MERGED ----> Miracle Drug + I think this is probably one of the most amazing and...
- Thread starter gobshite
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bono_212
Blue Crack Distributor
Wow, that's weird I was just talking about this song....literally ten minutes ago
Anyway, I feel indifferent about the song
I like Miracle Drug, but I wish Bono really hadn't brought the aids thing into their music, but then I say that, and it sounds like I don't support bono and I do, but that's bono's thing
it's not u2's
Anyway, I feel indifferent about the song
I like Miracle Drug, but I wish Bono really hadn't brought the aids thing into their music, but then I say that, and it sounds like I don't support bono and I do, but that's bono's thing
it's not u2's
neutral
genius of compression, Forum Moderator
I love the song too, it's still one of my favorites on the album. My favorite performance of it is that BBC promo show (2004-11-16) where he tells the full story of Christopher Nolan. I even got a couple of his books because of the song, 
they're very good though!
they're very good though!
neutral
genius of compression, Forum Moderator
biff
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
bono_212 said:
But Miracle Drug is not about "the aids thing". It's about a boy the band knew at high school. Here's a quote (from U2Star):
Said Bono, "When we were leaving school, this character arrived called Christopher Nolan, and he couldn't move a muscle. Only his eyes were just so sharp and so awake. He was born without any oxygen for two hours. But his mother so believed in the look in his eyes she used to read to him, she taught him. And then they found this little pill that allowed him to move his neck by about an inch. And then they put a thing to his head like a little unicorn and they taught him how to type. It turns out he had all these poems in his head." Nolan had his first book published at around 15. Bono wrote this song from the perspective of Christopher's mother and about her faith in her son. It is a song about the strength of love.
It's one of my favourites, not just from the last album, but from all of their work. I fell in love with it the first time I heard the beach clip with the waves crashing in the background.
dismantleme
The Fly
Amazing song. Miracle Drug to me is the opening of the mind. Letting others in. It reminds me of my stepmother. When Edge sings, "Beneath the noise below the dim.....," it's my stepmother thanking me for letting her be a part of my world.
biff said:
Wow. I didn't know that. I liked the song already, but that just makes it even better.
hey Dismantle me i really love your interpretation, i've always found the Christopher Nolan story incredibly moving and inspiring. There is such a special sense of being human and all it's possibilities at the heart of u2 and your post makes me hear it now in yet another special way. What i like about u2 is the way they love somany interpretations, i always find it grim if a band or po faced fans say no this is what it's about and nothing else. I realise some songs are like that but in general --
dismantleme
The Fly
Thank you gobshite. The special sense of being human is what U2's music has always meant to me. I also enjoy the fact that many of their songs can be interpreted in a different way from their original meaning. I like to think. 
"Streets" and "Bad" are my two favorites to interpret. How about you? you have an email address? mine is abcdbono@yahoo.com ttyl
"Streets" and "Bad" are my two favorites to interpret. How about you? you have an email address? mine is abcdbono@yahoo.com ttyleuropop2005
Refugee
- Joined
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I think this is probably the most amazing and touching story i've ever read!
RAIN BEFORE SUNSHINE: The story of Christopher Nolan
By Shaun Joseph Grantski
January 2005
-- -- --
So much in life is dependent on our perspective.
Unlike anything else, a change in perspective can make the difference that’s needed to transform our attitudes and revolutionize our lives. A change in perspective can turn evil into good, can bend a terrible day into a great day, transform worry into joy, twist fear into faith, and convert complaining into praise.
My problem is that I am often more focused on what I do not possess than on what I already have. My prayers are always too full of asking and too void of thanking. With God, I’m like the kid at Christmas time who frantically rips open a present, smiles, throws it down, and eagerly awaits his next gift. Every once in a while I’ll hear a true life story that kicks me out of my own selfish world and forces me to realize how truly blessed I am, how much I take for granted, and how shallow my faith may have become.
This is one of those stories.
THE FAITH OF A MOTHER
September 6, 1965. Dublin, Ireland.
A woman laboring to give birth lay in a hospital bed knowing something was wrong. She was already a mother of one, having successfully given birth to a healthy girl, but this time was different. Something wasn’t right. The doctors knew as well. The X-rays began to indicate the baby had stopped moving. The heart-pulse monitor signaled a sharp loss of heart rate. An immediate caesarean surgery was needed in desperate hope to save the baby--if it was not yet too late. Actually, at least two surgeries were going to be needed. One to somehow place the baby on a respirator and get oxygen to the womb before the baby died of asphyxiation and the other to deliver the child. The mother pleaded with the doctor for her son’s life as she went under. The father fervently prayed and paced back and forth falling in and out of faith and fear.
