I even gave an interview about this in The Village Voice:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/11/scott_bradlee_nickelback_cover_motown_detroit_thanksgiving.php

But this post isn’t really about Motown or Nickelback.  Well- perhaps it is, in some oblique manner.  I guess we’ll find out…

Perhaps more so than ever before, musicians today are burdened with the monumental task of reinventing the wheel.  Having seemingly exhausted the possibilities of both tonal and atonal music, the only real innovations left to make deal with the channels of delivery themselves; as the saying goes, the medium is the message.

Even so, it’s still fun to explore the musicsphere and experiment with genres and ideas like they did in the good ol’ days.  More importantly, there is still a demand for new sounds within a recognizable framework.  Since I enjoy this kind of thing, I spend a good deal of time scouring the history of recorded music for new ideas.  Although I would describe my own taste in music to be relatively mainstream, I find myself spending the most time pondering those genres of music that sprang forth fully conceived, existed for a brief time, and then vanished forever.

….

Evolution in art shares much in common with evolution in nature.  In nature, certain adaptations are selected for while others die off; this is done so effectively that when viewing only the “through line” of selected adaptations, it is easy for one to mistakenly believe that nature produced such adaptations out of necessity, instead of passively allowing those most conducive to survival and replication to become dominant.  In reality, most adaptations were evolutionary dead ends that simply faded away quietly.  There exists an interesting parallel to this in art and music- the chief difference being that culture selects for certain artistic “adaptations,” which in turn shape culture itself.  Of course, there is a bit of circular logic here, and this is what allows us to make the case for cultural “dead ends” as viable, if not obvious, sources for artistic development.

Instead of citing some universally accepted musical dead ends such as serialism, I want to take this time to explore some decidedly aesthetically unpleasant contributions in the last century.  Let us first examine the strange case of William “Shooby” Taylor.

Shooby Taylor, the self-proclaimed “human horn,” dedicated his life to a quixotic quest of approximating the sound of a saxophone with his voice.  In doing so, he created quite possibly the silliest and weirdest music known to man.  A typical Shooby record consists of out-of-tune scatting with unusual nonsense syllables (most notably, “shraw”), juxtaposed over existing commercial records by Johnny Cash, The Ink Spots, and other famous artists. Take a moment to view http://www.shooby.com (it’s oddly entertaining, particularly the “lyrics” section that hosts painstaking transcriptions).

Although on the surface there is an abundance of unintentional comedy in Shooby’s output, further inspection actually reveals some interesting points to consider from an artistic standpoint.  For one thing, Shooby is nothing if not unique– from the bizarre syllables he employs to his sense of phrasing, his musical vocabulary is entirely singular and self-contained.  For better or for worse, NOBODY sounds remotely like Shooby Taylor.  Another noteworthy element is his remarkable consistency – it is evident to the listener that he has honed this strange style for many, many years, allowing it to take shape over time.  Even though his delusions provided the impetus for this cultivation, this does little to detract from the sheer creativity required to imagine a musical vocabulary that had never been heard before.

When considering all of this, the next logical question is if Shooby would have succeeded in his quest had he been a technically proficient, musically literate vocalist.  Would he have shaped the genre of vocalese, inspiring younger performers such as Bobby McFerrin to adopt a saxophone-centric model of scat singing?  Would he have broken genre lines, making it perfectly acceptable to scat jazz licks in the middle of a Johnny Cash song or a Bach Cantata?  Sure, it is far-fetched when given the benefit of cultural hindsight, but the practice of beatboxing is not altogether dissimilar.  Culture, however, “selected” for beatboxing, while relegating saxophone impersonations to the annals of fringe music.  But is there any rhyme or reason for this selection? 

As far as I can see, cultural selection in music seems to be more of a matter of politics than aesthetics.  Both “populist” (mainstream) and “statist” (critically-acclaimed) works manage to make an imprint on history, and anything that lacks either characteristic seems to be ignored.  In some cases, a style of music can become so mainstream that it inspires enough of a backlash to effectively kill the genre.  In other cases, a particular style favored by critics and academics can cease yielding interesting developments and immediately render itself lifeless. These are the styles of music that we learn about in music history class- but is it the whole picture?  What about styles of music that never caught on at all?  How important is the pre-existing taste of the audience when it comes to musical innovation?

