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.
Zdravo, zovem se Desa i članica sam hip-hop kolektiva pod nazivom Doomtree. Ja sam ona u majici na bretele.
(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.
Zarađujem za život kao izvođač, reperka i pevačica. Kada nastupamo kao kolektiv, ovako naši nastupi izgledaju. Ja sam ona u čizmama. Bude tu dosta skakanja, dosta znojenja. Glasno je. Izuzetno energično. Ponekad bude nenamernih telesnih kontakata na sceni. Ponekad bude skroz namernih telesnih kontakata na sceni. Radi se o hibridu između lokalnih mečeva u hokeju i koncerata.
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?"
Međutim, kada izvodim sopstvenu muziku kao solista, nekako više naginjem melanholičnijim zvucima. Pre nekoliko godina, dala sam majci neobrađene mikseve novog albuma, a ona je rekla: „Dušo, prelepo je, ali zašto je uvek tako tužno?”
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
"You always make music to bleed out to." And I thought, "Who are you hanging out with that you know that phrase?"
„Uvek praviš muziku na koju se seku vene.” I pomislila sam: „S kim se družiš pa znaš za taj izraz?”
(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) Međutim, tokom karijere, napisala sam toliko tužnih ljubavnih pesama da sam dobijala sledeće poruke od fanova: „Objavi novu muziku ili knjigu. Treba mi pomoć zbog raskida.”
(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.
I izvodeći, snimajući i putujući sa tim pesmama dugo vremena, zatekla sam se u situaciji u kojoj je moja profesionalna niša u suštini bio ljubavni očaj. Međutim, nisam javno govorila o činjenici da je većina ovih pesama napisana o istom momku. Dve godine smo pokušavali da izgladimo stvari, a onda pet, a onda još deset uz prekide. I ne samo da mi je srce bilo slomljeno, već me je nekako bilo sramota što ne mogu da se oporavim od nečega od čega se čini da se ljudi redovno oporavljaju. I iako sam znala da to nije dobro ni za jedno od nas, prosto nisam mogla da otkrijem kako da ugasim ljubav.
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.
A onda, ispijajući belo vino jedne noći, odgledala sam TED govor žene po imenu dr Helen Fišer, a ona je rekla kako je u njenom radu uspela da ocrta koordinate ljubavi u ljudskom mozgu. Pa sam pomislila, dakle, ako bih pronašla ljubav u mom mozgu, možda bih uspela da je iščupam.
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."
Pa sam se obratila Tviteru. „Da li neko ima pristup magnetnoj rezonanci, npr. usred noći ili slično? Trampićemo se za prolaz iza scene i 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.
A ovo je dr Šeril Olman, ona radi na Univerzitetu Minesota u Centru za istraživanja magnetnom rezonancom. Prihvatila je moj zahtev. Objasnila sam dr Fišerin protokol i odlučile smo da ga ponovimo na uzorku od jedne osobe: mene.
(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.
Navukli su mi bolničku uniformu šumskozelene boje, položili me na nosiljku i odgurali u magnetnu rezonancu. Ako niste upoznati sa tehnologijom, u suštini, magnetna rezonanca je veliki magnet u obliku tube koji prati kretanje deoksidizovanog železa u vašoj krvi. Dakle, u suštini otkriva koji delovi vašeg mozga su metabolički najzahtevniji u bilo kom trenutku. I na taj način može da otkrije koje strukture su povezane sa određenim zadatkom, na primer, lupkanje prstom će uvek da osvetli istu oblast, ili u mom slučaju, posmatranje slika bivšeg momka, a onda posmatranje slika nekog lika koji nekako liči na mog bivšeg, ali prema kome nemam snažna osećanja. On je bio kontrolni subjekt.
(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."
A kad sam napustila mašinu, imali smo slike mog mozga u izuzetno visokoj rezoluciji. Mogli smo da rascepimo dve polovine. Mogli smo da naduvamo korteks i u suštini pogledamo sve nabore u unutrašnjosti, u prizoru koji je dr Šeril Olman nazvala „krzneni tepih”.
(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.
Mogli smo da vidimo kako se ponaša moj mozak kad gledam slike oba muškarca. A ovo je bilo važno. Mogli smo da pratimo sve aktivnosti kada sam posmatrala kontrolnog subjekta i kada sam posmatrala bivšeg, a upoređujući ove skupove podataka, mogli smo da otkrijemo samu ljubav, na isti način kao što bi, ako bih stala na vagu obučena, a onda ponovo stala na nju gola, razlika između tih brojki bi bila težina moje odeće. Pa kad smo uporedili podatke i oduzeli jedne od drugih, otkrili smo aktivnost baš u onim oblastima koje je dr Fišer predskazala.
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 sam ja. A to je moj mozak kad je zaljubljen. Aktivnost se nalazila u toj malenoj narandžastoj tački, ventralno-tegmentalnom području, ta nekakva crvena petlja je anteriorni cingularni korteks, a taj zlatni par rogova je kaudat. Nakon što je analizirala podatke sa svojom ekipom i partnerima, Andreom i Filom, Šeril mi je poslala sliku, samo jedan slajd. Radilo se o poprečnom preseku mog mozga, sa svetlom aktivnom tačkom koja je predstavljala moja osećanja prema tom momku.
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."
Ja sam znala da sam zaljubljena, to je čitav razlog zašto sam se zaputila ovoliko nečuveno daleko. Ali to što sam imala sliku kao dokaz se činilo kao potvrda, kao: „Da, sve je u mojoj glavi, ali sad znam i tačno gde.”
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And I also felt like an assassin who had her mark. That was what I had to annihilate.
I osećala sam se kao ubica koji je naciljao svoju metu. To sam morala da uništim.
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.
Pa sam odlučila da se podvrgnem tretmanu koji se naziva „neuroterapija”. Radila sam sa ženom po imenu Penidžin Grejsfajer i ona mi je objasnila da treniramo moj mozak. Ne radimo nikakvu lobotomiju. Treniramo ga na isti način kao što bismo trenirali mišić kako bi postao dovoljno fleksibilan i dovoljno otporan da odgovori na pravi način na moje okolnosti. Dakle, kada smo na pokretnoj traci, očekujemo da će srce da nam lupa i udara, a kada spavamo, zahtevamo da taj mišić uspori. Slično, kada sam u dugoj, održivoj, privrženoj ljubavnoj vezi, centri za osećanja u mom mozgu bi trebalo da budu angažovani, a kada nisam u dugoj, održivoj, privrženoj ljubavnoj vezi, trebalo bi vremenom da se ugase.
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.
Pa je navratila sa kompletom elektroda nešto manjih od novčića, dovoljno osetljivih da detektuju moždane talase kroz moje kosti, kosu i lobanju. A kada me je priključila, videla sam kako moj mozak radi u realnom vremenu. A na drugom snimku koji mi je pokazala, mogla sam da vidim tačno koji delovi mog mozga su hiperaktivni, ovde u crvenoj boji; hipoaktivni su prikazani u plavoj boji; a zdravi prag ponašanja, zelena zona je zona Zlatokose, gde sam želela da stignem. I, zapravo, možemo da izolujemo samo one delove mozga koji su povezani sa regulacijom zaljubljenosti, koje smo identifikovali u Fišerinoj studiji. Penidžin me je nekoliko puta zakačila na elektrode i objasnila mi je da ne moram da radim niti mislim o bilo čemu. U suštini je trebalo da budem mirna, ostanem budna i posmatram.
(Harp and vibraphone sounds play)
(Zvuk harfe i 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.
Tako sam i postupila. A svaki put kad bi moj mozak radio u zdravim granicama, čula bih na kratko zvuk harfe ili vibrafona. A ja sam prosto posmatrala svoj mozak kako se rotira otprilike brzinom žiroskopa na ravnom TV ekranu mog oca. A to nije bilo logično. Rekla je kako će učenje u suštini da bude nesvesno. Međutim, onda sam mislila na druge stvari koje sam naučila bez aktivnog učešća mog svesnog uma. Kada vozite bicikl, ne znam šta, na primer, mišić mog levog lista radi ili kako moj leđni mišić zna kako da reaguje kada se nagnem desno. Telo prosto nauči. I slično, Pavlovljevi psi verovatno ne znaju mnogo, na primer, o strukturi proteina ili obliku talasa zvuka zvona, ali ipak luče pljuvačku jer je telo spojilo stimulanse. Završila sam seanse, otišla do magnetne rezonance doktorice Šeril Olman, pa smo ponovili protokol, iste slike - bivšeg, kontrolnog i, zarad naučne verodostojnosti, Šeril i njena ekipa nisu znali koja je čija slika, kako ne bi mogli da utiču 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.
I kada je našla vremena da izanalizira drugi skup podataka, poslala mi je tu sliku. Rekla je: „Dominacija momka A u tvom mozgu je u suštini iskorenjena. Verujem da je ovo željeni rezultat”, zarez, da, upitnik.
(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.
A to je upravo bio željeni rezultat. Naposletku, dozvolila sam sebi trenutak introspekcije, na primer, kako sam se osećala. A na neki način, osećala sam kao da imam isti dijapazon osećanja koja sam imala na početku. Ne radi se o „Večnom sjaju besprekornog uma”. Momak nije sad bio stranac. Međutim, gajila sam ljubav, ljubomoru, naklonost, privlačnost, poštovanje i sva ta složena osećanja koja se nagomilaju nakon duge veze. Međutim, činilo se kao da su pozitivna osećanja isplivala na površinu, a da osećanja opsednutosti, kao i ona manje zahvalna osećanja nisu više toliko prisutna. A to se čini kao sitnica na neki način, ovaj novi poredak osećanja, ali meni se činilo kao ogromna stvar. Kao, ako bih vam rekla: „Daću vam anesteziju, ali ću vam takođe izvaditi umnjake." Zaista bi vam bio važan redosled po kom ću da obavim te dve stvari.
(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.
Takođe sam osećala da sam imala krajnje neuobičajenu filozofsku privilegiju da razumem ljubav. Laboratorija je ponudila da mi u 3D odštampaju kaudatu. Mogla sam u ruci da držim ljubav.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And then I bronzed it, and I made it into a necklace and sold it at the merch table at my shows.
Pa sam je izlila u bronzi, napravila ogrlicu od nje i prodavala je na štandovima za suvenire na nastupima.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
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 --
Onda, uz pomoć par prijatelja iz Mineapolisa, jedna od njih je Beki, napravili smo od toga ogromnu disko kuglu -
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
that could descend from the ceiling at my big shows.
koja se spuštala sa plafona na mojim većim nastupima.
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.
Osećala sam da mi je pružena prilika da bolje razumem ljubav, čak i njene kompulzivne delove. Ljubav nije uredno, simetrično Valentinovo srce. Telesna je, sistemska, ona je odvratni par ovnovih rogova zakopanih negde duboko u vašoj lobanji. A kada pravi dečko prođe pored vas, zasvetli. Ako se i vi sviđate njemu i usrećujete jedno drugo, onda rasplamsate vatru. U suprotnom, okupite ekipu neuronaučnika da je silom iščupaju.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Thanks.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)