(Music) (Applause)
(音樂) (掌聲)
Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you. It's a distinct privilege to be here.
十分感謝 謝謝,十分榮幸能夠來到這裡
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.
幾個禮拜前,我在Youtube上看了一段影片 關於眾議員Gabrielle Giffords 在那次恐怖槍擊後 的早期復健階段 子彈跑進她的左額葉 帶走了她腦袋的布羅卡區,掌控語言的中心 在這個療程中,Gabby和她的語言治療師一同努力 而她十分努力想要擠出 一些最基本的單字,你能看見她 開始變得心力憔悴,直到她崩出眼淚 然後開始啜泣 無言地倒在治療師懷裡 過了一會兒,她的治療師採取了一個新方法 他們開始一同唱歌 Gabby在淚眼下開始歌唱 然後你能聽到她明顯地能夠表現 歌中表達她情緒的單字 然後她唱著,在一段下降的旋律中,她唱道 「讓它閃耀,讓它閃耀,讓它閃耀」 這是十分震撼且發人省思的,並提醒我們 音樂的美妙能述說文字無法道盡的故事 甚至在這個例子中,真正的讓人開口說話
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.
看著Gabby Giffords的影片讓我想起 Gottfried Schlaug博士的研究 他是哈佛研究音樂與大腦的神經學權威 同時Schlaug也是一項叫做「旋律語調療法」的支持者 這項療法現在在音樂療法之中十分受歡迎 Schlaug 發現他一些因為中風而失語的患者 原本無法組織超過三四個單字的句子 但卻仍然能唱出歌中的整段歌詞 不管是「生日快樂歌」 或是這些患者的最愛、像是老鷹合唱團、滾石的歌 而在七十個小時密集的歌唱療程後 他發現音樂有辦法實質地重新搭接上 病人腦中的連結,並在他們的左額葉 創造出對應的語言中心 以彌補左額葉的損害
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.
當我十七歲的時候,我在某個下午拜訪了Schlaug博士的實驗室 他帶著我看過了一些大腦和音樂的尖端研究 裏頭說著音樂家和一般人相較起來 是如何有著顯著不同的大腦 音樂和聽音樂是如何 激發整個大腦 從前額葉皮層一路到我們的小腦 音樂是如何變成一個神經精神的療法 去幫助有自閉症的小孩 或是去幫助與焦慮和憂鬱症抗爭的病人 帕金森重度患者的顫抖以及行動不穩 在聽音樂時為何能夠穩定緩和 還有晚期阿茲海默症患者,他們的記憶 已退化至無法認出至親 卻仍能夠回憶起小時候學的 蕭邦鋼琴名曲。
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.
但是我拜訪Schlaug博士其實有個自私的動機 也就是,當時我徘迴於人生的十字路口 試著於醫學與音樂之間做一個抉擇 我那時大學剛畢業,並在Dennis Selkoe 的實驗室做研究助理 於哈佛大學研究帕金森氏症 而我愛上了神經科學,我想要成為外科醫師 我想要成為像Paul Farmer 或是 Rick Hodes 一般的醫師 像他們一樣能夠無所畏懼地前往海地或衣索比亞 並進行愛滋、多重抗藥肺結核、 或是兒童顏面損傷癌症的治療工作 我想要成為那種紅十字會的醫師 那穿越國界的醫師 然而,我自幼學習小提琴
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?"
我對音樂有得不只是熱情,而是狂熱 它就像氧氣一樣。我很幸運地能夠於曼哈頓的 茱利亞音樂學院習琴,並且於特拉維夫 與以色列愛樂管弦樂團及祖賓梅塔首次登台演出 而湊巧的昰,原來Schlaug博士 曾經於維也納音樂學院主修管風琴 但最後放棄音樂以追求醫學志業 而那天下午,我非得問他 "你做了這個決定之後有何感想?"
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.
他說,有時他仍然希望 他能夠回到像從前彈奏管風琴的時光 而對於我來說,醫學院能夠以後再說 但是小提琴卻沒有辦法 於是,我繼續進修小提琴演奏兩年過後,我決定 在回頭考MCAT申請醫學院 當個有出息的印度兒子 成為下一個Gupta醫師之前 (笑聲) 我決定給自己一個近乎不可能的機會 並參加聲名遠播的洛杉磯愛樂的甄試 那是我第一個正式甄試,而經過了 連續三天於屏風後演奏,我被錄取了 那有如美夢成真。我最瘋狂的夢想就是能夠 在樂團中演奏,於經典的迪士尼交響廳表演 並於樂團中由現今名聲響亮的Gustavo Dudamel指揮 但對我而言更加重要的是 樂團的音樂家和老師,他們成為我的家人 我的音樂家庭
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.
