28: Eric Lewis - The Singular Genius of Elew

The Singular Genius of Elew
Information
Guest	Eric Lewis
Length	02:05:43
Release Date	28 March 2020
YouTube Date	8 May 2020
Apple Podcasts	Listen
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Portal Blog	Read
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Eric Lewis is an open portal, a wonderful friend and one of the most important pianists in the world by our measure. As such, we will not bother with further notes for this episode. If you love the quest of the show as well as authentic soulful music, this is your guy. We simply sat down at a famous Yamaha grand piano at The Village recording studio in Los Angeles and this is the interview that transpired.

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Transcript

00:00:00
Eric Weinstein: [intro music] Hi, this is Eric with a few thoughts for this week's housekeeping. What I wanna bring up this week is how to think about the Portal podcast, and in particular, I wanna give a few thoughts on how we should measure the scale of a critique or the power of an idea, and how these two different concepts might interrelate. Many years ago, I used to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and we had our own very peculiar notion of celebrities back then. I mean, Tracy Chapman literally used to busk on the street for money, and NPR's Car Talk guys lived locally. It was within that milieu that I would go to talks for entertainment. As a broke graduate student, lectures were a godsend as they were free and plentiful. I would attend them the way other people would go to movies or concerts, and from time to time, that would include Noam Chomsky's lectures on political theory as he worked at MIT. I was always impressed by his sincerity, and sometimes I would stay after and talk with him. On one such occasion, I told him that I had had a conversation with a contact at NPR and that that person might be interested in getting him a regular slot of perhaps five minutes or more. I was naturally very excited to make something like this happen if it were in fact possible. Noam's response was surprising to me at the time. He was absolutely emphatic that he was not interested. Somewhat stung, I asked him why he was so definite. He replied, in such a small slot against a backdrop of NPR-filtered news, he would appear to the audience to be a stark raving madman, and that there was no way of presenting a deep critique so as to overcome the relentless framing of the news into narratives in which NPR was engaging. I have thought about that interchange many times since then, as I have been haunted by its implications. What good, after all, is a Chomsky-level analysis if it is barred from having any impact when done at scale? When we have a critique of a well-known narrative or worldview, it usually can be sorted into a taxonomy according to whether it accepts, bends, or is forced to break the frame of the storyline with which it contends. As an example, imagine we were back in twenty sixteen and I were to critique the coverage of the US presidential election for failing to contend with the ideas of Donald Trump. Saying that, "I feel that we aren't covering Trump sufficiently because we all know that Hillary is going to win," would constitute a critique, but one that accepts the narrative without challenge. Saying instead, "Hillary is going to beat Donald Trump by much less than she imagines and will have to build her mandate after the inauguration if she is to be effective," would bend the Hillary-is-inevitable media narrative. But saying instead, "I think all the pundits and polls are wrong and that Donald Trump should be expected to win," would break the narrative entirely. This breaking of the frame is usually cause for derision and is, of course, exactly what got Ann Coulter ridiculed on Bill Maher's program when she made just that prediction. To return to our story in Massachusetts, almost all of Chomsky's points were in fact narrative breakers in this third category. He would have stories we'd never heard from East Timor, detailed history on Iranian self-determination and oil reserves, data on Chilean atrocities. To accept Chomsky was to accept a world of different stories that, oddly enough, could usually be authenticated, but which were frequently not referenced outside far left circles. Thus, Chomsky could not play inside the game of NPR, which was often bending and sometimes challenging official narratives, but seldom ever breaking the dominant frames within which the storylines developed. In short, Planet Chomsky was an alternative universe in which a Howard Zinn might be found, but where you would never find Samuel Huntington or Henry Kissinger. I mean, they might have taught down the street at Harvard in the adjacent zip code one digit off, but it was another incompatible universe entirely. So what can one say about the style of deep critique which must break the frame of its target without knowing any further information? Well, in the first place, no one can really argue that all frame-breaking is unwarranted. I mean, clearly the US view of North Korea is such a critique, for example, as is the mainstream Baptist critique of an offshoot cult like the hate-fueled Westboro Baptist Church. And yet, when the narrative under scrutiny is our own narrative, the very one upon which we depend to give direction, meaning, and security in our daily lives, we can be relied upon to fight everything that breaks our frame irrespective of its validity. So with this in mind and the COVID pandemic response as our backdrop, who are today's deep critics, and should we be listening to them or ignoring them as is our reflex? Well, I'm glad to say that Noam Chomsky is still going strong, and I dare to think that upon his eventual exit from this world, he may well be remembered as America's leading public intellectual, even by many of the respectable people who paid him absolutely no mind while he was still a living threat to our system. Nassim Taleb, of course, is another candidate. Now, Taleb's idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, it is particularly difficult to contend with the substance of Taleb's critique because it is so vast. Where other people trade accusations about the misuse of statistics, Taleb verges on saying that the field of statistics is itself the problem. While some might argue about the fallacy of appeal to authority in a particular case, Taleb instead goes after many of the expert class by name, endearing himself to his targets by calling them IYI for intellectual yet idiot. He does this, I believe, because he wants to signal that all frames coming from the mainstream should be considered dead on arrival with him unless verified from first principles. A third case might have been my old friend and colleague Serge Lang at Yale, who I may discuss another time as he is no longer with us, and I will leave Scott Alexander, Venkatesh Rao, Peter Thiel, Nick Bostrom, and others for another time. My aim in bringing up these various and varied critics is to bring to consciousness that there is actually almost no real information content in pointing out that we disagree with nearly any deep frame-breaking critique if it's targeted upon our own narratives. This must be the baseline expectation if we wish to see ourselves as self-aware and metacognitive. We oppose most all such critics reflexively and completely independent of the merit of their arguments for reasons of self-preservation. And yet, and yet even knowing this, my goal at the Portal is, at least in part, to provide you, the listener, with just such a deep critique. The problem here is that the critique as it stands is simply so vast that it is difficult to consider independent of whether or not it makes sense or is true. Think, for example, about the past episodes we've been through. We've asked you to rethink science and its culture from the bottom up. The Portal, in fact, began with an interview about stagnation during a period where most everyone else was talking about some dizzying pace of technological change. We've explored the idea of universal societal lies and preference falsification, and the idea that Judaism might not even be a religion. And most insanely, the need to stave off an apocalypse, potentially through planetary escape, well before we were all told to stay indoors as a planet to avoid a killer virus. I mean, if there is a silver lining to this pandemic here at The Portal, it is surely that our talk about the twin nuclei problem on The Joe Rogan program and worldwide apocalypse seems a lot less far-fetched after transitioning suddenly from business as usual to worldwide lockdown. So how can this be done at scale without paying the same exact reflexive penalty of cognitive dissonance as all the other deep critics seem to have suffered? If there is an answer here, it is to be found in the concept of the portal itself. My goal is not to tell you that where we are is terrible and contains no meaningful options. The highest ambition, in fact, of the program is to show you how else you might think about finding passages to something real and more meaningful than the place you were when we first met. After that, if you want to remain in place, that would be a choice rather than a sentence. So what I want to leave you with is a notion which I believe goes back to Richard Dawkins. At some point, he opined that one could measure the power of an idea as if it were a fraction. To this way of thinking, the power of an idea is measured as what the idea explains divided by what the idea is forced to assume. For example, Dawkins might claim that the theory of evolution is powerful specifically because it explains the origin of all known species and adaptations, but only assumes the principles of natural and sexual selection. Maxwell's equations, by contrast, are powerful because they explain light, X-rays, radio waves, magnetism, electricity, photons, all as an unpacking of a single geometric concept. Weber's theory, by turns, that all government can oddly be unpacked from the simple concept of a monopoly on violence would be such a theory in the social rather than the natural sciences. As such, it may be easier to accept Darwin's, Maxwell's, and Weber's critiques of all that came before them specifically because their criticism is not scattered and flows simply from unifying and underlying principles. In the case of The Portal, we have endeavored to follow this example. Quite simply, and there's no getting around this, our critique of modern life is partially characterized by just how deep it is. Yes, we are really saying that we have had a universally unworkable leadership class in place for nearly fifty years, and that most of our institutions are not functioning ethically or honestly. In other words, most of us adults grew up in a bubble. Of course, that probably sounded a lot crazier to many before most people saw the worldwide clown show that was and is the developed world's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But just imagine that almost every critical area of civil society leadership is just as badly prepared as our public health sector to react to immediate changes in need, and you will start to watch your brain tune out as it may well have during initial discussion of the virus in January. After all, what would one do to fix it? I mean, I myself get innervated just like you whenever I think about the most straightforward implications. Where would we even begin, for God's sakes? Yet this is why we have endeavored to provide you with a very small denominator to combat the sense of hopelessness. I mean, if there is more or less only one root cause to the problems we are picking out, then our idea will have power in the sense of Dawkins, and we need not work individually on thousands of idiosyncratic downstream emergencies clamoring for our attention. In our theory, almost all of this novel level of systemic failure in institutional leadership follows from a simple change in growth regimes. In the post-war regime from 1945 until the early 1970s, growth was so remarkable and constant that we built our institutions around expectations of economic expansion and technological innovation. And then, just like that, most all of that growth stopped around 1971 through 1973, maybe having to do with predictions of Derek de Solla Price more than ten years earlier, which we can discuss another time. Like Weber's theory of a monopoly on violence or Darwin's explanation of selection, the validity of this simplification rests on what can be unpacked from relatively mild assumptions through the theory of embedded growth obligations. Because these institutions are all facing the same system of pressures, there is a near universal need for every titular head in this cohort of leaders to hide the fact that their institution is predicated on high growth expectations and that they are all now failing and that the expectations cannot be met. Further, if this is correct, they are failing in exactly the same ways with the same class and type of leaders at the helm, whose top skill must be this masking of the inability of the leadership to meet the growth obligation embedded within the foundations of their institutions simply to keep the game going. This is what must now come to an end. Generations are in fact defined by their cognitive development during whatever environment was present during their formative years. The important generational divide is likely between the silent and baby boom generations on one side, who grew up as children and young adults amidst real growth and who are thus attached to the narratives of success under difficult circumstances. With Gen X and the millennials still waiting their turn and largely alienated from narratives which offer them very little other than debt and near permanent holding patterns. Once the baby boomers and silents exit the system, we are likely to see their successors start to actually admit to the terrible state of the institutions. So if you're interested in this theory, this is now your homework assignment. As you watch this cohort of leaders wrestle with the COVID pandemic, ask yourself, what part of the bizarre nature of this response can be deduced from the theory of embedded growth obligations? We have now spent in the United States the last twenty-eight years under baby boomer administrations. So how well did they do to prepare us for this pandemic? Did they leave us stockpiles of essential supplies? Did they resign when they failed in their duties? Are their instincts compatible with the heavy burdens which are now likely to cascade from here? And if pandemic leads to depression and depression leads to war, would you wish to send yourself or a child into battle under President Sanders, President Trump, or President Biden as commander-in-chief? Or would you look for a portal instead to avoid this choice? This portal episode introduces you to one of my favorite people and favorite artists on Earth. Now let me say this. If you were to ask me which of my guests so far is most often an open portal to the transcendent, this is the one, and I've seldom been as certain as I am here. It's hard to know what to say about Elu, AKA Eric Lewis. Two things, however, are clear. He is a straight-up genius and a force of nature. Are we friends? I'd definitely say yes, but it is a strange thing to be friends with an avalanche or a tsunami. At our Shabbat dinner table, for example, he's one of our favorite guests, but he often speaks to me in riddles and sometimes reminds me in speech of how Jimi Hendrix used to struggle to talk to mortals. And in many ways beyond that, the comparison seems a good one. If one looks at the musical notation meant to say what Hendrix was doing on guitar, it is remarkable how little is captured. This is because Hendrix expanded the dimensionality of the guitar with feedback, micro embellishments, and electronic wizardry so that the notes provided only the barest substrate for the tapestry of sound that was being woven. In many ways, Eric has done the same thing for the piano. So just as Les Paul preceded Hendrix in using the studio as an instrument, and flamenco artists were tapping on fretboards long before Eddie Van Halen changed the percussive guitar game, Eric was not the first to play with the internal organs of the piano to coax out new sounds. But far beyond the prepared piano experiments of art music composers, when Eric ripped the cover off the piano to play both the keys and the harp-like strings behind, he brought so much dimensionality and soul that he at last overcame the critical limitation of the instrument that had plagued it since its birth. The piano's mechanical action, which is one of the great triumphs of pure mechanical engineering, ensured that there was regularity to most every note. Eric replaced that regularity and created a higher-dimensional instrument. If the piano was Einstein to the harpsichord's Newton, in Eric's hands the piano went relativistic and quantum finally at the same time. I should say that this is one of many different innovations that Eric has brought. He has explored the fusion of Baroque counterpoint and jazz into a style that he calls counterbop, which quite frankly stretches my mind farther than it can often go, as well as innovating rock jazz to replace the Tin Pan Alley songbook of standards. Additionally, he has innovated in several aspects of showmanship as well as DJing and screenwriting, which is hardly surprising as my entire body can seemingly fit inside his brain case. As for this interview, a word of warning. I should say that Eric is being very kind to me indeed by inviting me to at least pretend to play along with him, either on the high registers of the piano while he is playing, or using the clogged harmonica that I happened to find in my pocket the morning we recorded in LA on a famous Yamaha that was apparently used to record Angie by the Rolling Stones. I would appreciate it if you didn't see it as me getting in his way so much as an act of supreme generosity from a true innovator and friend to a humbled curator. I hope you will look into Eric's music after you've had a chance to listen to our uninterrupted conversation, and that you'll sit back, relax, and meet the portal that is my friend Elu, Eric Lewis. [guitar music] Hello. You found the portal. I'm here today with one of my favorite people and our guest, Eric Lewis, uh, alias Elu. I don't exactly know how to describe, uh, what he is and what he does, but we'll start with pianist and we'll go from there, because he's also a DJ, screenwriter, and a guy who, uh, one of, well, one of the reasons he's on the show is that it seems like everything he touches he has to innovate. So Elu, welcome to the portal.

