(Music) (Applause)
(Hudba) (Potlesk)
Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you. It's a distinct privilege to be here.
Veľmi pekne ďakujem. (Potlesk) Ďakujem. Je to veľká pocta, že tu môžem stáť.
A few weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at the early stages of her recovery from one of those awful bullets. This one entered her left hemisphere, and knocked out her Broca's area, the speech center of her brain. And in this session, Gabby's working with a speech therapist, and she's struggling to produce some of the most basic words, and you can see her growing more and more devastated, until she ultimately breaks down into sobbing tears, and she starts sobbing wordlessly into the arms of her therapist. And after a few moments, her therapist tries a new tack, and they start singing together, and Gabby starts to sing through her tears, and you can hear her clearly able to enunciate the words to a song that describe the way she feels, and she sings, in one descending scale, she sings, "Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine." And it's a very powerful and poignant reminder of how the beauty of music has the ability to speak where words fail, in this case literally speak.
Pred pár týždňami som na YouTube videl video kongresmanky Gabrielle Giffordsovej zo začiatkov jej zotavovania po tých príšerných strelných ranách. Jedna zasiahla jej ľavú hemisféru a poškodila Brockovu oblasť – rečové centrum mozgu. Na tom videu Gabby spolupracuje s logopédom a bojuje s tým, aby dokázala vysloviť najzákladnejšie slová. Je vidno, že ju to stále viac a viac ničí, až kým sa úplne s plačom nezosype a začne nemo vzlykať v náručí svojho logopéda. Po chvíli skúsi jej logopéd nový prístup a začnú spolu spievať. Gabby začne cez slzy spievať a môžete počuť, ako jasne artikuluje slová piesne, ktorá opisuje jej pocity, a ona spieva, na jednej klesavej stupnici spieva „Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.“ Je to veľmi silné a dojemné pripomenutie toho, ako krása hudby dokáže hovoriť tam, kde slová zlyhali. V tomto prípade doslova.
Seeing this video of Gabby Giffords reminded me of the work of Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, one of the preeminent neuroscientists studying music and the brain at Harvard, and Schlaug is a proponent of a therapy called Melodic Intonation Therapy, which has become very popular in music therapy now. Schlaug found that his stroke victims who were aphasic, could not form sentences of three- or four-word sentences, but they could still sing the lyrics to a song, whether it was "Happy Birthday To You" or their favorite song by the Eagles or the Rolling Stones. And after 70 hours of intensive singing lessons, he found that the music was able to literally rewire the brains of his patients and create a homologous speech center in their right hemisphere to compensate for the left hemisphere's damage.
Video Gabby Giffordsovej mi pripomenulo prácu Dr. Gottfrieda Schlauga, ktorý je jedným z prominentných neurovedcov skúmajúcich na Harvarde hudbu a mozog. Schlaug je zástancom terapie zvanej melodicko-intonačná terapia, ktorá sa stala veľmi populárnou terapiou hudbou. Schalug zistil, že pacienti po mŕtvici, ktorí trpeli afáziou, nedokázali tvoriť troj- alebo štvorslovné vety, ale stále dokázali zaspievať slová piesne, či už to bolo „Veľa šťastia, zdravia“, alebo ich obľúbená pieseň od Eagles alebo Rolling Stones. Po 70 hodinách intenzívnych hodín spevu zistil, že hudba dokázala doslova prerobiť prepojenia v mozgu pacientov a vytvoriť zhodné rečové centrum v ich pravej hemisfére a nahradiť tak poškodenie ľavej hemisféry.
When I was 17, I visited Dr. Schlaug's lab, and in one afternoon he walked me through some of the leading research on music and the brain -- how musicians had fundamentally different brain structure than non-musicians, how music, and listening to music, could just light up the entire brain, from our prefrontal cortex all the way back to our cerebellum, how music was becoming a neuropsychiatric modality to help children with autism, to help people struggling with stress and anxiety and depression, how deeply Parkinsonian patients would find that their tremor and their gait would steady when they listened to music, and how late-stage Alzheimer's patients, whose dementia was so far progressed that they could no longer recognize their family, could still pick out a tune by Chopin at the piano that they had learned when they were children.
Keď som mal 17, navštívil som laboratórium Dr. Schaluga a ten so mnou jedného dňa prešiel výsledky niektorých z popredných výskumov hudby a mozgu – ako majú hudobníci zásadne odlišnú štruktúru mozgu od „nehudobníkov“, ako hudba i jej počúvanie dokážu rozžiariť celý mozog, od prefrontálneho kortexu až po mozoček; ako sa hudba stáva neuropsychiatrickou metódou, ktorá pomáha autistickým deťom, pomáha ľuďom bojovať so stresom, úzkosťou a depresiou; do akej hĺbky si pacienti s Parkinsonom uvedomia, že ich tras a chôdza sa ustália, keď počúvajú hudbu; a ako pacienti v neskorom štádiu Alzheimera, ktorých demencia už natoľko postúpila, že už nerozoznávajú vlastnú rodinu, dokážu rozpoznať melódiu od Chopina, zahranú na klavíri, ktorú sa učili ešte ako deti.
