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Razorpsyche
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Name: Psychedelic
Country: United States
State: Massachusetts
Metro: Boston
Birthday: 9/23/1981
Gender: Female
Interests: violin, reading, all things musical, drawing, friends & chillage, being amused
Expertise: The psychology of music perception and cognition
Occupation: Research and development
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/14/2004
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| Many thanks to the following performers:
Elizabeth R superbly imitating the infamous Marilyn Monroe rendition of 1962,
The Beatles,
Dave M,
Adam M from DC,
Betty N from Hong Kong,
Cecilia P from Shanghai,
Charles L,
Charles T,
Christine F from the Netherlands,
Emilie K from CA,
Jenny S,
Joe D,
Cate B in Québécois,
Jon E,
Kwanie from CA,
Larry and Laura from Atlanta GA,
Liz P-G while gargling a mouthful of water,
Lynn L (third time lucky)
Mabel C,
Margaret S,
Mattie P en Franglais,
Rob G having been kicked in the balls in DC,
Saleemian and Maureenium,
Susan Y famously tone-deaf,
Casey and Rose from St Louis,
Anand J, perhaps?
Véronique I. playing an electronic birthday card,
John Doe with poor cellphone coverage,
Vincent C.,
Whitney G. from MD,
Wah L.,
Xin Z.,
Yang Z. from CA,
Emilie K. take 2,
Chris L. from CA,
Anja H. from Germany,
and, of course, Dr. Richard W for the ingenious idea, the artistic direction, arrangement, organization, sound editing, and technical support, and the final solo.
YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!
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| Two neurons meet at a synapse. One neuron says hi. The other one doesn't care. The first neuron keeps trying, and suddenly, bam! The second neuron goes crazy and henceforth it keeps going crazy whenever the first neuron fires.
This wonderful process of long-term potentiation is broadly thought of as the basis for learning and memory. But how far does it go? Can one develop LTP for riding a bike? For recognition of the boss's footsteps? For the seventh chord in the fourth movement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony? For coding in Python?
The point of this post is that I've been aching to learn some new skills for a while. All this paper- and grant-writing business is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception, and aspirations of discovering the neural experience of music is giving way to salesmanship and politics. Perhaps a few spurts of late-night productivity will help.
It has been an interesting summer; perhaps too busy to really feel the relaxation, but the traveling schedule was all booked and I did see many a novel sight. Photos are now up:
  
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| Innovation is how I measure my own productivity.
As that is quite different from the ways the world measures productivity, conflicts do result occasionally.
For a few months I had been simply churning things out at a predictable, nine-to-five kind of way (well, more like 10-to-6:30). And while there have been results to show, data acquired and analyzed, Powerpoints presented and so on, the very essence of creativity and coming up with innovative solutions to the problems, which drew me to this field in the first place, has been replaced by the need to be mentally stable and all-inclusive in terms of time management and lab politics. I want to learn new stuff and come up with new ideas; but when I'm busy doing I have no spare time or mental resources to be innovating on a large scale.
On the other hand, so much sweat is required to maintain a lab and carry a project through from inception to completion, that most of the necessary work is not part of the snazzy algorithm or the brilliant neural jumping jack, but to the stick-to-itiveness, the hours of proofreading and double-checking, or the whip-holding ability if said work requires supervision.
Now that several projects are on the brink of completion, there remains only a home stretch of resubmitting. And I am impatient to hit the proverbial last nail before moving on to the next wave of scientific interest, but I hope I am becoming increasingly sensitive towards the balance between maintaining old turf and breaking new ground.
Perhaps that is just part of growing up: acquiring the ability to combine level-headed mainstream work with the ideas that motivate. It is only with a combination of both that one can consistently and convincingly bring forth good ideas to the world.
And that is why we do what we do, isn't it? 
On a related note: congratulations to the lovely graduates of 2009!
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| Sir Roger Norrington resembles a cross between Bridget Jones's father and Winnie the Pooh: a jolly ol' Englishman with a pot belly and a child-like demeanour. And yet, conducting with unpredictable sweeps of the whole body and a remarkably fun interpretation, his concert with the Handel and Haydn Society tonight definitely changed my view of Classical period performances. I've been to a number of period performances before, from big wigs ranging from Emanuel Ax to Andrew Manze, but tonight might have been my best period-performance experience to date. The orchestra tonight was tuned to A=430 (at least I think it was). Alternate tuning systems in these period performances had always been a small pet peeve of mine: why make things unnecessarily difficult by distancing yourselves from an audience that is used to A=440 and 21st century tonalities? And yet tonight I was convinced of at least one of the reasons: it's fun. The all-Haydn program tonight had the air of an intimate chamber performance that happened to be in front of a symphony hall filled with people, but the players appeared to be primarily performing for each other and for the joy of music, and if you as an audience member didn't get on board, then oh well, it was your loss. There was a joy in the art of performance: matching each other's tone, bringing out the celli, and (most interestingly) paradoxically emphasizing the limitations of the atrocious natural horn, all of which brought a refreshing energy to the performance. It was as if Sir Roger and his jolly ensemble were saying: This was how Haydn's peeps did it in 1791, and this was how you were meant to enjoy it, so let us recreate it for you; you're welcome. Soprano Nathalie Paulin did a superb job in Haydn's aria and recitative Scena di Berenice as well as a collection of four Haydn songs in English, and the section principals did a marvelous job, both technically and musically, in the slow movement of the Divertimento for Nine Instruments.
I could almost see myself as a fly on the wall of a 1791 concert during Haydn's days in London. Ye musick was jolly goode indeede! | | |
| A very belated post on a small slice of an amazing California trip in March:
This is what I call a successful conversion to the school of the Monkey Head awesomeness.
After only one evening, we were proud to accomplish the lofty requirements of Devolution, as defined by the monkey head night at Berkeley's Triple Rock Brewery: 10 * 1L bottles! Thanks to the many friends who came out for this intriguing bacchanal experiment, and thanks especially to Diane who contributed 2 stamps to our ten-stamp cause.
For those who continue to bemoan the Bostonian weather, perhaps it takes a pint of Frosty Knuckle Ale to remind us that at least our knuckles aren't freezing off anymore... that would have made it rather difficult to play the violin.
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