Tod Machover-Toy Symphony

I think the best way to describe this is to share with the world (or mom and dad) a personal tale from my PCN journal.

"9/16/09
Today I had a mini panic attack in class watching Tod Machover give his speech about how ingenious he was, even though he was an incredibly humble man …that was all I kept thinking. I literally scribbled this down on the corner of my notebook as he spoke.
“I’m not Mozart. I have no extraordinary level of talent. I can’t create on his level. I keep looking at my hands expecting some miraculous creative idea to flow through them and just appear as clear as day. But it doesn’t. I’m un-entertainingly average.”
I was moved to tears watching that man with cerebral palsy create a symphony from his chair. I have an exceptionally large place in my heart for individuals with special needs. My mother is a speech pathologist supervisor, but she began her career as a speech therapist. I would go to work with her sometimes as a little kid. There were children with all types of special needs playing, sometimes together. Many of them had autism at varying levels. A few children had these special chairs that they could motor around in. I remember being jealous that I didn’t have a cool chair, and I remember thinking that something must have been wrong with me, because these children with autism did not want to play with me, or talk to me.
As I grew older I found myself in high school becoming extremely fired up if one of the kids with special needs was being picked on or poked fun of behind their back.
I wanted to know what they were thinking. My mother had taught me enough about many of the common disorders that these kids had for me to know that simply because they could not communicate their thoughts clearly to others did not mean that they were unintelligent. Some of the brightest minds belong to people with autism. I wanted to know what went through the minds of the children with cerebral palsy and autism when they heard someone talk down to them or talk about them. I wanted to know if they wanted to retaliate with a witty remark, or if they understood what was being said at all. I wanted to know if they listened to music, and who they would listen to if they did. I wanted to know why they always seemed to be smiling when on my worst days I couldn’t keep a smile on my face. On my worst day, I had a thousand more opportunities than them, and I was still pouting.
When Dan Ellsey spoke, immediately tears started to well up in my eyes. And then he created music. He created beautiful music. I cannot create music to save my life, and there was this miracle of a man, his mind seemingly “limited” to those who do not understand the disorder, expressing his heart through music. And for those few moments while he played his music, everyone could see that he truly had a beautiful mind.
I’ll tell you it was a good thing the lights were off during this video because tears were streaming down my face. I felt alive after that."