0:00:07.765,0:00:25.568 (Music) 0:02:22.825,0:02:25.924 (Applause) 0:02:25.924,0:02:31.284 Thank you very much. (Applause) 0:02:31.284,0:02:34.957 Thank you. It's a distinct privilege to be here. 0:02:34.957,0:02:36.881 A few weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube 0:02:36.881,0:02:39.161 of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords 0:02:39.161,0:02:41.320 at the early stages of her recovery 0:02:41.320,0:02:43.505 from one of those awful bullets. 0:02:43.505,0:02:45.626 This one entered her left hemisphere, and 0:02:45.626,0:02:49.142 knocked out her Broca's area, the speech center of her brain. 0:02:49.142,0:02:53.048 And in this session, Gabby's working with a speech therapist, 0:02:53.048,0:02:54.837 and she's struggling to produce 0:02:54.837,0:02:57.949 some of the most basic words, and you can see her 0:02:57.949,0:03:01.128 growing more and more devastated, until she ultimately 0:03:01.128,0:03:04.004 breaks down into sobbing tears, and she starts sobbing 0:03:04.004,0:03:07.980 wordlessly into the arms of her therapist. 0:03:07.980,0:03:10.297 And after a few moments, her therapist tries a new tack, 0:03:10.297,0:03:11.932 and they start singing together, 0:03:11.932,0:03:14.073 and Gabby starts to sing through her tears, 0:03:14.073,0:03:16.736 and you can hear her clearly able to enunciate 0:03:16.736,0:03:19.197 the words to a song that describe the way she feels, 0:03:19.197,0:03:22.117 and she sings, in one descending scale, she sings, 0:03:22.117,0:03:25.726 "Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine." 0:03:25.726,0:03:28.707 And it's a very powerful and poignant reminder of how 0:03:28.707,0:03:32.271 the beauty of music has the ability to speak 0:03:32.271,0:03:37.047 where words fail, in this case literally speak. 0:03:37.047,0:03:38.800 Seeing this video of Gabby Giffords reminded me 0:03:38.800,0:03:41.601 of the work of Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, 0:03:41.601,0:03:45.352 one of the preeminent neuroscientists studying music and the brain at Harvard, 0:03:45.352,0:03:47.771 and Schlaug is a proponent of a therapy called 0:03:47.771,0:03:52.784 Melodic Intonation Therapy, which has become very popular in music therapy now. 0:03:52.784,0:03:57.107 Schlaug found that his stroke victims who were aphasic, 0:03:57.107,0:04:01.757 could not form sentences of three- or four-word sentences, 0:04:01.757,0:04:05.060 but they could still sing the lyrics to a song, 0:04:05.060,0:04:07.009 whether it was "Happy Birthday To You" 0:04:07.009,0:04:09.647 or their favorite song by the Eagles or the Rolling Stones. 0:04:09.647,0:04:12.586 And after 70 hours of intensive singing lessons, 0:04:12.586,0:04:16.588 he found that the music was able to literally rewire 0:04:16.588,0:04:19.040 the brains of his patients and create a homologous 0:04:19.040,0:04:20.932 speech center in their right hemisphere 0:04:20.932,0:04:24.431 to compensate for the left hemisphere's damage. 0:04:24.431,0:04:27.816 When I was 17, I visited Dr. Schlaug's lab, and in one afternoon 0:04:27.816,0:04:30.332 he walked me through some of the leading research 0:04:30.332,0:04:34.167 on music and the brain -- how musicians had 0:04:34.167,0:04:37.231 fundamentally different brain structure than non-musicians, 0:04:37.231,0:04:38.741 how music, and listening to music, 0:04:38.741,0:04:40.995 could just light up the entire brain, from 0:04:40.995,0:04:44.469 our prefrontal cortex all the way back to our cerebellum, 0:04:44.469,0:04:47.296 how music was becoming a neuropsychiatric modality 0:04:47.296,0:04:50.919 to help children with autism, to help people struggling 0:04:50.919,0:04:53.704 with stress and anxiety and depression, 0:04:53.704,0:04:57.119 how deeply Parkinsonian patients would find that their tremor 0:04:57.119,0:05:00.500 and their gait would steady when they listened to music, 0:05:00.500,0:05:03.909 and how late-stage Alzheimer's patients, whose dementia 0:05:03.909,0:05:06.805 was so far progressed that they could no longer recognize 0:05:06.805,0:05:09.591 their family, could still pick out a tune by Chopin 0:05:09.591,0:05:13.253 at the piano that they had learned when they were children. 