Doug Lilly
This is the time of year where you may turn to a newspaper or magazine to search for recommended titles to read over the summer holidays (apologies to our Corpus readers in the northern hemisphere).
However I am not a “reader”. Those who have seen my not too insignificant collection of books might find this surprising. Over more than 45 of my adult years I have built a library of books that I had (and probably still have) every intention of reading – some day. Many have been leafed through and partially read. Many more retain their mint smell and feel. My vast, obsessive and largely unread collection of books on Bob Dylan fool many into thinking I am some sort of expert on the man.
Save the world? Let’s all start reading again, that’s what I say. Reading a book is an intensely personal activity. It’s just you and the words, make of them what you will. People can tell you what a book means to them, but no one can tell you what it means to you. That’s between you and the book. To find out, you need to come to know the book and your own mind. Those discoveries are generated in the private act of exploration we call reading. To be immersed in a book is to inhabit a creative and enchanted space, which is no bad thing to practice doing in a world that has come to feel distressingly devoid of magic. Because what is magic, if not another word for hope?
For many of us, Christmas has become much the same. Overlaid with a mix of secular, pagan and other religious rites and traditions, it is hard to hear what may be its message to us today. Yet it remains the one day of the year when more people attend Church than any other – as if the corporate singing of a carol or three will somehow expunge the pain and grief, anger and frustration that have marked out many of the other 364 days.
In the corner of my office, I have a sculpture on loan from artist Mike O’Kane. It confronts me every day with a wonderful juxtaposition of the themes of my work in neuroscience: how the brain works, and the personal experience of conditions that strike to the sense of self and the equilibrium of mood and emotion. An extremely prevalent example is anxiety disorder. Many of us have either personally experienced this, or know of someone who has.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is thought to account for 1-2 percent of acute coronary syndromes (ACS), ACS being medicalese for what most people would call ‘heart attacks’.