Lefties untie!

Several weeks ago I arrived at the Giraffe, a popular local restaurant. The moment I walked into the restaurant, I noticed that many people there were wearing green shirts. I didn't pay attention to the waiters, the aroma, just the number of people wearing green shirts. I thought it might be St. Patrick's day. It wasn't, just a lot of people wearing green shirts. I might not have given this another thought, except that a few weeks ago I read this article (from wikipedia) on lefties. Judge for yourself.

There are many theories on how being left-handed affects the way a person thinks. One theory divides left- and right-handed thinkers into two camps: visual simultaneous vs. linear sequential.
According to this theory, right-handed people are thought to process information using a "linear sequential" method in which one thread must complete its processing before the next thread can be started.
Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a "visual simultaneous" method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were one thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person — using the linear sequential processing style — would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This seems to suggest that left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more creative stems due to this ability to multi-task.

Actually I am a great switcher and sequential multi-tasker. I can change from one project (say science) to another (say music) in a second. But I am lousy at concomitant multitasking (which many females are able to do.

Right-handed people process information using "analysis", which is the method of solving a problem by breaking it down to its pieces and analyzing the pieces one at a time. By contrast, left-handed people process information using "synthesis", which is the method of solving a problem by looking at the whole and trying to use pattern-matching to solve the problem.

This is spot on, at least for me. I always 'see' patterns. Even when none exist. I thought everyone did, but now I have my doubts. Does this have anything to do with inventions? If so, lots of inventors should be left-handed.

The hypothesis that left-handed people are predisposed to visual-based thought has been validated by a variety of evidence. In the 2004 book Brains That Work a Little Bit Differently, researchers Allen D. Bragdon and David Gamon, Ph.D., briefly described some of the current research on handedness and its significance. "Handedness researchers Coren and Clare Porac have shown that left-handed university students are more likely to major in visually-based, as opposed to language-based subjects. Another sample of 103 art students found an astounding 47 percent were left- or mixed-handed." [page 76]
I'm a lousy artist. But my thinking is visually based. I can't use a computer-based meetings organizer (I need to imagine all the handwritten notes in my diary). I have trouble improvising on a song, even if I know the tune and chord changes, unless the song sheet is in front of me.

Ultimately, being left-handed is not an all-or-nothing situation. The processing styles operate on a continuum where some people are more visual-simultaneous and others are more linear-sequential.

This makes a lot of sense. Some lefties (such as my daughter) write with their left hand, but do other chores with their right.

Growing up leftie was just another of the challenge I had to deal with in my youth (growing up Jewish in a somewhat hostile environment, short, chubby, and a general all-round nerd). During kindergarten ("Melvyn is a nice boy but he cries all the time" they wrote in my report card), the 'teachers' spent a whole year trying to force the crayon into my right hand. Being a stubborn little pain in the ass, I would continue writing with my left hand, wiping away the tears with my right. Other kids succumbed (they probably don’t even know they're innately left handed), but I persevered. By the way, I still tie my shoes the way a three year-old does, never did catch onto that loop trick (I didn't see any improvement over the old way, either, to be frank).

Being a leftie means that few things work really well. Scissors are backwards. I must have had the lousiest baseball glove in Canada (they made lousty baseball gloves for lefthanded kids). I play the piano backwards as compared to righties (but then again, so did Bill Evans). As a child, I smudged every page I ever penned (this was corrected only when I started to write in Hebrew, which is a leftie-friendly language). I still write in English with a hideous curled hand. And when I am driving, my lethargic right foot is in charge of both the gas and brake. Well, at least I get to hold the fork in my left hand (take that, you righties!).

If lefties' brains are so different, should they be taught in the same manner as righties? Righties will probably say yes, why spend extra funds to develop teaching methods for those sinister left-handed characters? But, as it turns out, left handed academics do better than righties. So maybe they should be learning from us a few of those green shirt things.

My gigs in South Africa

Last month I had a great time in South Africa - a hectic week of professional lectures and interviews, followed by a great weekend of fun, relaxation, and of course - Jazz.

Saturday night I had one of the most memorable jazz performances of my career at the venerable Rand Club in Johannesburg. I played with a formidable rhythm section, led by Dr. Marc Duby (a fellow professor, but of music!), Roland Moses (who played a Roland keyboard), and a gentle giant of a drummer, named Godfrey Mgcina (you need a Ph.D. just to pronounce his name!!). It has some kind of clucking sound in the middle. At one stage I asked whether he might mind changing it to "Cohen".

The place was packed with jazz lovers. The gig was co-organized by my friend the lawyer/bass player/festival organizer Henry Shields, and Robby Richardson, who manages the Rand Club. We did a repertoire of international tunes, including Ipanema (in Portuguese), Falling Leaves (in French), Besame Mucho, Bei mir bist do schoen (Yiddish) and the Dead Sea Blues, alongside classic American standards (There will never be another you, Love is here to stay, I've grown accustomed to her face, etc.).

The Rand Club is a kind of castle/museum/gentlemen's club, a throwback to the Victorian heydays of Johannesburg (probably then Jews weren't allowed membership, not to mention performing there). There is an amazing library of some 50,000 old books (I found a book of quite explicit 'merry' poems dating back to the eighteenth century). But mainly the place is largely deserted. I slept over two nights (they have three guest rooms), and shared my room with a strange moth. I was afraid to damage it, as the castle is supposedly overrun by ghosts, and you never know who a moth may really be. Dee, the wife of the excellent cook Tom, reassured me that the ghosts are mainly on the fourth and first floors. I was thankfully on the second floor (mind you, my microphone mysteriously rolled off the table for no good reason). The Rand in all its magnificence (and it is magnificent) is smack in the middle of the once fancy, but now somewhat run down downtown of Johannesburg. I didn't dare venture more than twenty steps from the entrance. To ward off any danger in South Africa, I was accompanied throughout by the most fierce, ferocious bodyguards one could imagine. And I have the pics to prove it!

Sunday morning I flew to Capetown for yet another performance, organized by Henry at his restaurant, the Marimba. Again the rhythm section was impeccable – Andrew Lilley on the grand piano, Prof. Mike Campbell (another professor of jazz!) on bass guitar, and Ivan Bell on drums. Mike and I joined forces to compose a song entitled "It's so good being bad with you" which I sang in both venues (You can listen to it on my Hebrew blog).

We had another lovely evening in Capetown as well, you can get an idea of the fun from the following recording:




(On this one Henry sits in on bass).


Jazz is a language, and when you meet musicians you can communicate with, things happen. Many thanks to Henry and Robbie for organizing, the warm audiences in both venues, and the great musicians I got to meet and play with.