The Siam Paradox

Though perhaps it’s not quite a paradox. And it certainly has nothing to do with Siam, but then neither does The Greatest Man in Siam. But I’m calling it the Siam Paradox because it occurred to me while thinking about that cartoon.

As I argued in my first post about that cartoon, the dramatic climax is a 20 second segment where the trumpeter and the king’s daughter do a wild and joyous Lindy. They dance to swing music on the soundtrack, and that music features a trumpet solo. A really good trumpet solo. Astonishingly good trumpet solo. It took the trumpeter 20 seconds to play that solo. It took Pat Matthews, the animator, hours upon hours to make the 200+ drawings required to animate the scene.

That disparity is what this ‘not quite a paradox’ is about. I’m just blown away that these two streams of activity – the 20 seconds of music, the hours upon hours of drawing – lined up so well. The animator, of course, knew what he was doing. He compared his drawings, frame by frame, as he executed them. I supposed he was constantly riffling the stack to see how the flow went. And he probably filmed tests of preliminary drawings. So, there were procedures to be followed.

But I’m still astounded. The trumpeter was deep in his lizard brain. He had to be to play hot music like he did. What about Matthews’ lizard brain? When did it get to jump and jive? Sure, it was the human-level monkey brain that executed the drawings. But it was the lizard brain that did the ultimate match between the drawings and the music. Why do I think that? Because it’s the lizard that’s most sensitive to and cares most deeply about the match.

How’d Matthews train his monkey brain to draw to the tune called by his lizard brain?