Two hours later, Christopher Nolan arrived from his mother’s womb into the world. But not as planned. Baby Christopher lay limp in his hospital bed. His arms never raised, his legs never twitched; his head never turned. But his eyes were wide awake. Expecting her son to pass quickly from this life at any moment, Christopher’s mother desperately, manually moved his arms and legs as if to jump start his muscle movements. Hope quickly dissolved, however, as Christopher’s arms and legs would fall with a soft thud of lifelessness when his mother released her grip. But a glance would turn into a gaze as Christopher’s eyes met those of his mother. His mother got lost in her son’s blue eyes during those first few minutes. Christopher’s eyes were so sharp, so aware, and so full of life. It was as if all the life that had been drained from his body and dammed up beautifully into those eyes. For days Christopher and his mother fixed their eyes on one another. Because of Christopher’s eyes, his mother held on to hope. And because of his mother’s eyes, baby Christopher held on to life. And the minutes turned to days. The days turned to weeks. The weeks turned to months. And the months turned to years.
Christopher Nolan grew up a hostage to his own body, gazing out through the crystal window of his eyes, a spectator before the world, yet unable to respond, to comment, or to reply. The lack of oxygen during his birth left Christopher with severe brain-damage and paralyzed limbs. His body was a quadraplegic jigsaw. It quickly became apparent that he would never be able to move a muscle nor speak a word. Christopher would never feel the freedom of singing a song or kicking a football. He would never even have the privilege of being able to stand up. Not only that, but he would never experience the joy of lifting a finger. Though his body stilled during his birth, his mind was left unimpaired and the sharpness and power of his perception was impeccable. Image upon image ricocheted round his skull and burned into his consciousness. The only thing Christopher could ever do was look.
Gradually the whole family learned they could communicate with Christopher through his eyes. It eventually became apparent that Christopher could hear and comprehend everything that was going on around him. A simple form of communication was established where Christopher would answer questions by rolling his eyes upward to answer yes and rolling them down to answer no.
“I was teaching him all the time,” says his mother. “We had letters of the alphabet all around the walls of the kitchen and each letter was illustrated by one of my own drawings. He learned how to spell words by accumulating groups of letters. He used his eyes to indicate which letter came next in the word which he was attempting to spell. He memorized the look of each word and was always fascinated by the rich sound of unusual words.”
As the child grew up, his mother continued to recognize his intelligence, perception, and wit. A breakthrough came when the Nolan’s met Dr. Ciaran Barry, medial director of the Central Remedial Clinic in Dublin. Dr. Barry had a life ambition to happily help all frantic paralyzed patients and was the first professional to accept without question Mrs. Nolan’s belief that her son was an intelligent child isolated only by his inability to communicate.
“What are you going to do about his education?” he asked. He suggested Christopher should go to Dublin to the school attached to the Clinic. The Nolan’s eventually found a house a few doors away and seven year-old Christopher enrolled at his new school.
Christopher’s older sister (by two years), Yvonne, left all her friends and transferred schools with her brother to lend him encouragement and support. Yvonne would wheel Christopher into his classroom where he would sit motionless and stagnant in his small wheelchair; head tilted to one side while an expression of deep concentration defined his face.
“We had no idea whether he could write or spell,” said his teacher. “We knew he could read, but that was very limited because someone had to be with him to turn the pages.”
Some students teased and made fun of him while others made an effort to be friends. Overall, Christopher expressed great pleasure to be in school and to be able to learn. History, Geography, English, Mathematics, Nature Study, Irish, Music, and Religious Knowledge seeped into Christopher’s mind and gave him plenty to think about.
Meanwhile, Dr. Barry continued to do all he could to try and free Christopher from his handicap. His body was pumped with medicine as they tried to “unlock” his muscles. First, they tried to hook a device up to his larynx with no success. Next they tried to enable him to type by engaging his left wrist. Then his right wrist. Then his feet. Then his fingers. But his body would respond to nothing. They even tried a machine that hooked up to his mouth that could communicate through his actions of sucking and blowing. That failed as well. Christopher cried constantly during these procedures; without any means of expression, the pressure to communicate had become intolerable for him. At each staff meeting failure was reported to Dr. Barry, but he lovingly refused to accept defeat where Christopher was concerned. On each occasion he told his wonderful staff “we must keep trying.”
THE LONGEST INCH IN THE WORLD
Four years of failure passed until Christopher’s silent life was about to change. In the eleventh year of his life, Christopher was introduced to a drug, Lioresal, which relaxed the muscles of his neck sufficiently to allow him partial control of his head for short periods of time. It was a minor pharmacological victory, but for Christopher that minimal command opened a doorway of communication. This little pill that Christopher took allowed him to move his neck by about an inch. That inch was all Christopher needed. Dr. Barry and the Clinic developed a little “unicorn” stick that fit on his forehead while the Nolan’s purchased an electric typewriter. With a little support for his head, Christopher unsteadily struggled but fought to line up the unicorn to the typewriter and by nodding his head he began to depress each key that he wanted. His mother frantically rigged up the paper to the typewriter and anxiously watched as Christopher typed…
I Learn to Bow
Polarized I was paralyzed,
Plausibly palated,
People realized totally,
Woefully once I totally
Opened their eyes.