00:16:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Hi. Thanks, Eric.

00:16:05
Eric Weinstein: So o- o- one of the things I just want to jump right into-

00:16:08
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

00:16:08
Eric Weinstein: ... is that I'm super frustrated with where music has been recently.

00:16:11
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:16:12
Eric Weinstein: And I think it's really interesting that you occur in our era. From my perspective-

00:16:16
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:16:16
Eric Weinstein: ... a lot of our popular music has been getting simpler as it was getting more, uh, intricate and more dependent on musicianship back in the '70s.

00:16:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:16:26
Eric Weinstein: And a lot of what we're seeing is a shift to the studio-

00:16:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:16:29
Eric Weinstein: ... to, uh, simpler forms, and-

00:16:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:16:32
Eric Weinstein: ... you come along, and for my money, um, you are innovating at the very highest levels of, uh, jazz, rock, and pop all at the same time. Are you seeing something like that where you are somehow like a salmon swimming counter to the stream? Or do you think that you're just a part of our age and, uh, in fact it's the same as it ever was?

00:16:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Thank you, first of all, for saying that. I th- think of myself as just an arch traditionalist in some sense. Part of the tradition of jazz with a nod of the hat or an eye on Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Tatum. You know, part of the tradition of jazz is to innovate and to indi- individuate, as Carl Jung might say perhaps. You know, that is the focus that I find myself orbiting, and that's my pursuit. I've sort of painted myself in a corner in a lot of different ways, and I use that sort of sense of being trapped or forced to commit to this thing that I've painted myself into a corner with, and I use that particular situation, that particular scenario to drive out and bring forth innovation, as they say Ingenuity. What is that? Necessity is the mother of ingenuity, or-

00:18:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:18:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... mother of, of invention.

00:18:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's just the thing. So i- i- for, for people who don't know you, and they're gonna not only know you hopefully, but we have a beautiful Yamaha piano behind us, and they're gonna feel you-

00:18:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:18:26
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, shortly. Um, let me just give you sort of a, a non-musician's impression of where I've seen you innovating.

00:18:35
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay.

00:18:36
Eric Weinstein: First of all, you've taken what used to be called prepared piano, where people would leave, like, bricks and paperclips in the back of the piano.

00:18:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:18:42
Eric Weinstein: And you've stuck your hand in there to coax all sorts of sounds out-

00:18:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:18:46
Eric Weinstein: ... that add a s- such a rich dimensionality to your playing that y- you have access to many more degrees of freedom than a standard person. So you're playing in the back-

00:18:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:18:56
Eric Weinstein: ... and in the front of the piano.

00:18:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:18:57
Eric Weinstein: Uh, you've innovated this idea, uh, which you called rock jazz, which was a canonical innovation in that originally j- when jazz was coming up, people used the popular songs of the day as the substrate on which to improvise.

00:19:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:19:13
Eric Weinstein: And you, you pointed out that, you know, "Autumn Leaves" is not a part of our current canon, it's a part of our older canon, so why not use the rock songs that everyone knows as the substrate to be true, not to the letter, but to the spirit of jazz? Which is to use that which everyone knows and show them something they don't. Huge innovation.

00:19:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:19:32
Eric Weinstein: Um, like all of the best, uh, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis footage, where he kicks away the, the, the bench-

00:19:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:19:39
Eric Weinstein: ... and he's just playing standing there. You've got this in- insane, powerful stance. You, you use this armor to, you know, to convey, uh, the aggression. And I think, you know, I always talk about the violence of creativity. One of the reasons-

00:19:52
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:19:52
Eric Weinstein: ... we're afraid of creativity is-

00:19:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:19:54
Eric Weinstein: ... that we're afraid that it, creat-

00:19:55
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:19:55
Eric Weinstein: ... creativity's always a violent act.

00:19:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:19:57
Eric Weinstein: You came up with this thing called counterbop, where you're-

00:20:00
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

00:20:00
Eric Weinstein: ... bringing sort of Bach-like counterpoint into a, into the jazz idiom, and achieving a level of independence, uh, we say of your hands, but of parts of your mind that I've never... I don't think I've ever seen at the, at the keyboard. To say nothing of how you've innovated, uh, I'm starting to hear that you're DJing from inside of the piano.

00:20:22
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:20:22
Eric Weinstein: Um, it feels to me like everything you touch is a-

00:20:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:20:25
Eric Weinstein: ... response to a constraint, that you take on the constraints of the traditional-

00:20:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:20:30
Eric Weinstein: ... and then you force yourself, Houdini-like, to break out of them.

00:20:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:20:33
Eric Weinstein: Is that an accurate description of what it is that's driving this sort of explosion?

00:20:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I would say that most of it is accurate. Some of it would be argued from the perspective of branding and that sort of kind of thing.

00:20:49
Eric Weinstein: But isn't that part of-

00:20:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: But that-

00:20:50
Eric Weinstein: ... innovation?

00:20:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right.

00:20:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:20:51
Eric Lewis / ELEW: So, so there's that. You know, that's part of creativity, too, and it's important as well. So I would definitely say that counterbop, of all of the innovations, is one that's got the heaviest musical academic durability.

00:21:14
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:21:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I would say that rock jazz was innovative. However, I'm not the first person to play rock tunes or rock covers on a piano. I think I might be the first person to sort of go at it with the ferocity and the physical degree of power and endurance and sort of fidelity to those pieces. So I think that I go about that particular endeavor in an innovative way. Branding it as rock jazz, perhaps that's innovative, and using that as a wedge to create an extension of my career. So, you know, there's an innovative quality there. I would say counterbop, which is a, a more recent situation, more recent device that I've come up with, that's something that I can definitely say is innovative in the sense that I really haven't heard anyone mix Bach counterpoint with bebop. There's a lot of people that have brought Baroque counterpoint, European counterpoint into jazz. However, and this is for all of the people who are going to [laughs] immediately pounce on this statement or scream, wail that, "Oh, it has been done before." Actually, no, it hasn't. It hasn't been done in a swinging way.

00:22:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's, uh, well-

00:22:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: So the idea that jazz doesn't have to swing or that sort of kind of a thing-

00:23:02
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:23:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... that's going to be a thing, and that particular wormhole right there can go very deep. But suffice to say that no playing Bach counterpoint or that sort of kind of a thing inside of jazz is very different from counterbop, which is why I call it counterbop.

00:23:24
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:23:24
Eric Lewis / ELEW: 'Cause it's not counterpoint.

