I once read a New Yorker article about how people have epiphanies when they are relaxed and often doing something that's not directly related to goal that they have in mind. If I remember correctly, the article synthesized research in neuroscience about how people make "big connections" and have "ah-ha" moments when they aren't too directly focused on having a "big connection" or an "ah-ha" moment. The author seemed to suggest that this was one of the reasons for why people often have great ideas while taking showers or when they first wake up in the morning. I don't know the ins and outs of this research, but feel that I have experienced this throughout my academic career.
For example, when I was a 4th year PhD student, I was busy trying to publish articles from my dissertation. At that time, I was trying to publish an article about street corner rap battles outside of Project Blowed, a Hip Hop open mic workshop in South Central LA. I had been through several drafts of the paper and was feeling stuck. I had just sent the article out for review and had it rejected, but with some promising comments from reviewers.
One evening, while trying to puzzle through how I could reframe and repackage the paper, I turned on my TV. I was hoping to take a momentary break from my work. As I flipped through the channels, I stumbled upon The Godfather 2. I'm not sure if I've ever watched any of the Godfather movies from start to finish, but have seen each of the movies in parts many times.
That evening, I caught the second half of the film and had one of these "ah-ha" moments during an iconic scene in which Vito Corleone dies while playing with his grandson, Michael. In the scene, Vito is with his grandson Michael in a garden. Midway through the scene, Vito puts an orange peel into his mouth and pretends to be a monster. This act scares Michael, who begins to show fear. Upon realizing that Michael doesn't see this gesture as a joke or as "just play," Vito relaxes his posture, opens his arms, and starts laughing; all of this is done to say "I'm just playing" and "this isn't for real." Moments later, Vito dies in the garden.
As it turned out, this scene helped me have an "ah-ha" moment. Perhaps more than any other reading I had done, this scene inspired me to think about how young men show that they are "just playing" while battling each other. Street corner rap battles are an interesting case to examine this question because young men are always flirting with a precarious line between "play" and "violence" in a battle. Although battles are usually mutually understood as play, there is always a chance that one of the rappers says something that might really offend the other rapper. Using participant-observation in the scene, interviews with rappers, and videos of battles, I show that there are important non-verbal ways that young men show that they are "just playing" in moments that could become more serious, and if not managed correctly, fatally violent. These findings were eventually published in an article titled, "Battlin' on the Corner: Techniques for Sustaining Play" in Social Problems.
Anyways, this is all to say that I sometimes think that our biggest breakthroughs and epiphanies happen when we're relaxed and not entirely focusing on what we want to accomplish. I wonder if anyone else has similar stories of an "ah ha" moment that caught them by surprise? If so, I'd love to hear about it!
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