Apparently, the Cerebellum is sometimes called our “reptilian brain.” It’s old. It plays a big role in rhythm and is thought to hold emotional value for music.
When I execute the ‘build’ in They Promised You Life, I never sway with the exact meter of the eighth-note-triplets I’m playing on the snare. The triplets are the product of motor cortex, vision, thought, consciousness, and a fruit salad of other neuron bullshit that people hear as neat-o. The loving, patient, inhaling/exhaling rhythm of my swaying is my cerebellum. The magic trick for the non-musician is that they think it’s the triplets giving them an erection. Machines are sexy; alive is sexy; cerebellum is life-rhythm.
Bicycling in New York City is probably eighty-seven times as dangerous as motorcycling in New York City. Yup, this is coming from a whopping two months of motorcycling and you know what? I’m right. On a motorcycle, you are a loud, heavy package with turn signals, a horn and enough girth to command a lane of traffic. Although drivers are as stupid as endo assholes (the dickboxes who give motorcycling it’s bad name), a biker can keep up with traffic by rolling his wrist and accelerate out of trouble by rolling it a little more. On a bicycle, the only way to move like cars is to push your legs into the pedals as hard as humanely possible. Braking is shorter but skidding is more likely. And the cars? They don’t see you and don’t want to see you. You couldn’t command a lane of traffic if you were Jesus and moses riding a bicycle built for two. Anyway, my cerebellum is probably the only reason I’m alive here today writing this. Taken as a collective, the cars swell and flow like tree branches. There’s a brief inhale as a light turns green before a car exhales itself into an intersection. Just before a car cuts me off, I can always sense the anxious anticipation of a car about to turn. If my Cerebellum couldn’t tap into this rhythm, I’d be dead.
