Actress Mary Steenburgen went under the knife for minor surgery once but woke up with her brain acting in a completely different way.
The movie star admitted she felt “strange” after waking up from the operation, which ended up changing how her mind works. Mary Steenburgen said after the surgery, her brain changed how it processed a lot of things but mostly music. The Hollywood star woke up with a sudden musical ability, something she hadn’t had in her 60 years before. This is the remarkable story.
Mary Steenburgen brain ‘changed’ after surgery
After being put under anaesthetic for minor surgery on her arm, Mary Steenburgen woke up with her brain looking at everything like it was music.
The 71-year-old told CBS News the musical way of thinking began as soon as she woke up.
She wasn’t worried, and just went with the flow. But it’s been quite fruitful, because she’s co-written more than 40 songs in the years that followed. The celebrity was even signed by Universal Music.
She explained to IndieWire: “I felt strange as soon as the anesthesia started to wear off.
“The best way I can describe it is that it just felt like my brain was only music, and that everything anybody said to me became musical. All of my thoughts became musical. Every street sign became musical. I couldn’t get my mind into any other mode.”
Mary Steenburgen felt her new talent for music was strange, and at first scary, but it was a weird side effect her brain went through after the surgery.
She found it difficult to concentrate on anything else.
The Back To The Future star said: “I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t have acted. I couldn’t have learned any lines.
“My husband [Ted Danson] and I were kind of frightened about it.”
Star ‘heard music all the time’
But Mary Steenburgen’s brain was in overdrive after surgery, it was more than just seeing music everywhere.
She could hear music constantly playing in her head and it would take several months before she learned to embrace it.
That’s when she turned into writing and performing the sounds in her head.
“I called a very talented friend of mine on Martha’s Vineyard and I said: ‘Look, if I come over every day and sing what I hear in my head, could you help me make them into songs?’” she said.
But the Stepbrothers actress didn’t know how to play an instrument when she called up, so she learned.
Mary wrote 12 songs and sent them to a music lawyer, and used a pseudonym. They were that good she gained a contract with Universal Music. She had tried her hand at the new venture age 54, and her song Glasgow plays at the end of the film Wild Rose. It won Best Song at the Critic Choice Awards, and Best Original Song at the Hollywood Critics Association and Houston Film Critics Society.
In 2020, the Elf actress signed a global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.
By 2013 she had nearly 50 songwriting credits and collaborated with stars from Nashville.
Husband found it ‘scary’
Her husband of 29 years, Ted Danson, was on edge over the change though, in the beginning.
“At first it was scary and threatening to our relationship,” he told People.
“Is she humming to herself, or is she pissed off? I can’t tell!”
However, he knew it was making her happy. “When you write,” he tells his wife, “you go to heaven. You really go to some other place that is really almost divine.”
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