Oliver Sacks, Radio Garden, and the Recipe for a Happier Life

In his final published book, Oliver Sacks, the great neuroscientist and writer, said that in forty years of medical practice, he had found only two types of non-pharmaceutical therapy to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.

I was recently introduced to an App called Radio Garden, whose title seems cleverly to combine the two. It’s a fun thing, and involves you spinning the globe with your finger, then focusing on any part of the world, where you see many dots each representing a radio station. As you focus further, the App pinpoints the radio station and instantly plays in real time whatever song is on air from that location on the earth. 

The Persian word for garden is ‘Paradise’, which was borrowed into Greek, so entering translations of the Garden of Eden in the Bible. The idea of a garden as a place of repose, as a way back to nature, as a place of breathable fresh air is firmly embedded in all our minds.

The paradise of nature is often contrasted to the stereotypical hell of cities. But it does not have to be either/or, of course. I notice that in the plans for the city of Milan in the next decade, there exist many areas designated for green space. And this sustainable sense of future urban development is replicated in most cities across the world. 

I’ve written elsewhere about the wonderful ending of Voltaire’s novel, Candide, where the last sentence reads: ‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin’, or one must cultivate one’s garden. This is a metaphor of course for reflection and personal growth.

The metaphor of a garden is also employed in Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, Being There, in which a simpleton, Chauncey Gardiner, is mistaken by an ailing plutocrat for a genius, with his seemingly wise words about the world, expressed through the vocabulary of gardening.

Even the U.S. President is taken in, fooled into thinking that Chauncey’s comments are a sophisticated commentary on the growth cycle of the economy – with natural blooming in the spring and inevitable decay in the autumn.

Like Candide, the book is a wonderful satire, and it was made into a fine film by Hal Ashby, starring Peter Sellers. Sadly it was to be Sellers’ last movie. He died shortly after filming was completed.

In the version of Being There released at cinemas, and in the subsequent DVD, Ashby added a ‘bonus’ scene at the end – an out-take featuring Sellers, who throughout the film delivers his lines in a deadpan, affectless tone. However, in the out-take, he can’t stop ‘corpsing’ – bursting into laughter as he tries to deliver his lines. It’s a hilarious as well as a touching moment.

My two favourite gardens are the garden of the Rodin Museum in Paris, replete with sculptures (and on hot days, excellent ice cream). And of course, Kew Gardens, where I used to go many times in London on pilgrimage to see my favourite ginkgo tree.

Music, that other therapeutic tool touted by Oliver Sacks is, these days, ubiquitous. There is barely a shop, restaurant, hotel, supermarket, elevator, that does not play a brand of muzak – bass turned low, treble turned high. It seems this brand of music makes you shop more (revenues increase by 19% in supermarkets apparently where muzak is played).

Music to consume to is not something I enjoy. Probably because I really notice it. I dislike it in restaurants and hotels in particular. Live music is another matter, if it’s good – but I loathe the bland, synthesised slop of sound that issues from retail ceilings like a fine drizzle of rain.

Many people don’t notice this ambient noise because they have their own personalised stereos plugged in their ears. I remember driving somewhere with the family, and asking my sons a question as they sat in the back. I was puzzled at first by their silence until I remembered they had their earphones on, and couldn’t hear a word I said.

The first personal stereo was the SONY Walkman. Apparently one of the founders of SONY had the idea for the device while frequently bored on long flights, but it is as a metropolitan accessory that it has come into its own. Indeed, the NY in SONY embodies New York, as well as the Latin word "sonus", which is the root of the words ‘sonic’ and ‘sound’. 

Our Director of Music, Mr Biggs, recently lamented that students today seem less willing to be patient in learning an instrument. In a world where instant gratification is the order of the day, and boredom an anathema, the idea of every day over many years steadily improving your skills on a musical instrument is not something many have the mental endurance for.

And yet it is deeply satisfying to acquire a skill like this – slow, for sure, but profoundly rewarding. It demands sacrifice, of time and other interests, but it can benefit concentration, improve mathematical understanding, develop sight reading, not to mention the cultural immersion that the experience confers.

Similarly, tending a garden takes patience, and I’m delighted that, even with our limited space, we have a team that dedicates time to planting flowers and trees, sewing seeds, removing weeds, at the same time adding a layer of colour and beauty to the school.

I’d be tempted to add sport to the shortlist of music and gardening as pursuits that mentally help you unwind and relax, helping to give meaning and purpose to modern life that can often seem random and chaotic. I hope our students like to pursue all three. If they do, the chances are their existence will be happier and more stress-free than most.   

More than ever, I recommend a little cultivating of one’s garden, and a little music, to help us through these times.

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO