Brilliance vs. disability: ‘Born on a Blue Day’, a book on the story of Daniel who has emerged from anonymity, has outgrown his disability and asserted his own great originality.
Daniel Tammet is a 30-year-old young man affected by autism and epilepsy. His life is freakish, but he certainly has some unusual and surprising flairs. Among his broken records: he learned Icelandic in a week; as well he speaks English, Spanish, Finnish, German, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Welsh and Esperanto. He has also made up two new languages drawing on Finnish and Estonian, two Finno-Ugric languages. Languages are not his only main flair.
Daniel holds the record of reciting the mathematical constant pi to 22,554 places from memory in five hours and nine minutes. For plenty of figures hard to be borne in mind by a normal person, Daniel is able to.
He’s English and suffers from Aspenger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, as well as from epilepsy and synaesthesia.
Synaesthesia allows him to have a particular perception of figures as a combination of colours and emotions.
For example, he perceives number 333 as fine and catching, while he can’t stand number 289 because he thinks it’s bad. Number 89 looks like falling snow to him, and odd numbers are like smooth pebbles. He was also able to draw pi riflecting his idea of the number whose shape he can perfectly view.
So, behind autism, Daniel hides incredible skills in maths and foreign languages. Also, talents like popstars Mika or Joss Stone, great and popular singers, have claimed to have suffered from dyslexia and have been rather poor at school. So similarly minded people generally make up for their drawback, developing further their creativity and musical imagination.
He has admitted having easily become victim of teasing and bullying and has also experienced loneliness.
His book “Born On a Blue Day”, published in the USA in 2006, is a unique evidence, a journey into a genius mind, but also a story that tells of otherness.
Written by Dario Padula (VD), Davide Contini (I C) and Gianfranco Colla (II D)
Translated by Marilena Marcosano (V B) and Paola Montemurro (I D)
Liceo Classico "Duni" - Matera (Italy)
Autistic, epileptic, yet, behind a disease you can catch a glimpse of his incredible brain