Creativity is one of the great mysteries of the human mind. Brain scientists love to peer into the brain while it is working for hints about what the neurons are doing, and functional MRI can reveal which part of the brain is active during different tasks. I was fascinated by an interview in a recent Scientific American magazine in which Charles J. Limb, neuroscientist and musician, discusses using fMRI to study the brain during jazz improvisation. Dr. Limb is a hearing specialist, surgeon, brain researcher, and alto saxophonist, and his experience as a jazz musician drew him to study what happens in the brain during the creative process. Because musical improvisation provides immediate access to the creative process, it is an ideal window into the brain's ability to generate new ideas. Dr. Limb rigged up a keyboard that musicians could play while their head and torso rested in the circular tunnel of an fMRI machine.
While the musicians were creating jazz improvisation, Dr. Limb noted that activity was generated in many different areas of the brain; music is known to be a "whole brain" activity. He found that an area called the Medial Prefrontal Cortex became particularly active during improvisation, but the most interesting finding was that another area, the Lateral Prefrontal Region, turned off during these periods of musical imagination.
The function of these areas hints at the nature of creativity. The Medial Prefrontal Cortex is involved in self-expression and narrative, while the Lateral Prefrontal Region is involved with editing and evaluating. It appears that creativity relies on taking the brain's internal critic out of the game, allowing ideas to flow without interruption.
These findings provide a neurologic explanation for a variety of creative exercises. A standard writing exercise is the "timed writing", in which a person is required to write rapidly and continuously without pausing to think, preventing the brain's editor from evaluating what is being written. Only after the writing process has generated a lengthy torrent of words is the person allowed to go back to organize and edit what he has written. In an influential book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, artists are told to copy figures that have been turned upside down so that they are less recognizable. The common theme is that creativity requires temporary suspension of the conscious thinking process.
I have struggled for years to become a competent jazz improvisor, with only occasional success. When I have had opportunities to talk to good jazz musicians, I always ask them "what do you think about while you are playing?" Most musicians are at a loss to explain their creative process, but in general they respond that they don't think, they just listen. Somehow they must learn how to turn off their Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and allow their musical creativity to flow without thinking about it. This leaves unanswered the question of how musicians learn not to think.
Doug Miller, one of the premier jazz bassists in Seattle, told me a story that sheds some light on this process. When he was younger, Doug made the obligatory journey to play in New York City, a rite of passage for most professional jazz musicians. At one club in the big city, tenor saxophone legend Sonny Rollins hosts a weekly jam session. Saxophonists line up around the block for a chance to sit in and show off their chops by improvising 6 or 7 choruses over the chord changes of some up-tempo jazz standard. With as many as 30 horn players waiting to be heard a single tune like Oleo might go on for 2 or 3 hours, a case of what Doug called "rhythm section abuse". For the first 15 minutes the hard-working bass player concentrates to play the right notes, outlining each chord clearly despite the ridiculously fast tempo. Eventually fatigue sets in and the bassist starts to simplify, using repeated notes and open strings to make the playing easier. After another 30 minutes of struggle, a transformation takes place. Doug reports that a zen-like state takes over, in which the bass player is too tired to think or concentrate. The bass line suddenly creates itself effortlessly, without conscious awareness. This state of non-thinking is the nirvana of creativity for which jazz musicians strive.
Learning how to turn off the brain's critic in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex may take years of artistic struggle, so any shortcut in this process would be welcome. Too many jazz musicians in the past have abused chemical substances in an effort to stop thinking. Meditation has replaced medication for many contemporary improvising musicians who use ancient Zen techniques to calm the overactive "monkey mind" that obstructs the flow of creativity. The new brain studies suggest the possibility of using biofeedback or transcranial electromagnetic devices to retrain the brain, but somehow that seems like cheating. Eventually, musicians just need to relax, keep playing and stop thinking about it.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Late Bloomers
Have you ever listened to one of those teenaged classical violin prodigies that is performing with a major symphony while their classmates are out learning how to drive? What about that floppy-haired saxophonist who can outplay professionals twice his age? Well, I hate them.