Recently, composer Dave Soldier and artists Komar & Melamid set out to define contemporary musical taste in a qualitative setting when they recorded “The Most Unwanted Song,” based on survey results.

Some highlights include the opera soprano rapping over a tuba at 1:37 and the “Christmastime at Walmart” segment at 4:06 (for contrast, they also wrote and recorded “The Most Wanted Song,” which, to me, was far less inspired:

http://komar-melamid-and-dave-soldier-the-most–mp3-download.kohit.net/_/859487 ).

Of course, there is no REASON that we should find a rapping opera singer to be distasteful, but we do- even when we try to be objective and acknowledge that our personal preference in music is largely shaped by the culture in which we live.  We can even readily imagine an alternate universe where the opera-rap hybrid thrives (perhaps even with saxophone-vocalese accompaniment!), but we can not seem to force ourselves to enjoy it.  It’s a curious thing, and probably prevents us from exploring the possibilities of such a genre. For this reason, musicians that can successfully incorporate such left-of-center choices into their own work without sacrificing listenability are often heralded as “brilliant.”  Actually, all that requires is an open mind and an understanding of audience psychology.  The REAL innovators are those that conceive of ENTIRELY NEW, self-contained genres of music- almost always at the expense of listenability.  Of course, as much as we say we LOVE it, true innovation in art isn’t always viewed in a positive light [as an aside, a search for 'Stockhausen' on iTunes yields two different artists- one is 20th century composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the other a jazz-fusion band called Stockhausen.  Guess which one appears first in the iTunes search listing].

So, to bring this back to Nickelback and attempt to frame this discourse in a nice, aesthetically-satisfying manner:  perhaps Motown covers of Nickelback songs sound better than Nickelback covers of Motown songs.  Or vice versa.  Or, perhaps there lies an undiscovered Motown/Nickelback hybrid that could reinvent neo-grunge altogether.  Or maybe not.  The point is, our idea of what “works” musically is a bit illusory, because we are forced to look at the past to make such a judgment, and it’s all a bit arbitrary to begin with.  Most creative ideas in music will result in dead ends for no good reason other than that they failed to gain a toehold in popular or critical circles—and that’s ok.  It’s like that for non-musicians, too.  You truly must enjoy the creative process—even if most of the time it feels a bit like fumbling around in the dark, trying to find the light switch.  Even if sometimes, you wind up sounding like Shooby Taylor. -SCB

Postmodern Jukebox is, at its core, simply the process of taking contemporary pop songs and transforming them in some manner. One could call the Jukebox’s output a “cover song,” but I feel that doing so ignores the fact that said transformation has some concrete, ideological underpinnings. In other words, I want to make this sound profound, so just humor me a bit.

I have long had a love/hate relationship with pop music: I loved to hate it. As a music school kid and jazz snob, I wasn’t interested in listening to anything that might appeal to those that I deemed to possess a less refined palette of musical taste. This willful ignorance continued for some time; it was not until I began making YouTube videos (and subsequently receiving requests for modern pop songs) that I decided to check out what the kids are listening to these days.

What I found is that, despite my initial aversion to the stuff I was hearing, I was unable to truly categorize this as “bad music” without first defining a set of arbitrary, culturally-defined criteria. Furthermore, the fact that such a rigorous vetting process exists for the output of major labels indicated that these songs and artists certainly RESONATED with the culture of our times–no easy feat, in and of itself. As a relentless devil’s advocate, I then found that by simply altering the context of the creation of such songs, I could EVEN find some artistic merit inside of them.

To demonstrate this, I now present my argument that Kesha-with-a-dollar-sign COULD be considered an “artist”:

………

Suppose that Ke$ha was actually a product of an underground group of Luddite artists that spent their evenings lamenting the soul-crushing alienation from all things true and beautiful that modern technology had imposed upon them. Attention spans had withered, sophisticated news items were condensed into 140 characters or less, and the youth of the country had shunned a sense of purpose for outrageous displays of hedonism. A country founded on ingenuity and investment in the future had regressed to an unruly mob of pleasure seekers.

Enter their protege, Ke$ha (an acronym for, “Kantian Ethics [dollar sign placeholder for symmetry] Hold Authority”). An Ivy League philosophy major-turned-recluse, she nonetheless possessed the looks and necessary lack of social grace to appeal to such a constituency. It was soon decided that she was the only hope to revive the braindead from the lulling glow of instant gratification . But how?? By pulling a bait-and-switch–attracting a fan base with a facade of vapidness, then preaching important truths about the human condition??

