Like many of my fellow writers, journalists, and music lovers, I spent many hours on the phone or emailing with Steve Silberman, the acclaimed science writer, passionate Grateful Dead and David Crosby fan, and all-around mensch who died of natural causes on Aug. 28 at age 66. His husband, Keith Karraker, announced the news online.
But one of my conversations with Silberman stands out.
It was the fall of 2016, days after Donald Trump was, unbelievably, going to be our next president. Silberman already had it on his calendars to talk with me that day about Crosby (and the history of CSNY) for a book I was writing about them. From the start, you could tell that Silberman, raised by left-leaning teachers in New York, was distraught and flummoxed by the election results. As the phrase goes, he was in a tizzy. But in that moment, we chose not to dwell on it too much. Instead, I congratulated him on the reception to his pioneering best-selling book on the autism community, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.
But soon we were caught up in music talk, with Silberman explaining how he discovered CSNY music (in particular Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name) when he was a teenager; then we where deep into the group's legend, myth, and gossip. I can't speak for Silberman — and he might have thought this was a corny way to put it — but the conversation was a reminder of the healing power of music.
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