Setting aside the old question of talent versus practice time, it just seems unfair that there are musicians who can play with awesome technique and sincere feeling when they haven't experienced enough of life to earn an artistic voice. Therefore, I was heartened to read an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book, "What The Dog Saw". He argues that some artists achieve greatness early, while others are late bloomers, and he analyzes the difference between the two. Gladwell cites the example of a writer whose first successful novel was written after he was retirement age, and the painter who rose from decades of youthful mediocrity to produce masterpieces once his hair had grayed. If nothing else, these examples offer hope to those of us who have long passed the stage where we might become "early bloomers".
Upon analysis, the artists who produced works of quality at an early age seemed to find their direction from within. Rarely was there evidence that they had learned from other artists or experiences. While arduous practice honed their skills, the content of their art seemed to appear fully-formed. This is reminiscent of descriptions of autistic savants, those mentally challenged artists or mathematicians who simply "see" the object of their imagination and record the images or numbers as they see them. One autistic child of ten could sketch a Gothic cathedral in beautiful detail from memory, but when the sketching was repeated years later it was no better and no worse. His artistic ability was a gift, but it did not progress or grow. Less challenged writers and painters certainly show growth in their ability over time, but it still comes from within, rather than from careful research and experience.
"Late Bloomers" take a different course, according to Gladwell's analysis. Usually these artists' initial attempts were very mediocre and offered little reason to continue their efforts. But continue they did, experimenting with different approaches and looking to their external environment for ideas. Their gifts included diligent research to find new relationships in material from their real-world experience, weaving ideas together in different ways until gradually their works became meaningful and mature. These late bloomers bring more of external reality into their work as they slowly develop their skills, like flavors that blend together in a slow-cooked stew.
The idea that artistic ability could be gradually acquired and improved over a lifetime is encouraging. But as I thumbed thru my "Listener's Guide To Classical Music" looking for biographies of famous classical musicians who overcame average youthful abilities to achieve greatness, I found no examples. Nearly every famous composer had already made their mark by their early 20's. I considered the jazz greats, and failed to discover any well-known players that had labored in mediocrity before developing a distinctive instrumental voice in middle age. Bill Evans described himself as a mediocre player who had to gradually work out every aspect of his piano playing for years before he could bring it to his performances, but even he doesn't qualify as a "late bloomer". One of his best compositions, the beautiful waltz "Very Early", was written as an assignment for a college music class.
This is discouraging, but perhaps it only means that fame is reserved for those musicians that can turn their precocious abilities into a successful career. The musical late bloomers are forced to slowly develop their artistic abilities while they are working day jobs and raising their families, squeezing in an hour of practice after the children are asleep and searching on Craigslist to find jam sessions and casual gigs. But maybe after their children have grown and left for college, the late bloomers take what they have learned over the years and create meaningful music from their decades of experience and interrupted study. We probably won't hear much about these musicians, but their voices will be heard.
Setting aside the old question of talent versus practice time, it just seems unfair that there are musicians who can play with awesome technique and sincere feeling when they haven't experienced enough of life to earn an artistic voice. Therefore, I was heartened to read an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book, "What The Dog Saw". He argues that some artists achieve greatness early, while others are late bloomers, and he analyzes the difference between the two. Gladwell cites the example of a writer whose first successful novel was written after he was retirement age, and the painter who rose from decades of youthful mediocrity to produce masterpieces once his hair had grayed. If nothing else, these examples offer hope to those of us who have long passed the stage where we might become "early bloomers".
Upon analysis, the artists who produced works of quality at an early age seemed to find their direction from within. Rarely was there evidence that they had learned from other artists or experiences. While arduous practice honed their skills, the content of their art seemed to appear fully-formed. This is reminiscent of descriptions of autistic savants, those mentally challenged artists or mathematicians who simply "see" the object of their imagination and record the images or numbers as they see them. One autistic child of ten could sketch a Gothic cathedral in beautiful detail from memory, but when the sketching was repeated years later it was no better and no worse. His artistic ability was a gift, but it did not progress or grow. Less challenged writers and painters certainly show growth in their ability over time, but it still comes from within, rather than from careful research and experience.
"Late Bloomers" take a different course, according to Gladwell's analysis. Usually these artists' initial attempts were very mediocre and offered little reason to continue their efforts. But continue they did, experimenting with different approaches and looking to their external environment for ideas. Their gifts included diligent research to find new relationships in material from their real-world experience, weaving ideas together in different ways until gradually their works became meaningful and mature. These late bloomers bring more of external reality into their work as they slowly develop their skills, like flavors that blend together in a slow-cooked stew.