0:05:13.253,0:05:16.300 But I had an ulterior motive of visiting Gottfried Schlaug, 0:05:16.300,0:05:19.518 and it was this: that I was at a crossroads in my life, 0:05:19.518,0:05:22.303 trying to choose between music and medicine. 0:05:22.303,0:05:25.264 I had just completed my undergraduate, and I was working 0:05:25.264,0:05:28.137 as a research assistant at the lab of Dennis Selkoe, 0:05:28.137,0:05:31.600 studying Parkinson's disease at Harvard, and I had fallen 0:05:31.600,0:05:34.467 in love with neuroscience. I wanted to become a surgeon. 0:05:34.467,0:05:38.245 I wanted to become a doctor like Paul Farmer or Rick Hodes, 0:05:38.245,0:05:42.362 these kind of fearless men who go into places like Haiti or Ethiopia 0:05:42.362,0:05:45.193 and work with AIDS patients with multidrug-resistant 0:05:45.193,0:05:48.982 tuberculosis, or with children with disfiguring cancers. 0:05:48.982,0:05:51.906 I wanted to become that kind of Red Cross doctor, 0:05:51.906,0:05:53.910 that doctor without borders. 0:05:53.910,0:05:57.453 On the other hand, I had played the violin my entire life. 0:05:57.453,0:06:01.195 Music for me was more than a passion. It was obsession. 0:06:01.195,0:06:04.358 It was oxygen. I was lucky enough to have studied 0:06:04.358,0:06:07.437 at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, and to have played 0:06:07.437,0:06:11.792 my debut with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli philharmonic orchestra in Tel Aviv, 0:06:11.792,0:06:13.830 and it turned out that Gottfried Schlaug 0:06:13.830,0:06:17.054 had studied as an organist at the Vienna Conservatory, 0:06:17.054,0:06:19.437 but had given up his love for music to pursue a career 0:06:19.437,0:06:23.118 in medicine. And that afternoon, I had to ask him, 0:06:23.118,0:06:25.654 "How was it for you making that decision?" 0:06:25.654,0:06:27.683 And he said that there were still times when he wished 0:06:27.683,0:06:30.455 he could go back and play the organ the way he used to, 0:06:30.455,0:06:33.672 and that for me, medical school could wait, 0:06:33.672,0:06:36.447 but that the violin simply would not. 0:06:36.447,0:06:39.007 And after two more years of studying music, I decided 0:06:39.007,0:06:41.816 to shoot for the impossible before taking the MCAT 0:06:41.816,0:06:44.392 and applying to medical school like a good Indian son 0:06:44.392,0:06:47.250 to become the next Dr. Gupta. (Laughter) 0:06:47.250,0:06:49.882 And I decided to shoot for the impossible and I took 0:06:49.882,0:06:52.825 an audition for the esteemed Los Angeles Philharmonic. 0:06:52.825,0:06:55.827 It was my first audition, and after three days of playing 0:06:55.827,0:06:58.853 behind a screen in a trial week, I was offered the position. 0:06:58.853,0:07:02.771 And it was a dream. It was a wild dream to perform 0:07:02.771,0:07:06.271 in an orchestra, to perform in the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall 0:07:06.271,0:07:09.855 in an orchestra conducted now by the famous Gustavo Dudamel, 0:07:09.855,0:07:12.841 but much more importantly to me to be surrounded 0:07:12.841,0:07:16.731 by musicians and mentors that became my new family, 0:07:16.731,0:07:19.925 my new musical home. 0:07:19.925,0:07:23.635 But a year later, I met another musician who had also 0:07:23.635,0:07:26.724 studied at Juilliard, one who profoundly helped me 0:07:26.724,0:07:31.082 find my voice and shaped my identity as a musician. 