It was a poem! Christopher’s mom—shaking and crying—enquired, “Christopher is that the sort of mind you have?” Christopher joyfully, lovingly, and understandingly looked from his mother to the ceiling to give his affirmative signal over and over and over again.
Christopher would later type to his mother: “I have been mentally writing poetry since I was three years old.”
At first, it took Christopher 15 to 20 minutes to type each word with his new device. Spelling was also a struggle as Christopher picks up most words by sound alone and so he naturally spells them exactly how they are pronounced. But for the first time in his life, Christopher Nolan had the ability to share with his family—and the world--what had been going on in his mind for the past 11 years.
Christopher began to write letters to his extended family:
Dear Uncle Patsy,
I feel sure you will be surprised to hear from me. I prayed for so long for this day that it seemed it would never come. Rain usually comes before sunshine, Lioresal came before my breakthrough. Pity the tablets were not out long ago. First thing I want to do is to thank you for praying for me all down the years. A tap of my stick to the keys opens a whole new world-oasis for me.
A set of silent movies re being shown on T.V. they are very funny. Soon you will be home again, but I will be back at the C.R.C. [school]. I am pleased to be making headway at last.
That is all for now.
Yours Sincerely,
Christy
With the ability to type and communicate, it became clear how very bright Christopher was. Psychologists assessed his IQ as being five years above the average for his age. His reading and vocabulary levels were those of an adult. Often times, his poems would send his own mother to a dictionary to find out what the words meant! How has such a handicapped child acquired his extraordinary style and vocabulary?
“It is as though he has been playing with words all his childhood as other, able-bodied, children play with toys,” says his mother.
Just as blind people develop their sense of hearing to compensate for their dead eyes, Christopher has compensated for his useless body by using his mind. His handicap is his advantage. The use of his mind is his life, his work, his hobby, and his obsession.
To give you an example of how intelligent and talented Christopher is, please read the following words he wrote when he was still only 11 years old:
'Mankind always amuses himself by foolish conjecture, on odious old ones, oceans mated on opal-shattered, oil-saturated satellites and from which all oligarchies once alighted. I thought too, only lordly thinking, turned thoughts towards tiresome trends, in tinges of tranquil trying tremors of titular timidity, sorrow turned to triumph.'
As if Christopher’s story is not powerful enough already, there is more! Christopher continued to peck out with his unicorn stick and typewriter the poems he had stored up in his mind for years. During that first year of being able to type, Christopher also wrote an autobiography that took him 5 months to complete. This autobiography is cleverly written in third person with different characters that represent himself and his family. In it, we find—for the first time—Christopher’s perspective on all the events surrounding his life.
Christopher explained how he felt at the beginning of his life when he wrote: “All my blood ran cold at first, leaving me a brain-damaged, all paralyzed pauper, appearing to foolish, ignorant people as ‘heaven’s reject.’”
The torture of being trapped in a paralyzed body becomes real as Christopher recounts, with agony, how he constantly “begged for some form of communication with which to express his alter, myriad, brilliant, milling mind.”
One of the most astonishing discoveries was that Christopher had barriers to learning that nobody could have known. On top of everything else, Christopher learned to read by teaching himself out of his dyslexia, as he writes about here:
'What neither [teacher] nor [mother] knew was could only see because of [my] haphazard experience in reading, many words turned backwards…for example—Press—I would see a mirror impression looking like – sserP – which always confused me. would then change the letters sserP, using [my] fingers to remember which letter went first—thumb became P, etc, and so taught [myself] to recognize the word.'
WHERE WAS GOD IN ALL OF THIS?
Christopher’s writing also shed light, for the first time, on his authentic faith in Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the way; somehow through all his pain, Christopher found a Savior. After one poem, Christopher described himself as a “totally paralyzed, speechless person who in order to maintain sanity, lives in communion with God and with his own mind’s musical musings.” Within two days of learning how to type with his unicorn stick, Christopher wrote a second, more personal poem on impact God had on his soul:
I Peer Through Ugliness
Years dead tears, peter down my face,
Lucifer quietly plays me down,
Out of a light there came Christ Divine,
Peace always comes, reigns awhile.
Day after dawn, raw quiet rested there,
As I peered through rough pastures,
Dew drops glistened in golden buttercups.
In his autobiography, Christopher gives more insight to his spiritual journey. Shortly before his “miracle breakthrough,” Christopher went trough the most despairing night of his life. Christopher was gripped with what he called “new lasting despair” to the point that he desired so strongly to commit suicide, but, of course with his paralysis, he was “denied that form of escape.” Christopher describes his state of mind as “a paper thin balance between total rejection of God and acceptance of God’s will.” That night, Christopher stayed up all night praying and begging God to have pity on him. He was just about to finally fall asleep as morning broke when he felt the touch of a kiss on his cheek. He swiftly opened his eyes and glanced all around the room—nobody was there!
