Excerpts from Mirador

“Some salsa and bachata. Why?“

“Social dance has an incredible power of connecting you not only to your body and the music but also to other people moving with you in rhythmic entrainment. And our central nervous system loves entrainment. Entrainment makes it produce opiates and immunoglobulins, that’s how happy the brain is when it likes the togetherness in the music. Even dopamine, when reaching a moment of orgasmic chills at the heights of musical tension. It’s magical. Have you noticed that we don’t get bored with music we love and it keeps being rewarding? Perfectly timed prediction that envelops in time makes the brain savor its own delightful satisfaction…”

“Prediction? Of what?”

“Of what’s to follow! The brain loves to be right when it’s predicting. And if it knows a piece of music very well, its predictions are always correct. So that’s a double bonus: I like it and I’m right! Booyaa.. dopamine!!” I clicked my fingers. “Right before you know it will be resolved, your brain quivers with excitement, sends chills down your spine and squirts dopamine with desire for more… You remember this moment forever as fucking magic! It’s called reward, the inevitable circuit of happiness.” Emma’s pupils grew larger with the effort to comprehend my explosive joy. She doesn’t know me yet and I can be surprising at first encounter. Some people find me weird. I guess this was the moment when she’d make up a lie to end this interview? But she only highlighted something in her tablet again and smiled softly.

“Yes, I’m beginning to understand why you’re so famous.”

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