And if you know the Shins’ song ‘Phantom Limb’, you also have to know that it is Pr. Ramachandran who made the appellation famous, and explained how a no-more-existent limb can still make you terribly suffer. He solved the problem and helped a lot of desperate people in pain. Suffering from what does not exist anymore, a concrete thing in science that has become the best metaphor about absent relationships or lost desires.
But I can make more than one connection between music and the famous neurobiologist. He knows about the brain as only a few people in the world do, so after the talk, while he was signing his last book, I asked him what he thought about Ray Kurzweil, the computer science guy whom Conor Oberst was talking about in many interviews regarding his upcoming album, the guy who thinks that in 30 years we will be advanced enough to download our brains (and our consciousness) in computers and live forever.
Ramachandran looked at me, probably surprised I was asking such a question, then he said he could not comment on it because Kurzweil was a friend. But I insisted a little bit: ‘But do you think it’s insane?… he finally gave up and said looking a little embarrassed ‘Yes, it’s insane.’