ON ALPHA WAVES
(& DOOM, OF COURSE)
it’s all Pavlovian to me…
Podcasts bring me comfort and joy. They’ve seduced my brain down rabbit holes, both fruitful and insane. This week, I’ve thwarted doing the real work that needs to be done by becoming obsessed with neurofeedback therapy in the midst of a strong wave of writer’s doom.
I’ve been having a hard time with my book proposal. I’ve been tasked with the simple assignment of writing what I want my book to be. This was the first thing my agent asked me to do, and we’re now on round three of re-writes for it. I haven’t been asked to re-write anything since I was a small child—intense edits, fine; but three rounds of total re-writes is disheartening. I’m just not getting it. Would you believe me if I said that writing the book seems much, much easier?
On OkCupid, we’re all prompted to respond to, “What I’m doing with my life.” I wrote that I’ve just finished my thesis at Columbia and working with an agent to write a book proposal. “It’s a mind fuck,” I wrote to show how humble I am. “So, if you have any suggestions, give!” On my way to a hike to see the foliage with my girls (the pine scent was incredible, the gold rush was gorgeous, the merriment was immeasurable — I should have stolen a piece of sappy bark for my bedside table), I received this message from a would-be suitor:
My advice is don’t do what I did, which is become paralyzed by the success. I got my MFA in screenwriting from Columbia and got a super-agent before graduating, developed material for 2 years that amounted to nothing. Said agent dumped me and I lost faith in myself and gave up writing for good. Now, I am about as far from my dreams as possible.
Keep it to yourself, man. Is he trying to get laid using fear tactics? Getting dumped by my agent is something ever-percolating in the background of my mind, of course. I mean, I am an insecure, sensitive little poodly faced writer. I would probably go into massive hysterics, but a big ol’ agent dump wouldn’t be the end of my writing or the end of writing a book or even the end of writing this book. Unlike that OkCupid sir, I would never give up writing for good. I mean, what? It is an essential part of my being. Who talks that way? Despite my resolute attitude, he clearly got under my skin.
I often imagine life’s choices as forks in the road, you know, like Ol’ Bobby Frost talks about. And it’s not about picking the road less traveled, it’s just about picking (which is what I think Mr. Frost was saying, right? I heard that somewhere, didn’t I?). Anyway, you pick. You travel. There are more forks ahead.
Cheryl Strayed illustrates the point with “shadow selves,” or something, in her book Tiny, Beautiful Things, when she talks about making the choice to become a mother. She can still envision the woman who chose not to have kids. Strayed has no regrets (much to the contrary, she seems over the moon about her choice to reproduce), but that other self is living a life that isn’t hers, that doesn’t wipe asses or carpool or pay exorbitant fees for preschool.
It’s easy for me to fantasize about my shadow selves, too: the girl who said English instead of journalism, the woman who said yes to an $80,000/year job instead of yes to a pathetic salary with total creative control, and the fully grown adult who said, “$50,000/year in tuition plus the cost of living seems like a completely unreasonable sum of money to fork over in order to learn how to become a poor artist.” But, I am not those shadows selves. I am the one who chose journalism, then creativity. I said, “Hell yes!” to an Ivy League education and surrendered everything. Who would I be without even this very short list of defining choices? I don’t know. Probably a financially stable woman and maybe even a mother (and I don’t doubt I would love that, too—maybe more, maybe not). I don’t know. I chose.
Fear and loathing is a part of life, isn’t it? It’s a part of every life we choose. And so whenever I feel crippled by the terror, I look for confirmation biases, nuggets of hope that might push me in the right/write direction. “Inside Pete’s Brain with Dr. Tim Royer” from You Made It Weird offered one such nugget.
First of all, he cited one of my fave Radiolab episodes (“9-Volt Nirvana”) and he said that he thought The Family Stone was a pretty decent movie. Both facts just solidify the truth that is this: if Pete and I meet, if I could meet ol’ Pete, we’d for sure be friends…probably. As soon as I write my book, I’m sure he’ll have me on his show, and we’ll become BFF. Something of the sort has happened before with another mildly famous-person obsession I had.
Anyway, when Pete was with Dr. Tim Royer, the doc hooked him up to some sort of machine (images avail here), and he monitored Pete’s brainwaves. There were certain targets each type of wave was supposed to hit, numbers that sounded arbitrary like, “We like to see theta waves at a 2.2 or below.” Meaning what? I don’t know. Who cares? Science!