But I had an ulterior motive of visiting Gottfried Schlaug, and it was this: that I was at a crossroads in my life, trying to choose between music and medicine. I had just completed my undergraduate, and I was working as a research assistant at the lab of Dennis Selkoe, studying Parkinson's disease at Harvard, and I had fallen in love with neuroscience. I wanted to become a surgeon. I wanted to become a doctor like Paul Farmer or Rick Hodes, these kind of fearless men who go into places like Haiti or Ethiopia and work with AIDS patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or with children with disfiguring cancers. I wanted to become that kind of Red Cross doctor, that doctor without borders. On the other hand, I had played the violin my entire life.
Avšak za mojou návštevou Gottfrieda Schlauga bol skrytý úmysel, a to taký, že som sa ocitol na životnej križovatke snažiac sa rozhodnúť medzi hudbou a medicínou. Práve som dokončil undergraduate a pracoval som ako výskumný asistent v laboratóriu Dennisa Selkoeho, študoval som na Harvarde Parkinsona a zamiloval som sa do neurovied. Chcel som sa stať chirurgom. Chcel som sa stať doktorom ako Paul Farmer alebo Rick Hodes, alebo ako podobní nebojácni muži, ktorí idú na miesta ako Haiti alebo do Etiópie, kde pracujú s AIDS pacientmi trpiacimi multirezistentnou tuberkulózou, prípadne s deťmi znetvorenými rakovinou. Chcel som sa stať takýmto doktorom Červeného kríža, doktorom bez hraníc. Na druhej strane som však celý život hral na husle.
Music for me was more than a passion. It was obsession. It was oxygen. I was lucky enough to have studied at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and to have played my debut with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli philharmonic orchestra in Tel Aviv, and it turned out that Gottfried Schlaug had studied as an organist at the Vienna Conservatory, but had given up his love for music to pursue a career in medicine. And that afternoon, I had to ask him, "How was it for you making that decision?"
Hudba nebola len mojou vášňou, ale posadnutím. Bola mojím kyslíkom. Mal som to šťatie, že som mohol študovať na „Juilliard School“ na Manhattane a tiež debutovať so Zubinom Mehtom a s Izraelským filharmonickým orchestrom v Tel Avive. Ukázalo sa, že Gottfried Schlaug študoval organ na Viedenskom konzervatóriu, ale vzdal sa svojej lásky k hudbe, aby mohol ísť za kariérou v medicíne. V to popoludnie som sa ho opýtal: „Aké to bolo, urobiť také rozhodnutie?“
And he said that there were still times when he wished he could go back and play the organ the way he used to, and that for me, medical school could wait, but that the violin simply would not. And after two more years of studying music, I decided to shoot for the impossible before taking the MCAT and applying to medical school like a good Indian son to become the next Dr. Gupta. (Laughter) And I decided to shoot for the impossible and I took an audition for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was my first audition, and after three days of playing behind a screen in a trial week, I was offered the position. And it was a dream. It was a wild dream to perform in an orchestra, to perform in the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in an orchestra conducted now by the famous Gustavo Dudamel, but much more importantly to me to be surrounded by musicians and mentors that became my new family, my new musical home.
Odpovedal, že ešte dlho si prial, aby sa mohol vrátiť a zahrať si na organe, ako pred tým a že medicína na mňa počká, ale husle jednoducho nie. A po ďalších dvoch rokoch štúdia hudby som sa rozhodol pokúsiť o nemožné – ešte pred vstupným testom na medicínu (MCAT) a prihlásením sa na lekársku fakultu, ako správny syn Inda, aby som sa stal ďalším Dr. Guptom. (Smiech) Pokúsil som sa teda o nemožné a zúčastnil som sa konkurzu do váženej Los Angeleskej filharmónie. Bol to môj prvý konkurz a po troch dňoch hrania za plátnom počas skúšobného týždňa mi ponúkli miesto. Bol to sen. Bol to divoký sen hrať v orchestri, hrať v kultovej Koncertnej sieni Walta Disneyho v orchestri, ktorý dirigoval slávny Gustavo Dudamel. No najdôležitejšie pre mňa bolo, že som bol obklopený hudobníkmi a mentormi, ktorí sa stali mojou novou rodinou, mojím novým domovom.
