THE WOUND AND THE BOW. In the new Vanity Fair Tom Stoppard writes about his perception of rock music:

I have no understanding of music, none at all. Much as I love the noise it makes, I can stare for hours at a guitar band and never work out which guitar is making which bit of noise. Also, my brain seems incapable of forming a template even for sounds I've heard a hundred times. You know how it is at rock concerts when half the crowd starts to applaud the first few notes of what's coming? My brain is like a two-year-old playing with wooden shapes: sometimes I'm still looking for the right-shaped hole when the lyrics finally kick in, and it turns out to be "Brown Sugar." Me and music.

This corresponds to a suspicion I had about Stoppard when I saw his play Rock 'n' Roll in London last year (review here). The allusions to rock felt a bit academic and sterile to me, and now I learn that the author suffers from a kind of rock dyslexia.

I sympathize; though the rock is strong with me, I have almost no feeling for poetry and, as regular readers will know, cannot render a simple human figure convincingly. Nor am I skilled in the domestic arts: both my apartment and my finances are an unholy mess. Now that I think of it, I can't do much of anything, despite my education and experience. A more efficient society would have left me on a hillside to die. Oh well.

Luckily Stoppard has a sense of humor about his affliction:

With another play, Arcadia, the drug was the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," and since that play ends with a couple waltzing to music from an offstage party, I wrote the song into the ending and stayed high on that idea till I'd finished. It was inspiring. When, in rehearsals, it was pointed out to me that "You Can't Always Get What You Want" isn't a waltz and that, therefore, my couple would have to waltz to something else, I was astonished, uncomprehending, and resentful.

He might have substituted "I Got The Blues." But none of this should keep you from seeing Rock 'n' Roll on Broadway if you get the chance. It opens next month and Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack, and Rufus Sewell, all brilliant, are coming with it. In some cases, raw talent and professionalism can lift a man above his disabilities.