0:07:31.082,0:07:34.363 Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist at Juilliard, but 0:07:34.363,0:07:38.102 he suffered a series of psychotic episodes in his early 20s, 0:07:38.102,0:07:40.448 was treated with thorazine at Bellevue, 0:07:40.448,0:07:43.924 and ended up living homeless on the streets of Skid Row 0:07:43.924,0:07:46.370 in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later. 0:07:46.370,0:07:49.815 Nathaniel's story has become a beacon for homelessness 0:07:49.815,0:07:52.673 and mental health advocacy throughout the United States, 0:07:52.673,0:07:54.818 as told through the book and the movie "The Soloist," 0:07:54.818,0:07:57.964 but I became his friend, and I became his violin teacher, 0:07:57.964,0:08:00.474 and I told him that wherever he had his violin, 0:08:00.474,0:08:03.445 and wherever I had mine, I would play a lesson with him. 0:08:03.445,0:08:06.124 And on the many times I saw Nathaniel on Skid Row, 0:08:06.124,0:08:08.933 I witnessed how music was able to bring him back 0:08:08.933,0:08:11.900 from his very darkest moments, from what seemed to me 0:08:11.900,0:08:13.860 in my untrained eye to be 0:08:13.860,0:08:17.660 the beginnings of a schizophrenic episode. 0:08:17.660,0:08:20.914 Playing for Nathaniel, the music took on a deeper meaning, 0:08:20.914,0:08:23.472 because now it was about communication, 0:08:23.472,0:08:26.382 a communication where words failed, a communication 0:08:26.382,0:08:29.540 of a message that went deeper than words, that registered 0:08:29.540,0:08:33.029 at a fundamentally primal level in Nathaniel's psyche, 0:08:33.029,0:08:37.576 yet came as a true musical offering from me. 0:08:37.576,0:08:41.553 I found myself growing outraged that someone 0:08:41.553,0:08:45.462 like Nathaniel could have ever been homeless on Skid Row 0:08:45.462,0:08:48.801 because of his mental illness, yet how many tens of thousands 0:08:48.801,0:08:51.906 of others there were out there on Skid Row alone 0:08:51.906,0:08:56.662 who had stories as tragic as his, but were never going to have a book or a movie 0:08:56.662,0:08:58.924 made about them that got them off the streets? 0:08:58.924,0:09:02.937 And at the very core of this crisis of mine, I felt somehow 0:09:02.937,0:09:07.032 the life of music had chosen me, where somehow, 0:09:07.032,0:09:10.001 perhaps possibly in a very naive sense, I felt what Skid Row 0:09:10.001,0:09:13.012 really needed was somebody like Paul Farmer 0:09:13.012,0:09:17.153 and not another classical musician playing on Bunker Hill. 0:09:17.153,0:09:19.203 But in the end, it was Nathaniel who showed me 0:09:19.203,0:09:21.930 that if I was truly passionate about change, 0:09:21.930,0:09:26.253 if I wanted to make a difference, I already had the perfect instrument to do it, 0:09:26.253,0:09:31.022 that music was the bridge that connected my world and his. 0:09:31.022,0:09:32.694 There's a beautiful quote 0:09:32.694,0:09:35.158 by the Romantic German composer Robert Schumann, 0:09:35.158,0:09:40.367 who said, "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts, 0:09:40.367,0:09:42.792 such is the duty of the artist." 0:09:42.792,0:09:45.228 And this is a particularly poignant quote 0:09:45.228,0:09:47.967 because Schumann himself suffered from schizophrenia 0:09:47.967,0:09:50.075 and died in asylum. 0:09:50.075,0:09:52.537 And inspired by what I learned from Nathaniel, 0:09:52.537,0:09:54.901 I started an organization on Skid Row of musicians 0:09:54.901,0:09:58.094 called Street Symphony, bringing the light of music 0:09:58.094,0:10:00.738 into the very darkest places, performing 0:10:00.738,0:10:03.325 for the homeless and mentally ill at shelters and clinics 0:10:03.325,0:10:07.355 on Skid Row, performing for combat veterans 0:10:07.355,0:10:10.765 with post-traumatic stress disorder, and for the incarcerated 0:10:10.765,0:10:14.569 and those labeled as criminally insane. 