Sleep soon overcame Christopher’s will and he began to dream he was dead. He dreamt that night that he saw God—dressed as a modern man. In the dream, God simply gazed with sweetness and serenity into the eyes of Christopher. With honestly aching eyes, Christopher looked down from God towards the floor where he saw a gray typewriter and instinctively looked back at God. Christopher tells of that dream as a foreshadowing to the device and miracle drug that were about to set him free.
After the dream, Christopher had a sharp increase in strength, attitude, and ability to handle the medicine he was taking. It was after this dream that Christopher was gradually able to build up the dosage to that which allowed him to move his neck an inch. And with his unicorn stick and typewriter, Christopher slowly began to get more accustom and comfortable in his new ability to communicate; he knew the deepest prayer of his heart had been graciously answered.
“All men mull over hell,” Christopher meditatively writes, “Land lovers count their acres, rich folk count their millions, but wise men count their cold, holy crosses. And that is the central core of our existence on this earth.” Another poem young Christopher wrote is entitled ‘A Pass to Your Dead’ and it reads:
A grave that always waits,
A verge round at front and
A lasting sad cross,
Put away sadness,
Pray all the while,
Past is sorrow,
Heaven will be thine.
When describing the first Christmas in his poem ‘The Crib’ Christopher combines the depth of his intelligence, faith, and personality:
Snow fell dreamily, healthily, mottledy, in alarming spasms, covering the precipitous route to Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary left Galilee, a peasant couple, a pass allocated assigning them to the Caesar Augustus part of Judea.
There, their tale began.
Mary’s baby Jesus Christ was born, an earth’s savior, cradled among an ass and an ox.
Shepherds learned the wonderful tiding from an angel of the God Father in heaven.
They came to Bethlehem and adored the Almighty Redeemer of the world.
THE WORLD’S RESPONSE TO CHRISTOPHER
With open communication for the first time between everything inside of Christopher’s head and everything outside of it, his mother wrote the following:
"Through the typewriter Christy gained release from his tongue-tied world. Now, he sets his sights on the next hurdle, a breakthrough into the world of normal, full-time education at an ordinary secondary school. Success did not come easily. Time and time again he was made to experience absolute despair as one particular school rejected our every approach. Therefore when acceptance and admission to Mount Temple Comprehensive School came, it brought with it an added bonus, it restored Christy’s faith in himself."
Mount Temple, with a student population of almost eight hundred, took high to their hearts and with encouragement from an especially enlightened teaching staff and unobtrusive though caring help from his classmates, he felt eased into the everyday life of the school. Long schooldays sapped his energy, but nonetheless he somehow managed to mark his thirteenth year by writing his first play.
Amazingly enough, a few of Christopher’s classmates at Mount Temple School in Dublin, Ireland decided to start a band. That band is known today--more than 25 years later--as one of the biggest rock groups in history: U2. Their latest top-selling CD ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’ features the song Miracle Drug; written for their former classmate Christopher Nolan and his mother. When performing the song live, U2’s lead singer, Bono, takes the time to explain Christopher’s story to the audience before singing these words:
I want to trip inside your head, spend the day there.
To hear the things you haven’t said and see what you might see.
I want to hear you when you call. Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape and walk right out.
Freedom has a scent, like the top of a newborn baby’s head.
Of science and the human heart, there is no limit.
There is no failure here sweetheart, just when you quit.
I am you and you are mine, love makes nonsense of space
And time… will disappear; love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love…
God I need your help tonight.
Beneath the noise, below the din I hear a voice, it’s whispering
In science and in medicine, “I was a stranger, you took me in.”
The songs are in your eyes, I see them when you smile.
I’ve had enough of romantic love, I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it all
For a miracle, miracle drug.
Miracle.
Miracle drug.
Christopher Nolan went on to publish his first book, Dam-burst of Dreams, a collection of poems, short stories, and playwrights, at age fourteen. A college English professor at Oxford University called Christopher “an almost wholly original and (even without taking his physical handicap into account) astonishingly gifted young writer." The book won all kinds of literary awards in Ireland and Great Britain. Christopher then published his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock, to mass appraisal. It was awarded the prestigious Whitbread Book of the Year in 1987. In 2000, Christopher published his first full-length novel, The Banyan Tree, which took him 12 years to complete. His books have left all who read them, just as he is—speechless. Today, Christopher Nolan is regarded as one the great English writers of our time.
CLOSING COMMENTS
There is not much left for me to say. One can take so much from a story such as Christopher’s. There are so many things to learn, to ponder, and to apply. Above all else, I probably find Christopher’s faith most astounding. In his autobiography he writes, “Every avenue was explored in an attempt to arrive at God’s feet and abounding mercy.” I don’t know that I could write that about my own life. And I’ve had it pretty easy compared to the adversity that faces Christopher Nolan. I think I have learned that when you cannot change the circumstances in your life, you must change the perspective from which you view them in order to maintain your faith and joy that God intends to go hand in hand.
My Ambitions
Taste of pity as people stare,
Love, lots of love from mother,
Pills you find as lasting prayer,
An irate person may possibly
Have faith, instead of despair.
-Christopher Nolan
September 18, 1977
RAIN BEFORE SUNSHINE: The story of Christopher Nolan
By Shaun Joseph Grantski
January 2005
-- -- --
So much in life is dependent on our perspective.
Unlike anything else, a change in perspective can make the difference that’s needed to transform our attitudes and revolutionize our lives. A change in perspective can turn evil into good, can bend a terrible day into a great day, transform worry into joy, twist fear into faith, and convert complaining into praise.
My problem is that I am often more focused on what I do not possess than on what I already have. My prayers are always too full of asking and too void of thanking. With God, I’m like the kid at Christmas time who frantically rips open a present, smiles, throws it down, and eagerly awaits his next gift. Every once in a while I’ll hear a true life story that kicks me out of my own selfish world and forces me to realize how truly blessed I am, how much I take for granted, and how shallow my faith may have become.
This is one of those stories.
THE FAITH OF A MOTHER
September 6, 1965. Dublin, Ireland.
A woman laboring to give birth lay in a hospital bed knowing something was wrong. She was already a mother of one, having successfully given birth to a healthy girl, but this time was different. Something wasn’t right. The doctors knew as well. The X-rays began to indicate the baby had stopped moving. The heart-pulse monitor signaled a sharp loss of heart rate. An immediate caesarean surgery was needed in desperate hope to save the baby--if it was not yet too late. Actually, at least two surgeries were going to be needed. One to somehow place the baby on a respirator and get oxygen to the womb before the baby died of asphyxiation and the other to deliver the child. The mother pleaded with the doctor for her son’s life as she went under. The father fervently prayed and paced back and forth falling in and out of faith and fear.
Two hours later, Christopher Nolan arrived from his mother’s womb into the world. But not as planned. Baby Christopher lay limp in his hospital bed. His arms never raised, his legs never twitched; his head never turned. But his eyes were wide awake. Expecting her son to pass quickly from this life at any moment, Christopher’s mother desperately, manually moved his arms and legs as if to jump start his muscle movements. Hope quickly dissolved, however, as Christopher’s arms and legs would fall with a soft thud of lifelessness when his mother released her grip. But a glance would turn into a gaze as Christopher’s eyes met those of his mother. His mother got lost in her son’s blue eyes during those first few minutes. Christopher’s eyes were so sharp, so aware, and so full of life. It was as if all the life that had been drained from his body and dammed up beautifully into those eyes. For days Christopher and his mother fixed their eyes on one another. Because of Christopher’s eyes, his mother held on to hope. And because of his mother’s eyes, baby Christopher held on to life. And the minutes turned to days. The days turned to weeks. The weeks turned to months. And the months turned to years.
Christopher Nolan grew up a hostage to his own body, gazing out through the crystal window of his eyes, a spectator before the world, yet unable to respond, to comment, or to reply. The lack of oxygen during his birth left Christopher with severe brain-damage and paralyzed limbs. His body was a quadraplegic jigsaw. It quickly became apparent that he would never be able to move a muscle nor speak a word. Christopher would never feel the freedom of singing a song or kicking a football. He would never even have the privilege of being able to stand up. Not only that, but he would never experience the joy of lifting a finger. Though his body stilled during his birth, his mind was left unimpaired and the sharpness and power of his perception was impeccable. Image upon image ricocheted round his skull and burned into his consciousness. The only thing Christopher could ever do was look.
Gradually the whole family learned they could communicate with Christopher through his eyes. It eventually became apparent that Christopher could hear and comprehend everything that was going on around him. A simple form of communication was established where Christopher would answer questions by rolling his eyes upward to answer yes and rolling them down to answer no.
“I was teaching him all the time,” says his mother. “We had letters of the alphabet all around the walls of the kitchen and each letter was illustrated by one of my own drawings. He learned how to spell words by accumulating groups of letters. He used his eyes to indicate which letter came next in the word which he was attempting to spell. He memorized the look of each word and was always fascinated by the rich sound of unusual words.”
As the child grew up, his mother continued to recognize his intelligence, perception, and wit. A breakthrough came when the Nolan’s met Dr. Ciaran Barry, medial director of the Central Remedial Clinic in Dublin. Dr. Barry had a life ambition to happily help all frantic paralyzed patients and was the first professional to accept without question Mrs. Nolan’s belief that her son was an intelligent child isolated only by his inability to communicate.
“What are you going to do about his education?” he asked. He suggested Christopher should go to Dublin to the school attached to the Clinic. The Nolan’s eventually found a house a few doors away and seven year-old Christopher enrolled at his new school.
Christopher’s older sister (by two years), Yvonne, left all her friends and transferred schools with her brother to lend him encouragement and support. Yvonne would wheel Christopher into his classroom where he would sit motionless and stagnant in his small wheelchair; head tilted to one side while an expression of deep concentration defined his face.
“We had no idea whether he could write or spell,” said his teacher. “We knew he could read, but that was very limited because someone had to be with him to turn the pages.”
