The Nerd In Me
12 Mar
Here’s the part where my nerdy Art History degree does good by me.
I use this bloggy thing mostly for reviews of stuff I’m reading because I’m an unpublished author. As an unpublished author, there’s not a great deal I can say about myself that would ever be of any interest, unless someone really likes India and Tibet (places I’ve been), playing the guitar and swimming (stuff I do well), or the Beatles and their 1990s ripoffs (things I’ve spent way too much time listening to/thinking about.) And it’s all pretty irrelevant when it comes to me peddling my daydreams.
But it occurs to me that one of my passions is entirely relevant, and that it might stand up to some exposition here. That would be, of course, research.
I spent a lot of time in college and grad school doing a very pseudo Indiana Jones thing-going to far off places, discovering unmapped shiny things, documenting them and presenting them to a bunch of Americans a few months later. (Except no one ever tried to sacrifice me to Kali. I did see a few goats and a hundred buffalo get sacrificed to her, but that’s another story for another time.) Creating polished little gems of academia, effectively. For anyone who wasn’t sure, an Art History degree is like a specialized English degree. All you do is write-just that you only get to write about one thing. I was sort of good at this, for what it’s worth, because I love research.
This may have something to do with my ridiculous need to make lists and organize information when it’s in disarray, of course (and by “may”, I mean “definitely does”.) But the first part is fun too, the bit before the organization and polishing, the discovering of… stuff. Any stuff, really, so long as it’s something I’m into. For academic purposes it was Krishna temples and ancient royal baths, but when it comes to writing…
Dude. Really, that’s all there is to say here. Just, dude.
If it seems like I post reviews slowly, it’s not because I don’t read a lot. It’s because over half of what I read is nonfiction in preparation for something I’m thinking of or immediately planning to write. I’ve recently pored over several texts on Philadelphia history, grave robbing in early 19th century America, and medical practice before the civil war for a particular pet project of mine. (I also got to use it as an excuse to go to Philly for a long weekend and eat at Morimoto. Hey, all work and no play makes… right. I’ll stop being quite so effing lame now. Or try, anyhow.)
And right now I’m holding off on starting another book while I read up on various senses and how neuroscience (and often art) have managed to decode them thus far, so I can better understand a certain kind of weird telepathy I want to use. (Clearly, I’m going urban fantasy on this.) That’s had me, most recently, reading This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel J. Levitin, and the fascinating Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer. Both of which, if you’re an artist, musician, or writer, are beyond cool. (The latter was recommended Neuroscientist Reenie, who’s more of a help than any damn book in the world on this stuff. She’s the one who came up with my Vampire Science, I might add. Yeah, that was some research too, me on the alchemy, her on the actually cool and important stuff. Like blood.)
So now my desk is covered in post-its, or, in the case of the research that’s progressed to a certain stage of organization, covered in sheets of paper with a theme scrawled across the top, with post-its chock full of the appropriate information stuck all over them. (That’s a fun trick I picked up in grad school. Well, not fun… anyhow.) I love it, man. I love looking at all this information and thinking, I’m not just going to go and regurgitate this stuff; I’m going to make some crazy story come out of it.
I mean, I’m no Warren Ellis with the badass superhero science. But some day, right? I’m working on it.
And on a completely unrelated note: This new Flogging Molly album? It makes me very, very happy.
-Katey
—————-
Now playing: Flogging Molly – Float
via FoxyTunes
I like this name… and may have to keep it.
Finished Proust was a Neuroscientist myself the other day, with very mixed feelings. Some chapters were awesome (the taste one! And Stravinsky, obviously, even Stein), but some just made me want to stab the author over and over and over with a science stick. George Elliot, in particular, was almost unallievated CRAP that tried to fuck science in the head.
..if that analogy made any sense at all. Which it doesn’t.
But it was an interesting idea, and one that has some mileage… too bad he couldn’t really make it work a lot of the time. I may have a rant about the Proust chapter at some point (it was sort of good, but he made it sound like some sort of massive revelation in the 1980s which no one except Proust had known before… which is really not at all the case).
What’s the music book like? I was talking about it last night with Flyboy’s sister, and it seems interesting.
New science/pseudo-science recommendations though:
Genome, and Nature Via Nurture (the second one might have a different name over here) by Matt Ridley. He’s a science writer who can actually do both science and writing. It’s shocking!
Also, though not really scientifically relevant, A Primate’s Memoir (Robert Sapolsky) is the most hilarious book I’ve read in ages. It chronicles both his time spent observing and studying baboons (which is pretty interesting), and his weird adventures in Kenya.
Hmmm… should go slice brains. *sigh*
Yeah I decided on it last night– totally your new name. I’m glad you like it though, cause I don’t think I can come up with anything cleverer.
I didn’t like most of the literature chapters (Stein was all right, if only because I didn’t know much about her before, but the Woolf one made me want to gouge my eyes out because… no shit– way to print what we already knew!), but I liked the concepts behind them in general, and they were short enough not to cause too much pain. The music one was definitely the best, and the taste and smell ones gave me crazy ideas for scenes. Ah the joys of RESEARCH.
