they do not 'convert' numbers into music, but actually feel them, in themselves, as 'forms', as 'tones', like the multitudinous forms that compose nature itself. They are not calculators, and their numeracy is 'iconic'. They summon up, they dwell among, strange scenes of numbers; they wander freely in great landscapes of numbers; they create, dramaturgically, a whole world made of numbers. They have, I believe, a most singular imagination – and not the least of its singularities is that it can imagine only numbers. They do not seem to 'operate' with numbers, non-iconically, like a calculator; they 'see' them, directly, as a vast natural scene. And
( Oliver Sacks )
[ The Man Who Mistook His Wife ]
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