my lobotomy

on wednesday during my drive home, i caught a fantastic story on npr called "my lobotomy". it was produced by sound portraits (which makes its content freely available) and was the story of howard dully, a man who was administered a transoribital lobotomy (the old icepick through the eye socket routine) at the age of 12, back in 1966. in the piece, dully, who has a creepy otherwordly kind of voice that is particularly powerful, revisits the suffering the lobotomy caused him over the past decades as well as explores a bit of the history of walter freeman, the doctor who invented the procedure (as well as performed it on dully).

it was a great piece, creepy and practically begging to be sampled in some dark breakcore or noise. i thought about blogging it but it eventually slipped my mind, as such things do. then i came across this boingboing post, which even gives us a handy mp3 link! this is what public radio is all about: a moving story, superbly told. and dully's voice is unbelievably perfect for the tone: you would almost think they'd hired an actor to play him.¶