Some students teased and made fun of him while others made an effort to be friends. Overall, Christopher expressed great pleasure to be in school and to be able to learn. History, Geography, English, Mathematics, Nature Study, Irish, Music, and Religious Knowledge seeped into Christopher’s mind and gave him plenty to think about.
Meanwhile, Dr. Barry continued to do all he could to try and free Christopher from his handicap. His body was pumped with medicine as they tried to “unlock” his muscles. First, they tried to hook a device up to his larynx with no success. Next they tried to enable him to type by engaging his left wrist. Then his right wrist. Then his feet. Then his fingers. But his body would respond to nothing. They even tried a machine that hooked up to his mouth that could communicate through his actions of sucking and blowing. That failed as well. Christopher cried constantly during these procedures; without any means of expression, the pressure to communicate had become intolerable for him. At each staff meeting failure was reported to Dr. Barry, but he lovingly refused to accept defeat where Christopher was concerned. On each occasion he told his wonderful staff “we must keep trying.”
THE LONGEST INCH IN THE WORLD
Four years of failure passed until Christopher’s silent life was about to change. In the eleventh year of his life, Christopher was introduced to a drug, Lioresal, which relaxed the muscles of his neck sufficiently to allow him partial control of his head for short periods of time. It was a minor pharmacological victory, but for Christopher that minimal command opened a doorway of communication. This little pill that Christopher took allowed him to move his neck by about an inch. That inch was all Christopher needed. Dr. Barry and the Clinic developed a little “unicorn” stick that fit on his forehead while the Nolan’s purchased an electric typewriter. With a little support for his head, Christopher unsteadily struggled but fought to line up the unicorn to the typewriter and by nodding his head he began to depress each key that he wanted. His mother frantically rigged up the paper to the typewriter and anxiously watched as Christopher typed…
I Learn to Bow
Polarized I was paralyzed,
Plausibly palated,
People realized totally,
Woefully once I totally
Opened their eyes.
It was a poem! Christopher’s mom—shaking and crying—enquired, “Christopher is that the sort of mind you have?” Christopher joyfully, lovingly, and understandingly looked from his mother to the ceiling to give his affirmative signal over and over and over again.
Christopher would later type to his mother: “I have been mentally writing poetry since I was three years old.”
At first, it took Christopher 15 to 20 minutes to type each word with his new device. Spelling was also a struggle as Christopher picks up most words by sound alone and so he naturally spells them exactly how they are pronounced. But for the first time in his life, Christopher Nolan had the ability to share with his family—and the world--what had been going on in his mind for the past 11 years.
Christopher began to write letters to his extended family:
Dear Uncle Patsy,
I feel sure you will be surprised to hear from me. I prayed for so long for this day that it seemed it would never come. Rain usually comes before sunshine, Lioresal came before my breakthrough. Pity the tablets were not out long ago. First thing I want to do is to thank you for praying for me all down the years. A tap of my stick to the keys opens a whole new world-oasis for me.
A set of silent movies re being shown on T.V. they are very funny. Soon you will be home again, but I will be back at the C.R.C. [school]. I am pleased to be making headway at last.
That is all for now.
Yours Sincerely,
Christy
With the ability to type and communicate, it became clear how very bright Christopher was. Psychologists assessed his IQ as being five years above the average for his age. His reading and vocabulary levels were those of an adult. Often times, his poems would send his own mother to a dictionary to find out what the words meant! How has such a handicapped child acquired his extraordinary style and vocabulary?
“It is as though he has been playing with words all his childhood as other, able-bodied, children play with toys,” says his mother.
Just as blind people develop their sense of hearing to compensate for their dead eyes, Christopher has compensated for his useless body by using his mind. His handicap is his advantage. The use of his mind is his life, his work, his hobby, and his obsession.
To give you an example of how intelligent and talented Christopher is, please read the following words he wrote when he was still only 11 years old:
'Mankind always amuses himself by foolish conjecture, on odious old ones, oceans mated on opal-shattered, oil-saturated satellites and from which all oligarchies once alighted. I thought too, only lordly thinking, turned thoughts towards tiresome trends, in tinges of tranquil trying tremors of titular timidity, sorrow turned to triumph.'
As if Christopher’s story is not powerful enough already, there is more! Christopher continued to peck out with his unicorn stick and typewriter the poems he had stored up in his mind for years. During that first year of being able to type, Christopher also wrote an autobiography that took him 5 months to complete. This autobiography is cleverly written in third person with different characters that represent himself and his family. In it, we find—for the first time—Christopher’s perspective on all the events surrounding his life.
Christopher explained how he felt at the beginning of his life when he wrote: “All my blood ran cold at first, leaving me a brain-damaged, all paralyzed pauper, appearing to foolish, ignorant people as ‘heaven’s reject.’”
The torture of being trapped in a paralyzed body becomes real as Christopher recounts, with agony, how he constantly “begged for some form of communication with which to express his alter, myriad, brilliant, milling mind.”