00:23:26
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:23:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's counterbop, so that you have two Bud Powell or two Charlie Parker-like lines full of all of their internal striations and internal acrobatics, shall we say, harmonic, melodic acrobatics, working within the traditions of swing and those traditions of bebop at the same time, simultaneously. Um, there are a couple of pianists that do have some very highly developed left hands that are able to do it to a degree, and perhaps a, a good degree, but I haven't heard anyone get it to- Like the highest levels, and I believe that I've found a way to do that

00:24:15
Eric Weinstein: You know, I have to say this because I'm not a jazz guy. I don't have some-

00:24:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

00:24:19
Eric Weinstein: ... of the problems that you have. W- we just, there's an elephant in the room, and I want-

00:24:22
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay

00:24:22
Eric Weinstein: ... I wanna kill it at the beginning, which is jazz is such an intellectual pursuit, and it's so discriminating as to the fine points of one's ability that it really is a Mount Olympus, and it's left most of the world behind. And so you always have this problem that when you're talking-

00:24:41
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:24:41
Eric Weinstein: ... the small number of jazz cats who can really track what you're saying-

00:24:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:24:44
Eric Weinstein: ... and who know the history-

00:24:45
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:24:45
Eric Weinstein: ... like they're historians of the subject-

00:24:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:24:47
Eric Weinstein: ... will always pounce. Any simple statement is going to be wrong.

00:24:51
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:24:51
Eric Weinstein: You know, and they'll, they'll point you to something that happened in, you know, with Django Reinhardt-

00:24:55
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:24:56
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, way back when, and, and, and you, y- i- it's incredibly intimidating-

00:25:01
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:01
Eric Weinstein: ... to have to work within this tradition. One of the things I've most appreciated about you-

00:25:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:25:06
Eric Weinstein: ... is the way in which you're willing to both take on the constraints and totally, uh, overturn the apple cart at the same time-

00:25:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:15
Eric Weinstein: ... so that you're really true to the spirit. And I think the people who will resist you at first will thank you later.

00:25:21
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:25:21
Eric Weinstein: Um, if you think about-

00:25:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:25:23
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, Ray Charles, for example, who wasn't quite a- you know, at this level of jazz mastery, but as an innovator-

00:25:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:29
Eric Weinstein: ... brought gospel into the popular idiom. Boy, did he catch hell for that.

00:25:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:25:33
Eric Weinstein: Um, or, you know, playing around with country idioms.

00:25:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:25:36
Eric Weinstein: You know, the, the Black guy taking on w-

00:25:38
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:38
Eric Weinstein: ... what are supposedly white songs-

00:25:40
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:40
Eric Weinstein: ... and showing what can be done with them.

00:25:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:25:42
Eric Weinstein: I think that one has to, to, to break sensibilities and norms, and one of the things I don't wanna get caught up in is have you self-censoring yourself. So I'm gonna take full responsibility-

00:25:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:25:53
Eric Weinstein: ... for all the wrong things-

00:25:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:25:54
Eric Weinstein: ... that we say about jazz history on this show. Uh-

00:25:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:25:57
Eric Weinstein: ... n- not your problem, my problem. What do you see, uh, for people who don't understand the difference between, let's say, uh, a Miles Davis and a, and a Kenny G. N- n-

00:26:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:26:11
Eric Weinstein: ... nothing against Kenny G. What, w- what do the top people in this field, uh, do differently? How did America end up with a classical music that was this advanced this quickly, and, and who are the, who are the really top priests at the pinnacle of that summit?

00:26:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well-

00:26:28
Eric Weinstein: For you.

00:26:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay. So that's a solid and complex, multifaceted octopus question-

00:26:36
Eric Weinstein: Uh-oh

00:26:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... which is fine. It's understandable.

00:26:39
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:26:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm a big fan of science, and I try to exploit the scientific method whenever possible. So from the perspective of the human animal, you know, every sort of opinion about this or that as far as sound goes or as far as, as far as certitude or validity. For instance, if you put Kenny G's name next to Miles Davis's name, I think that it's difficult to have a truly acerbic scientific conversation about that. There's going to be those that feel as though Kenny G is the greatest musician that's ever lived, and there's going to be those that think that Miles Davis is the greatest musician that ever lived, and then there'll be those that think that the idea of-

00:27:44
Eric Weinstein: Of com-

00:27:45
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... calling someone the greatest musician that ever lived in-

00:27:47
Eric Weinstein: Is repellent

00:27:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... itself-

00:27:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:27:49
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... is flawed-

00:27:50
Eric Weinstein: No, I agree with that

00:27:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and has a bias inherent in it that intrinsically undermines the sort of conversation or the purity, the purity of the assessment.

00:28:00
Eric Weinstein: So I don't want, I don't wanna trap you in that. Let, let me, let me-

00:28:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Oh, no, no, it's fine. No, no, it's fine. I, I, I feel as though it's important as far as t- in the process of me answering your question and-

00:28:10
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:28:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... in the process of you getting a sense of who I am-

00:28:13
Eric Weinstein: Yep

00:28:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and how, you know, I feel about things or how I, you know, classify things. So that answers the first aspect of my approach to comparison.

00:28:25
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

00:28:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: So existentially speaking, they're sort of the same depending upon... You know, for instance, you could do a mind hack where you turn on a television a- and switch the channel to something that just gives you white noise.

00:28:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:28:41
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Shh. Now, you can do a mind hack where you could hear Jingle Bells inside of that [laughs] white noise. You can pretty much hear whatever you're listening for.

00:28:50
Eric Weinstein: John Cage certainly explored ideas like that.

00:28:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right. You can hear whatever you're listening for in something, and this goes to politics. This goes to-

00:28:59
Eric Weinstein: Yep

00:28:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... this goes all the way out into all of human thought and bias endeavors, right? So I sh- I'm a chess player, so I shy away from that particular b- battle line. I'm gonna, uh, uh, shy away from putting a qualitative or a, a, sort of a validate, valid- validation-oriented thing with regards to y- the Kenny G versus the Miles Davis and all that.

00:29:22
Eric Weinstein: Well, let, let me take Kenny G out of it. Uh, that was a bad-

00:29:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, no, it's fine. I think it's a, no, it's a perfect example, actually.

00:29:27
Eric Weinstein: You're not gonna let me out of it, okay. Go ahead.

00:29:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: But, but it's perfect, though.

00:29:30
Eric Weinstein: All right.

00:29:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's perfect. You-

00:29:31
Eric Weinstein: Then, then r- r- riff with it.

00:29:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's perfect. The extremities always allow us to get to clarity-

00:29:38
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:29:38
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... as far as I'm concerned, and that's a big aspect of what I look at when I'm evaluating things. You know, the, the more extreme something is, the more pronounced it is, the purer it is, and the easier we can see how it functions in reality. Our political climate is one of extremes these days, so then it's very clear. Everyone's agendas are very clear, and so we can see how those things interact and where they agree, where they disagree, and, you know, the bases upon, the bases, the basises, baseses or whatever that word is, the plural base-

00:30:11
Eric Weinstein: Bases, yeah

00:30:12
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... the bases [laughs] upon which each extreme side proffers- ... y- you know, their position to be concrete. Well, anyway, so when it comes to the aspect of classifying levels of greatness in musicians and stuff like that, that becomes a difficult thing to nail down because of the, the moveable objective criteria, the, the attackability of the objective criteria that we would try to put out there, right? But what we can talk about, we can talk about branding, we can say, or we can talk about physical difficulties, we can talk about things like that. Um, I'm trying to remember, you know, all of the question, but [sighs] I can say that as far as who really inspires me-

00:31:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:31:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... in, in that sense-

00:31:04
Eric Weinstein: At the highest level

00:31:05
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... right, the highest level.

00:31:06
Eric Weinstein: To you.

00:31:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, to me. I'm highly inspired by John Coltrane. I had a chance to tour with Elvin Jones, who was his drummer, so I was able to be sorcerer's apprentice for two years.

00:31:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:31:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Amazing experience. I would say I really look up to many of the European classical masters, Stravinsky, Liszt, Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms-

00:31:31
Eric Weinstein: Rachmaninoff

00:31:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... Rachmaninoff, Debussy. I look up to Hollywood film masters, Martin Scorsese. I look at, um, German impressionistic master F.W. Murnau. I mean, there are so many geniuses in so many diverse fields to be inspired by, and to me, the actual physicality or device or technique that they're using to access the light, shall we say the light-

00:32:09
Eric Weinstein: Is secondary

00:32:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... is somewhat secondary.

00:32:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:32:11
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I just am inspired that these people touched the light. I mean, Simone Biles, this, you know, gymnast that's out now is doing amazing things. The, the Williams sisters, Michael Jordan, moving y- y- y- um, S- Steve Jobs. I mean, Einstein, Newton. There's just so many numerous people. I, I'm inspired by the existential fact that they even existed.

00:32:39
Eric Weinstein: Exist. Okay, well, this, look, this is in, in large part what the portal is all about.

00:32:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:32:44
Eric Weinstein: And just to, to open something up, and I, I think this is the perfect episode to do it. I haven't said it before.

00:32:49
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:32:49
Eric Weinstein: There are, the N is often too low in any particular field. The number of true geniuses, like if I think about physics-

00:32:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:32:58
Eric Weinstein: ... there are lots of people who would be considered geniuses in any other field.

00:33:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, sure.

00:33:02
Eric Weinstein: But, like, the top level, it's five people or less in the last century.

00:33:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:33:06
Eric Weinstein: You know? And so you have to aggregate ov- field by field by field if you wanna see the pattern. And-

00:33:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:33:13
Eric Weinstein: ... in some sense that's what I hear you saying, is that, uh, you're looking... You're, you're not gonna let the instrument define where-

00:33:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:33:20
Eric Weinstein: ... where you look for inspiration and what you port back into your own craft.

00:33:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure, there are specific dynamics to executing behaviors, ideas upon a p- particular device or medium. The inspiration for that sort of thing, in my case, comes from multiple places, which I'm sure is the same for many people. As far as within the field who really inspires me, like I would, I would say John Coltrane and Art Tatum from the perspective of how they merged extreme, extreme technical mastery of their given instruments, how they merged that with a profound, quote, in-house, I'm referring to in their own mind, in their own flesh-

00:34:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:34:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... a profound in-house understanding of where to put the music and what approaches to take, similar to a chess player in the sense that a chess game, if you know how the pieces move, okay, cool.

00:34:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:34:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And if, if you, as long as you're functioning in some kind of way that you can either digitally or physically move pieces around, you can be part of the game. So now, how do the levels begin? How do you get from there to Magnus Carlsen, right? And so that internal game of, okay, why did you decide to defend this-

00:34:58
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:34:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... when in fact the greater attack was coming over here, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:35:01
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so this is a great-

00:35:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:03
Eric Weinstein: ... analogy with jazz in a weird way.

00:35:05
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:35:05
Eric Weinstein: Which is if I go back to guy I think of as potentially the greatest creative genius-

00:35:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:10
Eric Weinstein: ... of jazz arguably would be-

00:35:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:13
Eric Weinstein: ... Louis Armstrong-

00:35:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay

00:35:14
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, who sort of invented modern jazz from the Hot Fives to the Hot Sevens.

