBORAH WEARING: Well, every moment is his first waking moment.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: It's a long time since I've seen anything. My eyes are open today for the first time.]

DEBORAH WEARING: There is no other moment for Clive except this one.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: If I can't remember now what was going on this morning or why I was here. I've never seen anything.]

ROBERT: This was Clive from a documentary filmed a year after he got sick.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: There is no memory for me at all, anything at all. I don't know what the hell is going on.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: What's wrong with you?]

ROBERT: You can hear his wife Deborah trying for the umpteenth time to explain to him what happened.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I've never seen anyone at all.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: This is one of the things that's wrong with you.]

ROBERT: All he can feel is that he's not there.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I've never seen anything.]

ROBERT: That he's been nowhere.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I've been blind the whole time, I've been deaf the whole time. No sense of touch.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: You've been conscious, but the brain hasn't been able to ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Not as far as I'm concerned. 'Conscious' actually means that the person involved is actually connected with it.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: Yes.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: This hasn't happened.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: You're not being able to store—well, everything that you experience has been lost. It's fading away.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: It's not registering.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: It's not registering. That's right. It's not making any impact. It's not leaving a trace or an imprint on the brain. so it happens and then it fades.]

OLIVER SACKS: Proust has a wonderful description of waking up from deep sleep in a hotel or a strange room and perhaps feeling confused or not knowing where you are or what's around you, or not even knowing who you are. He says that memory comes like a rope let down from heaven to draw one out of the abyss of unbeing. No such rope is available for Clive.

ROBERT: But the staff at the hospital tried to help.

DEBORAH WEARING: We put a diary by his bed, and we initially wrote in it, "You are in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. It is—" et cetera, et cetera. And then we encouraged Clive to write things down.

OLIVER SACKS: So he starts to keep a journal. He is extremely intent on trying to document his state. He is very, very precise.

DEBORAH WEARING: He would look at his watch to see what time was this momentous event occuring of first consciousness. And so he would write down, "10:06. Awake first time." And then have the same sensation and put "10:07. Awake first time. Truly awake first time. Ignore the last entry. Now I'm awake. This is the first real awakeness." And so the diaries are line by line a succession of astonished awakenings.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: "People's interest in the diary are rubbish." What does that mean?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I have no idea.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: Did you write that?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I have no consciousness of it at all, no. You're showing me now for the first time.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: But it's—is it your handwriting?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Yes it is, but I know nothing about it at all.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: So how do you think it got there?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I did it. I presume the doctors didn't know.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: But you must be ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: No, I haven't. I haven't seen the book at all until now.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: No, all I'm saying is ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: No that's mean. That means I haven't seen it. I have no knowledge of it at all. That's all. There's no knowledge of that book. It's entirely new to me.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: But you've put—who would put that ...?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I don't know. But no, no—for heaven's sake. I haven't seen the bloody thing.]

ROBERT: It seems about as horrible as anything I could imagine.

OLIVER SACKS: Yes. Clive gets the sense of deep horror many many times a day.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Same as death. No difference between day and night, no thoughts at all.]

OLIVER SACKS: No one quite knows what to do with someone with amnesia.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I've never seen any human being since I've been ill. I don't remember sitting down on this chair for example.]

OLIVER SACKS: They're not mad, they're not retarded.

ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: It's precisely like death.]

ROBERT: Clive has now suffered with this total amnesia for more than 20 years.

ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Can you imagine having one night 20 years long with no dream? That's what it's been like. Just like death. In that sense, it's been totally painless.]

ROBERT: And yet somehow, some things have sustained. The love he has for his wife Deborah remained part of him. But even though he doesn't remember, for example, his children's names, he doesn't remember anything about his immediate past or even his relatively distant past, when Deborah walks into the hospital room ...

ROBERT: ... and he sees her, what's happening?

OLIVER SACKS: He gasps ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Darling!]

OLIVER SACKS: ... with relief and excitement. And they hug, and he kisses her with enormous passion. He is suddenly being rescued from the abyss. There's suddenly something and someone familiar.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Have I not seen you at all until now? Haven't seen anyone at all until now.]

ROBERT: She goes home and the phone is ringing. She's just visited him.

OLIVER SACKS: Yeah. And she may find—she might find 20 calls on the message machine.

ROBERT: From a man who doesn't know she's been there.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: Hi darling, Clive here. It's 10 to 7. I don't know anybody in this place. I know nothing about this case at all. I want to speak to you please. Can you come and see me please as soon as you possibly can? I don't care about anybody else in the world but you. Please, please come. Love you.]

ROBERT: 14 minutes later ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: This is Clive here. I don't want to speak to anybody else. I only want to speak to you, darling. Can you come and see me please? I haven't seen you yet and I want to. Please come, darling. Bye bye.]

ROBERT: 11 minutes later ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: This is Clive here. I have no idea what's been going on. Is there any way you can get to me tonight? Please do come. I want to see you, please. Please come. Please come, darling. It's Clive here. I don't care about anyone else. This is Clive here, in case you don't recognize my voice.]

OLIVER SACKS: Now he does not remember her in every way. He may fail to recognize her if she just passes. He cannot describe her. He may forget her name, but he does not forget her embrace, her warmth, her love, her kisses, her caring for him.

ROBERT: So the question is: what happened here that he could forget everything it seems, but not her? Well, when I asked Oliver, he referred to an experiment, a particular experiment.

OLIVER SACKS: Well, this was a famous—or infamous—experiment done by Claparède, who was a French neurologist in the beginning—and this was done at the beginning of the 20th century.

