La Pistola

Seizures and Sean Paul

If you’ve ever read this blog you probably know I have seizures. I’m not shy about the whole thing and find it, while somewhat annoying, rather interesting. Today I read a seizure-related story that completely fascinated me and is an early contender for Best Headline of the Year. The headline is from a January 18th New York Post article and I can't believe I haven't heard this story until now:

HIP-HOP OP FIXED MY HEAD
Grand “Paul” Seizures Cured

The story is about a young woman from Queens who would drop into a grand mal seizure every time the rapper Sean Paul’s music would play, specifically the song “Temperature.” Of course, just to make matters worse, Sean Paul happened to be one of her favorite musicians and she was having up to ten seizures a day from listening to his music. Ten. I’ve had two seizures in one day a couple times and that put me in the hospital and wiped me out for days.

Eventually she made the connection, took her ipod to a doctor who was, of course, “skeptical,” dialed up some Sean Paul and promptly hit the deck.

Apparently it’s called musicogenic epilepsy and somewhere between 50 and 100 people have been diagnosed with it…ever. Her doctors removed a small, about 3-inch section, from her right, frontal lobe and everything’s okay now…she can listen to Sean Paul all she wants and nothing happens. Hasn’t had a seizure since.

I’ve been trying to identify all the things I was doing when I’ve had seizures to see if there is any pattern…once in the car with my mom, once while taking photos on the streets of Denver, in a girlfriend’s apartment, in a taxi, in the office…nothing seems to tie them together. So, I went to You Tube, found the video for Sean Paul’s “Temperature,” turned up the volume on my computer and hit play.

And while I can see how that song might give somebody a seizure, it didn’t work for me. Too bad.

The New York Post article is here, as well as a couple others here and here.

Imagine there's no Imagine

I was talking with my brother the other night about this and that, and for whatever reason the conversation came back around to a statement I had made several weeks ago while we were vacationing on a houseboat on the Mississippi River: I hate John Lennon’s song Imagine. I mean…I hate it. Now, my brother William’s musical tastes and mine began diverging somewhere along the time he traded in his Cure and Adam Ant records for a big purple and green van and began following the Grateful dead in about 1986. Still, he did introduce me to the Cure and to the good part of The Beatles way earlier than that. But… Imagine? Let’s review the lyrics:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Okay…ick. It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-peace or anti-hippie or even anti-positive-thinking-can-change-the-world, but that’s just crap. That sort of stuff can get you kil…um, relegated to releasing your records in a Starbucks.

So, William, thanks for the Cure and thanks for teaching me how to smoke but seriously…fuck that song.