The idea that artistic ability could be gradually acquired and improved over a lifetime is encouraging. But as I thumbed thru my "Listener's Guide To Classical Music" looking for biographies of famous classical musicians who overcame average youthful abilities to achieve greatness, I found no examples. Nearly every famous composer had already made their mark by their early 20's. I considered the jazz greats, and failed to discover any well-known players that had labored in mediocrity before developing a distinctive instrumental voice in middle age. Bill Evans described himself as a mediocre player who had to gradually work out every aspect of his piano playing for years before he could bring it to his performances, but even he doesn't qualify as a "late bloomer". One of his best compositions, the beautiful waltz "Very Early", was written as an assignment for a college music class.
This is discouraging, but perhaps it only means that fame is reserved for those musicians that can turn their precocious abilities into a successful career. The musical late bloomers are forced to slowly develop their artistic abilities while they are working day jobs and raising their families, squeezing in an hour of practice after the children are asleep and searching on Craigslist to find jam sessions and casual gigs. But maybe after their children have grown and left for college, the late bloomers take what they have learned over the years and create meaningful music from their decades of experience and interrupted study. We probably won't hear much about these musicians, but their voices will be heard.
Friday, January 1, 2010
NATURAL PULSES
It is a strange phenomenon. A musician may practice diligently for months on end and seemingly make no progress. Then circumstances restrict or eliminate practice time for a month. Suddenly a gig comes up, which the musician accepts eagerly (wouldn’t we all, no matter how rusty we are?). Fearing the worst from weeks away from the instrument, the player finds that his playing is uncharacteristically fluid, creative, and musical; it seems that he has improved more from inactivity than from the previous months of disciplined “woodshedding”.
Musicians that I have talked to have all experienced this sort of rapid improvement after a hiatus from playing. Pianist Kenny Werner describes this experience vividly in his book, “Effortless Mastery”, and it prompted his leap from amateur to professional jazz musician. I suspect the same story could be told in other creative or scientific pursuits. There must be an reason.
Explanations always lead back to the neurons in our central nervous system. We know that our brain cells are constantly sprouting new branches, synapsing with neighboring neurons in a frenzy of connection. Learning seems to involve reinforcing the chosen connections and pruning away the irrelevant branches of the neurons. I imagine the brain like one of those topiary animals you might see at the park; the shrubbery is allowed to grow and become bushy, and then the branches are trimmed away until the form of an elephant or giraffe emerges. Perhaps the brain needs a little inactivity to grow bushy and fertile with new neural branches.
This principle of “pulses” of activity and inactivity seems to be a principle of nature. In some way, the seasons we experience on this planet act in this way on our biological systems. The hardship of winter selects and shapes the exuberant growth of the fertile summer. Paleontologists think that the ice ages worked on a larger scale to rachet up human intelligence and culture over thousands of years. When the ice sheets retreated, living was easy and there was plentiful food and free time to experiment with diverse ways of doing things. The return of the harsh winters in the next ice age put new ways to the test, selecting the most successful hunting techniques and stripping away the excesses of the lazy interglacial periods. Nature loves the tension of good times and bad.
If we knew enough, we might be able to maximize the balance of hard work and idle play. Musicians might get the most out of practice if we knew the right time to take a break. Right now it is time for me to get “deep in the shed” and intensify my own practicing for a while. Break time is over.
Musicians that I have talked to have all experienced this sort of rapid improvement after a hiatus from playing. Pianist Kenny Werner describes this experience vividly in his book, “Effortless Mastery”, and it prompted his leap from amateur to professional jazz musician. I suspect the same story could be told in other creative or scientific pursuits. There must be an reason.
Explanations always lead back to the neurons in our central nervous system. We know that our brain cells are constantly sprouting new branches, synapsing with neighboring neurons in a frenzy of connection. Learning seems to involve reinforcing the chosen connections and pruning away the irrelevant branches of the neurons. I imagine the brain like one of those topiary animals you might see at the park; the shrubbery is allowed to grow and become bushy, and then the branches are trimmed away until the form of an elephant or giraffe emerges. Perhaps the brain needs a little inactivity to grow bushy and fertile with new neural branches.
This principle of “pulses” of activity and inactivity seems to be a principle of nature. In some way, the seasons we experience on this planet act in this way on our biological systems. The hardship of winter selects and shapes the exuberant growth of the fertile summer. Paleontologists think that the ice ages worked on a larger scale to rachet up human intelligence and culture over thousands of years. When the ice sheets retreated, living was easy and there was plentiful food and free time to experiment with diverse ways of doing things. The return of the harsh winters in the next ice age put new ways to the test, selecting the most successful hunting techniques and stripping away the excesses of the lazy interglacial periods. Nature loves the tension of good times and bad.
If we knew enough, we might be able to maximize the balance of hard work and idle play. Musicians might get the most out of practice if we knew the right time to take a break. Right now it is time for me to get “deep in the shed” and intensify my own practicing for a while. Break time is over.
Friday, December 11, 2009
PLAY IT AGAIN
Aesthetics are intriguing. Beauty may be in the eye and ear of the beholder, but it must have a basis, perhaps even a function, deep in the neurons of our central nervous system. Recently I ran across an interesting assertion: According to one source, “The optimal percentage of redundancy for the perception of beauty by the human brain is 20%”. Twenty percent. A sort of “Golden Mean” of aesthetical repetition. This implies that people are attracted to something that repeats itself frequently, but not to excess. Perhaps when my children imply that my conversations repeat themselves, maybe what they really mean is that my verbal redundancy has reached an unaesthetic 40% level.
The beauty of moderate redundancy actually makes a lot of sense. People tend to say “I know what I like”, but they really mean “I like what I know”. Our brains seem to feel happiest when novel stimuli are balanced with the familiar. In the visual arts, repetition is a frequent theme: a row of white aspen trunks, a trio of babies in flower pots, or multiple spots of scarlet in a painted abstract resonate with our visual cortex. The Redundancy Rule gives us a mathematical means to evaluate art; on the next visit to the Seattle Art Museum, you can nod knowingly to an art patron nearby and note “I like it, but with 10% more redundancy I think it could be a masterpiece”.
Repetition is a vital part of music. A small group of notes played in sequence becomes a motif, and this motif can be varied and repeated to build a beautiful composition. The trick is to find just the right amount of repetition. When I listen to jazz musicians of varying levels of expertise, it is evident that novice players often “wander around”, playing lots of different notes that are technically correct (according to the chords and scales of the tune), but not very appealing. A great player can say more by repeating and inverting a phrase of just a few notes than the inexperienced player expresses with a constant stream of unrelated musical phrases. More redundancy may be the difference between the beautiful and the banal.
The general concept of incorporating just the right amount of musical redundancy sounds like a good recipe for beautiful composition or great improvisation, but it raises a number of questions.
At what level(s) does this redundancy take place? By my calculation, a tune in AABA format (typical of many standards, which consist of an 8-bar melody, a repeat of that melody, a different 8 bar tune, and then a repeat of the original 8 bars) would contain an overall redundancy of 50%, since half of the song consists of melody that has already been played. Too much? On a much finer level, individual notes might be repeated without being recognized as redundant. (An old bandstand joke: A listener asks “Do you know how to play Stardust”, to which the bandleader replies “No, but we can play Bye Bye Blackbird, and it has a lot of the same notes in it”).
If we were to strive for that ideal 20% redundancy, which musical elements are eligible for repetition? Rhythm is just as important as pitch, after all. If we use entirely different pitches, but play them in the exact same rhythm as the previous musical phrase, is that 50% redundancy? Tone and timbre are also essential parts of music; if the trombone comes in and plays the exact same phrase as the guitarist just played, is that 100% redundant, or just (some might say) 100% unnecessary?
And where does that leave us with Free Jazz? There is no reason why totally free improvisation can’t utilize the perfect proportions of repetition and variety, but many jazz experimenters seem to avoid repeating themselves. Perhaps that is why even the free jazz players are heard to remark that the music is more fun to play than to listen to.
I thought of closing this blog by simply repeating the first paragraph of this essay for an aesthetically redundant effect, but that might make the whole subject (some might say) 100% unnecessary.
