To JEE Re: Psychology Today interview

Hi, Dr. Tramo,

I'm a freelance writer for Psychology Today magazine and am hoping you can help me. I'm working on a story about fandom -- basically what makes someone not just like, but very deeply connect to and even become obsessed with, a particular movie, sports team, or music group.

I'd love to ask you some questions about music "fanatics," if you will. What makes a person a diehard fan of a rock group instead of "Avatar," for instance? Why does music "speak" more strongly to some people? What do music fans gain from hearing an album thousands of times over? Does it actually affect their brain chemistry?

Any insight you can provide would be wonderful, via email or phone, whatever works best for you.

Thanks in advance for your help. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Stephanie Booth
for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Stephanie,

Thank you for your email - I'd be happy to talk about your piece for Psychology Today - my cell # =

Your topic addresses the question of how we derive meaning and emotion from music, the neural basis of aesthetic experience, music's role in defining subcultures - not only musical subcultures (i.e., genres) per se, but different "cultural tribes" of humans that identify and connect with the referential meanings of their tribe's music/art.

Yours,
Mark

Mark Jude Tramo, MD PhD
Director, The Institute for Music & Brain Science

i hope you are very very well. the better question is what makes psychology writers, so desperate... I m in europe for a couple of weeks. tell me your progress

Hey JE - thanks for your note...i hope you are enjoying Europa with the appropriate dollop of wine, women, and, of course, song.

Yes - my take is that psychology writers' desperation derives from

(1) too many damn magazines and tabloids;

(2) too many damn(ed) psychology majors; and

(3) the 'touchy feely' feminization of society, wherein the individual's actions in everyday life need to be rehashed and rationalized - verbally - in accordance with the non-existent principles of Mass Psychotherapy.

I'd like send you Nietzschke's "The Birth of Tragedy" - you will appreciate his analysis of the dithyramb in Greek drama/music and why the masses (need to) enjoy tragedy - i think the ideas apply, in our age of mass media, to the huge segment of the U.S. population that feeds off celebrity scandals and other high-profile misfortunes.

Re Progress:

Thank you for asking, Jeffrey - A new opportunity has cropped up - I'd love to get a chance to talk with you about it:

Parlaying my still-active contract with an ICM literary agent (I chose Kris Dahl over Brockman) to do a pop-neuroscience book (tentative title, "The Music Instinct" - Kris says that advance would be $100k or more) into the first ever combined University book/lecture/concert tour...

The opportunity arose, in part, from my new relationship with Universal Music Publishing: The Head of its Creative Dept, Tom Sturges, whom I met when I spoke last year at the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS - they elect the Grammy winners), recently joined the Board of The Institute for Music & Brain Science. He is the Universal exec who auditions songwriters and sends the acceptable songs to Universal artists - everyone from Brimey Spears to Jennifer Lopez to Celine Dion. He's a mid-1950s baby who is sympatico with me (and you) on several levels. A Trustee of NARAS' LA Chapter, Sturges has nominated me for the NARAS Board of Governors...

Now that my "Apotheosis" album has somehow made its way onto the Internet, thanks to its discovery by a NYC FM radio DJ and some fans, including collectors from Japan, France, and the U.S., some of whom posted it on the Internet, one of whom offered as much as $200 for one vinyl (http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/mark tramo). (See also http://www.myspace.com/menwithtales)

To boot, my audition with Universal - as a songwriter - went well enough that they've given me a list of artists who need songs and a CD of hit beats (the new thing - I can explain later) for me to write melodies on top of.

In short, my two-year plan:

(1) publish a pop-neuroscience book on music

(2) publish the first-ever 'authoritative' Oxford Press text on the Cognitive Neuroscience ofMusic (Martin Baum, their Sr Neurosci editor, tapped me for the project, and I am now under contract - but Oxford advanced me only $2200!);

(3) finish data collection and analysis on the partially-funded Grammy Newborn Project - successful completion would be huge re: connecting with the Grammy PR department and, in fund-raising; tum, one and or more artists/music execs who would donate/do benefit concerts for Institute

(4) do the first-ever combined book/lecture/concert tour ofuniversities around the world.

To make it happen, the only thing I need is time - i.e., to stop spending time seeing my 423rd, 424th, etc patient with a stroke, MS, Alzheimer's, etc. Right now, I don't have time to write the book proposal and meet the Oxford text deadline.

And a bonus would be having a brain like yours to send 200+ words per day to as the book takes shape - the dialogues we've shared and the insightful questions you ask, would help structure and motor my writing - a la the Galileo book I sent at the start of your vacation, "Dialogues on Two New Sciences".

Do you have any time in the next week or so to kibbutz?

Peace & Love,

Mark