RHYTHM & MELODY

November 25th, 2020

In comedy, timing is everything.  Launch the punchline a little too early, or after a long winded and exhausting set up, and a funny joke can fall flat.  The key to comedy is realizing that it’s just story telling rigged up with a particular timing.  Much like music.  And so too in writing.  Creating something that is both surprising and delightful (as opposed to surprising and off-putting) is a matter of variance and familiarity.  Rhythm creates the familiarity.  Surprise through variance is all in the melody, and the combination of the two weave a cognitive magic for the human ear.

Content is king in the age of the internet, but the age old adage stands divine: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.  With so much creative history to stand on, almost everything written today is a remix of some sort, a rephrasing, a rehash with a fresh perspective.  And strangely, the remixed song is often more successful than the original.  Music is the perfect medium to explore this concept of how vs what because a listener can quite literally hear the cut and paste, and experience how well it does or doesn’t work.  The same set of observations, however, apply to writing.

Write a piece that is composed completely of 70 word sentences and it’s likely going to be quite a long slog for the reader.  Switch it up.  Cut in short sentences.  Offer some medium length grist to chew on.  And suddenly, a piece of writing seems to take on a new dynamism, a bit of life that doesn’t exist in the purely long-winded treatment.

Writing an essay and telling a joke can take on helpful similarities around rhythm and melody.  The story telling we call comedy is all about a rhythm that primes the mind for a perfectly timed juxtaposition that is unexpected but brings everything together.  A great essay does something similar, but the connection to writing goes even deeper.  The practicing writer hones for a feeling of rhythm and timing, improvising on the fly, like a jazz player, seeking something new.  In essence, the writer of the essay tries to find the punchline buried within a set of curiosities.  This is, of course what essay means - to try, in the same way jazz is -at heart- an attempt to create something new, fresh and delightful on the spot, spun from a deep sense of rhythm and melody.

The rhythm and cadence of words, clauses and sentences within an essay has a greater impact on the reader’s attention than perhaps anything else.  Keeping the same tempo throughout is a bore.  Like a piece of writing where every sentence is quite long.  But shifting constantly at random can be as straining as a cat walking on a piano, jerking the reader’s attention around in a way that is anything but music.

There is a balance to be discovered, to practice and play with.  And that’s really at the heart of it: to create something playful.  That juvenile word perhaps captures it best: play is what is both surprising and delightful.  It is the tradecraft of curiosity, and what so many adults seem to have such a hard time rediscovering - perhaps ironic considering play itself is a process of discovery.  The genuine writer is little different than a kid in a sandbox, but the castles fashioned aren’t made of sand, but of words.  The rhythm and melody discovered in those sonorous bits create a structure for the reader’s attention, much like the gaze of an onlooker that bounces from turret to drawbridge, spandrel and arch.  With practice, play develops into an art.  And then, with writing, a writer’s attention dances with the subject, so that the words might then dance with the reader’s attention.

ORIGINAL SOLUTION

November 24th, 2020

The first person to figure out how to ride a bike must have seemed a bit crazy.  Apparently, the first verified person to accomplish this hallowed task was a Karl von Drais.  Imagine the sort of trouble people have trying to find their balance on a bike, falling over and over before getting the hang of it.

A cute modern solution to this problem seems to have arisen in the last few years.  Take the pedals off the bike, make it lower to the ground and then kids can safely walk the bike and pick their feet up for brief interludes until the balance for it comes online.  

This innovation seems perfect and painfully so as someone who had to go through the unfortunate shock of having training wheels removed only to realize there had been no training with those training wheels.  It had all been a fraud and oh, there was now scuffed up palms, a bleeding knee and an awkwardly situated helmet to deal with, not to mention the bicycle that seemed to have switched to being on the top position.  

It was a rude awakening.  So how did the first person manage to push through this learning curve and have faith that something that had never been done before could be done?  Well it comes as a somewhat bitter surprise that the very first bicycle had no pedals.  It was more like a glider.  It had two wheels and it could be steered, but the primary method of getting it to go was either downhill or with one’s feet in contact with the ground, pushing it forward.

Perhaps our Karl von Drais didn’t look so ridiculous after all when that first fateful ride of the bicycle was undertaken.  It’s that later innovation, of pedals and gears with a chain that actually got in the way of the first skill needed to ride a bike: balancing.  Then the new and improved bicycle with it’s pedal propulsion system was simply shrunken down, pedals, gears and all, and it seems the utility of having no pedals was forgotten.  

Does a little kid really need the ability to go faster?  Certainly not.  But now kids have a mighty hard time figuring out how to ride a bike, and so the truly insidious invention of the training wheel came about.  Certainly it could be chocked up to one more way to profit off the enterprise riding bikes, but more likely it’s the result of a far simpler problem: creating something additional as a solution when the better solution is to simply take away the problem.  

For the bicycle it requires either a knowledge of the history of the quaint machine or a thoughtful and circumspect understanding of the machine to realize that it doesn’t really need pedals and a chain for someone who is learning it - that is, to see the pedals and chain as an add-on that can therefore be removed.

What’s most important things to highlight about this sly set of developments is that it wasn’t clear how important the original simplicity of the bicycle was until you improve it, make it more complex and cover up the simplicity that made it so much easier to learn to ride in the first place.

COIN OF COMPASSION & CRUELTY

November 23rd, 2020

There is an idea and opinion among scientists that theory of mind began with the invention of predation in the Cambrian period.  Before this period, there were no hunters, and nothing was subjected to being prey.  Imagine a world of plants and molluscs, all at peace, but certainly without much incentive to evolve.  The invention of predation provided just that sort of incentive.  To develop eyes and ears, not only to look out for predators, but also to try and find lunch.

The advent of predation likely kickstarted a sensory arms race that extended not just to ways of getting information from the environment, but also ways of interpreting that information.   Theory of Mind is quite likely one of those interpretations that help an organism flourish and persevere in this cutthroat game of survival.  If you can model the mind of your prey in your own mind, then you can think like that prey, and thereby anticipate the movements and plans of that prey, to predict them, and plan accordingly in order to intercept, ideally at lunchtime.  The converse is also symmetrically powerful.  If you are prey modelling the mind of your top predator, then you are predicting how they will perhaps try to predict your own movements and by going on this little imaginary adventure, potentially thwarting the designs of an enemy who is bent on consuming you.

One disturbing ramification from the notion that theory of mind arises from the invention of predation has to do with compassion and cruelty, and how they may be inextricably linked.  

Compassion, to start with the lighter and kinder of the two requires a theory of mind.  In order to feel compassion for someone else, it’s necessary to imaginatively put one’s self in the situational shoes of someone else.  This requires, not just compiling all the situational components of their life, but also taking detailed measure of their emotions as represented by their actions, their words and their expressions.  With so much information, the compassionate among us can close eyes and imagine the world as someone else, to model the mind of that person and to then feel the pain or pleasure, sorrow and surprise that someone else a tally experiences.  This is one of our greatest gifts as a species.

There is, however, an uncomfortable flip side to this powerful theory of mind.  Cruelty at its most diabolical requires the same exact theory of mind.  In order to consciously and deliberately hurt someone as much as possible, one must first play the same trick: to imagine what it is like to be that target person and then ask, what would be the worst thing that could happen to someone with this perspective?  Without theory of mind, the cruel intention can’t land as close to the heart as possible.  Cruelty is a potentially random strike, like a first move in a game of Battleship, equipped with a fairly random set of odds as to whether action will land effectively or not.  Theory of mind removes a lot of this guess work by zeroing in on what is important for another organism.  This is exactly how it likely functioned with predation.  What is important to the predatory is inversely identical to the prey, so the development of a theory of mind potentially had a large incentive to iterate quickly.  What is important to the prey is to not be eaten and the predator is equally in need of lunch, hence the need to model one another’s view of the world becomes equally important.

It’s certainly just conjecture, but it’s possible that compassion - one of the most exalted qualities that we prize among our species may in fact be a product of something that is anything put compassionate: predation.  

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: MURMUR

November 22nd, 2020

In the sky a dark wave unfurled and lightened as it thinned, the birds resolving as tiny dots in the evening light.  The whole mass of them turned up on end like an undulation of water commanded by some ethereal force.  And there they twisted tight and dark before collapsing down and spreading out again.

“What is it?” The boy asked Lucilius.

“It’s called a murmuration.”

The boy slowly repeated the new word, before looking to Lucilius again.  

“Why do they do it?”

Lucilius breathed deeply and then sighed.  “Oh, well, there’s a piece of the puzzle that you can’t see right now.”

“What’s that?”  The boy asked.

“Well, if we were to go diving in the sea, we’d eventually come across a school of fish doing much the same thing, tightening up together like that.”

“The fish do that too?”

“Yep.”

“But why?”

“Well the fish do it because there are much bigger fish in the sea trying to eat them, so they gang up together to stay safe.”

“Does it work?”

Lucilius nodded his head from side to side.  “Sometimes, but often it just makes them an easier target.”

The young boy watched the birds dancing together in the sky, squinting in a bit of confusion.  He looked around at the rest of the sky.

“But there’s nothing hunting the birds.”

Lucilius smiled gravely at the young boy.  “A long time ago there were much bigger things floating through the skies, much bigger things that needed to eat.”

The boy wore an unbelieving look as he studied Lucilius’ face for other signs, but when a fish jumped far down the shore the boy started and quickly looked before gazing up and around him for anything else that might be in the sky.

“Where are they now?”

“Extinct.”

“So why do they still do that if they aren’t in danger?”  The boy asked, looking up at the thousands of dancing swallows.