One of the most astonishing discoveries was that Christopher had barriers to learning that nobody could have known. On top of everything else, Christopher learned to read by teaching himself out of his dyslexia, as he writes about here:
'What neither [teacher] nor [mother] knew was could only see because of [my] haphazard experience in reading, many words turned backwards…for example—Press—I would see a mirror impression looking like – sserP – which always confused me. would then change the letters sserP, using [my] fingers to remember which letter went first—thumb became P, etc, and so taught [myself] to recognize the word.'
WHERE WAS GOD IN ALL OF THIS?
Christopher’s writing also shed light, for the first time, on his authentic faith in Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the way; somehow through all his pain, Christopher found a Savior. After one poem, Christopher described himself as a “totally paralyzed, speechless person who in order to maintain sanity, lives in communion with God and with his own mind’s musical musings.” Within two days of learning how to type with his unicorn stick, Christopher wrote a second, more personal poem on impact God had on his soul:
I Peer Through Ugliness
Years dead tears, peter down my face,
Lucifer quietly plays me down,
Out of a light there came Christ Divine,
Peace always comes, reigns awhile.
Day after dawn, raw quiet rested there,
As I peered through rough pastures,
Dew drops glistened in golden buttercups.
In his autobiography, Christopher gives more insight to his spiritual journey. Shortly before his “miracle breakthrough,” Christopher went trough the most despairing night of his life. Christopher was gripped with what he called “new lasting despair” to the point that he desired so strongly to commit suicide, but, of course with his paralysis, he was “denied that form of escape.” Christopher describes his state of mind as “a paper thin balance between total rejection of God and acceptance of God’s will.” That night, Christopher stayed up all night praying and begging God to have pity on him. He was just about to finally fall asleep as morning broke when he felt the touch of a kiss on his cheek. He swiftly opened his eyes and glanced all around the room—nobody was there!
Sleep soon overcame Christopher’s will and he began to dream he was dead. He dreamt that night that he saw God—dressed as a modern man. In the dream, God simply gazed with sweetness and serenity into the eyes of Christopher. With honestly aching eyes, Christopher looked down from God towards the floor where he saw a gray typewriter and instinctively looked back at God. Christopher tells of that dream as a foreshadowing to the device and miracle drug that were about to set him free.
After the dream, Christopher had a sharp increase in strength, attitude, and ability to handle the medicine he was taking. It was after this dream that Christopher was gradually able to build up the dosage to that which allowed him to move his neck an inch. And with his unicorn stick and typewriter, Christopher slowly began to get more accustom and comfortable in his new ability to communicate; he knew the deepest prayer of his heart had been graciously answered.
“All men mull over hell,” Christopher meditatively writes, “Land lovers count their acres, rich folk count their millions, but wise men count their cold, holy crosses. And that is the central core of our existence on this earth.” Another poem young Christopher wrote is entitled ‘A Pass to Your Dead’ and it reads:
A grave that always waits,
A verge round at front and
A lasting sad cross,
Put away sadness,
Pray all the while,
Past is sorrow,
Heaven will be thine.
When describing the first Christmas in his poem ‘The Crib’ Christopher combines the depth of his intelligence, faith, and personality:
Snow fell dreamily, healthily, mottledy, in alarming spasms, covering the precipitous route to Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary left Galilee, a peasant couple, a pass allocated assigning them to the Caesar Augustus part of Judea.
There, their tale began.
Mary’s baby Jesus Christ was born, an earth’s savior, cradled among an ass and an ox.
Shepherds learned the wonderful tiding from an angel of the God Father in heaven.
They came to Bethlehem and adored the Almighty Redeemer of the world.
THE WORLD’S RESPONSE TO CHRISTOPHER
With open communication for the first time between everything inside of Christopher’s head and everything outside of it, his mother wrote the following:
"Through the typewriter Christy gained release from his tongue-tied world. Now, he sets his sights on the next hurdle, a breakthrough into the world of normal, full-time education at an ordinary secondary school. Success did not come easily. Time and time again he was made to experience absolute despair as one particular school rejected our every approach. Therefore when acceptance and admission to Mount Temple Comprehensive School came, it brought with it an added bonus, it restored Christy’s faith in himself."
Mount Temple, with a student population of almost eight hundred, took high to their hearts and with encouragement from an especially enlightened teaching staff and unobtrusive though caring help from his classmates, he felt eased into the everyday life of the school. Long schooldays sapped his energy, but nonetheless he somehow managed to mark his thirteenth year by writing his first play.
Amazingly enough, a few of Christopher’s classmates at Mount Temple School in Dublin, Ireland decided to start a band. That band is known today--more than 25 years later--as one of the biggest rock groups in history: U2. Their latest top-selling CD ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’ features the song Miracle Drug; written for their former classmate Christopher Nolan and his mother. When performing the song live, U2’s lead singer, Bono, takes the time to explain Christopher’s story to the audience before singing these words:
I want to trip inside your head, spend the day there.
To hear the things you haven’t said and see what you might see.
I want to hear you when you call. Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape and walk right out.
Freedom has a scent, like the top of a newborn baby’s head.
