Is Mclennon Real?

#69

Afterward, in the church social hall, Paul picked up a guitar himself, flipped it over to play left-handed and showed off the songs he knew—Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins, Little Richard. * He had the lyrics down (including the complete lines to Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock," a song others had a hard time even deciphering) and knocked off the chords perfectly (including a quick and delicate shift from a G to an F chord that made jaws drop). Then he went over to the piano and pounded out some Jerry Lee Lewis. The boy had polish and heat. He wore a white jacket with silver threads—he looked like Elvis, John thought. "Right off, I could see John checking this kid out," said Shotton (who played the washboards for the Quarry Men). Another friend said that John and Paul "circled each other like cats."
Clearly, these two boys had chemistry—that ineffable quality of attraction that feels like a primal, physical force and that often descends like a lightning strike. As with the passion of love, or the nature of creativity itself, science has struggled to account for chemistry. Humans may, or may not, have pheromones that affect connection (though smell does demonstrably play a role in sexual attraction). Mirror neurons may, or may not, play a role in empathy and rapport. In their new book, Click, Ori and Rom Brafman offer many powerful stories of what chemistry looks like, but when it comes to analyzing it, their first adjective is "magical." Hardly the stuff of white coats and laboratories.
Of course, we celebrate, even venerate, these "chemical" connections—and for good reason. They give us a big kick. MRIs show the brain region responsible for dopamine absorption lights up in couples that say they are in love, comparable to the influence of narcotics. By contrast, social disconnection provokes activity in the region responsible for physical pain.
But intense connection also brings a peculiar discomfort. People "madly" in love show symptoms directly comparable to mania, depression, anorexia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Serotonin levels actually fall in passionate love (which, not incidentally, has a short lifespan, as opposed to the mellower, longer lasting "companionate love").
The behavior in passion also carries profound psychological risk. Arthur and Elaine Aron's experiments on what they call self-expansion show that people literally lose a sense of distinction between themselves and a close other. And as the psychologist Sandra Murray has shown, love wouldn't work at all without "cognitive restructuring," or helpful illusions that dispel the inherent fear of rejection and pain.
John Lennon saw the two sides of his attraction to Paul McCartney quickly and clearly. "I dug him," he said, and he wanted him in the band.

-Inside the Lennon and McCartney Connection, Slate.com, September 14, 2010 (via romanovsinthehizzouse)