00:35:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:35:18
Eric Weinstein: Uh, not to slight the Jelly Roll Mortons of the world.

00:35:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:35:22
Eric Weinstein: That is understandable to me in the same way that a game of, like, Morphy-

00:35:27
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:27
Eric Weinstein: ... or Capablanca-

00:35:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:29
Eric Weinstein: ... was understandable when chess was sort of in an earlier stage of its development.

00:35:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:35:34
Eric Weinstein: But as both of these fields progressed-

00:35:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:35:37
Eric Weinstein: ... you always have this problem, which is that the greater play loses the casual observer. Like, they can't-

00:35:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:35:46
Eric Weinstein: ... figure out what's going on, and I, I, I, I bring this up in the context of something.

00:35:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:35:51
Eric Weinstein: I saw you hanging out with Herbie Hancock, and it warmed my heart.

00:35:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:35:54
Eric Weinstein: Um, I heard him describe playing with Miles.

00:35:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yes.

00:35:59
Eric Weinstein: And he said, "I hit a chord that was so wrong and so off I wanted to clutch my head."

00:36:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:36:06
Eric Weinstein: And he said, "What I didn't know is that there was a level of m- musicianship beyond this where Miles heard the same chord and figured out the exact right notes to play that made it the right chord in arrears."

00:36:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:36:20
Eric Weinstein: And it was w- a keyboard player- Uh, you know, talking about a trumpet player who was fixing his mistake because he didn't hear it as a mistake.

00:36:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:36:31
Eric Weinstein: He just heard it as notes to be played with.

00:36:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

00:36:33
Eric Weinstein: And I think about that in, in terms of, like, the improvisational idiom-

00:36:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure

00:36:37
Eric Weinstein: ... yes and. There are levels and levels and levels, and they lose us as casual observers. Like, would we have known that moment happened if we were in that club or at that recording date if we weren't at the top level of the profession?

00:36:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, I think, as they say, if you have a good plumber, [laughs] you're never gonna know anything's wrong, right? So I think we're in the business of not letting the audience know that anything has gone wrong. Now, analyzing the word wrong and that sort of, kind of a thing, that's where a matter of skill and understanding come into play. We're talking about phenomenology at that point. We're talking about event horizons. We're talking about existentialism at that point. Let me be slightly less obtuse. In the world of film scoring-

00:37:30
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:37:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... I think Bernard Herrmann was the one who made the famous statement about the great paradox that exists in music, where a piece of music could, quote-unquote, be terrible.

00:37:44
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:37:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: You know, it could be really weak, bad, have a lot of inconsistencies, fail at a lot of different levels, clearly be mediocre in its aspirations and its execution of those aspirations. However, however, with the right visual apparatus going with it, with, with the right film going with it, suddenly that piece of music is the penultimate apex zenith of-

00:38:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:38:16
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... perfection for that particular moment. This is the great paradox. So similarly, when Herbie played that chord-

00:38:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:38:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... Miles definitely aware of this type of paradox can come to that and put a sound with it that transcends one aspect of sonority, transcends one aspect of analysis, and speaks, as Miles Davis said, a higher level of theory. It speaks to a higher level of theory. If you're coming from the perspective that any sound is just a sound, free of bias, free of predestination, you suddenly have expanded your toolbox. And so then it just becomes a question of how familiar are you with employing these, quote, out of the box-

00:39:13
Eric Weinstein: Oh, I love this

00:39:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... sorts of effects and manipulating that sort of, kind of thing.

00:39:19
Eric Weinstein: Well, you, you know this joke that Leonard Bernstein put into West Side Story where he takes the, the most dissonant interval, the tritone.

00:39:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:39:29
Eric Weinstein: Right? And he goes, "Maria," which is like, "Ugh."

00:39:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, yep.

00:39:34
Eric Weinstein: And then, "Ah," and he goes to the fifth-

00:39:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:39:36
Eric Weinstein: ... which is, like, the most consonant. And then he's like, "The most beautiful word I ever heard, Maria," right? And the whole idea is-

00:39:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:39:44
Eric Weinstein: ... that the release from maximal tension into-

00:39:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:39:47
Eric Weinstein: ... maximum sonority-

00:39:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:39:49
Eric Weinstein: ... is the most gorgeous thing. So he's gonna take the ugliness and-

00:39:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:39:53
Eric Weinstein: ... just serve it up as, like, this is what... you know, this, the, the feeling of just having met your true love. Um-

00:39:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: In screenwriting, conflict-

00:40:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:40:01
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and tension are the building blocks of your story. I mean, that's drama. That's irony. Night and day, these are the binaries. These are the opposites. Life and death, pain, pleasure, happy, sad. All of these things, opposites. There was a philosophy of aesthetic realism that one of my professors in Manhattan School of Music would talk about, and I don't wanna [laughs] butcher their tenets. However, one thing did stick out they would always talk about was how the coming together of opposites is how beauty forms or-

00:40:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:40:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... you know, is the, the, the component of beauty. And so, you know, while I might not necessarily call it beauty or, you know, uh, uh, put that term to it, movement, speaking of Counter Bop-

00:40:57
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... speaking of Bebop, speaking of improvisation, movement is the core issue. I mean, even getting down to neurosciences, the brain enables movement. Moving topics around, moving pieces, moving music, moving people. Movement, movement, movement. Dance, movement. Choreography, movement. Movement, how you use harmony, how you use writing, how you use words. All of these things work towards that same thing, movement. Einstein said when asked about the universe, when asked about God, "Something's moving."

00:41:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:41:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: There's something moving. So-

00:41:33
Eric Weinstein: And yet he froze it in spacetime. The whole concept of spacetime-

00:41:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:41:37
Eric Weinstein: ... freezes the wave.

00:41:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:41:39
Eric Weinstein: And so there's something profound about the fact that his insight arguably got rid of movement-

00:41:45
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:41:45
Eric Weinstein: ... by putting time as part of the substrate. So, you know, and, and this is gonna come up when we talk about Cubism-

00:41:52
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:41:52
Eric Weinstein: ... where you have been, uh, on this new project which is, again, once, once again seemingly increasing the dimensionality of independence, like parts-

00:42:04
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:42:04
Eric Weinstein: ... no longer it's just two parts of your hands being independent. Like, multiple parts of the same hand are now independent. Um, and it, that goes back to, like, Duchamp with the Nude Descending a Staircase, which was a some- something of a reference to space and time where the tube of the nude, like, one human form creates a tube over time. Do you see that you're playing with- ... sort of concepts that are coming out of this science inspired exploration and the tension, even internal to somebody like Einstein. Is it movement or is it frozen?

00:42:38
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm quite inspired by neuroanatomy, and I'm quite inspired by physics. A good buddy of mine is far more articulate about math and physics than I am. He's, you know, a big devotee of that stuff, and he's a musician. His name's, uh, Marcus Miller. Not the b- bass player, he's a saxophone player.

00:43:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:43:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: But he's really interesting, and so he and I, you know, talk about stuff like that. I tend more towards the neuroanalytical side of things, so I'm very interested in the humocula- the homunculus. I'm interested in the hippocampus and the corpus, um, corpus callosum, and how the different hemispheres of the brain enable movement, which plays directly into my coordination. So I explore those kinds of spaces. I explore how we perceive time m- less so than t- the actual substrate of time itself. And, you know, although I, I do ponder those things, I am very concerned with what's going on under the hood. You know, what's going on in the mind. I like to analyze transcripts of conversations between someone who has dementia versus someone who has Alzheimer's, and listen to them talk to each other.

00:44:02
Eric Weinstein: Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

00:44:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: How they understand each other. Because to me, that's the same as, like, two pieces of music being played at the same time, you know? Because when something makes no sense-

00:44:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:44:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... at the language level-

00:44:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:44:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... or it's incoherent, the only way that we have to try to glean anything from it is f- by analyzing it from a different perspective. So if I analyze it as music, da da da da da da da da.

00:44:32
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:44:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Like the rhythm of my voice, da da da da da da da. You see what I'm saying? Da da da da da da. These are the kinds of techniques and manners and methods of analysis that start to come into how I go about assessing genius, pursuing genius, and pursuing challenges, and pursuing fluidity at what I do. And so getting back to that question of Miles Davis and Kenny G-

00:44:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:44:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... again, we're starting, we're starting to get into topics that form the substrate of analysis. These are the... All these topics are the components of a platform of analysis through which I ponder the event horizon of, of music and m- mu- musicians. So like Lex Luther said [laughs] to Otis in Superman, you know, there are some people who can-

00:45:26
Eric Weinstein: That can swerve? [laughs]

00:45:27
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Some people can, movement, some people can-

00:45:30
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:45:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... look at the contents of a bubblegum wrapper-

00:45:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:45:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and f- s- pe- figure out the secrets of the universe.

00:45:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: You know what I'm saying? So that's the thing. So if we wanna pejoratively-

00:45:42
Eric Weinstein: What?

00:45:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... call Kenny G a bubblegum wrapper, but yet-

00:45:45
Eric Weinstein: Actually, I-

00:45:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I know you didn't. I'm not accusing you of that.

00:45:47
Eric Weinstein: All right.

00:45:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm just saying.

00:45:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm just saying, but so many people normally do. This is why I'm-

00:45:52
Eric Weinstein: The reason I chose-

00:45:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's powerful

00:45:54
Eric Weinstein: ... folks at home, the reason I chose Kenny G-

00:45:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:45:56
Eric Weinstein: ... was that he was accessible.

00:45:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I agree.

00:45:58
Eric Weinstein: And-

00:45:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Just like bubblegum.

00:46:00
Eric Weinstein: Bubblegum is-

00:46:00
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And people would argue, people would argue-

00:46:02
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:46:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... that his music is bubblegum compared to a, a, a filet mignon or if you're-

00:46:08
Eric Weinstein: Well, where I was going next with that-

00:46:09
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay

00:46:10
Eric Weinstein: ... is, is that if I think about two records of Miles-

00:46:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:46:14
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, Bitches Brew-

00:46:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yep

00:46:15
Eric Weinstein: ... versus Kind of Blue.

00:46:16
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure.

00:46:17
Eric Weinstein: Bitches Brew was-

00:46:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:46:19
Eric Weinstein: ... pretty challenging, even though-

00:46:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:46:20
Eric Weinstein: ... it was trying to be a little bit more in the rock idiom.

00:46:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure.