Of science and the human heart, there is no limit.
There is no failure here sweetheart, just when you quit.
I am you and you are mine, love makes nonsense of space
And time… will disappear; love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love…
God I need your help tonight.
Beneath the noise, below the din I hear a voice, it’s whispering
In science and in medicine, “I was a stranger, you took me in.”
The songs are in your eyes, I see them when you smile.
I’ve had enough of romantic love, I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it all
For a miracle, miracle drug.
Miracle.
Miracle drug.
Christopher Nolan went on to publish his first book, Dam-burst of Dreams, a collection of poems, short stories, and playwrights, at age fourteen. A college English professor at Oxford University called Christopher “an almost wholly original and (even without taking his physical handicap into account) astonishingly gifted young writer." The book won all kinds of literary awards in Ireland and Great Britain. Christopher then published his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock, to mass appraisal. It was awarded the prestigious Whitbread Book of the Year in 1987. In 2000, Christopher published his first full-length novel, The Banyan Tree, which took him 12 years to complete. His books have left all who read them, just as he is—speechless. Today, Christopher Nolan is regarded as one the great English writers of our time.
CLOSING COMMENTS
There is not much left for me to say. One can take so much from a story such as Christopher’s. There are so many things to learn, to ponder, and to apply. Above all else, I probably find Christopher’s faith most astounding. In his autobiography he writes, “Every avenue was explored in an attempt to arrive at God’s feet and abounding mercy.” I don’t know that I could write that about my own life. And I’ve had it pretty easy compared to the adversity that faces Christopher Nolan. I think I have learned that when you cannot change the circumstances in your life, you must change the perspective from which you view them in order to maintain your faith and joy that God intends to go hand in hand.
My Ambitions
Taste of pity as people stare,
Love, lots of love from mother,
Pills you find as lasting prayer,
An irate person may possibly
Have faith, instead of despair.
-Christopher Nolan
September 18, 1977
Canadiens1131
ONE love, blood, life
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Cliffs?
coolian2
Blue Crack Supplier
Canadiens1160 said:
Stole what i wanted to say.
xaviMF22
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
wow that was beautiful...
thank you for this.....this made me understand and appreciate "Miracle Drug" a lot more..
thank you for this.....this made me understand and appreciate "Miracle Drug" a lot more..
bono_212
Blue Crack Distributor
That was beautiful...but THAT'S what Miracle Drug is about? I had no idea...the song has just become a whole lot better to me
as for those who haven't read it, Christopher Nolan was born without enough oxygen and so he was completely paralized and could not speak. However, when he was 11 a drug was discovered, Lioresal, which allowed him to move his neck about an inch in each direction. WIth this mobility he was able to use a typewrite and a unicorn like horn to type what he had to say, he turned out to be a genius, and had a very strong grasp of the english language. He eventually attended Mount Temple and became friends with some of the members of U2, and today he is a very successful writer. The song Miracle Drug is about him.
as for those who haven't read it, Christopher Nolan was born without enough oxygen and so he was completely paralized and could not speak. However, when he was 11 a drug was discovered, Lioresal, which allowed him to move his neck about an inch in each direction. WIth this mobility he was able to use a typewrite and a unicorn like horn to type what he had to say, he turned out to be a genius, and had a very strong grasp of the english language. He eventually attended Mount Temple and became friends with some of the members of U2, and today he is a very successful writer. The song Miracle Drug is about him.
JCOSTER
ONE love, blood, life
Damn beat me to it I was going to say all the stuff above.
But it is beautiful and Miracle Drug is beautiful as well when you understand what it is about.
But it is beautiful and Miracle Drug is beautiful as well when you understand what it is about.
xaviMF22
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
the lyrics really make sense to me now
The Slow Loris
War Child
Thanks for sharing this, Euro-pop. It's great to see the examples of his early writings. What a genius! And so spiritually aware at such a young age. Sometimes I think people choose the life they have, and if this is the case, Christopher chose to be a sort of emissary to bring something to the world....to open people's eyes and hearts.
phillyfan26
Blue Crack Supplier
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I'm amazed that the meaning behind the song hadn't come around sooner.
And I rarely say this, but that story truly was touching.
And I rarely say this, but that story truly was touching.
europop2005
Refugee
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- Mar 19, 2006
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so the song is basically a conversation between him and his mother
u2wildhoney
The Fly
Thank you very much for the whole story. I heard some part of it, and I am sure Miracle Drug is about this story....It is touching, it is about a real miracle of the 20th-21th century.
The Disciple
New Yorker
Amazing.
tuwie
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
thanks for posting this! i read the whole thing and it's truly an amazing story.
u2thewho
The Fly
Virtually anyone, especially (x3) this guy, deserves better than this worthless piece of schlock. I've said it before, I'll say it again, this song is terrible. It's syrupy, it's got got an overall weak sound, and the lyrics are ingratiating when heard out of context, and since people are inherently stupid, 99% will.
Earnie Shavers
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
u2thewho said:
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