Murmuration is Andrew Lees’ second collection of tweets, in verse form. Unapologetically personal but not lacking self-criticism, Murmuration is also far from uncritical of those trends of our time that threaten to divide medicine from the human, and from the humane.
Lees’ verses show a delight in nature, in dance, in music to which one may dance (especially Northern Soul), in speaking plainly and in enthusiasm for its own sake.
Apprehension and antagonism (but never without the poet’s sense of mischief and compassion) are shown towards inhuman trends – monolithic big business, commercialised universities professing their impact, careless conflation of pathology with patients’ experiences and instances everywhere of dogs (or perhaps murmuring, tweeting birds) being wagged by their tails.
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AI features of course and, in one of his verses, Lees does machines the honour of delegating to them the crucial task of washing up. I think this concedes the inevitability of technology and its value, but clearly warns against its uncritical deployment.
Lees dislikes the very term ‘artificial intelligence’ and questions powerfully its potential effects on human creativity and on the human experience of serendipity. There is also specific questioning of risk posed by AI to what may be apt label for Lees’ own vocation – Soulful Neurology – where understanding of pathological basis of disease in the human nervous system combines with appreciation of the patient in the room.
The soulful neurologist is one whose soles likes Lees’ have trodden lecture halls, libraries, laboratories, long teaching rounds, lands far away and also negotiated all the regulations, conventions and algorithms without loss of soul. And ‘Mumuration’ is warmly recommended to all aspiring soulful neurologists.