No. She would force a paradigm shift by simply giving them what they wanted–an overload of insipid, thoughtless material that seemed to affirm a hedonist lifestyle beyond the point that most would dare desire. The most reliable route to reach the masses? Pop music. And so, the prophetizing began, and the party did not start until she walked in.

Such an effective ruse it was that even her detractors failed to see the multiple levels of irony contained within the lyrics, and the music production that commented on the manufactured, synthetic nature of a consumer society by taking its cue from early 8-bit videogames. As with most types of overindulgence, the sickeningly sweet overload of poor taste triggered a backlash that spread through the ranks of her legions of supporters, which eventually demanded an end to the forcefeeding of superficial culture to which they had grown accustomed…and an end to auto-tune and other technological enhancements of music, as well. The Luddites rejoiced; Ke$ha was a success.
….

Now, if this was indeed the story of Ke$ha, I would have to concede that this was an artistic venture that managed to simultaneously indulge, satirize, and transform a culture–pretty high praise for any post-Enlightenment figure.  Obviously this is a fabrication, but if we allow that Ke$ha is self-aware enough to see her work as a caricature of popular culture, then she’s probably not THAT much worse than Andy Warhol. Well, Andy Warhol with an auto-tune plugin, anyhow.

So, realizing that a parable involving Ke$ha is a pretty oblique way to explain Postmodern Jukebox, I will further elaborate on what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get people to stop thinking of songs as rigid, ephemeral objects, and more like malleable globs of silly putty. Songs can be twisted, shaped, and altered without losing their identities–just as we grow, age, and expire without losing ours–and it is through this exploration that the gap between “high” and “low” art can be bridged most readily. Using popular music as source material is nothing new, but it had fallen out of favor somewhat as the era of the standard went the way of the Victrola. Now, with Radiohead songs being covered by multiple jazz artists, we seem to have arrived at an era ripe for such a blurring between taste and genre distinctions. As something of a capitalist, I’m happy to throw my hat into the ring. Perhaps, in the future, it will become common practice for the lyrics of popular songs to change over time, as well. I can imagine the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” appended to reflect issues of arthritis and regularity (well, maybe not). This would be a big step in defining a new type of fluid, changing, differentiable music, as opposed to the static, fixed model we have taken for granted. The times they are a-changing. Tik Tok, indeed. -SCB

Let’s get into it—I now present you with the classic Liar / Truth Teller Riddle:

“A man finds himself standing in front of two doors: one which leads to heaven and the other which leads to hell. In front of the doors are two guards, one which always lies and the other which always tells the truth. The man does not know which door is which, nor which guard is which. He must ask one question of one of the guards to determine which door will lead him to heaven…”

You may have seen this one before, and you may know the answer. I don’t care about that. Pretend you don’t. Pretend you’re on a reality TV show with no prior knowledge of this riddle, and maybe substitute “Heaven” and “Hell” with the Price is Right showcase containing the new car, and the kind of lame showcase with the weird ‘70s furniture, respectively.

As you can see, the stakes are high. But let’s cut to commercial and discuss this a bit before doing anything rash. How do we go about selecting an appropriate question? How do we know how to evaluate the answer we receive?

Of course, just as you may not need a flashlight to unlock your front door when it’s pitch black, you may not need a strategy at all to come up with the correct answer—“fumbling in the dark “ can be quite effective, and the correct answers often come out of the blue with seemingly no antecedent.

However, for us mere mortals, we can choose to use our magical gift of reason to light the way for us. I’ll describe a simulated thought process:

The first step is to truly UNDERSTAND the problem. This means stripping away the extraneous information. To evaluate each statement, ask yourself whether you can substitute the given subject for another without changing the problem. Start simple: A MAN finds himself STANDING in front of TWO doors. Suppose we want to be politically correct; could we change this to a woman? Of course we can. Maybe she isn’t standing. Could she be hopping on one foot? Sure, it makes no difference. Now, what if we changed it to THREE doors? Uh oh…then the contents of the third door is undefined in the description. Better leave it as two doors.

After completing this excision, we have the statements that matter:

(i) Two Doors; one with the desired outcome, one with the undesired outcome.
(ii) One Guard Per Door; one always lies, one always tells the truth. The identity of either is unknown to you.
(iii) One Question Available to Ask Either Guard to Obtain Desired Outcome.

