Scared off the Road

I'm a cyclist. I've been riding a road bike for about 20 years, now. I do it mostly to stay physically fit, but it also definitely helps with my mental health. I like riding alone out on rural roads. In the same way that many people have insights and find inspiration in the shower, I can easily turn off my prefrontal constraints and let my mind wander in the saddle. It's like a productive meditative state. I've had breakthroughs on the bike with songwriting and with sociological research projects. Mostly, though, it's just a way to (dis)engage in a relatively undemanding, repetitive mental/physical practice that unclutters my mind. (It turns out cranking pedals and maintaining balance is a lot like washing one's hair but lasts far longer.)

A problem, though, that I've encountered from almost the first time I went on a bike ride as an adult is that motorists regularly endanger and disrespect cyclists. While cycling is pretty safe, it can feel harrowing. What is more troubling, though, is the aftermath of those troubling encounters. When my life is threatened, I am understandably angered. Think about the times when you've been driving your car and another motorist does something stupid that could have killed you or others. You likely got mad. This is not "road rage"; it's a justifiable and natural reaction. It's only amplified when I'm on my bike because while car accidents are dangerous, as a cyclist, I have about 10% of the mass of a typical car and am protected by a helmet, not crumple zones, airbags, a seatbelt, etc. Add heightened adrenaline levels from the exercise and stress, and these emotions are exagerated. You'll forgive me for being a bit enraged when someone chooses to risk my wellbeing because they're in a hurry. When I'm behind the wheel of a car and some idiot cuts me off, I can use the horn to alert them to their mistake. There is no such mechanism on my bike so I end up yelling and, sometimes, using my middle finger.

The double-whammy of having my life endangered and then feeling irrationally guilty for the rest of my day from expressing righteous anger erases the mental and emotional benefits of cycling for me. I was stubborn enough in my youth to push past this, but now, I have changed my habits. For the last month or so, I have been riding nine laps around my 1.74-mile neighborhood loop instead of doing my typical 17-mile ride through the local countryside. It's not the same. It's better than feeling bad about getting mad, but it's still sad.

Friday Music: Does the Blues Make You Happy?

This is not so much a musical post as a post about music. I've posted before about music and emotion. In the vlog below, Mike Rugnetta at the PBS Idea Channel ruminates about whether the connection between music and emotion is universal and objective or culturally-particular and specific.



Great stuff here.

Culture, Music, Emotion, and the Research Report

In this episode of Office Hours, the guests talk about the process of making a documentary film based on their research and how they negotiated the competing norms of science and art. Of particular interest to me was their discussion of music in the film. The soundtrack was difficult for them because it was used specifically to evoke emotion, a practice foreign to most objective researchers. The discussion reminded me of composer Paul Buckmaster's comments in the making-of film on the 12 Monkeys DVD. His general sentiment was that music is important in film because it evokes emotional response. He noted that some, like John Williams, tend to telegraph the emotions with the music. According to Buckmaster, Williams makes it very clear: "This is how you should feel." (Think back to the soundtracks of Indiana Jones or E.T. for good examples.) The initial cuts of 12 Monkeys screened poorly when the original music played up the romantic scenes. After Buckmaster reworked the numbers to make those scenes more ambivalent, the film screened much more positively among test audiences as they were allowed to decide for themselves about the romantic relationship. The late Dick Clark famously said that "Music is the soundtrack of our lives." It's interesting how ignorant we are to the influence of actual soundtracks in our emotional experience of our lives.

Apropos, a friend sent a link to the Facebook page for MajorScaledTv. You can jump directly to their Vimeo page here. They've somehow figured out how to digitally transpose songs from minor to major keys. The result is quite stunning.

Here is an A/B between the original and the transposed of REM's "Losing My Religion":




Here is The Doors' "Riders on the Storm":




Here is Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters":




h/t Brent Harger

Some Thoughts on Grief

Last week, we lost an alumna of our department to a tragic accident. She was fatally shot in a corrections-officer training exercise. Reportedly, the trainer had swapped out a blank-filled training weapon during a break for his standard firearm and neglected to swap them back before returning to the classroom. Mourning is a complicated process in itself, but when people die untimely or preventable deaths, the mourning that those who knew them must endure is further complicated. Case in point, I was struck by the angry sentiment of those who knew this woman well. Instead of primarily expressing sadness over loss, several folks expressed rage at the trainer. Certainly, this man's actions were negligent and are deserving of professional sanctions (and arguably even civil restitution), but he did not intend to kill anyone, and that makes all the difference. My first two emotions on hearing of this accident, and in this order, were sadness for the victim and sympathy for the man who will have to live the rest of his life knowing that he was responsible for prematurely ending that young woman's life.

I hate to even type this terrible cliché, but people do mourn in different ways, and almost all of them are irrational. Irrationality is not necessarily problematic, but when irrational emotions, like fear and vengeance, are directed at others, we risk exacerbating the situations that are bad enough initially.

Flowing Brooks of Emotion: What Are Things That Will Ferrell Might Name This Post?

David Brooks latest op-ed piece has been garnering lots of re-posts and notes today. Two of his conclusions are as follows:

...[E]motion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason....We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships.

The later sentiment, in particular, is right on. I see a semantic difference that might cause some confusion, though. Many equate the internal feeling of emotion with the outward emotional disposition; the latter is all together different from the former. Granted, many--if not most--inward experiences of emotion elicit an outward emotional display; however, that is not what this is about. It's fairly in line with the differences between quantitative and qualitative methods in sociology.