Wes Phillips

Oliver Sacks on music and amnesia—and about just how puzzling cognition and memory truly are.

The KGB's long war with Nureyev.

Huckleberry thinks I don't have sufficient respect for nap time.

Chet Raymo manages to coax an entire essay out of a description of a kiss: "The way bees on a drowsy day suck honey from fuchsia."

Stevie Nicks would like her forties back. "'It was eight completely wasted years of my life.' Here's the irony, she says: the 'powers that be' had sent her to the psychiatrist in order to keep her working, but the 'treatment' he gave her made work almost impossible. 'It's very Shakespearean. It's very much a tragedy.'"

Moises Kaufman has written 33 Variations, a play that explores Beethoven's obsession with Diabelli's inane little waltz. Sounds worth seeing—or you could buy this.