Now, we have some information to work with. We see immediately that asking questions like, “Is it the door on the left?” will not increase our odds beyond that of pure chance; there’s no correlation between left and right and lies and truth stated. In fact, there isn’t much to go on…but that’s a good thing.

Let’s examine each statement for any outstanding features. When we do this, we notice that statement (ii) is the only one of note—it gives the CONDITIONS of the problem (the other two simply state the “rules of the game”). Therefore, it is not unreasonable to make an assumption that, if there is, in fact, a solution to this riddle, it should exploit this condition. Let’s ask some more questions—specifically, about truth and lies…

If we ask a question that only involves the truth, such as, “Is the Truth Teller guarding the correct door?” we still fail to increase our odds beyond chance; If the Truth Teller is, indeed, guarding the desired door, he will say yes; if not, he will say no. But, if the liar is asked, he will say the opposite. Of course, we have no way of knowing who we asked, so the answer would be meaningless.

This serves to illustrate the fact that you can be on the right PATH to a solution and STILL be no closer to the answer; it’s often an all-or-nothing proposition. However, this doesn’t mean that our assumption about statement (ii) is incorrect.

After trying out analogous questions involving the Liar only, it becomes apparent that the impediment to our quest to win that sweet 1979 LeBaron lies in the fact that each guard will give opposite answers. If we ask X to the Truth Teller, we receive X. If we ask X to the Liar, we get O. This is a major bummer.

Now, imagine what the solution, if there is one, would hypothetically contain—what would overcome this barrier? Obviously, there would need to be a question that would receive the same answer from either guard. That way, the answer wouldn’t be due to chance.

So, now we have two pieces of information about the solution: It must exploit the fact that one guard always lies and one always tells the truth. Also, it must force the same answer from either guard. We can extend this last one by recognizing that such a question would, out of necessity, be interpreted differently by each guard; this means it must be a general question that does not refer to the Liar or Truthteller by NAME.

So now we just need to find a way to throw a monkey wrench in the Truth/Lie machine. A question that somehow exploits the properties of the Liar and Truthteller, without explicitly referring to them, AND forces the same answer from both.

This last bit may be sufficient to spark the answer, but if not, there is one more interesting property about Lies and Truth: If we represent both as binary logic, a lie about a lie will equal the truth…whereas the truth about the truth will STILL be the truth…

Similarly, If you ask the Liar to tell you what HE WOULD SAY if you WERE TO ASK him which door to choose, you’ll negate his lie and get the CORRECT door. If you ask the Truth Teller to tell you what he would say, you’ll also get the CORRECT door. Both answers are the same; drive that new car off the set and go get your pets spayed or neutered.

The other solution, of course, would be to “bounce” the answers off of one another by asking, “Which door would the OTHER guard tell me to choose?” In this case, both will tell you to choose the incorrect door, so you just choose the opposite one. Both questions, when you pick them apart, serve the same function and satisfy the necessary conditions of our hypothetical solution.

Pretty amazing stuff, this ability we have as thinking humans! Don’t feel bad if it took you awhile to get the answer—it took me a long time, and I felt very dumb as a result. It wasn’t until I actually sat down and went through all the steps I described that I figured both solutions out (I don’t think there are any other solutions that aren’t a variation on the one I gave, but I could be wrong).

Now, in our everyday lives, we encounter much more difficult situations with many more variables, and many, many more outcomes. But, when we pick these situations apart, we are often surprised at how much of our confusion stemmed from a simple misreading of a problem, or our inability to visualize what a solution might LOOK like. Thinking is hard! But, if you can find a way understand the problem AND understand what the solution might entail, all the stuff in the middle usually finds a way to work itself out.
As an alternative, you can always just bid $1 and wait for the other contestants to mess up. –SCB

How do we extract the “value” of a particular piece, and does such value even exist?

Let’s start at the very bottom and work our way up, as we construct a hypothetical model of a piece of music, bear with me for a bit…

Every sound, no matter how complex, can be broken down into a Fourier series–an infinite summation of simple periodic sine and cosine waves of varying coefficients, which are interpreted as “frequency.” If we “zoom in” on these waves, we can even measure the instantaneous rate of change at any given point. From there, in theory, one could measure the corresponding physical model of sound (oscillations in pressure), down to the molecular level.

