Creative Quest

Creative Quest
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Ecco, April 24, 2018, 261 pages
Kindle edition $12.99, Amazon paperback $14.29

I had never heard of Questlove, aka Ahmir Thompson, until he showed up on the Rachael Ray show one day. Not that I watch Rachel Ray regularly (I wish there was an easy way eliminate all the other goings-on (as they appeared on the show pre-COVID-19) and just watch the cooking segments), but I caught this episode. It turns out that he is the musical director of the Jimmy Fallon incarnation of The Tonight Show, and his musical group Roots is the house band. But you no doubt knew that.

Questlove is also a lover of gourmet cooking and in a pre-COVID19 world he hosted food salons so he could hang out with four- and five-star chefs. He was on Rachael Ray to talk about gourmet holiday potlucks, as I recall.

When I looked him up on Amazon I found this book. Always interested in improving my creativity I bought it. It was a mixed bag for me. I’m not a big fan of hip-hop. Actually, I actively dislike hip-hop. (I never enjoyed the music on Fallon’s version of Tonight the few times that I’ve watched it. Questlove is not Doc Severinsen.) Questlove writes a lot about the creative process in hip-hop and music in general. A music lover I am, but understanding the creative process behind producing music doesn’t interest me in the same way that understanding the creative process in writing does. The author writes about things like ProTools, which, if you are a serious musician, is the ultimate music editing software, or so I understand.

Still, Questlove has some interesting insights into the creative process, and he is candid about his failures in addition to noting his successes. He suggests that in a world of the internet and Google “the brain is more a hunter-gatherer and less a farmer.” He cites William Klemm, of Texas A&M University:

[Klemm] defines creativity as the process of drawing water from a deep well. I’m paraphrasing. He said that “creativity comes from a mind that knows, and remembers, a lot.” We don’t have those brains anymore. Instead, we offload our knowledge to our phones and computers, to Wikipedia, to Shazam. It’s a great convenience, but what’s lost in the process?

Questlove, born in 1971, the year I graduated from high school, ought not be worrying about aging quite yet, but I like the fact that he references Dick Van Dyke, now in his nineties, saying as we age we ought not avoid (for example) using the stairs just because it hurts a little. I’ll remember that the next time I ache getting up off the floor when I’m arranging Tasha’s food on the bottom shelf of the cabinet.

The author writes in a light, breezy style. He has a “with” co-author in Ben Greenman, but I assume that the self-deprecation and dry wit are Questlove’s and not imposed by Greenman.

Not one of my favorite books, but there are some good insights here.

Who We Are and How We Got Here

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
David Reich
Vintage (March 27, 2018), 356 pages
Kindle edition $7.99, Amazon paperback $13.68

Our ability to interpret the human genome has advanced our scientific knowledge in a wide range of disciplines. In these recent stay-at-home pandemic months I have streamed on my Roku Great Courses lecture series on evolution, Native Americans, and linguistics. All of them have touched upon genetic evidence as part of the material presented.

Author David Reich is a working scientist who complains at the outset about taking time away from preparing papers for professional journals to write a popular book. The general reader, however, is better off for his having done so. He provides a readable outline of the state of genetic research today.

Reich discusses early human history and describes how modern humans carry genes from both ancient Neanderthals and Denisovans, something that helped early modern humans survive in new environments. He writes about the migrations of people and the interbreeding between hunter-gatherers and farmers. The author then describes research into the distribution of human populations today. Throughout the book he talks about work done in his own lab and gives proper credit to individual researchers.

Near the end of the book Reich complains about the politics and academic disputes that arise in the world of research. This was somewhat frustrating reading, but the bulk of the book, in which he lays out how the science of genetics has helped flesh out our understanding of humankind, was fascinating stuff.

Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms

Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms
Alistair Moffat
Birlinn (November 1, 2012), 308 pages
Kindle edition $10.99, Paperback $27.93
Purchased during an Early Bird Books sale for $1.99

Alistair Moffat spent many years as an actor and as an executive for the Scottish equivalent of the BBC before retiring to live on his farm in southern Scotland and work as an amateur historian. This book is a product of that second career.

There is far less allure to the book than the title might imply. Much of it focuses on the early history of southern Scotland, describing the comings and goings of the Romans, Angles, and Saxons and their interactions with the native Britons. Moffat also has an ax to grind. It is important to him to establish Arthur’s origins in Southern Scotland, and he goes out of his way to do so.

Moffat writes that there is more evidence for the historical existence of Merlin than there is for Arthur. Yet he then uses place names and historical documents from a couple of hundred years after the supposed time of Arthur to describe the battles he led, to state that Arthur considered himself to be a military leader and not a king, and even give a specific year for Arthur’s death.

Moffat’s efforts are in the end unsatisfying and unconvincing. Despite all the efforts he and others have put into unearthing a historical Arthur, I’m not sure we’ll ever find him. Far better, I think, to enjoy and savor the myth and the legend.

The Unexpected Universe

The Unexpected Universe
Loren Eiseley
Library of America, 254 pages
originally published in 1969
Kindle edition $8.99, Amazon paperback 11.59
Purchased during an Early Bird Books sale for $0.99

Back in my Claremont cockroach days, the era that began after I graduated from Pitzer College but stayed in Claremont and ended when I headed off to Laredo, Texas to open a B. Dalton Bookseller store, I was a big fan of Loren Eiseley. I loved his writing on nature, natural history, and the happenings of everyday life. I was delighted to discover, then, that much of his work is back in print. I learned this when I saw his book The Unexpected Universe in an Early Bird Books email. I bought it immediately.

Eisley is a skilled essayist. In the opening piece he interweaves Odysseus and Darwin as he discusses their respective journeys, one fictional, one real. In another essay he describes a man on a beach in Mexico throwing starfish which had washed up on shore back into the ocean to give them another chance at life.

He writes beautifully about humankind’s connection to nature:

I saw the drifting cells of the early seas from which all life, including our own, has arisen. The salt of those ancient seas is in our blood, its lime is in our bones. Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments, or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.

Eiseley is not unaware of the destruction caused by humans: “We have become planet changers and the decimators of life, including our own.” And this in 1969. Nonetheless, there is so much beauty, wonder, and awe in Eiseley’s writing that reading his work makes for a most enjoyable diversion in these turbulent times.