一年後,我認識了另一位音樂家 他同樣從茱莉亞畢業,並且深切地幫助我 發掘以及塑造我身為音樂家的風格及身分 Nathaniel Ayers 在茱莉亞時修習低音大提琴 然而他二十幾歲時不幸精神病發 並在Bellevue醫院接受氯丙嗨(精神分裂藥名)治療 三十年後,他落的無家可歸 流連於洛杉磯市中心的貧民窟(Skid Row) Nathaniel的故事已經成為美國各地 心理健康宣導以及街友輔導的代表故事 並被寫成書和拍成電影《心靈獨奏》 但是我成為他的朋友,他的小提琴老師 我告訴他,無論在哪裡,只要他帶著他的小提琴 我也帶著我的琴,我就會陪他演奏上課
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.
在我多次於Skid Row陪Nathaniel演奏時 我親眼目睹音樂如何能夠將他從黑暗之中舉起 我親眼目睹音樂如何能夠將他從黑暗之中舉起 如何幫助他從,在我這外行人眼中看來是 精神分裂的邊緣,得到緩和 如何幫助他從,在我這外行人眼中看來是 精神分裂的邊緣,得到緩和 當我為Nathaniel演奏時,音樂有了更深刻的意義 因為音樂成為我們溝通的方式 當言語表達無法傳達時 音樂的主旨有辦法比言語更深刻的 於Nathaniel的精神最原始之處激起回應 並來自我忠實的音樂奉獻 我開始為Nathaniel的遭遇感到憤慨 一個像他如此有才華的人,只因為他的精神病況 而淪落街頭,然而僅在Skid Row 就有上萬的人,擁有同樣悲慘的故事 但卻沒有人幫他們寫成書、拍成電影 讓他們能夠脫離無家可歸的困境? 而在我心靈交戰的核心 我感到是音樂這條路選擇了我 而我有點幼稚地以為 Skid Row這種地方需要的是像Paul Farmer醫師的人 而不是又一個在Bunker Hill演奏的古典音樂家 (Bunker Hill是迪士尼音樂廳所在地)
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.
但最後,還是Nathaniel使我了解 如果我真正有熱情改變現況 如果我想要有所影響,我其實早就擁有最適合的工具 音樂就是連接我們倆的世界的橋梁
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.
德國浪漫樂派作曲家羅伯‧舒曼 有一句美麗的名言 他說:「將光明送入人內心暗處 這就是藝術家的職責」 他這句話特別發人省思 因為舒曼本身受精神分裂症所擾 並於精神病院過世 我由Nathaniel身上所學到的種種受到啟發 並於Skid Row組織了一個音樂家團體 叫做街頭交響樂(Street Symphony),致力於 將音樂之光芒帶進最黑暗的地方 為Skid Row的庇護所和醫療站服務的街友 以及精神病患演奏,為受創傷後壓力症候群所苦的榮民 受監禁的罪犯、以及被稱為喪心病症的人們演奏。 受監禁的罪犯、以及被稱為喪心病症的人們演奏。
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.
有一次,我們於San Bernadino的Patton State醫院 演奏結束,有一位女士走上前來 她淚流滿面 並些許的顫抖著 並有個美麗的微笑,她說 她從來沒有聽過古典音樂 她本來覺得她不會喜歡,她沒聽過小提琴 但是她聽到這音樂就像是聽到陽光一般 而以前根本就不會有人探訪他們,她說 在這六年來第一次,她在聽我們演奏時, 不需藥物,就停止顫抖
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.
忽然間,我們發現這些表演 離開了舞台,遠離聚光燈 褪去了燕尾服,音樂家成為 傳達身心療癒的媒介 透過音樂進入大腦,慰藉一群 永遠無法進入表演廳的觀眾 永遠無法接近我們所創作的這種音樂 就如同醫藥的目標不只是治療 建構軀體的一塊塊積木 音樂的力與美遠超越我們所愛的TED縮寫中的"E" (entertainment 娛樂) 音樂的力與美遠超越我們所愛的TED縮寫中的"E" (entertainment 娛樂) 音樂超越純粹的美學價值 那種種參差的情感,可啟發於 韋格納的歌劇,或是布拉姆斯的交響樂 或是貝多芬的室內樂,那情感促使我們憶起 我們共同的人性,那於最深處聯繫的意識 也就是同理心意識 神經心理學家Iain McGilchrist曾說這意識 於大腦右葉有具體的通路 而對於那些生活在最抹滅人性的狀態中 受精神疾病所苦、流落街頭 或是遭受監禁,音樂的美及力量 足以讓他們有機會超脫四周的世界 並認清他們仍有能力去體驗美麗的事物 而世界的人們並沒有忘記他們的存在 那美感觸發的火花,那閃耀的人性 將蛻變成希望 而我們都知道,無論我們選擇的是音樂 或是醫學之路,希望永遠是最需要灌輸的 無論是在我們的社區之中,或是觀眾之間 希望是由內心療癒的第一步
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)
我想要以英國浪漫派詩人, 濟慈,曾說的一句話做作結 這句名言你們多數人大概聽過 濟慈本人也曾放棄醫學職業 以專心作詩。他過世時只比我大一歲 濟慈寫道: 「美及是真,真理及是美。那就是 所有你在這世上所知,和你所須知的一切。」 (音樂) (掌聲)