Bill Benzon is an independent scholar working on mind and culture. He published Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture in 2001 and is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function in New York City. He has taught in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and has published widely on literary analysis and theory, cultural evolution, cognition and brain theory, visual thinking, African-American music, and technical communication. He also plays trumpet and has shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, Frank Foster, Al Grey, and Nick Brignola. He blogs at New Savanna. Email: bbenzon [at] mindspring.com
by Bill Benzon We all know that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. We also know that’s nonsense, pious and sentimental nonsense. Which is why it has been said so often. The subtext, of course, is that the cradle-rocking hand is connected, through appropriate anatomical intermediaries, to a foot that’s chained to…
by Bill Benzon The purpose of a book review, I suppose, is to tell the reader enough about the book to decide whether or not they would find it worthwhile. What do you think would be in a book entitled Spacecraft? A catalogue of spacecraft, both real (e.g. Sputnik, Voyager, Apollo) and imaginary (the Enterprise,…
by Bill Benzon I was living in the Lafayette section of Jersey City at the time, just in from Communipaw Avenue on Van Horne, next to the Jackson Funeral Home, the largest black funeral home in the city and up the block from the Monumental Baptist Church. It was only a couple of weeks before…
by Bill Benzon When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s Westerns were pervasive on television and at the movies. Where they the dominant genre of the era? Perhaps, I don’t really know. But whatever the numbers say, the were very important. Correlatively, science fiction was a relatively minor genre, both on television…
by Bill Benzon Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age, The University of Chicago Press, 2021. Permanent Crisis hits close to home. In the first place, I have been trained as a humanist, my degree is in English Literature. But I have long suspected that the sense humanists have of being…
by Bill Benzon “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs” – so began James Joyce’s (infamous) Finnegans Wake. That line is but the completion of the book’s last sentence, “A lone a last a loved…
by Bill Benzon I don’t remember exactly what I was saying – this conversation took place over a half century ago – but perhaps I was explaining why I choose to become a scholar rather than a musician. What I remember is Gren’s reply: You ARE a musician. After awhile he convinced me. That is,…
by Bill Benzon I don’t remember when it was, but it was years ago, before religion had become such a prominent factor in American politics. Perhaps it was during my graduate school years, the mid-to-late 1970s. Whenever, it came as a shock to learn that America was more religious than Europe. It’s not so much…
by Bill Benzon You may or may not know that sukiyaki is a beef-based Japanese hot-pot dish. But I’m not talking about food. I’m talking about music, specifically, a Japanese pop song entitled “Ue o Muite Arukō” (“I Look Up as I Walk”) which was a hit by Kyu Sakamoto in 1961 in Japan, 18…
by Bill Benzon Elizabeth from Knoxville We haven’t yet settled on a name for the event. I do see “1/6” being used here and there, a formation parallel to “9/11.” However reference to 9/11 is common, well understood, and routine, while the use “1/6” is sporadic. But then the bombing of the World Trade Center…
by Bill Benzon Music as a prelude to Jerry Seinfeld I started trumpet lessons when I was ten years old or so. After about two years or so my lessons were drawn from Jean-Baptiste Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, which dates from the middle of the 19th century and is the central method book…
by Bill Benzon A little over a week ago Jacob Collier’s version of Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) came up on YouTube. I know the song well, and love it. As I’d seen a video or three by this Collier fellow, I decided to give it a listen. Wow!…
by Bill Benzon At close to 71 million votes, Donald Trump beat Barack Obama’s 2008 total of 69.5 million, which had been the highest number of votes ever cast for a presidential candidate (Wikipedia). But Joseph Biden got over 75 million votes to win. Those numbers alone make this a landmark election. The nature of…
by Bill Benzon Anyone with even a casual interest in photography quickly becomes acutely aware of light. It defines what you do, but your ability to control it is limited, even if you work in a studio with expensive equipment. I don’t work in a studio, nor do I have expensive equipment. But I am…
by Bill Benzon https://youtu.be/Pgmoz4f8LA4 The idea has been around for awhile. Rodolfo Llinás had the idea in the mid-2000s; you can see him in the astonishing video above (c. 04:45 ff.). Christof Koch has recently speculated about it in Nature [2]. But Elon Musk is by far the most visible proponent of direct brain-to-brain thought…
by Bill Benzon That, I assume, is the floor slab of a demolished industrial building. It’s located near one of the remaining fragments of the Morris Canal in Jersey City. Back in the day the Morris Canal delivered anthracite coal from Eastern Pennsylvania to New Jersey and New York City – the Hudson River is…
by Bill Benzon I was hanging out on Twitter the other day, discussing my previous 3QD piece (about Progress Studies) with Hollis Robbins, Dean of Arts and Humanities at Cal State at Sonoma. We were breezing along at 240 characters per message unit when, Wham! right out of the blue the inspiration hit me: How…
by Bill Benzon How do we get there from here? Evolution, revolution, or revolution through evolution? I don’t know, but as the smart kids are saying these days, I have my priors. As does everyone else. A movement begins Back in July 2019 Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen called for a science of progress in…
by Bill Benzon When I was a child I sought out the first blossoms of spring. The forsythia bushes were first. Then tulips perhaps? I don’t really remember. I’m guessing, though the guess is not groundless. Daffodils, yes daffodils, yellow and white. But I DO remember the irises. Not vividly, for it was a long…
by Bill Benzon This pandemic changes everything, we can’t go back to the way we were. That’s what everyone is saying. Well, not everyone, but I don’t know how many times I’ve read some version of that over the past month. I would like to reflect on that theme, albeit in perhaps and oblique and…