In this weekend's cover story, Jerry Seinfeld comes across as a kind of comedy jock. As the writer, Jonah Weiner, puts it, Seinfeld "sees himself more as exacting athlete than tortured artist." He uses baseball imagery to explain his craft. He identifies with Ichiro Suzuki. ("This is the guy I relate to more than any athlete.") And he says this:
I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don't I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.
There's a hidden punchline in there: the article he's referring to is one of our own, in a manner of speaking, Daniel Coyle's cover story from the March 2007 issue of Play magazine, "How to Grow a Super Athlete." Coyle was trying to get to the bottom of why some places become hotbeds of talent and how the "dumpy" Spartak facility in Moscow in particular had produced so many top tennis players. The answer, of course, is complicated (like Russia itself), but ultimately he finds that the expression of great skill depends on the neurological process of myelination, the insulating of nerve fibers so that signals move quickly and efficiently between neurons.
Turns out that deep, focused practice leads to greater levels myelin production, better insulation. One neurologist tells Coyle, "You have to understand that every skill exists as a circuit, and that circuit has to be formed and optimized." Another says: "What do good athletes do when they train? . . . . They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire — lots of bandwidth, high-speed T-1 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us."
So, Seinfeld's been myelinating himself! (There might be some grist for a Seinfeld joke in the possibility that a New York Times story has been partly responsible for Seinfeld going about his business in such a way as to make him an appealing subject for a New York Times story.)
I have to admit to some slight skepticism, though. Can myelination really account for something as seemingly (and delightfully) mysterious as humor, as being funny? I put this to Coyle, whose story for Play led to his book, "The Talent Code." (He also breaks down Seinfeld's joke-making process on his own Web site.) His response:
The deep practice takes you only so far, especially with soft skills like comedy. As with so many other pursuits, you also need kind of adaptive, strategic component that directs and fuels the practice — the gritty guy working in a lab of his own making, like [Seinfeld] does, ruthlessly refining the craft. . . . If the metaphor for deep practice is construction (connecting wires, making them work fast), then the metaphor for the second process is building the ability to draw the construction blueprint — and to redraw it over and over, as needed. . . . So is this second-level, "blueprint-drawing" circuitry made of myelin? Neurologists I know would say: if it's about building a reliable circuit in the brain, then it's about myelin.
There you have it, I guess. Biology is destiny, and sometimes it makes you laugh.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
The 6th Floor Blog: Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete
Dengan url
http://koraninternetonline.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-6th-floor-blog-jerry-seinfeld.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
The 6th Floor Blog: Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
The 6th Floor Blog: Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar