May 20, 2005

The "Piano Man" mystery.

Who is he?
[A] hospital in Kent [has] appealed for help identifying a man who had been found near Sheerness beach in a dripping-wet suit without labels - a man who refused to talk, and whose defining feature was a talent for the piano...

[T]he fact that the labels have been cut out of his clothes ... could mark him out as an asylum-seeker trying to hide his identity, or it could make him a "tactually defensive" autistic savant.
One theory is that the man is autistic and from a foreign country where the disabled are not treated well and that his family, calculating that England would take him in, dumped him on the beach in an unidentifiable condition.

UPDATE: Mystery solved?

2 comments:

Be said...

I know that reality doesn't necessarily follow art, but this story reminds me of
this film where the protagonist did not remember anything about his past life, save for the clues his body gave him that he was a welder at some point.

I live in fear of something like this happening to me, actually, having lived long-term with an alzheimer's sufferer before.

MT said...

He's a performance artist. He's got to be putting us on.