Hello, my name is Dessa, and I'm a member of a hip-hop collective called Doomtree. I'm the one in the tank top.
Pozdravljeni. Moje ime je Dessa in sem članica hip-hop skupine po imenu Doomtree. Jaz sem tista v majčki.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And I make my living as a performing, touring rapper and singer. When we perform as a collective, this is what our shows look like. I'm the one in the boots. There's a lot of jumping. There's a lot of sweating. It's loud. It's very high-energy. Sometimes there are unintentional body checks onstage. Sometimes there are completely intentional body checks onstage. It's kind of a hybrid between an intramural hockey game and a concert.
Denar si služim kot raperka in pevka na turnejah. Ko nastopamo kot skupina, naš šov zgleda takole. Jaz sem tista v škornjih. Veliko je skakanja, veliko znojenja. Glasno je, energično. Včasih pride na odru do nenamernih trkov. Včasih pride na odru do popolnoma namernih trkov. Gre za neke vrste hibrid med šolsko hokejsko tekmo in koncertom.
However, when I perform my own music as a solo artist, I tend to gravitate towards more melancholy sounds. A few years ago, I gave my mom the rough mixes of a new album, and she said, "Baby, it's beautiful, but why is it always so sad?"
Ko pa izvajam lastno glasbo kot solo umetnica, gravitiram proti bolj melanholičnim zvokom. Pred nekaj leti sem dala mami grobo zmiksani novi album in rekla je: "Ljubica, prelepo je, ampak zakaj je vedno tako žalostno?"
(Laughter)
(smeh)
"You always make music to bleed out to." And I thought, "Who are you hanging out with that you know that phrase?"
"Vedno delaš glasbo, ob kateri človek izkrvavi." In pomislila sem: "S kom se družiš, da poznaš to besedno zvezo?"
(Laughter) But over the course of my career, I've written so many sad love songs that I got messages like this from fans: "Release new music or a book. I need help with my breakup."
(smeh) A v svoji karieri sem napisala toliko žalostnih ljubezenskih pesmi, da sem od oboževalcev dobivala taka sporočila: "Izdajte novo glasbo ali pa knjigo. Rabim pomoč ob razpadu moje zveze."
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And after performing and recording and touring those songs for a long time, I found myself in a position in which my professional niche was essentially romantic devastation. What I hadn't been public about, however, was the fact that most of these songs had been written about the same guy. And for two years, we tried to sort ourselves out, and then for five and on and off for 10. And I was not only heartbroken, but I was kind of embarrassed that I couldn't rebound from what other people seemed to recover from so regularly. And even though I knew it wasn't doing either of us any good, I just couldn't figure out how to put the love down.
In po dolgem nastopanju in snemanju in turnejah s temi pesmimi sem se znašla v položaju, v katerem je bila moja profesionalna niša v bistvu romantični obup. Vendar pa v javnosti nisem povedala, da sem večino teh pesmi napisala o istem tipu. In dve leti sem se skušala pobrati in potem pet in po malem deset. In nisem imela le strtega srca, ampak mi je bilo tudi malo nerodno, da se ne morem pobrati od nečesa, kar ljudem očitno redno uspe. In čeprav sem vedela, da nobenemu od naju to ne koristi, nisem mogla ugotoviti, kako naj pozabim ljubezen.
Then, drinking white wine one night, I saw a TED Talk by a woman named Dr. Helen Fisher, and she said that in her work, she'd been able to map the coordinates of love in the human brain. And I thought, well, if I could find my love in my brain, maybe I could get it out.
Potem sem neke noči ob belem vinu videla TED govor neke ženske po imenu dr. Helen Fisher, ki je rekla, da ji je pri njenem delu uspelo zarisati koordinate ljubezni v človeških možganih. In pomislila sem, dobro, če bi lahko v svojih možganih našla ljubezen, bi jo morda lahko dobila ven.
So I went to Twitter. "Anybody got access to an fMRI lab, like at midnight or something? I'll trade for backstage passes and whiskey."
In sem šla na Twitter. Ima kdo dostop do fMRI laboratorija, recimo opolnoči ali kaj takega? Zamenjam za VIP karte in viski.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And that's Dr. Cheryl Olman, who works at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. She took me up on it. I explained Dr. Fisher's protocol, and we decided to recreate it with a sample size of one, me.