The beauty of moderate redundancy actually makes a lot of sense. People tend to say “I know what I like”, but they really mean “I like what I know”. Our brains seem to feel happiest when novel stimuli are balanced with the familiar. In the visual arts, repetition is a frequent theme: a row of white aspen trunks, a trio of babies in flower pots, or multiple spots of scarlet in a painted abstract resonate with our visual cortex. The Redundancy Rule gives us a mathematical means to evaluate art; on the next visit to the Seattle Art Museum, you can nod knowingly to an art patron nearby and note “I like it, but with 10% more redundancy I think it could be a masterpiece”.
Repetition is a vital part of music. A small group of notes played in sequence becomes a motif, and this motif can be varied and repeated to build a beautiful composition. The trick is to find just the right amount of repetition. When I listen to jazz musicians of varying levels of expertise, it is evident that novice players often “wander around”, playing lots of different notes that are technically correct (according to the chords and scales of the tune), but not very appealing. A great player can say more by repeating and inverting a phrase of just a few notes than the inexperienced player expresses with a constant stream of unrelated musical phrases. More redundancy may be the difference between the beautiful and the banal.
The general concept of incorporating just the right amount of musical redundancy sounds like a good recipe for beautiful composition or great improvisation, but it raises a number of questions.
At what level(s) does this redundancy take place? By my calculation, a tune in AABA format (typical of many standards, which consist of an 8-bar melody, a repeat of that melody, a different 8 bar tune, and then a repeat of the original 8 bars) would contain an overall redundancy of 50%, since half of the song consists of melody that has already been played. Too much? On a much finer level, individual notes might be repeated without being recognized as redundant. (An old bandstand joke: A listener asks “Do you know how to play Stardust”, to which the bandleader replies “No, but we can play Bye Bye Blackbird, and it has a lot of the same notes in it”).
If we were to strive for that ideal 20% redundancy, which musical elements are eligible for repetition? Rhythm is just as important as pitch, after all. If we use entirely different pitches, but play them in the exact same rhythm as the previous musical phrase, is that 50% redundancy? Tone and timbre are also essential parts of music; if the trombone comes in and plays the exact same phrase as the guitarist just played, is that 100% redundant, or just (some might say) 100% unnecessary?
And where does that leave us with Free Jazz? There is no reason why totally free improvisation can’t utilize the perfect proportions of repetition and variety, but many jazz experimenters seem to avoid repeating themselves. Perhaps that is why even the free jazz players are heard to remark that the music is more fun to play than to listen to.
I thought of closing this blog by simply repeating the first paragraph of this essay for an aesthetically redundant effect, but that might make the whole subject (some might say) 100% unnecessary.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
RUN AND PLAY:
Learning to play music is hard. In my readings about the brain and how it functions, I am always looking for a shortcut to faster musical progress. When I read in Oliver Sack’s book “Musicophillia” about a non-musical physician that became a classical pianist and composer after being struck by lightening in a phone booth, I hung out around phone booths hoping for a hit. In Seattle, however, you are more likely to be struck by an expresso cart than by a bolt from the blue.
A more realistic path to musical enlightenment is found in the new brain research detailed in John Ratey’s new book, “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about their brain. The short version is that aerobic exercise releases chemicals in the body and brain that produce more brain cells and improve the functioning of the nerve cells that are already there. The first responders after moderately intense exercise are the neurotransmitters, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. They may sound familiar, since your anti-depressant medication is probably directed at increasing one or more of these chemicals. It has been shown for some time that exercise does at least as well as Prozac in treating depression.
The “new science” that makes this book exciting involves a variety of “growth factors”, including insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and the coolest of all, brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). Together these factors create new brain cells and new connections between the neurons in the brain.
The practical application of this brain chemistry is simple to test: have people (or rats) take tests of memory, cognition, or creativity, with or without sweating first. The results are consistent and significant; exercise improved scores on most types of test by 20%. Now this gets my attention!
In addition to improving these useful brain functions, aerobic exercise helps with depression, ADHD, PMS, and addictive behavior. There is a lot of ongoing research in this area; this week a study was released in which monkeys were given a drug that causes Parkinson’s-like shaking. The sedentary “cage potato” monkeys developed nerve damage and muscle tremors, but the monkeys that were trained to run on a treadmill had little or no ill effects.