So far I’m only on the second chapter of the music book, but it’s been cool, if basic (and he’s more likely to use the Beach Boys as a reference than, say, Schoenberg. Yay!) He subscribes to the same outreach theory, anyhow, and isn’t a patronizing dick about it. I’ll probably come to you with questions when I get further into it… ’cause I can’t process things without help, as we all know.
Yay though new recs! Weeeee~
Ahh, the Woolf chapter. I spent most of that one ignoring everything he said about her and trying to work out what he was attempting to say about consciousness… and then failing to be impressed by it.
“Consciousness is something we construct for ourselves out of our perceptions, and therefore it is an illusion…
…and therefore it’s solved. Don’t bother with experiments.”
So sad – it seems so obvious to me that if it is an illusion (which probably is right), the question becomes ‘how the hell can a bunch of neurons come up with that sort of illusion? If we’re just telling stories to ourselves… how can we do that?’
I think head people might be a fruitful way of investigating this, actually. Particularly in real DID. If you can have more than one self in your head, how does that work?
But yeah. Nothing frustrates me more in art AND science than someone saying ‘this is too complicated to ever figure out, so we just won’t’. Just look at freaking history, people! Gravity is too complicated to figure out! So are atoms! So is DNA! And yet look… somehow we managed to figure out a few things about them in spite of that.
There’s another rant I must have sometime.
That Woolf thing just gave me flashbacks to the time I decided to be open-minded and take courses on modern, followed by post-modern philosophy. I spent most of the time rolling my eyes until my professor asked, “Katey, what would the Buddhists say?” (I’d just come back to Nepal, the man loved torturing me. He was fun, at least!) I didn’t even realize that was his point– I thought he was just glorifying navel gazing in general. Jesus Lord, I’m glad I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
The Cezanne stuff was kinda similar in its “exploration of shit we already knew about a person”, but maybe because I spent so much time studying post impressionism in particular (I always thought it was pretty interesting, like enough for a class or two.) But anyhow, at least the point of that one was bringing art and science together nicely enough (you know, since they shouldn’t be separate in the first place) that it was fun to watch him do it.
And yes. It’s always a great moment for art and science when someone says, “But, let it be a mystery!” As if answering questions won’t lead to 50 more, if you do it right… yeah dude. Time for a rant.
I still hold out hopes of someday being sacrificed to Kali myself! (Unsuccessfully, of course). But you know I have much envy for your worldly travels to exotic locales. And I know it gives me mad nerd points, seeing as how much of my envy stems from the ‘Think of the research I could do!’ thoughts. Well, that, and I totally wanted to be Indiana Jones when I grew up too. Except when I wanted to be Neil Gaiman, and Iceman, of course (the Top Gun version, natch). Alas, I lacked the necessary academic patience required to learn a) the stuff you get tested on before they let you walk around with a Dr. in front of your name, not to mention handle priceless artifacts that may or may not double as mystical MacGuffins, and b) to crack a whip without dismembering any hapless bystanders unfortunate enough to be nearby when I face off with villainous Nazis.
Plus, I’m told that villainous Nazis are in very short supply these days. What ones are left tend towards the geriatric, and when the villain of the piece has neither hair nor teeth nor the ability to stand up unaided….well it loses a little something, me thinks.
So! New plan! Get people to pay me to write books and movies so I can go to said exotic locales and check mark the box that says ‘business expenses’. All in the name of research.
Can not fail!
(Also, I heartily endorse Neuroscientist Reenie as an official designation!)
I still hold out hopes of someday being sacrificed to Kali myself! (Unsuccessfully, of course). But you know I have much envy for your worldly travels to exotic locales. And I know it gives me mad nerd points, seeing as how much of my envy stems from the ‘Think of the research I could do!’ thoughts. Well, that, and I totally wanted to be Indiana Jones when I grew up too. Except when I wanted to be Neil Gaiman, and Iceman, of course (the Top Gun version, natch). Alas, I lacked the necessary academic patience required to learn a) the stuff you get tested on before they let you walk around with a Dr. in front of your name, not to mention handle priceless artifacts that may or may not double as mystical MacGuffins, and b) to crack a whip without dismembering any hapless bystanders unfortunate enough to be nearby when I face off with villainous Nazis.
Plus, I’m told that villainous Nazis are in very short supply these days. What ones are left tend towards the geriatric, and when the villain of the piece has neither hair nor teeth nor the ability to stand up unaided….well it loses a little something, me thinks.
So! New plan! Get people to pay me to write books and movies so I can go to said exotic locales and check mark the box that says ‘business expenses’. All in the name of research.
Can not fail!
(Also, I heartily endorse Neuroscientist Reenie as an official designation!)
“Think of the research I could do!” is the ultimate writing nerd creedo. Oh we are such masters of it, are we not?
Well we all know how great grad school was for ME, but the whip thing held me back too, I feel. I’m sure I could’ve gotten into some seriously cool adventures if I’d only had the ability you speak of. Alas.
And so, I now heartily subscribe to your plan of action as well. Business expenses, here we come!
(You know. Soon. Totally soon!)