One more thing and then stand down:
You have seen this video before – from the Brooklyn Parkinson’s Group. You should see it again in this context. The scientific method they are using does not have peer review, but comes from a scientist who flunked math and physics and who never worked in a science lab: Albert Einstein, who summarized his explanation of the universe thusly: “Nothing happens until something moves.”
I respect science greatly and I am very wary of old time hippies offering me herbal tea. But science and art working together can inform each other and get it right. It is a multi-dimensional universe, and can be observed from different sides.
Science saved my life. I am living on pills, for which I thank God and Merck, and the Federal Drug Administration I love my sinemet; Mirapex takes all the blame for my conduct, and selegiline is goes well with red wine.
I love the Mri tube and the scans and I volunteered for a clinical trial in which I play a video game against a computer, while inside the Mri tube, wearing a helmut on which the computer projects an alternate reality, and the computer changes the rules of the game without telling me what the new rules are – and at that moment, when I realize that up and down have reversed positions, red is no longer red and solid rock becomes liquid and yes means no and doors do not open and weapons do not shoot, and I am on my own to figure out what the new game is; and all the while they are zapping images of my brain… basically putting me through a 3-D psychotic fantasy world to take pictures of how my brain reacts to sudden reversals of meaning and direction - great fun! I kept going back for more. It was a mixture of The Matrix and Vertigo. Brilliant stuff. Scientists are doing amazing stuff. But notice they made a video game. An art form. Notice that I understood it as movies. An art form.
It’s chemicals in our brains and that is science and I bow down to scientists. But the condition our condition is in is heavily influenced by the spirit our spirit is in. Which also influences the production of chemicals in the brain.
Pretend you are the doc. The PWP in this video are your patients. They take the drugs, they follow the science. But also they make use of art and exercise, in this case dance and music…. And it all becomes more liveable; and the condition their condition is in will be visibly improved.
Science and art/spirit/hope/beauty are both needed.
So why is only one side being invited to the World Parkinson’s assembly in Montreal in Oct. 2013?
If these were your patients, would you approve of them doing this dance , and would you work together with creators of beauty, in addition to, not in replacement of, your scientific methods?
To put it another way, is this cool or not?
http://youtu.be/Wr0K4MSKX3I
http://youtu.be/Wr0K4MSKX3I