My Brain on Fire - Paris and Other Obsessions

This is Leonard Pitt's story of growing up the misfit in Detroit in the 1940s and 50s. In a later age he would have been put on Ritalin and paraded before psychiatrists because he couldn't pay attention in school. In 1962, at the end of a misguided foray towards a career in advertising he took the ultimate cure, a trip to Paris. He thought it would only be a visit. He stayed seven years. There in the City of Light, Leonard's mind exploded. And it hasn't stopped since.br>br>Studying mime with master Etienne Decroux and living in Paris were the university he never knew. This inspiration unleashed a voracious appetite to understand the “why" of things. He asked a simple question, “Why did the ballet go up?" While building a theatre career performing and teaching, he embarked on a quest to study the origins of the ballet, the history of early American popular music, the pre-Socratic philosophers, early modern science, the European witch hunt, the history of Paris, and more. To his unschooled mind it all fits together. Who would see a historical arc between Louis XIV and Elvis Presley? Leonard does. And he'll tell you about it.

About the author

Leonard Pitt

Product details

• Authors: Leonard Pitt
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2016
• EAN: 9781593766344
• ISBN: 978-1-59376-634-4
• No. of pages: 356
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Travel > Travelogues, traveller's tales; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical, TRAVEL / Europe / France