But, without seeing how that pressure changes with time, “sound” is completely meaningless, because frequency necessarily requires time–so we need a second dimension to represent the independent variable, time. With enough superimposition, you can accurately model the physical reality of a piece of music on a Cartesian coordinate system in only two dimensions, with amplitude as a function of time—although this would be quite messy and probably obscure most of the details.

However, sound waves travel in three dimensions, so it would be better to picture these waves as emanating from the center of a sphere (the idealized sound source) and traveling outward in all directions. Then, once again, we need to add another dimension for time, so this model becomes a something of a fiber bundle—a 4 dimensional sphere with all of the information from the 2 dimensional time-amplitude representation projecting orthogonally at all points. To visualize this would be to imagine seeing all sides of a sphere at once; rotations in the 4th dimension would produce vantage points at which the sphere looks completely flat!

Then, you move away from the ideal acoustic model and start to take into account environmental disturbances in the medium of wave propagation as it traverses the distance from source to receiver. Notice that we are introducing new variables while retaining all the previous information.

Then, you have to take into account the reflecting, translating, and decoding mechanism in our auditory system, from the pinna to the corti to the auditory cortex, that turns these air pressure disturbances into pitches and dynamics. Now, we have “music”—or do we?

At this point, we reach an impasse, because we can only make objective measurements on SOUND. MUSIC, however, requires active interpretation—an audience—to truly distinguish it from sound. We can make certain qualitative statements about the nature of the sounds, or we can analyze the structure of the piece, or we can compare it to other works, but these all depend upon a previous frame of reference—this requires human interpretation. Once we talk of interpretation, we require an answer to the hard problem of consciousness to proceed objectively. Already we can see a crack in the foundation of music criticism—when applied with rigor it mistakes the aesthetics of a culture for an a priori absolute. Therefore, rigorous music criticism is a fallacy.

But, getting back to the model, suppose we do the impossible and proceed seamlessly from SOUND in the geosphere to MUSIC in the noosphere. Now, a proper representation of a piece of music must examine the interpretative abilities of the listener–their age, life experience, intelligence, knowledge of music, prior musical experiences, cultural conditioning, attentiveness, etc. Any tweaking of these qualitative variables will result in a very different experience for the listener.

Then, we do the same for the interpretative abilities of the collective audience of those that hear the piece, which includes listeners of a wide range of personal and cultural differences, as well as their respective listening environments. We are going from an audience of one to an audience of many.

Finally, we must extend this observation of the interpretive abilities of the collective audience to include EVERYONE who has ever listened to/ will listen that piece. Now, we have included the complete physical profile of a piece of music, and a complete psychological profile.

That’s the only way to truly have the final say on the “meaning” of a piece of music.

A bit of a hopeless endeavor, no?

However, just as we accept that music is both microscopic (pressure oscillations at the molecular level) and macroscopic (the history of the entire population that ever heard it), we can also accept that other elements of nondualism exist in music, and that binary logic simply has no place in music criticism. To generalize this to other artistic disciplines, the obligatory self-referential nature of the act of criticism renders itself null and void of objective merit; its value is purely subjective, much like MUSIC itself.

The BEST critics understand this, and instead use their considerable knowledge and resources to make sense of music WITHOUT removing its cultural context; instead of passing value-free JUDGEMENTS, they ENLIGHTEN the reader by guiding them towards their own, meaningful interpretations. These critics never have to face the embarrassment of having initially panned some new style of music, only to retract their review once it gains critical acclaim!

The point? Enjoy music (or art, or whatever) for what it is—a form of expression–and don’t try to fit it into neat little boxes, or devise a sliding scale or taste hierarchy to measure its intrinsic value. Don’t bemoan the passing of some great era of music—chances are, the power of nostalgia has simply placed it upon an undeserved pedestal. Don’t fall into the trap of defining what is “hip” by the standards of others—standards that were once, in turn, defined by other, decidedly “non-hip” people. Listen to what YOU like, and don’t try to justify it to anyone!!

The beauty of music lies in its limitless capacity for personal expression. Above and beyond that, it’s up to you. -SCB

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”
-Elvis Costello/ Frank Zappa/ Steve Martin/ Laurie Anderson

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZ…

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Hello-My-Ragtim…

Let’s lighten things up and talk 80′s ragtime:

This piece has a long history.  I began playing an approximate version of this almost 10 years ago, only with classic rock songs such as “Stairway to Heaven” instead of 80′s tunes.   I was playing with a band at bars in Connecticut, still underage, and I found that interpreting these classic rock chestnuts as stride piano pieces caused a stir.  To be accurate, it was pretty polarizing;  People either loved it or hated it.  ”Freebird” is gospel to some folks, and to them, desecrating it in such a manner was blasphemy.

