This gift isn't for everyone, I don't think.
It's exhausting.
The think with Derek is, is that he's an anomaly.
He's literally one in eight billion people.
If this would've happened to most people, it probably would've just shut 'em down.
It's a gift but nobody knows what the long-term consequences are.
Sometimes people actually kinda treat me like a superhero.
And what they don't realize is that there is a dark side to this gift.
I had never touched a piano.
I was a regular kid.
I played baseball and chased girls.
Like boys do.
I dove into a swimming pool nine and a half years ago to catch a football and I hit my
head in the shallow end of the pool.
Basically when I got back from the hospital I slept for five days.
On the fifth day I woke up and that's when I walked up to the piano.
It was dusty.
I knew nothing of how to play it.
And I was just hoping to hit a couple notes.
And that's when my hands just kind of went crazy and I was playing fluid... it was instant.
There was no building up or rehearsing or practicing.
I don't even remember being really shocked.
I was just kinda like something profound was happening.
You know, I don't know where the music comes from.
I can tell you that Derek couldn't do it before.
And it's amazing.
It really is.
It brings tears to people's eyes.
It's almost like the ghost of Beethoven jumped into my body, right, and took over
and I just kinda went crazy.
He has a fluidity of movement
that a lot of early players struggle with.
It's about a one in a hundred million chance
that somebody's gonna go
have a head injury and have some kind
of acquired savant skills.
Depending on how proficient a musician a person wants to be, we know from lots of studies
that you need to put in the hours.
The extraordinary part of his story is this fact that it seemingly happened overnight.
Derek's example is one of unlocking his brain's potential.
And unfortunately it's associated with side effects.
I've always thought there's nothing in this world that can make you feel like you don't
wanna be on this Earth.
Sometimes the headaches are so bad I'm almost begging to just not even have to be alive
to deal with it.
I worry about his headaches.
They seem to be debilitating.
And they can last for days.
I've had extreme migraines since my accident.
Loss of hearing, memory loss, light and sound sensitivity.
It's the brain's job to filter out external stimulis.
Sometimes what happens, too, in the midst of a head trauma...
[BACKGROUND CHATTER OF CHILDREN PLAYING]
... or something else that's causing the brain to fire excessively, there's so much information
that comes in, that it overloads the filtering mechanism.
When I go out in the real world, it's like overstimulation.
Every noise is heightened.
It's sometimes too much to where I just can't take it.
I've collapsed and passed out several times in the last nine years.
I'm in my room and I heard "wham!"
And he went down.
When I walked into the bathroom, Derek was sitting on the tub.
And he had blood coming out of his nose.
Since I woke up with the immediate ability to play the piano, I see these nonstop geometrical
squares that go left to right in my mind's eye.
And it's not repetitive music going in a circle just like one song.
Each one of these squares maybe have a lot of notes to each square
rather than just one note.
It's almost as if someone basically plugged a super intense musical stream into my brain.
It's twenty-four hours, nonstop composition even when I'm sleeping.
Some people with synesthesia can smell color.
In Derek's case, he can actually see sound.
The squares tell my fingers where to go.
And since I don't understand where a D Minor is or an F Sharp, if it's in those blocks
of squares, I'm hitting that D Minor and I don't even know it.
And I don't capture every note that I see.
I don't think it's possible.
It's a gift.
But nobody knows what the long-term consequences are.
Doctors have suggested that I try taking anti-seizure medication.
And my choice is absolutely not.
Why would I want to take a synthetic product that could possibly cloud this whole process,
or even make it go away.
I'm not willing to take that chance.
I think my abilities are insisting that, not only people, but doctors and everybody looking in
reevaluate what simply is possible.