The medical part of me finds this fascinating, but the musician part grasps the practical implications. Practice should be most productive if done within several hours after a good workout, and perhaps a run later in the day before an important gig would be a great idea. Maybe premedicating with a big shot of serotonin and brain-derived neurotrophic factor is just what my playing needs.
Learning to play music is hard. In my readings about the brain and how it functions, I am always looking for a shortcut to faster musical progress. When I read in Oliver Sack’s book “Musicophillia” about a non-musical physician that became a classical pianist and composer after being struck by lightening in a phone booth, I hung out around phone booths hoping for a hit. In Seattle, however, you are more likely to be struck by an expresso cart than by a bolt from the blue.
A more realistic path to musical enlightenment is found in the new brain research detailed in John Ratey’s new book, “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about their brain. The short version is that aerobic exercise releases chemicals in the body and brain that produce more brain cells and improve the functioning of the nerve cells that are already there. The first responders after moderately intense exercise are the neurotransmitters, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. They may sound familiar, since your anti-depressant medication is probably directed at increasing one or more of these chemicals. It has been shown for some time that exercise does at least as well as Prozac in treating depression.
The “new science” that makes this book exciting involves a variety of “growth factors”, including insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and the coolest of all, brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF). Together these factors create new brain cells and new connections between the neurons in the brain.
The practical application of this brain chemistry is simple to test: have people (or rats) take tests of memory, cognition, or creativity, with or without sweating first. The results are consistent and significant; exercise improved scores on most types of test by 20%. Now this gets my attention!
In addition to improving these useful brain functions, aerobic exercise helps with depression, ADHD, PMS, and addictive behavior. There is a lot of ongoing research in this area; this week a study was released in which monkeys were given a drug that causes Parkinson’s-like shaking. The sedentary “cage potato” monkeys developed nerve damage and muscle tremors, but the monkeys that were trained to run on a treadmill had little or no ill effects.
The medical part of me finds this fascinating, but the musician part grasps the practical implications. Practice should be most productive if done within several hours after a good workout, and perhaps a run later in the day before an important gig would be a great idea. Maybe premedicating with a big shot of serotonin and brain-derived neurotrophic factor is just what my playing needs.
Friday, July 24, 2009
One of the popular historical pastimes of the 21st century is to guess what psychiatric disorder various famous people suffered from. Joan of Arc? At the very least she had severe migraines, based on her drawings of visions of the "City of God", which look remarkably like the fuzzy circular "scotomas" of these crippling headaches. Saint Paul? Temporal lobe epilepsy seems a likely diagnosis, based on that Road to Emmaus episode. Any famous Russian novelist? Clinical depression seems to be the norm for these writers. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill? Depression, with a silver lining: depressed individuals often are at their best when a huge crisis looms.
Jazz musicians are a fertile subject for this post-humous mental diagnosis. In many, it is hard to tell if they had an underlying mental illness because they were primarily known for the abuse of hard drugs: Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, and myriad others. Thelonius Monk was definitely a candidate for psychoactive medications; to me, his bizarre twirling during the solos of other musicians sounds like he was autistic, although other explanations have been offered. Monk's unique compositions even have some of the characteristics of drawings by autistic savants: angular, logical, and seeming to emerge in a finished, complete form rather than being gradually developed.
I am pondering these thoughts because I recently read Wynton Marsalis' new book, "Higher Ground". In his descriptions of famous jazz musicians, he laments the fact that John Coltrane, revered as the postmodern god of the tenor saxophone, was a severe obsessive/compulsive. According to Marsalis this was a tragedy, as it drove away other musicians that tired of his long, intense solos, and it alienated all but the most dedicated jazz listeners.
On the one hand, OCD seems to explain Coltrane's behavior. One of the reasons that he is so revered is that his practice habits were legendary. As a young man, he could be heard playing his scales even as he walked down the stairs to breakfast. He had a noiseless saxophone that he would take on airplanes so that he could practice in the restroom (try that now!). Even his soloing embodied a compulsion to express every melodic idea possible. When Miles Davis asked him why he soloed so long, Coltrane said "I still had something to say, and I didn't know how to stop". In his growly voice, Miles responded "Just take the #@*# horn out of your mouth".