00:46:23
Eric Weinstein: Kind of Blue, despite the fact that it is unbelievable musicianship-

00:46:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yep

00:46:29
Eric Weinstein: ... was inviting, and it became so iconic because-

00:46:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:46:33
Eric Weinstein: ... it worked at so many different levels. It didn't intrinsically tell me, you know, uh, "Bug off, kid. Th- this is for experts only."

00:46:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:46:43
Eric Weinstein: It said, "This is the highest level of musicianship, and it's going to work, uh, in a way that you can put it on without having to, you know, just break your head over it." When I think about Art Tatum-

00:46:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:46:57
Eric Weinstein: ... I w- when I used to put the needle onto my v- vinyl Art Tatum albums-

00:47:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:47:02
Eric Weinstein: ... I would only do it if I was in some place to receive, uh, um, the brilliance of this person that I could not possibly understand. He was playing so fast and so technically-

00:47:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:47:15
Eric Weinstein: ... at such a different level. I mean, I would, would, w- would it be fair to say that many pianists consider Art Tatum, uh, you know, a- at the absolute-

00:47:24
Eric Lewis / ELEW: High

00:47:24
Eric Weinstein: ... maybe even the, the top guy ever to play jazz piano?

00:47:27
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure. Many would, and then there would be those who-

00:47:30
Eric Weinstein: Those who claim that it's not that musical and-

00:47:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: To con- you know, go contrary to that, and-

00:47:34
Eric Weinstein: Yep

00:47:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... you know, that's normal.

00:47:35
Eric Weinstein: Okay. But just be, some, some people at home-

00:47:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And

00:47:37
Eric Weinstein: ... have never heard of Art Tatum at all.

00:47:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: At another level, there's different times for different things-

00:47:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:47:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and different moods.

00:47:45
Eric Weinstein: To every season.

00:47:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: There's that, too.

00:47:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:47:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right. You know, there's situations where Art Tatum's best would be inappropriate or counterproductive to-

00:47:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's what, very few circumstances-

00:47:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: To, to the mood

00:47:58
Eric Weinstein: ... in my life do I s- think, wow, I really just wanna hear some Art Tatum. The only situation that I'm in-

00:48:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:48:02
Eric Weinstein: ... when I really feel that for myself, and I'm, again, I'm not as a musician, is when I want to remember what the human mind is capable of.

00:48:12
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And this is the great conundrum, this is the great paradox, because as we were saying, someone could hear Kenny G's Silhouette, for instance-

00:48:23
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:48:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and experience profound tranquility and serendipity. They could listen to Yanni and get that. There's people, if you go to YouTube, you can look in a comment and someone would say, "Oh, he's the Mozart of our generation," something like that. So incredulity-

00:48:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:48:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... is, there's, I'm sure of course you've heard of it, the, the fallacy of, the incredulity fallacy, where just because it's impossible for you to find believable makes it untrue. So similarly, there's only a certain threshold that classifying or dissecting validity or worth can go. And, you know, the, w- let me put it to you this way. There's a story about Charlie Parker where he was at a club and he was listening to a guy play that was, to everyone else's opinion, you know, really weak. But Charlie Parker was like really into checking it out, and he was able to hear things inside of what that guy was doing or what that guy was going for that gave him ideas. And I think when I was first starting out with rock jazz, that was something that I experienced in a different kind of way, where when I first started hearing some of these young bands and I would hear some of their live shows on the internet at that time, on YouTube, I would think to myself, "Man, this doesn't really sound that great, but the people are loving it."

00:50:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:50:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And so then that caused me to have a different thought process about, hmm, maybe there's other aspects that are in play that connect to people's enjoyment of things. And so, you know, it really called some things into question. You know, it, it really caused me to think about things from multiple perspectives, and basically it threw me into the ocean suddenly. It's just like what we see in politics where you can feel really strongly about a particular thing, then you can find out that there's others that feel even potentially for the exact same reasons that you feel strongly about a thing, for those exact same reasons, they feel the exact opposite thing.

00:50:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:50:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And it can be very, a very incredulous sort of, kind of situation.

00:51:03
Eric Weinstein: Well, I, I bring up this example of Dolly Parton writing this brilliant song, Jolene.

00:51:08
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:51:09
Eric Weinstein: And if you look at the lyrics, they're incredibly tight and economical and conveying so much more through implication than they even state explicitly.

00:51:18
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

00:51:18
Eric Weinstein: Jack White heard the song-

00:51:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:51:20
Eric Weinstein: ... recorded with The White Stripes, turned it into a pre-murder ballad singing the female song from a male, in a male voice.

00:51:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

00:51:28
Eric Weinstein: And Dolly Parton, I believe, wrote him a letter saying, "You may understand something about guitar, but you understand nothing about women." But I think the joke was on her that she'd written such a brilliant song that she didn't realize that it was now approachable from a completely different angle, that she hadn't had the last word on her own song. So there are all of these weird-

00:51:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And that reminds me of the difference between Newtonian physics model versus Einstein's physics and models in, you know, the quantum theory and things of that nature, how, I might be misstating this, correct me if I'm wrong, that classical physics s- start to break down at the quantum level. E-

00:52:11
Eric Weinstein: There's-

00:52:12
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Or sorry

00:52:12
Eric Weinstein: ... you would say that classical physics is recoverable from the deeper model, but only as an approximation to the true physics within a regime. And y- y- but, you know, we, we, nobody has thrown away Newtonian physics because of Einstein.

00:52:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

00:52:31
Eric Weinstein: Because where it works, you don't need the extra Einsteinian, uh, perspective.

00:52:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Now, that was an amazing statement.

00:52:38
Eric Weinstein: Did you trap, did you trap me in something?

00:52:40
Eric Lewis / ELEW: No, you just said something cool though. You just said something that blows the whole thing open very nicely.

00:52:45
Eric Weinstein: Tell me.

00:52:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, we don't need necessarily X, we don't need to discard X in this location, or we don't necessarily need to bring in Y to this location. So we can substitute Art Tatum for Rachmaninoff.

00:53:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:53:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: We, we can algebraically plug in Kenny G., Miles. We can plug in whichever artist or things that we want to in a thing and have that same exact dichotomy of this works in this particular space.

00:53:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. I, Eric, I totally agree.

00:53:22
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And you see where I'm going with that? So similarly, let's just say people wanna have a romantic evening.

00:53:29
Eric Weinstein: But Eric, there, th-

00:53:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Say

00:53:30
Eric Weinstein: ... look, there is an aspect of this that I'm fighting, which-

00:53:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

00:53:33
Eric Weinstein: ... you're making a very deep point, that whatever moves you, whether it's the way the performer looks or the, the feel of the evening, uh, th- there is the total effect on the, on the audience and the listener from having been present at a performance. There is also something which I can't get it escape, which is you're just-

00:53:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

00:53:53
Eric Weinstein: ... at a different level than just about anybody I ever meet. And you, we can play around with that and, you know, I play a little bit of piano. I know when I'm being, uh, when I'm in the presence of greatness. And you are at a different level than almost anybody I've ever met. And y- you don't have to say anything back if it's an im- uncomfortable thing to hear. We can talk about the fact that who knows, maybe Taylor Swift is as musically interesting as Miles Davis. It's a reasonable-

00:54:24
Eric Lewis / ELEW: That's not what I'm saying. That, that's not what I'm saying.

00:54:27
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:54:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Let's look at it from a different perspective please.

00:54:31
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:54:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Another perspective. Let's look at it from a, a DJ perspective.

00:54:36
Eric Weinstein: All right.

00:54:38
Eric Lewis / ELEW: What is a DJ's job? A DJ's job, one of the jobs of a DJ is to curate-

00:54:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:54:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and present music-

00:54:45
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:54:45
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... for people for a particular occasion to elicit either a certain response or to provide an atmosphere that the venue or the client-

00:54:55
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:54:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... is interested in. Now, if we take that down to a, a microcosmic level-

00:55:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:55:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... inside of our own head, take it to the piano, for instance.

00:55:06
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:55:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Take it to these instrumental scenarios, each note that I decide to play in that nanosecond, in that microsecond-

00:55:13
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:55:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... I decide to play it, that's the same as me DJ-ing. That note is a track. Now, imagine how many notes that you would hear in the average performance, and then in my case, [laughs] I'm gonna play a zillion notes, right?

00:55:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:55:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: So then that's a zillion tracks that I've dropped in a particular moment or a particular session. So I'm trying to get into how mental processes are uniform, whether it's at a hyper-slow speed-

00:55:49
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:55:49
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... or a hyper-fast speed.

00:55:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:55:52
Eric Lewis / ELEW: The same process is there. So this conversation that we're having might seem nebulous or maybe even evasive on my part, or vague on my part, or noncommittal or something like that-

00:56:02
Eric Weinstein: No, I should tell people that in general when you and I talk, what I get is a time release understanding of your points over the next three or four days as they finally make sense to me. So I'm, I'm gonna challenge my audience. I told them at the beginning of this show that I would never spoon feed them. You are a more challenging person to talk to because, quite frankly, your perspective is just richer and you speak in an unusual fashion, and I, quite frankly, it takes me days to understand what conversation we just had usually.

00:56:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, I, I appreciate the accolades and I love you too, Eric, and I-

00:56:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, I really love you. I just admire what you've done for us, and I'm gonna blow people's mind by just letting you be you. But y- it is important to know that these levels of being exist, and that's part of why th- the show is called The Portal, is that you are in touch with something that most people have no idea is even available.

00:56:55
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, I will say that I do find inspiration, having recovered from heavy depression and heavy panic attacks, even sort of debilitating ones, that it's inspiring for me to try to share perspectives that hopefully some people could use to get a different angle on their sufferings, say. Like, when I talk about some of these things or when I answer your questions a certain sort of type of way, some of these techniques, some of these ways that I'm managing myself also help me manage stress, help me manage depression, help me manage panic attacks.

00:57:56
Eric Weinstein: And you've had anger. I've seen anger in you.

00:57:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Oh, well, certainly, yeah.

00:57:59
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:57:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Ang- anger control, things of that nature. Fury, rage.

00:58:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:58:04
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And it also helps me get a higher chess rating, too. [laughs]

00:58:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:58:08
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Because, well, think about The Godfather for a moment. Remember how the James Caan character, Sonny-

00:58:16
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:58:16
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... ran out the house because Carlo was being, you know, he was being super aggressive to his sister. But then the bad guys realized, oh, that's the way to get him out there, 'cause he'll jump on that. And so then they manipulated-

00:58:30
Eric Weinstein: Got him at the Tobu.

00:58:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, they manipulated his anger.

00:58:33
Eric Weinstein: Yep.