But a year later, I met another musician who had also studied at Juilliard, one who profoundly helped me find my voice and shaped my identity as a musician. Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist at Juilliard, but he suffered a series of psychotic episodes in his early 20s, was treated with thorazine at Bellevue, and ended up living homeless on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later. Nathaniel's story has become a beacon for homelessness and mental health advocacy throughout the United States, as told through the book and the movie "The Soloist," but I became his friend, and I became his violin teacher, and I told him that wherever he had his violin, and wherever I had mine, I would play a lesson with him.
Ale o rok neskôr som stretol iného muzikanta, ktorý tiež študoval na Julliard School a ktorý mi nesmierne pomohol nájsť môj hlas a vyformovať moju hudobnú identitu. Nathaniel Ayers bol na Julliarde kontrabasistom, ale v 20 rokoch ho postihlo niekoľko psychotických záchvatov, bol liečený Thorazinom v Bellevue, a o 30 rokov neskôr skončil ako bezdomovec v uliciach Skid Row v centre Los Angeles. Nathanielov príbeh sa stal symbolom pre obhajobu bezdomovcov a mentálneho zdravia v USA, ako je to zobrazené v knihe i vo filme „Sólista“. Stal som sa jeho priateľom i jeho učiteľom huslí a povedal som mu, že kedykoľvek on bude mať svoje husle a kedykoľvek ja budem mať svoje, zahráme si spolu.
And on the many times I saw Nathaniel on Skid Row, I witnessed how music was able to bring him back from his very darkest moments, from what seemed to me in my untrained eye to be the beginnings of a schizophrenic episode. Playing for Nathaniel, the music took on a deeper meaning, because now it was about communication, a communication where words failed, a communication of a message that went deeper than words, that registered at a fundamentally primal level in Nathaniel's psyche, yet came as a true musical offering from me. I found myself growing outraged that someone like Nathaniel could have ever been homeless on Skid Row because of his mental illness, yet how many tens of thousands of others there were out there on Skid Row alone who had stories as tragic as his, but were never going to have a book or a movie made about them that got them off the streets? And at the very core of this crisis of mine, I felt somehow the life of music had chosen me, where somehow, perhaps possibly in a very naive sense, I felt what Skid Row really needed was somebody like Paul Farmer and not another classical musician playing on Bunker Hill.
A tak vždy, keď som Nathaniela uvidel v Skid Row, mohol som sa stať svedkom toho, ako ho hudba dokázala vrátiť z jeho najtemnejších chvíľ, ktoré sa môjmu laickému oku javili, ako začiatky schizofrenických záchvatov. Hudba a hranie mali pre Nathaniela hlbší zmysel, pretože teraz to bolo o komunikácii, o komunikácii, kde slová zlyhali, o komunikácii niečoho, čo zašlo hlbšie, než slová a ktorá pôsobila na úplne základnú prvotnú úrovneň Nathanielovej duše. Hranie preňho bolo z mojej strany ozajstnou obetou. Pristihol som sa, že ma poburuje, ako niekto taký, ako Nathaniel, mohol vôbec skončiť ako bezdomovec v Skid Row kvôli svojej mentálnej chorobe. Navyše, koľko desiatok tisíc iných sa ocitlo v Skid Row osamote kvôli podobným tragickým príbehom, ale nikdy o nich nebude napísaná kniha alebo natočený film, ktorý by ich dostal preč z tých ulíc. A v jadre tejto mojej krízy som ucítil, že si ma život hudby vybral, a kde som akoby, a možno aj veľmi naivne, ucítil, že práve Skid Row potrebuje niekoho ako je Paul Farmer a nie ďalšieho klasického muzikanta hrajúceho na Bunker Hill.
But in the end, it was Nathaniel who showed me that if I was truly passionate about change, if I wanted to make a difference, I already had the perfect instrument to do it, that music was the bridge that connected my world and his.
Ale na konci to bol práve Nathaniel, kto mi ukázal, že ak som naozaj túžil po zmene niečoho, ak som chcel, aby bola účinná, mal som na to perfektný nástroj, a že hudba bola mostom, ktorý prepájal naše svety.
There's a beautiful quote by the Romantic German composer Robert Schumann, who said, "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts, such is the duty of the artist." And this is a particularly poignant quote because Schumann himself suffered from schizophrenia and died in asylum. And inspired by what I learned from Nathaniel, I started an organization on Skid Row of musicians called Street Symphony, bringing the light of music into the very darkest places, performing for the homeless and mentally ill at shelters and clinics on Skid Row, performing for combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, and for the incarcerated and those labeled as criminally insane.