In tole je dr. Cheryl Olman, ki dela na Centru za raziskave z magnetno resonanco na univerzi v Minnesoti. Prijela me je za besedo. Razložila sem ji protokol dr. Fisherjeve in odločili sva se poustvariti ga na enem samem primerku, meni.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
So I got decked out in a pair of forest green scrubs, and I was laid on a gurney and wheeled into an fMRI machine. If you're unfamiliar with that technology, essentially, an fMRI machine is a big, tubular magnet that tracks the progress of deoxygenated iron in your blood. So it's essentially figuring out what parts of your brain are making the biggest metabolic demand at any given moment. And in that way, it can figure out which structures are associated with a task, like tapping your finger, for example, will always light up the same region, or in my case, looking at pictures of your ex-boyfriend and then looking at pictures of a dude who just sort of resembled my ex-boyfriend but for whom I had no strong feelings. He was the control.
Tako so me zavili v zelena bolnišnična oblačila in me polegli na voziček ter me odpeljali v fMRI stroj. Če ne poznate te tehnologije, je fMRI stroj v bistvu velik, cevast magnet, ki spremlja pot deoksidiranega železa v vaši krvi. V bistvu ugotavlja, kateri deli vaših možganov imajo v nekem trenutku največjo metabolno zahtevo. Na ta način lahko ugotovi, katere strukture so povezane z neko nalogo; tapkanje s prsti bo na primer vedno osvetlilo isto območje, v mojem primeru pa gledanje slik mojega bivšega fanta in potem gledanje slik tipa, ki mu je na nek način podoben, a do njega nimam močnih čustev. On je bil kontrola.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And when I left the machine, we had these really high-resolution images of my brain. We could cleave the two halves apart. We could inflate the cortex to see inside all of the wrinkles, essentially, in a view that Dr. Cheryl Olman called the "brain skin rug."
In ko sem prišla iz stroja, smo imeli res dobre slike mojih možganov. Dobro smo lahko ločili obe polovici. Lahko smo povečali korteks, da bi videli v vse gube na način, ki ga je dr. Cheryl Olman imenovala 'možganska kožna preproga'.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And we could see how my brain had behaved when I looked at images of both men. And this was important. We could track all of the activity when I looked at the control and when I looked at my ex, and it was in comparing these data sets that we'd be able to find the love alone, in the same way that, if I were to step on a scale fully dressed and then step on it again naked, the difference between those numbers would be the weight of my clothing. So when we did that data comparison, we subtracted one from the other, we found activity in exactly the regions that Dr. Fisher would have predicted.
Videli smo lahko, kako se moji možgani obnašajo, ko gledam slike obeh moških. In to je bilo pomembno. Lahko smo sledili vsej aktivnosti, ko sem gledala kontrolo in ko sem gledala svojega bivšega, in s primerjavo teh podatkov smo lahko našli ljubezen samo na enak način, kot če bi oblečena stopila na tehtnico, potem pa še enkrat gola, bi razlika med tema številkama bila teža mojih oblačil. Ko smo torej primerjali podatke, smo eno odšteli od drugega in našli aktivnost točno v predelih, ki jih je dr. Fisherjeva prej napovedala.
That's me. And that's my brain in love. There was activity in that little orange dot, the ventral tegmental area, that kind of loop of red is the anterior cingulate and that golden set of horns is the caudates. After she had had time to analyze the data with her team and a couple of partners, Andrea and Phil, Cheryl sent me an image, a single slide. It was my brain in cross section, with one bright dot of activity that represented my feelings for this dude.
To sem jaz. In to so moji zaljubljeni možgani. Aktivnost se vidi v mali oranžni točki, v ventralno tegmentalnem območju, tista rdeča zanka je anteriorna cingulatna skorja in tisti par zlatih rogov sta kavdata. Ko je utegnila analizirati podatke s svojo ekipo in dvema partnerjema, Andreo in Philom, mi je Cheryl poslala sliko, en sam diapozitiv. Na njem so bili moji možgani v prerezu z eno živahno točko aktivnosti, ki je predstavljala moja čustva do tega tipa.
And I'd known I was in love, and that's the whole reason I was going to these outrageous lengths. But having an image that proved it felt like such a vindication, like, "Yeah, it's all in my head, but now I know exactly where."
Vedela sem, da sem zaljubljena, in to je edini razlog, zakaj sem se lotila vsega tega. A slika kot dokaz tega je pomenila tako utemeljitev, kot: "Ja, vse je v moji glavi, a zdaj vem, kje točno."
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And I also felt like an assassin who had her mark. That was what I had to annihilate.
Hkrati sem se počutila kot atentator, ki ima svojo tarčo. To je tisto, kar moram premagati.
