The Man That Got Away
Comments: 5
Did you ever see those old ads in the backs of comic books that said something like “We use only 10% of our brains! Learn to unlock your potential.”?
After a mental thrashing at the hands of my daughter last night I returned to my desk, once she was in bed, and caught myself humming one of the ridiculous number of 1930s standards I seem to have accumulated, in this case, These Foolish Things. I started wondering how much smarter I could have been (note the tense: it’s too late to do anything now) had that space been given over to something else. Quantum physics, say, or… or innovative ways of inflating the profits of energy companies.
We’re probably talking about a lot of space here. These Foolish Things requires 581 bytes – and that’s just for the lyrics. If you launch into the version that Benny Goodman recorded with Helen Ward and feel the need to ad lib your way along some of Goodman’s melodic lines, then it could easily be double that.
Another not-so-random example (Goodman and Ward again): That Feeling is Gone takes up 393 bytes. Get creative with the grace notes, include the obbligatos (you must!) and it starts to add up.
And what about all that poetry? The one thing from John Donne that I can remember, The Sun Rising (or The Sunne Risinge or however the hell he spelled it back then) occupies 387 bytes of my brain – more if you include my confusion about the title.
Add these examples together and that’s 1.25 kilobytes right there.
Now consider that I know way more Cole Porter and Harold Arlen than any heterosexual man should know, include all the Hank Williams and Tom Waits and Nick Drake and Patti Smith and Tim Buckley and the ludicrous fact that I once tried to learn two Mahler songs phonetically on account of I don’t speak a word of German (the remnants of which now litter my brain like pieces of some transcontinental train wreck) and it’s serious megabytage, I tell you. Serious!
And yet, as tight as space is around here, who could kick these friends out and bear to live without them?
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Posted to General Rants • 2002.10.30 (Wed) • 17:44
Comments
Posted by Kiffin 2002.10.30, 17:57
Correlating space used in the brain with the actual number of bytes is alright, but that is only the ten percent of what you are talking about in the first place. True space in the sense of the capacity of the mind is measured in another dimension. Just thought you might be interested in this.
Posted by nick 2002.10.30, 20:05
granted, you could have filled all that space with something a little more intelligent or useful, but think about this: every time you spaced out you’d be spacing out on math or science or philosophy instead of a nice little song. how would you like that? for example, i sit in front of the computer too goddam much, and as a result i have various lines of code floating through my brain at any given time. i drive around and think about how to better write a function. i kiss my girl and plan the new layout for my site. i don’t like it! when i’m in that little separate world i want to be thinking about a pretty field somewhere, or perhaps playing back a song in my head. so the way i look at it is that every time i acquire some truly thought-invoking information, i’m filling up space that could be occupied by something calming. no, no, no.
i guess it’s just a matter of knowing the difference between smart and too smart for your own good. i don’t, but perhaps you do, and if so then more power to you.
Posted by resonance 2002.10.31, 01:01
I believe that as is the case with email, transmission of real-world to brain requires some kind of encoding. As such, these memories actually take up more space than they do in the real world. And this is why you can’t remember in the morning where you last put your keys.
Actually, it gets scarier when you realize you don’t just remember the lyrics to countless numbers of songs, but basslines, chord progressions, drumbeats. Then you recall the details of the album cover, the store from which you bought the album, cassette, or CD…
Someone needs to come up with a defragmentation program for the brain.
Posted by resonance 2002.10.31, 01:03
I believe that as is the case with email, transmission of real-world to brain requires some kind of encoding. As such, these memories actually take up more space than they do in the real world. And this is why you can’t remember in the morning where you last put your keys.
Actually, it gets scarier when you realize you don’t just remember the lyrics to countless numbers of songs, but basslines, chord progressions, drumbeats. Then you recall the details of the album cover, the store from which you bought the album, cassette, or CD…
Someone needs to come up with a defragmentation program for the brain.
Posted by Josh 2002.10.31, 02:45
Some of those songs and poems and other “friends” might actually increase your capacity to remember information.
There are so many things that you dont remember until the right stimulus comes along to pull it from the wrinkled depths. All those songs and poems are, I am sure, associated with other memories.
I lived in Venezuela for two years and the smell of cilantro, or black beans occasionaly makes me remember a long-forgotten spanish word. Songs sometimes jostle a name loose that has been stuck for years. I can remember what my high school english class looked like when I read some of the books I first read there.
The 10% statistic is a myth. You have plenty of space for more friends. Keep piling them in.
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