If we accept the notion that this titan of Avant Garde jazz suffered from an obsessive/compulsive disorder, what does that mean to those of us who saw an aesthetic spirituality in his impossible dedication to practice and his endless melodies and "sheets of sound"? Many of those obsessive characteristics actually made him into the unique musician that he was, but labeling him with a psychiatric diagnoses somehow taints the legend. When we listen to his later recordings, are we hearing a transcendent genius, or simply witnessing the final train-wreck of a mental illness?
There is a concept that we should view all forms of mental illness as simply "neural diversity", similar to the racial and cultural diversity that makes our society richer and more complex. And yet when we know someone personally with mental illness the suffering seems to outweigh any beneficial side-effects that come with it. If nothing else, this conflict suggests that we should be more conservative about medicating away those behaviors that fall outside the norm.
Listening to Coltrane's beautiful ballad, "After the Rain", you can almost hear the peace that comes when the noise of an unquiet mind comes to rest. That may be enough of an answer.
Jazz musicians are a fertile subject for this post-humous mental diagnosis. In many, it is hard to tell if they had an underlying mental illness because they were primarily known for the abuse of hard drugs: Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, and myriad others. Thelonius Monk was definitely a candidate for psychoactive medications; to me, his bizarre twirling during the solos of other musicians sounds like he was autistic, although other explanations have been offered. Monk's unique compositions even have some of the characteristics of drawings by autistic savants: angular, logical, and seeming to emerge in a finished, complete form rather than being gradually developed.
I am pondering these thoughts because I recently read Wynton Marsalis' new book, "Higher Ground". In his descriptions of famous jazz musicians, he laments the fact that John Coltrane, revered as the postmodern god of the tenor saxophone, was a severe obsessive/compulsive. According to Marsalis this was a tragedy, as it drove away other musicians that tired of his long, intense solos, and it alienated all but the most dedicated jazz listeners.
On the one hand, OCD seems to explain Coltrane's behavior. One of the reasons that he is so revered is that his practice habits were legendary. As a young man, he could be heard playing his scales even as he walked down the stairs to breakfast. He had a noiseless saxophone that he would take on airplanes so that he could practice in the restroom (try that now!). Even his soloing embodied a compulsion to express every melodic idea possible. When Miles Davis asked him why he soloed so long, Coltrane said "I still had something to say, and I didn't know how to stop". In his growly voice, Miles responded "Just take the #@*# horn out of your mouth".
If we accept the notion that this titan of Avant Garde jazz suffered from an obsessive/compulsive disorder, what does that mean to those of us who saw an aesthetic spirituality in his impossible dedication to practice and his endless melodies and "sheets of sound"? Many of those obsessive characteristics actually made him into the unique musician that he was, but labeling him with a psychiatric diagnoses somehow taints the legend. When we listen to his later recordings, are we hearing a transcendent genius, or simply witnessing the final train-wreck of a mental illness?
There is a concept that we should view all forms of mental illness as simply "neural diversity", similar to the racial and cultural diversity that makes our society richer and more complex. And yet when we know someone personally with mental illness the suffering seems to outweigh any beneficial side-effects that come with it. If nothing else, this conflict suggests that we should be more conservative about medicating away those behaviors that fall outside the norm.
Listening to Coltrane's beautiful ballad, "After the Rain", you can almost hear the peace that comes when the noise of an unquiet mind comes to rest. That may be enough of an answer.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Blueberries and Prozac
Worrying about our brains is part of getting older. Am I losing it? Or did I never actually have it? They tell us that we grow a whole skullful of neurons up until about 14 years of age, and from then on we start losing them. Initially this culling process makes you smarter, but at some point you find that you can't even remember which car belongs to you in the Starbucks parking lot.
The new watchword in neurophysiology is "neuroplasticity". Brain cells can apparently reorganize themselves to meet new challenges or old neural injuries. I found it particularly encouraging when I read in several sources, including a major Scientific American article and a new book on improving brain function by Dr Restak (if I remember correctly, it is called "Think Smart", but I might be wrong) that we do in fact make new brain cells, even as aging adults. But unless these new brain cells are put to use within 2 weeks, they die off, leaving you no smarter than you were.