So I decided to embark on a course of treatment called "neurofeedback." I worked with a woman named Penijean Gracefire, and she explained that what we'd be doing was training my brain. We're not lobotomizing anything. We're training it in the way that we would train a muscle, so that it would be flexible enough and resilient enough to respond appropriately to my circumstances. So when we're on the treadmill, we would anticipate that our heart would beat and pound, and when we're asleep, we would ask that that muscle slow. Similarly, when I'm in a long-term, viable, loving romantic relationship, the emotional centers of my brain should engage, and when I'm not in a long-term, viable, emotional, loving relationship, they should eventually chill out.
Zato sem se odločila za serijo tretmajev, ki se imenuje 'nevro feedback'. Delala sem z žensko po imenu Penijean Gracefire, ki mi je razložila, da bova trenirali moje možgane. Ničesar ne bova lobotomizirali. Trenirali jih bova tako, kot bi trenirali mišico, da bodo dovolj fleksibilni in odporni, da se bodo ustrezno odzvali na mojo situacijo. Ko smo recimo na tekalni stezi, pričakujemo, da nam bo srce močno bilo, ko spimo, pa želimo, da se ta mišica upočasni. Podobno, ko sem v dolgem, uspešnem, ljubečem romantičnem razmerju, se morajo moji čustveni centri angažirati, ko pa nisem v dolgem, uspešnem, ljubečem romantičnem razmerju, pa bi se morali počasi umiriti.
So she came over with a set of electrodes just smaller than a dime that were sensitive enough to detect my brainwaves through my bone and hair and scalp. And when she rigged me up, I could see my brain working in real time. And in another view that she showed me, I could see exactly which parts of my brain were hyperactive, here displayed in red; hypoactive, here displayed in blue; and the healthy threshold of behavior, the green zone, the Goldilocks zone, which is where I wanted to go. And we can, in fact, isolate just those parts of my brain that were associated with the romantic regulation that we'd identified in the Fisher study. So Penijean, several times, hooked me up with all her electrodes, and she explained that I didn't have to do or think anything. I just essentially had to hold pretty still and stay awake and watch.
Tako se je pojavila s kompletom elektrod, majhnih kot kovanec za 5 centov, in dovolj občutljive, da so zaznale moje možganske valove, skozi moje kosti in lase in skalp. In ko me je opremila, sem lahko videla možgane delovati v resničnem času. V nekem drugem pogledu sem lahko točno videla, kateri deli mojih možganov so bili hiperaktivni; tu so prikazani z rdečo. Hipoaktivni so tu prikazani z modro, zdrava mejna vrednost vedenja, zeleno območje, območje Zlatolaske, ki je, kjer sem želela biti. In dejansko lahko izoliramo samo tiste dele mojih možganov, ki so povezani z romantično regulacijo, ki smo jo identificirali v Fisherjevi študiji. Tako me je Penijean nekajkrat povezala s svojimi elektrodami in mi razložila, da mi ni treba nič narediti in nič misliti. V bistvu sem morala samo biti mirna in ostati budna in gledati.
(Harp and vibraphone sounds play)
(zvoki harfe in vibrafona)
So I did. And every time my brain operated in that healthy threshold, I got a little run of harp or vibraphone music. And I just watched my brain rotate at roughly the speed of a gyro machine on my dad's flat-screen TV. And that was counterintuitive. She said the learning would be essentially unconscious. But then I thought about the other things I had learned without actively engaging my conscious mind. When you ride a bike, I don't really know what, like, my left calf muscle is doing, or how my latissimus dorsi knows to engage when I wobble to the right. The body just learns. And similarly, Pavlov's dogs probably don't know a lot about, like, protein structures or the waveform of a ringing bell, but they salivate nonetheless because the body paired the stimuli. Finished the sessions, went back to Dr. Cheryl Olman's fMRI machine, and we repeated the protocol, the same images -- of the ex, of the control and, in the interest of scientific rigor, Cheryl and her team didn't know who was who, so that they couldn't influence the results.
In sem. Vsakič, ko so moji možgani operirali v zdravi mejni vrednosti, sem slišala glasbo harfe ali vibrafona. Gledala sem, kako moji možgani rotirajo s hitrostjo, podobno hitrosti tuljave v televizorju mojega očeta. In bilo je v nasprotju z intuicijo. Rekla mi je, da bo učenje v bistvu nezavedno. Nato pa sem pomislila na vse drugo, česar sem se naučila, ne da bi aktivno uporabljala svojo zavest. Ko vozim kolo, ne vem zares, kaj počnejo moja leva meča ali kako moja hrbtna mišica ve, da naj ukrepa, ko se zamajam v desno. Telo se samo uči. In podobno Pavlovi psi verjetno niso vedeli veliko o, recimo, proteinskih strukturah ali obliki valovanja zvoncev, a so se kljub temu slinili, ker je telo reagiralo na spodbude. Končala sem seanse, se vrnila k fMRI stroju dr. Olmanove in ponovili sva postopek. Iste slike bivšega in kontrole in v interesu znanstvene doslednosti Cheryl in njen tim niso vedeli, kdo je kdo, tako da ne bi mogli vplivati na rezultate.