This current reincarnation came about as I was promoting New Arts NYC’s “New Arts in the Park” concert.  My original idea was to cover 40 songs (!!), but that ran wayyyy too long, so I settled on 10. I made the video hastily, listing the songs I wanted to cover on a piece of paper in sharpie (said paper can be seen to my left in the video), and improvising the whole thing off the top of my head. Normally, I’d do a few takes of something like this, but I felt that my neighbors were patient enough with me as it was.  I slapped a title on it and threw it online.

A couple of days later, it had gotten 10,000 views, which is more people than I have met in my lifetime.  Neil Gaiman in particular was responsible for spreading the word–he twittered (is that the word??) about it when it only had a couple hundred views.   From there, it was a short step to viral video sites and blogs.  

At the time of this writing, it’s been just shy of two weeks and it’s holding steady at about 60,000 hits…perhaps just a drop in the ocean in pop culture terms, but far more than I could ever have fathomed.   I received a lot of really cool emails from people that enjoyed the video, and that always makes me smile.  Finding my likeness on certain humor websites was a bit surreal, however.

Let me pause to acknowledge my favorite placement of this video:

http://clownalley.blogspot.com/2009/06/scott-bradley-80s-hits-played-in.html

You know you’ve made it as a musician when you are featured on a site called, “Clown Alley.”  Scroll right:  They sell clown shoes.  And, they misspelled my name.

I’m very appreciative that the internet has afforded such a large audience to my ridiculous hijinks, and am looking forward to the possibilities it will yield in the future.  I plan on making many more videos, some funny, some serious.  However, I don’t plan on following up the “80′s Ragtime” series with “90′s Ragtime” or  the like, because that’s too derivative and I’m not a fan of sequels.  I do, however, plan on doing a studio recording of the medley (with a few extras) on a grand piano to be made available on iTunes.  That will be the definitive version of this thing, and then I can retire from the world of ironic ragtime medleys knowing that I did my part.

For now, let’s have some fun with this thing and see where it goes.  I’d personally like to see it start showing up in completely irrelevant locations on the internet–that would crack me up . 

Thank you all for showing it to your friends, and I look forward to entertaining you again. “Clown Alley”–stand by. -SCB

(Note:  As a few nerds were all too eager to point out, “ragtime” is a bit of a misnomer when used to describe this video; it borrows much more from stride piano and more contemporary “old fashioned” piano styles.  If you are interested in the rich history of stride piano that I humbly attempt to approximate, here is a list of a few of the real masters:

James P. Johnson

Fats Waller

Willie “The Lion” Smith

Art Tatum

Dick Hyman (yes, actually his name)

Terry Waldo

Dick Wellstood

^^^All of them are ridiculously awesome players that contributed to the development of this genre and whose invocation alone keep this style of music alive.)

Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’ offers a new take on exceptional people, starting with what he terms the ‘10,000 hour rule.’  Essentially, the rule states that for someone to completely master a skill, they must allow for approximately 10,000 of dedicated practice.  This holds just as true for gene-dominated fields, such as athletics, as intellectual fields, such as science; the men and women that become standouts are the ones that put in way more time than everybody else.  Even the prototypical child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart does not violate this rule; he simply put his 10,000 hours in remarkably early in life.

The other noteworthy observation is that genius does not exist in a vacuum; that is to say, genius always makes use of its forerunners, even in cases of ideas that seems to come out of left field.  In 1905, a clerk in a Swiss patent office discovered  what we now know as the Theory of Special Relativity.  The man, Albert Einstein, was not employed by academia and worked outside of the mainstream.  However, he was very much up to date on current studies on electrodynamics.  His revolutionary move was to discard the idea of an ‘ether,’ a medium in which light was believed to travel, similar to waves traveling through water.  This was a significant departure from the conventional wisdom of the scientific community at the time, and it stands to reason that only someone with no professional reputation to lose would make such as assertion.  Indeed, Henri Poincare would have certainly been the first to discover Special Relativity had he been willing to drop the idea of the ether.