It turns out that bursts of new brain cells are formed in response to three different stimuli: Exercise, eating blueberries, and antidepressants. Gaining a few young neurons is enough reason to get out of bed on a rainy morning and run 5 miles. Even walking three times a week may be enough to do it. Blueberries (and strawberries and a few other colorful fruits) apparently make you smarter, even at reasonable amounts, like 1/4 cup a day. A good reason to have a few blueberry muffins after your run. And antidepressants also spur the birth of a neuron. There is some thought that Prozac and other SSRIs actually improve depression by growing back neurons in those areas most damaged by stress, rather than simply increasing serotonin levels. Stroke patients, as well as some people with peripheral nerve or spinal damage, are receiving antidepressants to help replace lost nerve cells.
This is all good news, but this is still a "use it or lose it" proposition. These cells have a short lifespan unless they are put to use, and it takes certain types of demands to make them stay around. Specifically, it appears that the brain has to perform learning that anticipates near-future events. For rats, the task was to teach them to blink exactly 1/2 second after a tone sounds, to avoid a little puff of air directed at their face. What normal activities involve this kind of anticipation? Playing video games has actually been shown to have a significant effect, especially the shoot-em-up action games. Apparently activating the survival parts of the brain primes this type of learning better than Tetris or other puzzle-type games. Fortunately, you don't have to subject yourself to 2 hours a day playing Grand Theft Auto, because playing music involves the same type of skills. We might guess that playing improvised music with a group would work best: playing jazz forces you to think quickly, look forward to anticipate the next chord change or the next accent that the drummer lays down, and draw upon many different brain areas. And sometimes that slightly panicky feeling when it is your turn to take a solo activates those fight-or-flight survival areas to sensitize the learning center.
Go to the gym, throw a handful of blueberries on your oatmeal, and go sit in with some other musicians. Maybe those new brain cells will work even better than the old ones.
Worrying about our brains is part of getting older. Am I losing it? Or did I never actually have it? They tell us that we grow a whole skullful of neurons up until about 14 years of age, and from then on we start losing them. Initially this culling process makes you smarter, but at some point you find that you can't even remember which car belongs to you in the Starbucks parking lot.
The new watchword in neurophysiology is "neuroplasticity". Brain cells can apparently reorganize themselves to meet new challenges or old neural injuries. I found it particularly encouraging when I read in several sources, including a major Scientific American article and a new book on improving brain function by Dr Restak (if I remember correctly, it is called "Think Smart", but I might be wrong) that we do in fact make new brain cells, even as aging adults. But unless these new brain cells are put to use within 2 weeks, they die off, leaving you no smarter than you were.
It turns out that bursts of new brain cells are formed in response to three different stimuli: Exercise, eating blueberries, and antidepressants. Gaining a few young neurons is enough reason to get out of bed on a rainy morning and run 5 miles. Even walking three times a week may be enough to do it. Blueberries (and strawberries and a few other colorful fruits) apparently make you smarter, even at reasonable amounts, like 1/4 cup a day. A good reason to have a few blueberry muffins after your run. And antidepressants also spur the birth of a neuron. There is some thought that Prozac and other SSRIs actually improve depression by growing back neurons in those areas most damaged by stress, rather than simply increasing serotonin levels. Stroke patients, as well as some people with peripheral nerve or spinal damage, are receiving antidepressants to help replace lost nerve cells.
This is all good news, but this is still a "use it or lose it" proposition. These cells have a short lifespan unless they are put to use, and it takes certain types of demands to make them stay around. Specifically, it appears that the brain has to perform learning that anticipates near-future events. For rats, the task was to teach them to blink exactly 1/2 second after a tone sounds, to avoid a little puff of air directed at their face. What normal activities involve this kind of anticipation? Playing video games has actually been shown to have a significant effect, especially the shoot-em-up action games. Apparently activating the survival parts of the brain primes this type of learning better than Tetris or other puzzle-type games. Fortunately, you don't have to subject yourself to 2 hours a day playing Grand Theft Auto, because playing music involves the same type of skills. We might guess that playing improvised music with a group would work best: playing jazz forces you to think quickly, look forward to anticipate the next chord change or the next accent that the drummer lays down, and draw upon many different brain areas. And sometimes that slightly panicky feeling when it is your turn to take a solo activates those fight-or-flight survival areas to sensitize the learning center.
Go to the gym, throw a handful of blueberries on your oatmeal, and go sit in with some other musicians. Maybe those new brain cells will work even better than the old ones.
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