Here I am listening to Beethoven on my bed, piano arpeggios mingling with the keyboard clicks, someone's footsteps on the stairway, and beyond that this newly consoling silence just floating in the night. I finished this book in a loud pizza shop and had to put earphones in (no music) to focus. At once it is commentary on the density of the prose and research and my chronic inability to focus, especially given how readily available sound and music and hubbub is in my life and in our society.

I don't Sign, but now I want to be introduced to the wholly novel way of thinking and framing that Sign facilitates. I am reminded of the Master of None scene where the soundtrack evaporates and the deaf character begins to express herself, to seemingly vibrate with life off the screen, her facial expressions and gestural emotiveness leaping onto a whole new linguistic dimension. My favorite parts of this book were the times Sacks conveys this admiration for Sign, as well as his admiration for language in general. Sign in this book is a channel by which Sacks navigates the anatomical, developmental, cultural, and aesthetic structures and textures of language.

It took me a while to get through this short book, though. Mostly because it is dense.