Perhaps, in light of this, Einstein’s genius was his temperament.  His natural rebelliousness and ability to focus wholeheartedly on his ambitions (often to the detriment of his personal life) gave him a huge advantage over his peers that were still reluctant to contradict Newtonian physics.  That is not to discount his considerable intellect in the least, only to say that there were plenty of brilliant minds and certainly better mathematicians, whom history has since forgotten.  

An even more striking model of exceptional human ability is found in those that have achieved despite considerable impairment, whether physical, mental, or social.  My longtime favorite jazz pianist, Art Tatum, was one such model. 

Blind from infancy, Tatum grew up to be the most technically proficient jazz pianist that ever lived.  Even more significantly, he developed a wholly unique  improvisatory style, one that fused 19th century impressionistic harmony with elements of  stride piano and modern swing. It is testament to his uniqueness that he inspired relatively few disciples in jazz; his style was so inimitable and all-encompassing that he evolved outside of the jazz mainstream.

It would be easy to say that Art Tatum achieved despite his disability, but perhaps it is more accurate to say that he achieved BECAUSE of his disability.  Due to the elastic nature of the human brain, a person deprived of one particular sense will find that his/her other senses learn to “pick up the slack,” so to speak.  In Art Tatum’s case, the reduced need for visual processing allowed him to develop incredibly sensitive hearing and touch–the two senses that are necessary for performing at a virtuosic level.  

A more dramatic example of this is found in savant and “Rain Man” inspiration Kim Peek:

In Peek’s case, the nerves that normally connect the two hemispheres of the brain are absent, forcing the neurons to make other connections.  This, in turn, probably resulted in his prodigious memory.  

Depending on how deterministic we believe our lives to be, we can readily identify some or nearly all the factors that combine to produce what we recognize as “talent” in others–and the deeper we dig, the less important “natural ability” becomes.  Of course, this shouldn’t change our appreciation of displays of talent one iota.  There will always be something superhuman about  impressive feats of human achievement, regardless of how textbook the circumstances that produced them are in actuality.  The miracle in all this is that the sum produced by all these factors is infinitely greater than its parts.

Talent is NOT something reserved for the select few; it is something waiting to be unlocked inside all of us.  Of course, not everyone will answer the call, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  The sheer investment of time required to master a skill may be better spent in other ways.   Besides, we are somewhat past the era of the Polymath;  the amount and depth of knowledge in the modern world practically prohibits the mastery of multiple skills, and our fast changing world is impacted more by deliberate, collective efforts, rather than random acts of genius.  Still, it’s an empowering idea.  I’m going to go get started on those 10,000 hours. –SCB

If there is one movie that I am constantly forcing upon people, it is Godfrey Reggio’s 1983 film, Koyaaanisqatsi.  I must’ve seen it at least 40 times at the time of this writing, and I still manage find  a new angle of appreciation for it with every viewing.  I thought I’d write a bit about the film and discuss some of the questions it raises about the future of our planet.  

Koyaanisqatsi is not a conventional movie.  There is no plot.  There is no spoken dialogue.  There is no character development; in fact, all the people shown are  ultimately reduced to one dimensional blips of light in a kind of live pointillist diorama.  There is, however, an unmistakably strong subtextual narrative created by the often breathtaking visual juxtapositions.  The film may demand a requisite attention span, but it is far from abstruse.

I won’t waste words on describing the sequence of visuals, because they are accurately described here.  Or, better yet, stop reading this, turn off the lights and your cell phone, and watch the entire film here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sps6C9u7ras

It is easy to see why this is a significant piece of cinema, even if we place this among present day documentaries.  We may forget that Ron Fricke’s cinematography introduced an entire generation to the time lapse video effects that now seem commonplace, but we can not deny that the camera work is absolutely beautiful.  Philip Glass’ iconic score may be a far cry from the sweeping orchestral scores that one might expect from a movie subtitled, “Life Out of Balance,” but the cold, sterile minimalism compliments the narrative rather well.  Finally, the cinematic sequences themselves–I’ve tried and can not imagine them in any other order than the one in which they are presented.  The pacing of the scenes allow for a natural ebb and flow while growing almost imperceptibly faster, until you suddenly are presented with far too much information for your brain to process.  People suddenly become Twinkies in a factory, then bits of lights, then invisible particles on a motherboard.  You needn’t be cognizant of any message to appreciate the subtitle–watching that climactic fast sequences and the inertia one feels upon reaching the static landscape scene that suddenly interrupts it will make you physiologically feel “out of balance.”  