00:58:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: They manipulated one aspect that was predictable about him, and they manipulated that to get out there. So similarly, I think within ourselves there are certain weak spots or different things that can manipulate us, whether we want to or not, into bad situations or, you know, whether it's a micro bad situation or macro bad situation. And so it's important to develop techniques to manage those kinds of things, ergo Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. So I always wondered why, 'cause it w- as, growing up as a kid, I was like, "Why is it called well-tempered? What does that mean? I only know one kind of temper." Um, well, well anyway, all of these particular devices and techniques and responses all play to trying to find the most accurate answer and, you know, find the most accurate way to approach a situation, and that's a very musical thing. How do we approach this? We see it in chess, too. How do we approach this position? It's your move.

00:59:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:59:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: You've gotta make a move. The clock's ticking. How do we approach this? You can see it in screenwriting. Okay, I've got this idea. I wanna s- have this character save the world. How do we approach this? Okay, I'm at the piano. The people are waiting for the next tune. Okay, I've got this idea. I'm playing something with my left hand, and I've got this idea that I wanna bring out. I've got this energy that I'm feeling. I've got this inspiration that... But how do I approach it? How do I bring this thing into existence, existential reality?

01:00:20
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:00:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Aesthetic reality. How do I do this? Intentions oftentimes are not enough.

01:00:25
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:00:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It has to m- match up with execution, you know? That's when we start to get into the conversation of levels. Now, again, it can become a debated and subjective thing- And that particular stalemate the, but getting back to the Kenny G., Miles Davis thing-

01:00:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:00:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... that particular stalemate only gets broken by something objective. When we're faced with subjectivity that seems endless-

01:00:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:00:55
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... then that stalemate gets broken by the simple question of, "Okay, who's going to pay for it ultimately?" So who's going to hire Miles Davis?

01:01:07
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:01:08
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Who's going to hire Kenny G.? Now, that can get to the lament that you were referring to earlier in the big picture of, okay-

01:01:13
Eric Weinstein: Well, then you have these problems of, like, the comedian's comedian can't get hired, but all the people who can get hired look to that person and they say, "That's the guy who's really got it going on."

01:01:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:01:23
Eric Weinstein: This is the confusion about this. Now, the thing quite bl- you know, I'm just gonna over-

01:01:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay.

01:01:28
Eric Weinstein: You're an overwhelming presence. I'm gonna try to overwhelm you right back.

01:01:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Okay.

01:01:32
Eric Weinstein: One of the things that I love about your playing is is that you're playing at this incredibly technical level. It's so inventive, but you bring so much soul and so much showmanship, and the branding, and the whole thing is going on. Whatever layer of the stack I wanna plug into, it's available to me.

01:01:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:01:47
Eric Weinstein: If I want to just have the most beautiful tunes, you're providing that. If I wanna see something new and innovative, it's happening. And what I've seen is, you know, and I, I've... This is a little bit off-color.

01:01:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: No.

01:01:58
Eric Weinstein: It's like you make love to a room of 3,000 people at a time.

01:02:01
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure.

01:02:01
Eric Weinstein: And just everybody is locked in. They're, everybody's in the pocket. Everybody's feeling the groove, and we're, we're thinking and we're feeling at different levels. I think maybe one of the, my mistakes here is is that I need to get you in front of the piano first, have you play us some stuff, and then when we talk about these levels, I'm not gonna be quite as back-footed. Uh, I shouldn't, probably shouldn't have done the Kenny G. thing just because people will-

01:02:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I thought that was great

01:02:26
Eric Weinstein: ... well, people will infer that I meant something from it that I didn't, but-

01:02:30
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's not true

01:02:30
Eric Weinstein: ... so be it.

01:02:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I dis- I disagree with you.

01:02:32
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:02:32
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I think that it was perfect. I think that it's actually a spectacular thing because it's really going to be a type of provocative and easily recognizable-

01:02:47
Eric Weinstein: Or maybe people will talk it through

01:02:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... distinction.

01:02:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:02:49
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Well, yeah. I mean, it gets back to one of the other points that you were making with regards to distinction.

01:02:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:02:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: How do we tell things apart? So we have to use things that are very distinct in order for us to have a distinction in the conversation. I mean, that's the same thing that happens in great film. If your premise or your opening part of your film lacks-

01:03:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:03:13
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... a strong enough of a distinction about a situation, that particular l- lackage, deficiency is going to haunt the film the whole time. You know, um, the premise of Dirty Dancing, there's this professional dancer and there's this competition, and he wants to win that. His partner ends up having an super dangerous, super harmful, I guess illegal, just terrible abortion, and then there's this rich girl whose father's a doctor who saves her life, that woman's life, but now she can't dance. And so then the, the daughter now, who c- is a klutz, has to be taught how to dance so that this guy can go ahead and win the competition, but it has to happen in secret now because the father... You know, it's the pl- that, however, it struck me, it blew me away that such a, an amazingly painful, controversial topic-

01:04:20
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:04:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... such as ab- abortion-

01:04:22
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:04:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... you know, such a-

01:04:23
Eric Weinstein: Could be-

01:04:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... an amazingly painful, excruciatingly, mind-bendingly sad topic-

01:04:34
Eric Weinstein: And divisive

01:04:35
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... divisive-

01:04:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:04:37
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... yet this is-

01:04:38
Eric Weinstein: Could propel that story

01:04:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... yet this is a dance at th- the finale, the dance in the finale. We see that at [laughs] weddings. On, online you can see-

01:04:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:04:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... different couples trying to do that. So when it came out in the, y- you know, cinematically or as far as storytelling, the power of such a topic that seems... What does that particular, what does that particular-

01:05:03
Eric Weinstein: Doing in the story

01:05:04
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... thing have to do with a dance competition?

01:05:06
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:05:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: But think about it. As a screenwriter, I thought about it. If you take that out-

01:05:12
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:05:12
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... then you're sitting with pen and paper and you're like, "Okay, well, I've got this dance competition. I've got this dancer. I've got this klutz. So the, the good guy, the, you know, the great dancer needs, needs to teach this klutz-

01:05:23
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:05:24
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... how to dance so that he can win the competition." Now, if you replace that other scenario with multiple types of problems, you'll find that it's hard to get something as compelling as that. However, that person took a heavy risk. Now, the screenwriter was a woman, so then she-

01:05:43
Eric Weinstein: I didn't know that.

01:05:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah.

01:05:44
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:05:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: The screenwriter's a woman, and she was a mambo dancer, and she was, her father was a doctor.

01:05:50
Eric Weinstein: Oh.

01:05:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And she went to country clubs, and so she experienced this Dickens-like type of life where, you know, there's y- rich and poor and, you know, all these kinds of things. And I'm sure her father was c- you know, warning her about the, um, the, the dangers of sexual activity and, you know, pitfalls of what he's seen and stuff like that. So she put that all together. So perhaps because she had an experience with it and she's a woman, that she was able to speak on those subjects so amazingly, and she had the understanding of how to bring those subjects together because she lived it.

01:06:26
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:06:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: You know? However, it wouldn't occur to the average person, but this is what we call genius. Y- you know what I'm saying? That's genius, and it's lasted the test of time. But d- that's my whole point with why the whole opening... And this gets back to what you're talking about when we're talking about genius and things of-

01:06:43
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:06:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... that nature. You did a genius thing, yet you're trying to get me- To discount that or go away from that, but I'm identifying you're a genius, and that ties to what I was saying about how Charlie Parker-

01:06:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:06:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... would hear a guy that people would say, "What's, what's he talking about?" But he's listening intently. That's the whole point. You s- all these things come together. It's a question-

01:07:05
Eric Weinstein: So you've, you've created this podcast as the example of the thing that we were talking about in the podcast.

01:07:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, these are wheels within wheels.

01:07:11
Eric Weinstein: Wheels within wheels.

01:07:12
Eric Lewis / ELEW: This is how... Yeah, this is, uh, the universes within universes, quantum, it all breaks down at this level, but it holds at this level.

01:07:17
Eric Weinstein: This is why we love having you over for Shabbat dinner, my friend. [laughs]

01:07:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Algebrically, XY, all that kind of thing. So you did it-

01:07:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:07:22
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... from the very beginning.

01:07:23
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:07:24
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Your instinctive thing, you... I didn't force you to choose those names.

01:07:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:07:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: You naturally chose those names. All I'm doing-

01:07:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:07:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... is the same thing that I would do inside of my mind. If I get an idea, the sensor-

01:07:39
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:07:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... the filter in my mind's like, wow, that's actually pretty cool because I'm referencing all these other things. I'm seeing all this stuff. It's just like a chess game. I'm seeing the checkmate. I'm like, wow, this king is positioned over here. Okay, I've gotta do this in such a way that by the time I'm gonna spring this trap, he doesn't even see that that subtle move he made actually provided an opening for me.

01:07:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, the funny thing is is I think I chose Kenny G., if I recall correctly-

01:08:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

01:08:03
Eric Weinstein: ... because I think I remember hearing that he had ha- he had actually been an innovator with some circular breathing technique-

01:08:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:08:10
Eric Weinstein: ... and that he was somebody who was seen as being middle of the road, but actually-

01:08:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:08:14
Eric Weinstein: ... a good deal above that in musicianship.

01:08:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:08:17
Eric Weinstein: So I think I had some different process.

01:08:19
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:08:19
Eric Weinstein: I wish it was that I had some, some super clever idea, but it was probably only one, one or two moves deep, but thank you for saying.

01:08:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It still functions perfectly-

01:08:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's the... But through-

01:08:28
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... because through, through what you-

01:08:29
Eric Weinstein: Through dancing, I get to dance with you, so, so you get to, uh, do what Miles did to my Herbie Hancock move.

01:08:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And just like in Dirty Dancing, he had to take what she was doing-

01:08:41
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:08:41
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and from what I've understood about dancing in that particular format, it's the man's role in, tr- traditionally, to showcase the female.

01:08:54
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: He's more of basically a pole, a, you know, a static figure that's showcasing all the things that she can do. That's what makes a good male dance partner. I don't know how things work as far as, you know, how we're identifying in, you know, r- on political roles these days. However, I think traditionally that's kinda how it works.

01:09:13
Eric Weinstein: Well, I think it's, there's a beautiful aspect to this concept that healthy male-female relations in a heterosexual context-

01:09:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

01:09:20
Eric Weinstein: ... have to do with passing power back and forth.

01:09:22
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:09:23
Eric Weinstein: And so the idea is that he might have the responsibility of leading-

01:09:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:09:26
Eric Weinstein: ... which people will say, "Well, that's an oppressive act."

