Pianist With No Short Term Memory | Pianist Reacts

hello and welcome back to my youtube channel in this video we're going to be reacting to someone called clive waring who was a famous psychology case study where he had no short-term memory at all and he was a pianist and a musician i think this was originally a documentary in the uk for bbc three or bbc four so let's get straight into it i know it's like we did now they are not the same right no difference between dreams and anything like that no senses at all the brain has been totally inactive no dreams and no thoughts of any kind whatever clive was a renowned conductor living in london when he was struck down by a virus in 1985. parts of his brain were completely destroyed including his memory however his ability to play music is unaffected it's amazing that because i think so basically this case study shows that the difference in how you memorize and learn music it's a very different process to how you memorize you know day-to-day things so he can't remember anything about what's happening right now but you can remember how to play the piano do you feel different when you play music i've never heard a note since i've been ill i don't know what it's like to play with you and you're unconscious you played us some music about two minutes ago not known to me do you know that we're making a film about you no no that's news to me you're being filmed for a television program oh no oh yeah oh i said i'd be poshed away upper class because you're very famous i like this story you're full of jokes aren't you are you two laughing as well about 20 years ago a film was made about you oh no just after you became ill called a prisoner of consciousness and 20 years on we're making a new film about you because millions of people watch the film and wanted to know how you were good heavens so millions of people know you how embarrassing they know too much about me now so it's interesting because you can obviously remember what she's been saying within the conversation but you just can't remember anything that happened you know in leading up to this film or to the previous one 20 years ago his wife deborah lives 85 miles away in reading his illness has made it impossible for them to live together for 20 years [Music] you see he has no problem whatsoever there remembering how to read music how to read words or anything like that you can you can play completely fine as if it was before the illness that he had which is incredible really does clive know his name yes does he know how old he is no does he know where you live no no i do does he know your job no no idea does he know the day of the week no does he know the date no can he read a book no because he can't remember the sentence before last can he watch your film no he'll watch the rugby or he'll watch the cricket so i'm thinking if she's moved away his wife has moved away if she comes back he won't realize that she ever moved away we're still very much a team i mean it sounds odd and we see so little of each other but we're very much a team come on never hanging around on the other side of the room it's incredible he can still remember his wife obviously they had so much memory or maybe it's related to a feeling that he has every moment for clive is the first moment because the amnesia is rubbing everything out immediately after it happens not only does he not remember anything that's happened to him since he was ill he doesn't remember anything that's ever happened to him in the whole of his life i can't imagine that i imagine that's quite a traumatic thing to have experienced and he will experience that every sin every seven seconds apparently where he just remembers that he doesn't remember or maybe he just doesn't know that he doesn't remember if that makes any sense whatsoever he would look at his watch to see what time was this momentous event occurring of first consciousness and so he would write down 1006 awake first time and then have the same sensation and 1007 awake first time truly awake first time ignore the last entry now i'm awake this is the first real awakeness and so the the diaries are line by line a succession of astonished awakenings so he feels like every single more minute that he is awake for the first time since the amnesia which is really bizarre that's 1990 when he'd been suffering amnesia for just five years and this is the effect on him seven years on but you can see that he's by no means resolved his anguish by no means he writes the time now in big in a big hand and a tick a tick to say yes that's authentic i i wrote that it's authentic that's definitely me awake he has to then cross through the previous ticks and do a new tick with a circle around it to say this is the real one and that wasn't the real one next time he comes back and so on it must be so hard because he must like feel like he's always on the edge of reality like he doesn't understand that what he's experiencing now in a minute he will have forgotten so he's constantly trying to grasp onto the minute that he's awake yeah first time i've seen my writing first time i see my room first time i've seen human beings never have a dream or a thought day not the same do you think he do you think he knows that he has a memory problem because it seems to me like he knows that he has a memory problem he just doesn't know how to get out of it [Music] you asked me when did i decide to divorce him and when did i decide to leave it wasn't really a decision it was an imperative there was no way any human being could continue in that way we had the same dialogue in a loop tape repeated verbatim with the same inflection the same tone the voice the same expression on the face for well nine th the whole nine years until i left and we were still having that conversation as i was backing out of the room that must be so hard for her to have to experience that and she's having to have the same conversations with him all of the time i know that a lot of people who have family with alzheimer's or dementia have a similar situation whereas um i imagine with this because he's kind of there and present and he's still functioning 100 in in the moment must be hard because you can't remember anything that's happening clive is visiting some ethel readers church in london for the first time since he recorded