As visually stunning as it may be, the thoughts and questions that the film raises are the real talking points.  The film’s use of time lapse effects allows one to take themselves out of the present and consider their place in the world objectively.  It is not a comfortable feeling for someone raised in a culture that believes in the triumph of the individual; we may see hundreds of thousands of people appearing in this film, but from our point of view, they are all rather insignificant, despite all their 1980′s glory (there is a bit of retro humor found in this film).  Clearly, we are only considering the effects of humankind on a very large scale, so that leaves us with a environmental awareness film that does not compel us to change and instead just essentially tells us we’re screwed.  It’s “An Inconvenient Truth” with the original ending exhumed from the cutting room floor.

But, the real question:  Is the fatalistic, apocalyptic view presented by this film a valid one?  Well, yes and no.  Certainly, the film’s portrayal of technology destroying the natural beauty of the Earth and stripping away our humanity is accurate, so taking this to its natural conclusion leads to the grim visions of the future presented therein.  In that sense, it may be valid.  But, that is overly simplistic and discounts the fact that technology is, in fact, an adaptive process–a sort of extension of our  own evolution.  Moreover, if we are so destructive by nature, shouldn’t we have blown ourselves up years ago?  There are clearly other mitigating factors here.

Take the history of the western world in the last century.  Two horrific, devastating World Wars in the span of two decades, followed by a period of relative peace.  What brought about this peace?  In a lot of ways, the Bomb and its potential to wipe out entire nations.  The doctrine of mutually assured destruction  is simply enough of a psychological deterrent to prevent a third (and probably final) world war.  Suddenly, the fates of nations have become entwined, and peaceful diplomacy is now the only means for survival among world powers.  It is a tense peace, but peace nonetheless.

Technological evolution, by definition, occurs on an exponential scale. As I mentioned before, it is an adaptive process that solves many problems, but also creates many problems as unavoidable byproducts–the second law of thermodynamics governs this.  There is no distinction between technological evolution and own evolution as a species, because they are one in the same.  We have incorporated technology into our lives just as we would have done a pair of wings.  Like the increasing amount of entropy in the universe, the process is irreversible.  We can not close Pandora’s Box.

However, this evolution has another notable byproduct–it connects our consciousness.  With every new development comes twenty more developments, then twenty more for each of those, and so forth, with each one growing in efficiency and efficacy.   Information spreads further and faster than ever before.  Consequently, globalization ensues, the world grows smaller, and events that once occurred in remote isolation now have global impact.  As in postwar diplomacy, our fates become entwined, and it becomes necessary to elevate our collective consciousness to a one world-one society state of being.  Technology is simply the agency for this change.

Even if we operate under the belief that humans are destructive and violent by nature, as some evolutionary psychologists do, one could easily argue that these were simply unattractive adaptive traits that were at one time necessary for survival.  However, in a globalized world where one’s fate is inextricably tied to that of others, such traits would be an evolutionary disadvantage.   Indeed, our technologically advanced civilizations of today are on the whole far less barbaric than ancient civilizations were.  

In short:  Evolution is a real procrastinator.  It takes a threat that promises to annihilate a species before it brings about change.  I am fully confident that when we, as a global community, are faced with such a threat, we will have the ingenuity and collective will to overcome it, just as we have done in the past.

But  this is all large scope stuff.  Where does that leave us in our day to day lives?  Reliance on such evolution sounds a bit like a soft nihilistic philosophy.  Should we even bother to care about conservation?  Or how we treat others, for that matter? The answer is YES!

We don’t live on a plane of existence where thousands of years pass before our eyes.  We don’t even live in a time lapse world where people turn into twinkies and cities turn into microchips.  The distant future of this planet is something that we may never see, let alone directly impact.  But, our actions do have tangible, measurable effects on the here and now, and we owe it to OURSELVES, as part of a global community, to make responsible decisions that improve the world around us.  A simple act of kindness may not have an appreciable effect on the world two hundred years from now, but it may mean all the world to another person for an instant, and ultimately, our lives are a series of instances.  Don’t do good with the expectation of reward, do good because we’re all one and the same, made up of the same matter, living in the same environment, with the same needs, the same dreams, and the same destiny.–SCB