Chris Harvey<\/em><\/strong> enjoys a film producer\u2019s surprising memoir about waking up without a finch-sized chunk of brain.<\/p>\nSix years ago, Martino Sclavi, a 38-year-old Italian film producer, was in Los Angeles working on a new movie about a con-man posing as a priest. His friend Russell Brand was to play the lead, and the finished script was almost due. During a read- through, Sclavi found that he couldn\u2019t quite follow the text. He\u2019d had a headache since breakfast, and felt that his eyes weren\u2019t working well. Later, the headache got so bad that he called an old college friend to drive him to a doctor. He didn\u2019t have health insurance and so was turned away from a number of clinics before the friend rang his own father and explained that Sclavi \u201cno longer seems to be able to answer, or maybe even hear, my questions\u201d. His dad told him to take Sclavi to the ER at Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Sunset Boulevard right away.<\/p>\n
The next day, Sclavi awoke to find that a surgeon had cut out part of his brain \u2013 at a cost of $100,000 (\u00a377,000), which required a down payment from his mother and sister\u2019s credit cards. He had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma \u2013 a very aggressive type of cancerous tumour that had reached its most violent stage. Doctors gave him a 98\u2009per cent chance of dying in the next 18 months. Some six months later, in Rome, Sclavi would undergo experimental cancer treatment and further surgery.
\nIn the most dramatic section of this memoir, Sclavi describes waking up on the operating table, \u201cawake in a way\u2026 that I have never been before. It\u2019s not that slow move into awareness. It\u2019s Bang! Reality\u201d. As the scalpel delves deeper into his brain tissue, he is asked to count forwards and backward to 10, and to recite the alphabet. Sclavi is aware that it \u201creally, really hurts\u201d and he is conscious that \u201cwe are starting to lose\u2026 something\u2026\u201d When it is over, there is a hole the size and shape of a bird in his brain.<\/p>\n
As the film-maker begins his slow, odds-defying recovery, he finds that he can no longer read. Over time, he realises the ability is not coming back. Back in the US with his wife, Margarita, and young son, Miro, he goes off on walks, deliberately getting lost so that he can try to read the signs and find his way back. When he is forced to ask passers-by for directions, they often show him maps on their phones, which he can\u2019t read either.<\/p>\n
He does find, however, that he can still touch-type and embarks upon the long process of documenting his experiences before and after the events of January 2011. He uses a voice app \u2013 which he names Alex \u2013 to read back each sentence to him, then he corrects it, and has it read back to him again. This painstaking process heals most of the faults in his typing but not all \u2013 he still has to \u201cfind a way of telling my son about Daddy\u2019s trip to the moon\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sadly, The Finch in My Brain also documents the breakdown of Sclavi\u2019s marriage to Margarita, a psychiatrist from Macedonia. They married in 2004, and his description of their first meeting, the innocence of his love for her, and their gradual coming together, is the most diverting section of his memoir, given depth and colour by being played out against the medieval backdrop of Siena, among his wealthy, idiosyncratic Italian relations.<\/p>\n
Margarita adds footnotes to some of the milestones in Sclavi\u2019s painful pilgrimage: \u201cI needed very much to talk to you\u2026 but there was only silence\u2026 you explained you were trying to make peace with Death, and had no need for help.\u201d
\nTo the reader, though, their separation is inevitable from the moment he wakes up after the second
\noperation and can no longer recall her name.<\/p>\n
Brand also figures large: pre-illness, as an erratic, inspirational figure, fighting his own demons, especially his addiction to drugs and \u201cbeautiful, big-breasted girls\u201d; post-surgery, as a loving, supportive friend. Brand lent the house in LA he shared with then-wife Katy Perry to Sclavi and his family during his initial recuperation; he also wrote the foreword to this book in which he describes how his friend went from being \u201can encyclopedia of opinions on communism, sculpture, movies, Cuba, opera, the whole damn shebang, to a gentle, mindful Shaman quietly watching with a light beyond words in his eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the other story here: how Sclavi comes to terms spiritually with his altered state and its depressing contours. It\u2019s an uneven book, but it represents some kind of miracle just by its ever having been written, and Sclavi\u2019s optimism shines through it. \u201cAs long as the finch in my brain remains happy and doesn\u2019t transform into a dragon or an alien,\u201d he writes, \u201cI feel pretty safe and can have a cup of tea with my sweet, dark-haired friend Death, who is ready to accompany any one of us, at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_image src=”http:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/brain-scan.jpg” title_text=”Post-surgery scan” animation=”right”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]<\/p>\n
The shape of things: a scan of Martino Sclavi\u2019s brain, after a surgeon had cut out his tumour<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ background_image=”http:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/background1.jpg” admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row custom_padding=”27px|0px|0px|0px” admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” text_font_size=”15px” background_color=”#cccccc” custom_padding=”10px|10px|10px|10px”] Interview in The Telegraph How do you read your son a bedtime story when cancer has left holes in your brain? [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” text_font_size=”15px” background_color=”#cccccc” custom_padding=”10px|10px|10px|10px”] Martino Sclavi Obituary The Italian film producer and writer Martino Sclavi, who has died aged 47, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefinchinmybrain.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}