0:10:14.569,0:10:16.962 After one of our events at the Patton State Hospital 0:10:16.962,0:10:19.483 in San Bernardino, a woman walked up to us 0:10:19.483,0:10:21.800 and she had tears streaming down her face, 0:10:21.800,0:10:24.266 and she had a palsy, she was shaking, 0:10:24.266,0:10:27.288 and she had this gorgeous smile, and she said 0:10:27.288,0:10:29.270 that she had never heard classical music before, 0:10:29.270,0:10:31.696 she didn't think she was going to like it, she had never 0:10:31.696,0:10:35.798 heard a violin before, but that hearing this music was like hearing the sunshine, 0:10:35.798,0:10:39.167 and that nobody ever came to visit them, and that for the first time in six years, 0:10:39.167,0:10:43.970 when she heard us play, she stopped shaking without medication. 0:10:43.970,0:10:46.928 Suddenly, what we're finding with these concerts, 0:10:46.928,0:10:49.970 away from the stage, away from the footlights, out 0:10:49.970,0:10:53.591 of the tuxedo tails, the musicians become the conduit 0:10:53.591,0:10:56.713 for delivering the tremendous therapeutic benefits 0:10:56.713,0:10:59.806 of music on the brain to an audience that would never 0:10:59.806,0:11:01.608 have access to this room, 0:11:01.608,0:11:07.440 would never have access to the kind of music that we make. 0:11:07.440,0:11:10.871 Just as medicine serves to heal more 0:11:10.871,0:11:14.169 than the building blocks of the body alone, 0:11:14.169,0:11:17.936 the power and beauty of music transcends the "E" 0:11:17.936,0:11:20.671 in the middle of our beloved acronym. 0:11:20.671,0:11:24.309 Music transcends the aesthetic beauty alone. 0:11:24.309,0:11:27.319 The synchrony of emotions that we experience when we 0:11:27.319,0:11:30.576 hear an opera by Wagner, or a symphony by Brahms, 0:11:30.576,0:11:34.222 or chamber music by Beethoven, compels us to remember 0:11:34.222,0:11:38.130 our shared, common humanity, the deeply communal 0:11:38.130,0:11:41.545 connected consciousness, the empathic consciousness 0:11:41.545,0:11:45.118 that neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says is hard-wired 0:11:45.118,0:11:48.194 into our brain's right hemisphere. 0:11:48.194,0:11:51.590 And for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions 0:11:51.590,0:11:53.751 of mental illness within homelessness 0:11:53.751,0:11:56.534 and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music 0:11:56.534,0:12:01.166 offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, 0:12:01.166,0:12:04.548 to remember that they still have the capacity to experience 0:12:04.548,0:12:08.500 something beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten them. 0:12:08.500,0:12:11.361 And the spark of that beauty, the spark of that humanity 0:12:11.361,0:12:14.161 transforms into hope, 0:12:14.161,0:12:17.121 and we know, whether we choose the path of music 0:12:17.121,0:12:20.330 or of medicine, that's the very first thing we must instill 0:12:20.330,0:12:22.269 within our communities, within our audiences, 0:12:22.269,0:12:26.200 if we want to inspire healing from within. 0:12:26.200,0:12:28.876 I'd like to end with a quote by John Keats, 0:12:28.876,0:12:30.921 the Romantic English poet, 0:12:30.921,0:12:33.859 a very famous quote that I'm sure all of you know. 0:12:33.859,0:12:36.878 Keats himself had also given up a career in medicine 0:12:36.878,0:12:40.199 to pursue poetry, but he died when he was a year older than me. 0:12:40.199,0:12:45.272 And Keats said, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. 0:12:45.272,0:12:51.770 That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know." 0:12:54.527,0:15:38.650 (Music) 0:15:38.650,0:16:07.126 (Applause)