01:09:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:09:29
Eric Weinstein: But then if the idea is, no, but it's not just that I'm leading. I'm, my g- role is also to become the substrate to showcase your-

01:09:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right

01:09:37
Eric Weinstein: ... abilities. Um, these kinds of dynamics have broken as we've gotten very simplistic-

01:09:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:09:43
Eric Weinstein: ... in saying, "Well, that's, that's power. That's oppression."

01:09:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:09:46
Eric Weinstein: And not recognizing that these things are part of an interwoven whole. Um-

01:09:51
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right. Interwoven

01:09:51
Eric Weinstein: ... so, you know, the idea is that if I, if I evaluate myself as a podcaster, and I'm just thinking about myself, and I'm not thinking about the dynamic of the conversation, 'cause I'm just learning this. This is, like, th- I'm eight episodes in or something like that.

01:10:04
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm. Right.

01:10:04
Eric Weinstein: Um, yeah, y- you know, uh, it's, it's a question of I need to learn more yes and because of the improvisational idiom that podcasting is, so.

01:10:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right, and, and improvisation is everywhere. Everyone's doing it. Each word we speak is improvised. We're drawing from a vocabulary. We're putting concepts and ideas to sound. We're usi- utilizing these instruments, and we're-

01:10:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:10:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... bringing out energy, and we're moving things around to create a type of movement, progression, and these are all the things that get depicted in art all over the place. So a lot of times it's very easy to find genius or brilliances, brilliancies. The hard part can be to, after you've managed to identify it-

01:11:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:11:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... accurately that is, to stay with it, and then bring in enough tradition or enough substantiation to further demonstrate why that thing is genius. That's been my mission in this particular conversation. I thought-

01:11:24
Eric Weinstein: Fantastic

01:11:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... pivoting between the Kenny G. and the Miles Davis element was brilliance, and it provided such a great foundation for the conversation. Because we could've gone, we can go further.

01:11:35
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:11:35
Eric Lewis / ELEW: We can talk about how Kenny G. racially is very interesting. In fact, that was one of the things-

01:11:42
Eric Weinstein: I know nothing about this.

01:11:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, well, that was one of the things that inspired me as ILU was the idea that there is a huge number of Black people-

01:11:53
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:11:53
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... that really got into this guy playing soprano saxophone. They were really into it, t... and they made him rich, you know? Much to the consternation of many Black jazz musicians who couldn't understand how a white musician like that could get such loyalty-

01:12:16
Eric Weinstein: I know nothing about this

01:12:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... and money from-

01:12:19
Eric Weinstein: Do you have an answer as to why?

01:12:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... a, a target demographic. Well, because some things transcend, quote, quote, "color." It is what it is. Some things transcend that for different reasons, for different reasons. So part of ILU was also an experiment-

01:12:39
Eric Weinstein: Oh

01:12:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... because I was thinking, "Well, that's interesting. What if I tried that in reverse? What if I, a, quote, unquote, 'Black guy' from a murder capital, from Camden, New Jersey-"

01:12:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:12:51
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Look it up, folks. Camden, New Jersey There's a Rolling Stone article called Apocalypse New Jersey: The Sad Story of Camden, to get a sense of where I'm from.

01:13:02
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

01:13:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm a native of that place. What would happen-

01:13:05
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:05
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... if I, who has spent my life learning Miles Davis-

01:13:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:11
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... learning Art Tatum, learning a- all of this traditional, quote, Black music-

01:13:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... what if I learned how to play The Rolling Stones? What if I learned how to play Nirvana? What if I learned h- how to play that stuff? Because when I was doing the traditional thing, I won the biggest competition in jazz. I got a full scholarship to-

01:13:32
Eric Weinstein: This is Thelonious Monk Competition.

01:13:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, I won the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition. I had also gotten a full scholarship to Manhattan School of Music, which I, which I graduated Dean's List. All of these types of accolades. I toured the world with Wynton Marsalis.

01:13:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:13:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: But I couldn't get a record deal, which is always ... I mean, this is, when I talked about your anger.

01:13:50
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:13:51
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I couldn't get a record deal.

01:13:52
Eric Weinstein: I, I, I was so flabbergasted to hear this.

01:13:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right.

01:13:54
Eric Weinstein: And then, and then the idea that you figured out this hack, which in some-

01:13:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right, which is, is, and that's what we're getting into here. So when we talk about, when we talk about Kenny G and Miles Davis, it c- it goes deep into a lot of aspects for me because I looked at him, I looked at Yanni, I looked at Liberace.

01:14:10
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:14:10
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And I was like, wow, they have massive followings. If you took them to downtown New York's jazz scene, how distinctive would they be as far as skill level goes relative to, you know, your average [laughs] college musician or post-college musician? So then that was where I got the th- the idea to, well, one of the places that I got an idea to do an experiment. Well, what would happen if a, quote, unquote, "Black guy from the hood" decided to start expertly playing Sweet Home Alabama, which I ended up playing on America's Got Talent. The enigma of that, the, the, speaking of elephants in the room-

01:14:56
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:14:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... right, the elephant in the room is, you see this guy. I mean, sure, the average person's gonna say, "Oh, I don't see color. Oh, wow, you're just playing Sweet Home Alabama." But, you know, I don't know. I, I kinda don't think so. I don't think it's just that. But either way, that's my point. So I sought to see if the same thing could be true in reverse, and sure enough, it did. Now, I didn't write my own music the way Kenny G wrote, like, Silhouette.

01:15:26
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:15:26
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I didn't use drum beats and things of that nature. And so there's relativity as far as, you know, degrees of success with that. However, I did achieve a very-

01:15:36
Eric Weinstein: Okay, but, like, even, even in this situation-

01:15:38
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yes

01:15:38
Eric Weinstein: ... just, just to riff off of it.

01:15:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure.

01:15:40
Eric Weinstein: You know this, uh, movie Victor Victoria, the story of a woman playing a man playing a woman, a female female impersonator, right?

01:15:49
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm. Right.

01:15:50
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:15:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right.

01:15:50
Eric Weinstein: So you're telling me when you do Satisfaction, that you're actually swerving and feeding The Rolling Stones back, back to a white audience as potentially a very visibly Black man. On the other hand, there's this beautiful video of Keith Richards taking apart and dissecting Satisfaction, and he says, "You wanna know where, what it is?" And he starts playing it as, like, a Mississippi Blues on the guitar.

01:16:15
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:16:16
Eric Weinstein: And so you realize that he took this, this riff, you know, a- a- off of the fifth, sixth flat seven, uh, you know, typical blues pattern-

01:16:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:16:25
Eric Weinstein: ... disguised it, and now you're sort of weirdly the Black guy playing a white guy playing Black music, feeding it back to white audiences, and in some sense giving this v- really beautiful, um, and, and friendly middle finger to this whole notion of race dividing us, that we have to both note it because it does exist and it influences us, no matter how much we deny it. On the other hand, it doesn't have to preoccupy us constantly and be the only thing. I, I, I always think about, um, you know, this race and IQ point that keeps coming up. I never see this happening among people who are deep into music, because the, the contributions have been so profound from everywhere-

01:17:09
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:17:09
Eric Weinstein: ... that it just is like, why are, why are you exploring these ideas that clearly don't capture who has contributed and how much has been done?

01:17:21
Eric Lewis / ELEW: For me, chess has been a great liberator or a great questioner of some of these more, quote, race-driven concepts, because I learned chess from basically Black street hustlers in Washington Square Park, and they had-

01:17:41
Eric Weinstein: Who prefer speed chess.

01:17:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah, blitz guys.

01:17:43
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:17:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: And so they had great aspirat- or sorry, great admiration and aspiration-

01:17:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... towards some of the Russian GMs. And just to hear these men who are the epitome of soul-

01:17:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:17:57
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... the epitome, the epitome of, quote, Blackness-

01:18:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:18:01
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... flavor, all of that stuff, rhythm, all of that stuff, to hear them muse about Capablanca or to pull out a game Nezhmetdinov or Tal or some of these great masters to, you know, go over those games and say, "Well, see, he's a killer here. No, hold on, hold on. Wait a minute now. We gotta watch the bishop. Watch the bishop. Boom. Okay. Okay, he saw that. You saw me coming, huh?" Like, just all of the snappy pattern-

01:18:28
Eric Weinstein: I remember getting into about, uh, a conversation in Washington Square Park about Tigran Petrosian, the chess player.

01:18:35
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right.

01:18:35
Eric Weinstein: And th- these guys were, like, convinced that somehow he hadn't been understood for, for the, the soul that he was bringing to the game.

01:18:41
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right. So for me to get around that-

01:18:44
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:18:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... was, like, very striking because at that time I was really starting to feel, you know, my depression was coming in, my panic was coming in because in my thoughts I'm like, wow, I've won the Monk competition. I've toed the line, full scholarship, came from Camden, full scholarship-

01:19:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, that's ridiculous

01:19:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... graduated, all this stuff. But the powers that be don't find me, I guess, marketable enough to have me be a, a representative of their agency, you know, in the form of a recording artist. So I really started to have some really mind-bendingly rageful and, you know, things going on in my head. And, and I noticed that there were some other artists, quote-unquote white artists, that were starting to experiment with rock in the jazz lane. They were getting jazz record deals, but they were working with rock concepts, overtly questioning does jazz have to swing, and things of that nature, that me from the Wynton Marsalis purist background and aspiration, I would never question does jazz have to swing, right? So there was a lot of anger-

01:20:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:20:02
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... starting to build up from a f- a couple of different places. From you could say a political aspect, and also from a personal aspect because I'm like, "I can't even get a record deal here? Like, how good do I have to play? What do I have to prove here? And ultimately, who are you guys to judge whether I'm worthy of a record deal or..." You know, I, it, it kind of got into these kind of simplistic and superficial anger type of places.

01:20:26
Eric Weinstein: Which di- diminish... And this is one of the reasons, to be blunt about it.

01:20:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:20:29
Eric Weinstein: Since I heard you play first, I don't know, close to 10 years ago, but maybe in person a little bit less-

01:20:36
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:20:37
Eric Weinstein: ... I've often thought, "I have to be promoting this guy, not because he's not gonna get famous on his own, but because he shouldn't have to say what doesn't need... It just doesn't need to be said." I, when I watch you in a room, everyone knows something amazing is happening. And if I could just tell one story from our personal life. Uh, we were having dinner, my wife and I, with Sam Harris, and he was fading in, in San Francisco.

01:21:00
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:21:00
Eric Weinstein: And I said, "Hey, do you wanna go over and hear a friend of mine play a little piano?" And it didn't sound very inviting, but I wasn't gonna tell him anything more.

