MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE

The story of one expatriate’s quest to both embrace Paris and to build a new understanding of the world through art, music and exploration.

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. 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.

Leonard Pitt is an actor and author. He has written two books on Paris, Walks Through Lost Paris (Counterpoint 2006) and Paris Postcards: The Golden Age (Counterpoint 2009, UK rights sold to Amberley for 2016 pub), plus A Small Moment of Great Illumination (Counterpoint 2006).