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It's August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She's in a bar, standing onstage, performing a karaoke duet of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'... and then a blood vessel in her brain bursts. When she wakes up in hospital, days later, she has no internal monologue, and a vocabulary of only forty words.
Put your headphones on for this episode: Martin Austwick composed a special score for it, based around 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. It's a Bonnie Tyler brain aneurysm earworm.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS:
Aneurysm stats, if you want to reassure yourself/freak yourself out.
Lauren Marks has compiled a big list of aphasia resources.
You can also see pages from the journals she started keeping as part of her language therapy.
Did Catherine the Great really die during sex with a horse, though?
Here's a deep dive into the video for ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’.
By listener request, here's an Aphasics' Special Edition of the episode, with only the speech.
By listener request, here's Martin's music from the episode.
The transcript of this episode is at theallusionist.org/transcripts/eclipse.
I'll be performing a new show at this year's London Podcast Festival. Come along! Tickets are here.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
yean
CREDITS:
Lauren Marks has written a book about her aphasia experiences, A Stitch Of Time, out now - find out more about it, Lauren, and aphasia at astitchoftime.com.
This episode was produced by me, and scored by Martin Austwick. Martin does nearly all the music on this show, as well as his own - find that here, and the rest of his very varied work at martinaustwick.com. He also co-hosts the podcast Song By Song, examining the songs of Tom Waits in chronological order; there'll be a live show at the aforementioned London Podcast Festival, for which I will join him to consider the first three tracks of Raindogs. Click here for tickets.
Find me at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/helenzaltzman.
