The other day I heard, on the radio, about a man who got bonked on the head and the result was he could play the piano. He had never played a piano before the bonking. It has been diagnosed as Acquired Musical Savant Syndrome. Then I read about a man who got attacked by two men, had a concussion, and woke up a mathematical genius. Acquired Savant Syndrome, they call it. Some football players get concussions, but most of them don’t get Savant anything therefrom. I played football couple of times. It hurt, but I don’t think I had a concussion – at least I do not remember if I did. And I can’t play the piano or do math very well. Some people have all the luck, I guess.
A) Maybe, someday, in the Brave New World, ‘They’ will be able to induce a concussion on your head and twist something in your brain and make you a Savant in any field of endeavor you want. Maybe. If the waters don’t rise first.
B) If I have a concussion, I think I’d like to know how to play the guitar.
C) When I saw the movie “Concussion” I thought ‘Well, that’s it for football. Nobody is going to be stupid enough to let their kids or boyfriends possibly hurt themselves like that.’ But I guess “Concussion” was just a movie. The NFL just had a record year, profit-wise.
D) Hey! I have an idea for a movie. Here’s the pitch: A young man from an impoverished background gets a football scholarship to an elite college and he gets a concussion in his first game, but he wakes up a quantum physicist genius and eventual gets a Nobel Peace Prize. (You could probably get seed money for the film from the NFL. I want a 5% finders fee.)
In Ginsberg’s “Howl!”, he wrote: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical…” Today, what do you think the best minds of the generation are doing?
A) Trying to get people to ‘click’ on ads.
B) Playing video games.
C) Playing or watching football games. (See ‘D’ above)
D) Trying to solve the world’s oncoming food shortage problem.
E) Your guess here.