Romantický nemecký hudobný skladateľ Robert Schumann raz povedal: „Povinnosťou umelca je vyslať svetlo do temnoty ľudských sŕdc.“ Je to veľmi hlboká myšlienka, pretože samotný Schumann trpel schizofréniou a zomrel v liečebni. Inšpirovaný tým, čo som sa od Nathaniela naučil, som v Skid Row založil organizáciu hudobníkov, ktorá sa volá „Street Symphony“ (Pouličný orchester) a prináša svetlo hudby do najtemnejších miest tým, že hrá pre bezdomovcov a mentálne chorých v útulkoch a na klinikách v Skid Row, hrá pre vojnových veteránov s posttraumatickým stresovým syndrómom, pre uväznených a pre označených ako potenciálne nebezpeční.
After one of our events at the Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, a woman walked up to us and she had tears streaming down her face, and she had a palsy, she was shaking, and she had this gorgeous smile, and she said that she had never heard classical music before, she didn't think she was going to like it, she had never heard a violin before, but that hearing this music was like hearing the sunshine, and that nobody ever came to visit them, and that for the first time in six years, when she heard us play, she stopped shaking without medication.
Po jednom z vystúpení v nemocnici Patton State v San Bernardine k nám prišla žena, ktorej tiekli po lícach slzy, bola ochrnutá, triasla sa, no mala úžasný úsmev a povedala nám, že pred tým nikdy nepočula klasickú hudbu, nemyslela si, že sa jej bude páčiť, nikdy pred tým nepočula husle, ale že počúvanie tejto hudby bolo ako počúvanie slnka, že ich nikto nikdy neprišiel navštíviť a že prvýkrát po 6 rokoch, keď nás počula hrať, sa prestala triasť aj bez liekov.
Suddenly, what we're finding with these concerts, away from the stage, away from the footlights, out of the tuxedo tails, the musicians become the conduit for delivering the tremendous therapeutic benefits of music on the brain to an audience that would never have access to this room, would never have access to the kind of music that we make. Just as medicine serves to heal more than the building blocks of the body alone, the power and beauty of music transcends the "E" in the middle of our beloved acronym. Music transcends the aesthetic beauty alone. The synchrony of emotions that we experience when we hear an opera by Wagner, or a symphony by Brahms, or chamber music by Beethoven, compels us to remember our shared, common humanity, the deeply communal connected consciousness, the empathic consciousness that neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says is hard-wired into our brain's right hemisphere. And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions of mental illness within homelessness and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experience something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten them. And the spark of that beauty, the spark of that humanity transforms into hope, and we know, whether we choose the path of music or of medicine, that's the very first thing we must instill within our communities, within our audiences, if we want to inspire healing from within.
Zrazu sme zisťovali, že vďaka koncertom mimo pódia, mimo reflektorov, mimo smokingov, sa muzikanti stali prostredníkmi ohromných terapeutických úspechov hudby pre mozog obecenstva, ktoré by nikdy nemalo prístup do tejto miestnosti, nikdy by nemalo prístup k hudbe, ktorú robíme. Ako liek slúži na viac, ako len na liečenie stavebných častí samotného tela, sila a krása hudby presahuje to „E“ v strede nášho milovaného akronymu (TED). Hudba prekračuje samotnú estetickú krásu. Súlad emócií – ktoré pociťujeme, keď počujeme Wagnerovu operu alebo Brahmsovu symfóniu, či Beethovenovu komornú hudbu – nás núti pamätať na našu spoločnú, vzájomnú ľudskosť, hlboko prepojené spoločné vedomie, empatické vedomie, ktoré je podľa neuropsychiatra Iana McGilchrista pevne ukotvené v pravej hemisfére mozgu. A tým, ktorí žijú v najneľudskejších podmienkach mentálnych chorôb ako bezdomovci a uväznení, hudba a jej krása ponúka možnosť prekročiť svet okolo nich, aby si uvedomili, že stále majú schopnosť prežívať niečo krásne a že ľudskosť na nich nezabudla. A tá iskra krásy i tá iskra ľudskosti sa pretvárajú v nádej a my vieme, či už si zvolíme cestu hudby alebo medicíny, že to je tá úplne prvá vec, ktorú musíme vštepiť do našich spoločností, do nášho publika, ak chceme podnietiť liečenie zvnútra.
I'd like to end with a quote by John Keats, the Romantic English poet, a very famous quote that I'm sure all of you know. Keats himself had also given up a career in medicine to pursue poetry, but he died when he was a year older than me. And Keats said, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know." (Music) (Applause)
Na koniec by som chcel citovať Johna Keatsa, anglického romantického básnika. Je to veľmi známy citát, ktorý iste všetci poznáte. Aj Keats sa vzdal kariéry v medicíne, aby sa mohol venovať poézii, ale zomrel, keď mal o rok viac, ako ja teraz. Keats povedal: „Krása je pravda a pravda je krása. To je všetko, čo viete a všetko, čo potrebujete vedieť.“ (Hudba) (Potlesk)