And after she had time to analyze that second set of data, she sent me that image. She said, "Dude A's dominance of your brain seems to essentially have been eradicated. I think this is the desired result," comma, yes, question mark.
In ko je imela čas analizirati drugi nabor podatkov, mi je poslala tole sliko. Rekla je: "Izgleda, kot da je dominanca tipa A v tvojih možganih izbrisana. Mislim, da je to željeni rezultat," vejica, "ja?", vprašaj.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And that was the exactly the desired result. And finally, I allowed myself a moment to introspect, like, how did I feel? And in one way, it felt like it was the same inventory of feelings that I'd had at the outset. This isn't "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The dude wasn't a stranger. But I'd had love and jealousy and amity and attraction and respect and all those complicated feelings that you amass after long-term love. But it felt like the benevolent feelings had risen to the surface, and the feelings of fixation and the less-generous feelings weren't quite so present. And that sounds like a small thing in some way, this resequencing of feelings, but to me it felt like the biggest thing. Like, if I told you, "I'm going to anesthetize you, and I'm also going to take out your wisdom teeth," it would really matter to you the sequence in which I did those two things.
In točno to je bil željeni rezultat. Končno sem si dovolila trenutek, da sem se zazrla sama vase, češ kako se počutim. Na nek način sem se počutila, kot da imam isti nabor čustev, ki sem jih imela na začetku. To ni Večno sonce brezmadežnega uma. Tip ni bil tujec. A imela sem ljubezen in ljubosumje, prijateljstvo, privlačnost in spoštovanje in vsa tista zakomplicirana čustva, ki se nakopičijo po dolgotrajni ljubezni. A občutila sem, da so se na površino dvignila dobrohotna čustva in čustva obsedenosti in manj prijazna čustva niso bila več tako prisotna. In to na nek način zveni malo, to spremenjeno zaporedje čustev, a zame je bilo največ. Kot če bi vam rekla: "Anestetizirala vas bom in vam izpulila modrostne zobe." Zaporedje, v katerem bom opravila ti dve stvari, bi bilo res pomembno.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And I also felt like I'd had this really unusual philosophical privilege to understand love. The lab offered to 3D-print my caudate. I got to hold love in my hand.
In počutila sem se tudi, kot da imam ta res nenavadni filozofski privilegij, kako razumeti ljubezen. Laboratorij mi je ponudil, da bo moj kavdat natisnil s 3D tiskalnikom. Ljubezen sem lahko držala v roki.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And then I bronzed it, and I made it into a necklace and sold it at the merch table at my shows.
Dala sem ga vliti v bron in ga predelala v ogrlico in jo prodajala na svojih nastopih.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
(Applause)
(aplavz)
And then, with the help of a couple of friends back in Minneapolis, one of them Becky, we made an enormous disco ball of it --
In potem sem s pomočjo dveh prijateljic iz Minneapolisa, ena od njiju je Becky, iz njega naredila ogromno disko kroglo,
(Laughter)
(smeh)
that could descend from the ceiling at my big shows.
ki se je spustila s stropa na mojih velikih nastopih.
And I felt like I'd had the opportunity to better understand love, even the compulsive parts. It isn't a neat, symmetrical Valentine's heart. It's bodily, it's systemic, it is a hideous pair of ram's horns buried somewhere deep within your skull, and when that special boy walks by, it lights up, and if he likes you back and you make each other happy, then you fan the flames. And if he doesn't, then you assemble a team of neuroscientists to snuff them out by force.
In čutila sem, da sem dobila priložnost bolje razumeti ljubezen, celo kompulzivne dele. To ni čedno, simetrično Valentinovo srce. Je telesno, sistemsko, je grd par ovnovih rogov, pokopan nekje globoko v tvoji lobanji in ko pride mimo tisti posebni fant, se osvetli, in če si mu tudi ti všeč in drug drugega osrečujeta, potem podpihuješ plamene. Če pa ne, potem zbereš tim nevroznanstvenikov, da jih izbriseš na silo.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
Thanks.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(aplavz)