01:21:06
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

01:21:07
Eric Weinstein: So he says, you know, "Fine, if it's quick." So we, we get him over to this place, and you're there. And we go over, and there's this old beat-up Steinway, and there's a crowd of people who were, who were sitting around waiting to hear you play. And this one woman will not be quiet. She's just not calming down.

01:21:23
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:21:23
Eric Weinstein: She's on her phone. And you say something like, "Hey, something amazing is about to happen. You're about to have a life-altering experience. You need to be in the right frame of mind." And everybody in the room who knew you knew what was about to happen, and everyone in the room who didn't know you said, "What? Nothing, nothing... Nobody talks like this."

01:21:48
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right.

01:21:48
Eric Weinstein: The room quieted down. I've never seen Sam Harris so deep in meditation. He was... His whole world was, like, rewoven, uh, with, with the music you were playing.

01:22:00
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:22:00
Eric Weinstein: And he was just speechless at the end of it. And we all stayed up late into the night. Um, there is something, uh, in this which is it doesn't need to be said. I don't know why, uh, it's so hard to get through, because the music does speak for itself. But I think it goes back to your just wheels within wheels, curation. One of the things I wanted to do, and you were one of the people I had in mind when I started this podcast-

01:22:29
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:22:30
Eric Weinstein: ... was I wanted to show people what is possible in, in their lives. And, uh, I'll be honest with you, you have two separate effects on me. Sometimes I hear you, and I just sit down at the piano and I wanna play, play, play and get better. And other times, I don't wanna touch it, I don't wanna look at it, because I know I'm never going to be at that level. And it is difficult and uncomfortable to work with genius and to, and to see it in, in, in a field in which you're just playing and you're never going to aspire to be at the top of what you might be able to achieve.

01:22:58
Eric Lewis / ELEW: That particular night, I know that you're paraphrasing or, you know, re- recalling. I know how I get when I feel as though there's a person that's violating things for others. So I don't recall my exact words. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't call attention to myself in the sense of, "Hey, I'm about to do something amazing," in, in, in that sense. If I did, it wasn't from a narcissistic standpoint.

01:23:32
Eric Weinstein: No, Erica wasn't.

01:23:33
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It was from a pers-

01:23:34
Eric Weinstein: She, she thanked... I don't know if you remember this. She came up to me and she said, "He was absolutely right."

01:23:39
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I... Th- That, that said, um, I just wanna kinda clarify that 'cause I don't want to create the impression of, of a, a naked n- narcissistic, egotistical kinda thing. That's not my point, and it wasn't-

01:23:52
Eric Weinstein: You did say something like that, but it was the, the feeling of it. If I, if I-

01:23:56
Eric Lewis / ELEW: For me, it was just that she was ruining a situation. You've got Sam Harris there, you've got people there, and she's, you know, bringing a scenario that ultimately no one else was going to sort of deal with it. And so I kinda-

01:24:12
Eric Weinstein: She was making a choice for everybody. And th- this-

01:24:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right

01:24:14
Eric Weinstein: ... you see this-

01:24:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: So then I had to make a choice as well.

01:24:15
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the thing. How often do you have a conductor who stops a performance of an orchestra-

01:24:21
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:24:21
Eric Weinstein: ... you know, of, of 50 people because somebody's cellphone goes off, right? This is now a common feature.

01:24:27
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

01:24:27
Eric Weinstein: We don't make the room for opening our hearts.

01:24:31
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm.

01:24:31
Eric Weinstein: And I think, to be blunt about it, um, I'm sorry if I told the story in a way that didn't convey it, but what, what actually happened was that we all did have a communal experience that we're still talking about. You know?

01:24:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah.

01:24:43
Eric Weinstein: And I, I, I can tell you that there are a small number of performances, the time I saw Prince open for the Rolling Stones, uh, the time, um, that I saw a c- a clarinet player, uh, blow, um, Dizzy Gillespie off stage that I'd never heard of-

01:24:59
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

01:24:59
Eric Weinstein: ... named Tony Scott. There are a very small number of things that actually just change your life.

01:25:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:25:03
Eric Weinstein: And this was one of those.

01:25:04
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:25:04
Eric Weinstein: That was one of those nights.

01:25:05
Eric Lewis / ELEW: On the other side I've come to understand over time-

01:25:12
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

01:25:14
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... what aspects of my playing and also what aspects of my personal behavior or presentation have been detrimental-

01:25:25
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

01:25:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... to my progression in certain aspects of the business. So I also want to make sure that I bring in that aspect, too, because it's very immature also to come with a Knights Templar kind of perspective. We've seen that and we've heard that, and that also is not brilliant because the fact of the matter is there're many reasons and many contributing factors, many dynamics that play-

01:26:01
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

01:26:01
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... into careers, into helium, into buoyancy, and the like. And so over time, I've come to understand a lot more about how energy works and how-

01:26:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:26:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... I've been very good at transforming the energy in a room and, you know, bringing people to these types of ecstasies. However, there was another aspect that I was less concerned with. Now, I think that because of the panic attacks and the depression and stuff like that, I was a lot less sensitive to it 'cause, and the anger as well. However, as time has gone by, I've gotten better. I've improved my technique, and I've grown th- s- through anger, and I've found ways to harness anger and panic attacks and depression and bring it into the music in a, a powerful way and in a, a c- technical way. It's caused me to have even more vision, and my chess rating has improved. So I'm able to-

01:27:11
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's fantastic

01:27:11
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... to, I'm a- am able to analyze myself and realize just because I could raise the roof on a place-

01:27:19
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:27:20
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... didn't necessarily provide a blank check for me to get a record deal. They're looking at other aspects, and those aspects are important, too. Like, see, this is, and this gets, again, back to the Kenny G, Miles Davis, um, um, con- construct, the model, because one thing that I didn't understand, if I'm going to work with a record label-

01:27:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:27:46
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... then I'm making an implicit statement there. I'm saying that I want to be a part of their family.

01:27:54
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:27:54
Eric Lewis / ELEW: I'm saying that I want to represent them at multiple levels. Now, I was coming from a very uncompromising place. I was coming from a very narrow sh- we could say, place. I also was sub-aware of how I sounded in, in, in certain aspects. These days, I've come to understand-

01:28:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:28:25
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... as I've gotten so much better, I've un- come to understand, wow, there are so many other aspects-

01:28:31
Eric Weinstein: You didn't have the luxury back then. I mean, if I can be honest-

01:28:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

01:28:34
Eric Weinstein: ... about it.

01:28:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure.

01:28:35
Eric Weinstein: I'm not really ready to be in front of the world. It's very terrifying having a podcast because I don't have all my stuff sorted out.

01:28:42
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm.

01:28:42
Eric Weinstein: But nobody does. Nobody does. And one of the things back then is you were, you were a terrifying guy because you were completely uncompromising. You know, and I, I get in there, and I try to have a c- musical conversation with you, and you're very patient with me. But inevitably, you know, it shows the levels that we're at, and, you know, I could see how exacting you were. You have been driving yourself. You were in a competition with you alone, so far as I can tell, at the piano, and you've been pushing yourself farther and farther. And I, I love the fact that you're getting the recognition and that it's giving you the luxury to look at yourself and the j- as your mental state goes up, the, the vision expands and your chess rating improves. But we also have to honor that it may be that it is as a developmental stage, and just to turn it back to the Kenny G, uh-

01:29:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Uh, Miles thing

01:29:36
Eric Weinstein: ... uh, Miles thing, that we want to shed where we were. I was in a narrow place. I was in an angry place. But sometimes that stuff is like colostrum. It's needed to get going, and you have to go through those periods where you've-

01:29:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:29:50
Eric Weinstein: ... got that anger and furor because that's what causes things to progress, and that advanced your story a bit.

01:29:55
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's quite the, it's quite the paradox. I, that, I'll have to concede that that, that's very true. Had I not been so angry, had I not had those issues, rock would have never appealed to me because w- what rock enables one to express-

01:30:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:30:17
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... I wouldn't have had that to express. The lyrics of rock are very different from the lyrics that you'll find in a Gershwin or a jazz tune, and it was those lyrics that provided me some escape from-

01:30:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, let us give you some catharsis

01:30:35
Eric Lewis / ELEW: ... where I'm saying screw you to Neil Young and screw you to the governor of Alabama in the song.

01:30:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:30:40
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Right?

01:30:40
Eric Weinstein: Right. And, and to your point about swing, the word rock transitioned from rock and roll, where rock is a rocking motion, it's a verb-

01:30:47
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm-hmm

01:30:47
Eric Weinstein: ... to rock, where it's Led Zeppelin, and it's just-

01:30:50
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Mm

01:30:50
Eric Weinstein: ... a giant stone edifice, and it doesn't move, right? And the same question comes up with, uh, with jazz. But let me ask you, can I lure you, uh, to the piano and, uh, sort of explore some of these, uh-

01:31:03
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Sure

01:31:03
Eric Weinstein: ... ideas with me at the keyboard and, um-

01:31:05
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yeah

01:31:05
Eric Weinstein: ... give, give my listeners a taste of what we're talking about?

01:31:07
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Yep.

01:31:08
Eric Weinstein: Fantastic.

01:31:18
Eric Lewis / ELEW: [playing piano] That sort of kind of a thing. We call that rhythm changes. It's based upon George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm. [playing piano] So. [playing piano] The same thing that you would get from Bach as far as counterpoint. [playing piano] That kind of stuff. Putting it here. [playing piano] Maybe that still looks complicated. Let's try it this way. [playing piano]

01:33:32
Eric Weinstein: Holy cow.

01:33:34
Eric Lewis / ELEW: Were you able to hear the progressions inside of that?

01:33:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, and I was also able to hear the independence of the lines, and I'm assuming that that is a, a good chunk improv.

01:33:43
Eric Lewis / ELEW: It's all improv.

01:33:43
Eric Weinstein: Jesus.

01:33:44
Eric Lewis / ELEW: [playing piano]

01:43:38
Eric Weinstein: [playing piano] Wow. Lovely. [playing piano] [outro jingle] Thank you, sir. [outro jingle] Doctor. Thank you. Well, you got it that time. All right. You've been through the portal with the maestro of genius himself, Mr. Eric Lewis. Part of him is ELEW. Uh, he's all over the Internet and wherever you buy your music. And come out to see him in concert. I guarantee you've never seen a show quite like it, and, uh, it'll be an amazing night that you'll remember forever. Eric, thank you, my friend. Thank you. [clapping] Blessings. [outro jingle]