I suggest giving the episode a listen (especially if you liked his “Science Mike” episode), because I found so much of it interesting but only managed to retain this: alpha waves are where creativity persists. They are present when we dream and strongest when we’re a bit tired or coming out of sleep (so writing first thing or at night are both legit times to take advantage of the creative buzz or “felt sense”—also, maybe this explains why so many alcoholics and drug addicts are great artists). And, if you’re an athlete for instance, wanting to reduce your anxiety in high-pressure moments, or if you’re a writer wanting to be closer to your muse, you can train your brain, almost like a dog, to do what you want it to do. It all sounded a tad Pavlovian to me…
I love thinking of my brain as an animal. I like thinking that my brain is not really me, but an outside entity that I need to train. I am not my brain. It gives me hope that whatever malfunction inside of me that is causing me to fail so often on my proposal can be set right, too.
I’m doing research right now to figure out how legit the form of therapy is—how empirical neurofeedback therapy is, etc. So far, I’m finding a lot. My BFF’s husband has tried it. He says it’s incredible how quickly you feel a difference after a little bit of training. Most of the sites I’ve seen for this type of treatment talk a lot about helping people with ADD get off meds (that’s not an issue for my BFF’s husband, by the way).
Personally, I want to be trained not to eat sugar, and I want to create more efficient pathways to my creativity, and I want to cut out the part of my being that triggers my flight-or-fight response in completely inappropriate scenarios. Even though no one has specifically said neurofeedback therapy is good for such quests, I believe it is. In fact, I believe it can make any and all of my dreams come true. As soon as I start neurofeedback therapy, I will be able to write my book proposal. Let us initiate a Kickstarter so that I can afford this therapy!
I doubt I’ll get my brain hooked up any time soon, but I am going to be more precious with my waking and witching hours. No emails, brass tax, exercise, phone calls, television, or bullshit for me during the hours of 8 p.m.–10 a.m. (unless of course I am getting drunk in the pursuit of alpha waves or writing blogs in pursuit of distraction/attention/validation).
THIS WEEK’S BEST-ISODES
“Inside Pete’s Brain with Tim Royer,” You Made It Weird
“Is Death Final?” The Intelligence Debates
“Making Mistakes,” The TED Radio Hour (if you like Brene Brown—Vulnerability—she’s on this episode with clips from her new TED Talk)
NOTES
{If you see an episode you listened to, stick me with a note about your thoughts, yo. They are in alphabetical order by podcast name.}
Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast —one hour of 9–15–2014
Call Your Girlfriend — Emotional Detox
→They talked about police violence toward people of color and it made me very uncomfortable. I’m still trying to pinpoint why, and I think part of it is because I feel like it’s a perfect example of why talking about race is so difficult in America. Something was unreal about it to me. Unreal or self-conscious.
→Serious vocal fry. How serious is my vocal fry?
→Serious snottiness.
Death, Sex & Money — Meet the First Family…of Podcasting
→I realized I don’t know that much about podcasts. Then I thought, oh well, and promptly subscribed to Kulop’s podcast, Who Charted?
Professor Blastoff —Development (with Katie Krentz of the Cartoon Network)
→Super cute engagement story that includes the song from Aladdin, “A Whole New World.”
→Where are the Mother Meditations???
→Finally looked up Kyle Dunnigan. He’s not as hot or muscley as they make him seem.
The Catapult—Jaime Green’s opening remarks for Julia Pierpont & Gabriel Roth
→More Jaime, please.
The Dinner Party — James McAvoy, Jon Favreau, and Emma Staub
The Intelligence Debates — “Is Death Final?” & “Do Millennials Stand a Chance?”
→After listening, I was convinced that there’s no life after death (in a much more cynical way than I had previously been convinced)
→Millennials stand a chance. Thoughts?
The Peace Revolution — 41 minutes of JFK-50 Years Later
→I was missing Voldemort. I called him back. See how I’ve appropriately buried this information? He was kinda schmoopy with me. DANGER!
The TED Radio Hour—Making Mistakes
→Letting it all hang out is not vulnerability.
→The segment from the doctor about the first patient who died because of a mistake he made is incredible and brave.
This American Life — It’s Not the Product, It’s the Person & A Not-so-simple Majority
→Maybe I need to start thinking about my proposal as a product.
→Good job handling the racist overtones, This American Life.
Who Charted—part of Episode 137
You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes—Inside Pete’s Brain with Dr. Tim Royer, Cameron Esposito & Live from High Plains Comedy Festival
→Dr. Tim Royer seems to fuck up his parts of speech quite a lot for a doctor.
→Hey, Cameron Esposito. Yeah, I’m talking to you. As a straight woman, I don’t need your sympathy. I like dudes. People can be nightmares, not just unforgivably white white white men. Other than that, I think you’re sensational.
→Nick Thune at the Live episode in Colorado (that I wasn’t at because The Victory Lap couldn’t get it together in time to go with me) killed it.
WTF with Marc Maron—Nicholas Stoller (director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
→Pretty over Marc saying his coffee made him shit his pants.
Thanks to Tuck for suggesting The Read and some guy on Tinder for suggesting Notebook on Cities & Culture — looking forward to checking out both.
