We’ve all heard about Phineas Gage, the railroad worker who, in 1848, survived an accident that sent a metal rod through his skull, a brain injury that altered his personality in lasting ways. Sadie Dingfelder’s story of Edward Freytag is no less compelling: Following a motorcycle accident, Freytag discovered he could flawlessly identify and even visualize musical notes. Dingfelder’s account of Freytag, while succinct, is surprising, and given a lush animation treatment by artist Daniel Barreto that complements and elevates her narrative into a special experience. Not to be missed.
About a month after his accident, he saw an unfamiliar file on his computer’s desktop one morning called “Brain Bleed.” He assumed that it was something from his hospital stay that he had saved and then forgot about.
When he double-clicked the mysterious file, more than 50 pages of scored music appeared. The file listed Edward himself as the composer, but the strange, lurching tune was utterly unfamiliar to him. Even stranger, his wife, only half awake, was humming along. “Did you write this?” he asked her.
“No, you wrote it, dummy,” she replied.
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Heaven’s Melodic Strains
“From a certain height, the problem becomes one of knowledge itself: Do you believe what you hear, or do you hear what you believe?”
The Sound of Your Voice
“The fact that I had song ideas, let alone a place where I was saving them, was significant. It had been 15 years since I’d last released an album.”