STEVEN JOHNSON: And there was this famous patient who basically had a version of the—of the memory problem that was in the film Memento.

ROBERT: That's science writer Steven Johnson.

STEVEN JOHNSON: Basically, she couldn't remember anything longer than kind of five or 10 minutes. It would just disappear. And every day she would go see her doctor, and he would greet her and she would say hello and introduce herself, and he would say, "Well, we see each other every day," but she wouldn't remember. And then one day—this is kind of a funny story because it's not exactly what you want your doctor doing, one day what he did was, he concealed—as he was shaking her hand, he concealed a little thumbtack in his palm, and reached and shook her hand and pricked her hand. And she, you know, recoiled and said, "Well, you're a terrible doctor!" And then the next day ...

ROBERT: When she came back again and didn't know who he was ...

STEVEN JOHNSON: Didn't recognize him at all as usual, and said hello and introduced herself. And then he reached out to shake her hand and she paused. And she had this instinctive kind of feeling like there was some kind of threat here. If she had no memory, if she couldn't remember who this guy was, how could she somehow remember this—this threat, the threat posed by the pinprick in the palm?

ROBERT: Well, this is Oliver's notion.

OLIVER SACKS: And I think memories of pain and joy, I think, are sort of primordial.

ROBERT: Deep down in the oldest parts of our brains, Oliver thinks, there may be a place for the memories that matter the most.

OLIVER SACKS: And I like the idea of a sort of subcortical safe vault.

ROBERT: For Clive, protected in the vault, out of reach from his amnesia, was love for his wife and one thing more.

DEBORAH WEARING: Yeah, I'd taken him off the ward to get some peace because he was hypersensitive to noise. And the most peaceful place happened to be the chapel. And we picked up an old hymn book, and for want of anything better to do, and because Clive talked jumble most of the time at that stage, I began to sing.

ROBERT: And all of a sudden, like, it was the most natural thing in the world ...

DEBORAH WEARING: He joined in.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: [singing]]

DEBORAH WEARING: He could sing!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: [singing]]

DEBORAH WEARING: I was amazed that he could still read music and sing.

ROBERT: Was it a tentative sort of stumbling thing, or ...?

DEBORAH WEARING: No, no. It was just like falling off a log.

ROBERT: Full voice, strong, everything.

DEBORAH WEARING: Yeah. And I was so thrilled!

ROBERT: Did you want to sing another?

DEBORAH WEARING: Oh, you bet!

ROBERT: And another?

DEBORAH WEARING: Yeah, absolutely.

ROBERT: And if he could do that, she wondered, well what else could he do?

DEBORAH WEARING: We even brought his choir in ...

ROBERT: The one he used to conduct in London.

DEBORAH WEARING: ... to the hospital chapel. I had a hunch that if we stood Clive in front of them with a piece of music, he would be able to conduct. And it happened, just as I'd hoped. His singers were flabbergasted. There was their old conductor bringing them in completely and utterly himself.

ROBERT: And almost the instant it was over, it was over. He had no memory of what he'd just done. In fact, later on she showed him a tape of that very performance.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: What would you say if I told you you conducted the Lassus Ensemble this week?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: [laughs] That's hilarious!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: I thought you'd say that.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: That's absolutely hysterical.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Deborah Wearing: Do you want me to prove it to you? [singing]]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: This is the strangest thing I have ever seen.]

ROBERT: On the screen right in front of him, there he is on the pedestal, baton in hand, and he's conducting.

OLIVER SACKS: He is fully in the music, fully himself. So music in a way becomes this Proustian rope from heaven, which will recall him to himself.

ROBERT: And no one really knows why.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Clive Wearing: I remember that now. [laughs]]

ROBERT: What music does that makes this possible. Not just in Clive but in many others. Maybe it's something about music itself, that it's so richly organized, that every time you're in a song, you can feel what has been and what's about to be. Maybe Clive was just carried along in the architecture of music.

DEBORAH WEARING: But when the music stops, he falls out of time. Music gives him a piece of time in which to exist.

ROBERT: Out of time, out of memory, out of himself. There's two things left: there's love and there's the joy of music. Everything else is gone, but for some reason, those stay.

ROBERT: Thanks to Deborah Wearing, she's written a book about Clive called Forever Today: A Memoir of Love and Amnesia. Thanks also once again to Oliver Sacks, who's included a piece about Clive in his new book on music and memory called Musicophilia. And thanks to Uden Associates, producers of the 1986 Jonathan Miller documentary, Equinox: Prisoner of Consciousness.

JAD: That's our show for today. And never fear, if you didn't absorb anything we just said because you can always go to our website, Radiolab.org. We will give you links there to any of the books that you just mentioned. I think ...

ROBERT: You can also subscribe to the podcast, right?

JAD: Yes. Radiolab.org.

ROBERT: Or go to iTunes.

JAD: Oh, one more thing.

ROBERT: Hmm?

JAD: You can send us an email, too.

ROBERT: Please.

JAD: Radiolab (@) wnyc.org. That's the email address. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: And this was Radiolab.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Three new messages. Message one.]

[DEBORAH WEARING: Hello, this is Deborah Wearing to read your credits. Radiolab is produced by WNYC-New York Public Radio, and distributed by NPR, National Public Radio. Support for NPR comes from NPR stations and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, helping disadvantaged children and their families connect to strong and supportive neighborhoods. Find them on the web at AECF.org. Also, Anne and John Herman, celebrating the breakthrough collaborative involving middle school students and learning and older students and teaching at BreakthroughCollaborative.org. And the Ford Foundation, a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide. On the web at FordFound.org. This is NPR, National Public Radio.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of message.]

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