a concert there in 1982 [Music] to have the acoustic of the churches is quite unlike the sort of concert hall yeah yeah there's lots of echoes and long reverberation it's very special in that way listen see how quiet it think there's some music in the distance he's still so aware of how music is structured and how reba reverb affects the sound and everything he just can't it's it's amazing to me that he still has all of his standard music memory where he knows how reverb and acoustics affect sound in a church etc and that's really strange how he can't remember anything day to day but he can remember all of his music knowledge he hasn't lost any of it i remember last time we were here you were conducting the lasses requiem and it was for the the last international lassis festival that you put on and you you came in here and none of the pews were here and you used the whole building and you had uh it was far from a concert it was actually a celebration of the mass as if lassas had just died it was extraordinary and it was so moving that there were people here who were crying and it was broadcast live to five countries and you were directing it and it was so moving it was so moving that everyone was in tears that's how good she is how good a director a musical director you were it was just live and you it gave the lesson it's like he's experiencing it again or like feeling it for the first time again he obviously has like a deep connection with music so they can picture or maybe maybe he's kind of remembering the feeling i don't know but it's like he can picture what's what was happening at the time best pub in the country if you could go anywhere where would you like to go no idea well i'm gonna take you home oh i see your smiles yes yes uh yesterday home is yesterday that's that's not a bad answer okay do you think you've ever been to writing yes i have been there have you yes i've been going with every city there's never really i suppose you could have gone when howard was studying there yeah yeah i didn't know you'd ever been there you've never mentioned reading no it's not very interesting because i haven't remember going there yeah not a very interesting place so so i think you can remember everything that happened prior to the illness but not stuff that happened after it or maybe i don't know because he seems to not remember his wife's face which is odd so maybe it's just selective as to what you can and can't remember has it gone well um i don't really want to answer that thank you why does a giant pronounce the ladies we get i know zacchaeus that was fabulous um again i was just wondering how the day had been um well it's just so sad that it's not you know that's not our reality bless her she really struggles with the fact that that's not how life panned out for her which is real which is really sad was it easier to stay away oh yeah yeah it was the easy way out they didn't seem any point either because he didn't remember he'd write it in his diary but he'd turn over the page and start raining the next day um did he know who you were more or less sometimes you'd need a bit of prompting it must be strange for his obviously him because his dad can't remember him but also it must be strange the other way around because obviously your child gets older and if you can't remember them aging at all it must be like seeing a complete stranger today clive's sister adele has come to see him and i used to take the children to see him but he used to get very aggressive i think for his family who have largely seen that he has kind of he's there and is not there so his personality is there i think having something like the piano where they can see that he is who he was before and he can still play the way he could play before is something that's probably quite special to the family to latch on to because that's who they saw as a person before and they see him as that person still even though a lot of his life has changed because of his memory issues do you remember adele sitting next to me can you remember what she was wearing no never seen her you're the first human beings i've seen three of you two men and one lady the first piece of people i've seen since i've been now no difference in day and night no thoughts at all no dreams day and night that same blank precisely like death is it very hard no it's exactly the same as being dead which is not difficult was it we did it's easy you don't do anything at all you can't do anything and you're dead it's so sad because it's kind of just existing he's not really feeling fulfilled in life because every single moment is like a new like it's like he's remembering again if that makes any sense so it's like he's never he's never gonna be able to do anything that's fulfilling and this is kind of it now until death that's morbid but yeah he'll say things like do you know what it's like and that's really dangerous because if you i actually did i said yes at once because i was just saying yesterday that was disastrous i've never said that again since why because he says you don't know what it's like how do you know of course he's right isn't he you know so there's no way you're gonna know what it's like um so he's still got some fight in him oh yeah yeah but that's the thing is probably three quarters of his personalities still i think it's really good actually that he's aware that he has a a memory problem because if he wasn't aware of that it would be really hard to explain to him every minute what the issue is with how he's perceiving life if you could do anything now if you had free choice what would you do next i would gin and tonic it was a cigarette and then of course waiting for time to elude and disappear and her arrival if you have enjoyed this video and want to see more of these types of videos then let me know in the comments and like and subscribe and i will see you next time

Channel: Matthew Cawood

Views: 1,525

Keywords: piano, piano cover, pianist, memory loss, clive wearing living without memory, clive wearing music, clive wearing documentary, clive wearing prisoner of consciousness, clive wearing psychology case study, pianist reacts, piano reaction, pianist reaction, clive wearing reaction, reacting to piano, piano reaction videos

Id: z1W2UVH2VUU

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021