“That’s an excellent question.  And you should remember it as you get older.  You’ll find a lot of people continue to do strange things because they were once in danger but aren’t in danger any longer.”

“It sorta just looks like they’re dancing.”  The boy mused aloud.

“Well here’s a good question: why do things dance?”

“Because they’re afraid?” The boy offered.

Lucilius shrugged.  “Maybe.  It’s certainly a good strategy that some people have figured out.”

“To dance when you’re afraid?”

“Sure, people often sing to themselves when they’re scared.  It can help calm yourself down.”

The boy sat with a look of odd surprise, digesting the notion.  Then slowly the boy grew curious, confused.  He looked to Lucilius.

“When did those big birds go extinct?”

“Oh, long time ago, real long ago.”

The boy grew suspicious.  “How do you know about the big birds that went extinct?”

Lucilius gave the boy a knowing smile.  “Maybe I saw them?”

“That’s impossible, you’re not old enough.”

“How do you know?  I was here before you.”

The boy considered with more suspicion.

“Kiddo, you have to realize, it’s a strange tradition, but adults are constantly lying to kids about stuff.”

“About everything?”  The boy nearly shouted.

“No, not everything, but for whatever reason, a lot of stuff just doesn’t get properly explained, and often you just get something that’s wholesale off planet.”

“But why?”

Lucilius shrugged his shoulders.  “Ya know, I’m not really sure why.  I think maybe it has to do with the fact that other adults are often so unwilling to believe or accept what other adults say, and maybe it’s just refreshing to have a kid around who will believe any old thing, and adults just have a bit too much mindless fun with that freedom, or they’re just trying to make a short cut so they don’t have to explain something all the way.”

The boy was a bit dejected, looking down at the grass, till he noticed again the rolling murmuration in the sky.  He smiled at it, and then tried to imagine a bigger bird diving at the flock, trying to eat some of the smaller birds.  The murmuration seemed to split and move in a way that would dodge the attack.  A light smile formed on the boy’s face.

“Wait.” The boy exclaimed, pausing for a moment to gather his words as Lucilius looked to him.

“Are you lying to me?”

UNEXPECTED EFFECT

November 21st, 2020

There are certain efforts that have results that are entirely unlike the process of getting those results.  In fact, most things are like this.  The experience of having a clean and tidy room is not at all like the task of cleaning a room and making it tidy.

Unfortunately there are many useful habits that run on the same paradox.  The 3rd day of attempting to meditate is not at all like the 300th day of meditation.  And it goes even further.  The whole day when we squeeze in that third session of meditation is entirely different from the 300th whole day when 299 days of consecutive meditation are stacked up behind.  It’s the difference between walking into a completely wrecked room and trying to do a few minutes of cleaning walking into a fairly well kept room and organizing just a few items that are out of place.

The important difference to note is that the effects of sustained effort aren’t really available to the person who’s just starting.  This simultaneously goes without saying and needs to be explicitly spelled out.  When starting out, we all have a hazy intellectual notion of what the effect will be, but so often we give up before receiving any meaningful result because the bridge between that intellectual understanding and a meaningful, visceral and tangible result is vast.  Having done it contains an important gulf that is very rarely crossed by intellectual understanding alone.  And in some sense that gulf can never be crossed by conceptualization alone.

This is one of the diametrically faulty and virtuous aspects of the imagination.  For some people and some circumstances, conceptual faith, as aided by the imagination is tantamount and required for making good decisions, as with navigating decisions around an invisible enemy like a virus, or radiation poisoning.  In such cases the conceptual imagination - that is reasonable imaginative extrapolation upon facts - is vital for getting enough of an understanding in order to avoid experiencing the real thing.  

The flip side is using that conceptual imagination - that is the reasonable imaginative extrapolation upon facts in order to get enough of an understanding in order to take the leap of faith and go for it.  The version of this regarding meditation is to take certain facts and place them at the core of an enduring practice that feels pointless in the moment for the sake that one day such effects will turn up.  For example, brain changes, as seen in MRI scans, induced by meditative practice aren’t visible until a person has racked up a minimum of 3 or 4 months of consistent practice.  That’s quite a long time to do something without receiving some sort of positive result.  Now granted, for many people, subjective results come long before this 3 to 4 month period is traversed, but it’s possible that such results are psychosomatic.  Real progress can only be objectively verified by brain changes, regarding primarily the size of the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the size of the connections linking the two along with the connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.  

So there’s a tricky balance to strike when it comes to those things that we understand but haven’t actually experienced.  It’s easy for the imagination to run off on it’s own into the realm of unsubstantiated conjecture.  Strangely, at the same time, the human mind seems fairly resistant to pulling the same trick when the fulfillment of those substantiated conjectures require real work, regularly and consistently.  The actual effect, if an when we finally take the leap and put in the time is often, a surprising if expected experience.