Artwork title: Linnea’s Brain
Artist: Al Crockett
[Medium shot of Linnea playing acoustic guitar in her apartment]
Linnea: A lot of songs I wrote in the dark room, when I was just
waiting for rats to do things.
[Detail of artwork on living room wall]
[Detail of stuffed unicorn on couch]
[Wide shot of decorative light fixture on ceiling]
Linnea: I think there’s some kind of enhanced connections between
different areas of the brain that’s kind of similar to what people
believe is true of synesthesia.
[Detail shot of circuit boards with LED lights flickering]
Linnea: So, I guess one of the common ones would be like associating
colors with sounds, or colors with numbers.
[Looking over Linnea’s shoulder at the circuit boards in front of her]
Linnea: Something seems to be happening that’s similar in my brain,
because I’m able to draw connections between things that like, I
normally wouldn’t be able to—like I’m able to see connections,
[Medium close-up of Linnea, speaking to camera]
Linnea: I’m able to see the words that go with each other, and they’re
not just generic things that are in every song. They’re like words
that, you know, people would not necessarily be able to put together
who are not me.
[Electric guitar strums a chord]
[Detail of a ripple tank creating an interference pattern on a screen]
Linnea: That first summer in the lab, I realized that, like, brain
waves from different areas of the brain could sort of have coherence
with each other, like sound waves could. And this process was actually
important—or at least correlated—with attention and memory, and so I
became, like, just really interested in that concept, of brain waves
acting like sound waves.
[Full shot of Linnea on stage at a small rock club]
Hey Lowell, we’re Linnea’s Garden. Thank you so much to the P.A.’s and
the Tysk-Tysk Task!
[Detail of Linnea’s pink-sparkle Doc Marten boots as the band starts
to play their first song]
[Wide shot of audience dancing]
[Wide shot of band playing]
[Medium shot of Linnea playing electric guitar]
[Wide shot of Linnea playing guitar]
Linnea: A lot of the world’s like, very like heteronormative. I saw
this whole presentation. It was like, “Are LGBT people
underrepresented in STEM?” and like, we didn’t even know the answer!
[Silhouette of the head of an anonymous audience member cast on a
window shade]
Linnea: They would be like, “We don’t want to make people
uncomfortable by, like, having to out themselves.”
[Sound of a subway train]
[Wide shot of Linnea climbing the stairs out of Kendall/MIT MBTA
station]
Linnea: Just weird how they did not have that data point for so long
because of being unwilling to ask the question, even.
[Wide shot of Linnea walking through Kendall Square]
Linnea: I think this goes in, like, a lot of professional occupations,
though….there’s a lot of the vibe where it’s like talking about that
stuff or revealing that about yourself at work is not professional,
which needs to change—because that’s how you get rid of the
stereotypes!
[Wide shot of Linnea working alone in a lab]
Linnea: I think people have a lot of misconceptions of me as, like,
some kind of Genius, when in reality, I’ve had these experiences and
this training to do very specific things—and I’m, like, a world expert
on, like, three very specific things, but that’s it.
[Medium close-up of Linnea talking at camera]
Linnea: You know, if I could be a role model and inspire people,
that’s great, but I’m just trying to do my own thing and enjoy life,
and if that inspires people, then hip-hip f hooray, but that’s
not what I set out to do.
[Medium shot of Linnea chatting with friends in back of rock club]
[Live punk rock music playing in background]
Linnea: It’s weird, a lot of my mentors and role models ended up
disappointing me in some way.
[Wide shot of rock band The P.A.’s on rock club stage]
As the years have gone by you just have to, like, adapt, and be like,
“Well, that person’s not going to be an exact model for how I want to
live my life, because they’re living their life.” And then you realize
that, like, you have to do the same thing.
[Cut to black]
[Electric guitar feedback fades out]
LINNEA’S BRAIN
starring Linnea Herzog
directed, shot, and edited by Al Crockett