Letters to the Editor
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The Dreamer and the Dreamed
Introduced to LeDoux's thoughts by my son, a gifted electric guitarist who has long tried to articulate the thinking LeDoux expresses so eloquently here, I have followed and been extremely gratified to finally understand from a neural perspective (as opposed to just the subjective experience so beautifully set down by the late John Fahey) what may be happening between what I think of as "me" and the music from which I may actually have been in part created.
I'm also gratified to know that LeDoux has not fully accepted the notion (set forth here a while back by Daniel Levitin) that we are programmed in our adolescence by the music we hear during that crucial period in our lives. While we are probably subject to more naturally-released adrenaline (and a lot of other hormones, too, come to think of it) during that period, there is something, it has always seemed to me, that is already there, waiting, and it is music. Sometimes it is music we have never heard, yet recognize upon first listen. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said "Music can make us nostalgic for places we've never been and never will be." There is something else at work, and LeDoux, through his work, both neurological and musical (if the two can truly be separated) may have begun to discover the bridge between the strictly physical and the spiritual (the brain as "lens" for something like a soul). We are all richer both for the science and the music. Rock on.
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Very interesting article.
I grew up playing classical piano music, and ended up as a music snob, even as a kid. Some years ago I fell in love with flamenco music, and for the last ten years have studied flamenco guitar.
After discovering just how difficult it is to play guitar, I gained a great respect for all guitarists, even rock guitarists. So at the advanced age of 54, not at all acting my age, I got a 1970s Fender Strat, with the wide Stevie Ray Vaughan frets, and have been learning electric guitar. My flamenco guitar teacher, prior to his conversion to flamenco was a metal head and "cock rocker" who played in clubs in Los Angeles.
What's interesting is that my interest in music in recent years is almost a kind of obsession -- something I HAD to do, even when friends indicated that I was not "acting my age."
Well, with all respect to my geezer friends, fuck the idea of "acting my age." In my geezerhood I love flamenco and metal. Paco, Moraito, Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, Gerardo Nunez, Pepe Habichuela, bring 'em on. And there's plenty of room for Lacuna Coil, Dream Theater, and Porcupine Tree (the best band you've never heard.)
I'll never make a dime playing guitar, and I'm not worthy to dust the guitar cases of the great guitarists. But at age 54, I'm energized, I'm playing, I'm having the time of my life. Whatever the relationship between brain and music, it's happening for me.
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KIds are laying down their Xbox controllers and picking up Strats
I used to have a recurring dream where I was playing smokin' lead guitar--improvising and jamming like crazy. Although I'd been able to strum a few basic chords since I was 10, I had no idea about how to play lead guitar until my mid-40s (I'm 50 now), when I happened to take a few guitar lessons from a teacher who explained the pentatonic scale and how to play it.
Once I understood scales and how to play them on the guitar, I eventually became mildly proficient at playing/jamming lead licks on the guitar in any key.
Now that I know how to play lead guitar, guess what: that's right--I no longer have the recurring dream about playing lead guitar.
One reason middle-aged men are picking up Strats is because being middle-aged and financially-established, they can afford them. They can also afford to buy musical equipment for their kids, which is one reason why the kids are losing interest in video games, and forming bands everywhere. Another reason is that playing music is the ultimate game--it's different every single time you play it.
BTW, I'm sure somebody is already at work trying answer the question of why proficiency at playing Guitar Hero doesn't translate into proficiency at playing real guitar, and vice versa. My own theory is that Guitar Hero is a visual game, while playing real guitar is an auditory game.
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The Taliban understands this perfectly well
It's amazing that all of these things press the same button -- drugs, sex, music.
I think that's why the Taliban banned music along with hashish and sex.
You know what -- even if you go somewhere like Afghanistan, you find that the local musicians tend to enhance their endocannabinoids with phytocannabinoids.
The way musicians across the globe seem to take to cannabis makes me wonder if the CB1 system isn't involved in the enjoyment of music.
So this leads me to wonder --- if you block someone's CB1 receptors with the anti-cannabinoid called Rimonabant, can they still enjoy music?
Since Rimonabant is being sold as a diet drug in England and Europe, this would be an easy thing to check. Just find someone taking it and see if they can still enjoy music.
Rimonabant can't be sold in America because the side effects of blocking the brain's cannabinoid receptors appear to include vomiting, suicidal depression and multiple sclerosis.
If you think I'm joking, then Google Rimonabant.
I'm wondering if another side effect of Rimonabant could be an inability to enjoy music.
If that were true, then that would tell us that the CB1 receptor system is involved in our ability to enjoy music, in addition to its currently known functions of regulating appetite, deep wave sleep and the suppression of traumatic memories.
This is a really interesting receptor system. It's too bad that it's so undiscussable because of the politics.
I wonder if it ever will be publicly discussable in the scientific context, or whether the politics will win out and ignorance will rule forever.
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The Origin of Self, Music, Soul...
As a musicologist and composer (whose dissertation was helped substantially by one of Jonathan Cott's books), I am often puzzled and frustrated by the lack of interdisciplinary interest in how the brain processes music. We have to keep in mind the claims of people like Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near) and others of the Transhumanism movement who are absolutely certain that once computers reach a certain speed and memory, they will in essence be like thinking humans, aware of themselves, and perhaps even feeling emotions. As someone who is not standing in line for immortality by downloading my brain into a computer chip, I suspect that there is a big missing piece to this brain puzzle, although what it is I can't yet imagine. Meanwhile, it is quite chic these days to believe that the brain is a machine and all the mysteries of life, including music, will be solved once we sort the whole thing out. I might not yet be as chic as LeDoux, but hope that he's open-minded enough to include more music theorists in his research.