[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane

by those who could not hear the music."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathrustra-

Recently had an epiphany while processing a mystifying, semi-shattering rejection that threatened to leave me feeling less than one of Todd Walton's "Perfectly Wonderful Souls." 

So, as usual when mired in a swamp of conflicting emotions, to make sense of it I focused on how to make Art of it.  First, I had to step back from the endlessly punishing ruminations of events in order to begin transposing the feelings into an external medium--a poem, a story, a photograph, sculpture, collage... whatever was at hand and easiest, usually.  Then I had to find strong metaphors suitable to absorb discordant energy while altering it into a productive expression that could stand alone as a separate entity.  This act of external transformation, while holding fast to the original truth, provides a necessary distance in which to assess and discover nuances, new viewpoints or values, from an otherwise deflating experience.

While musing on the this, I came across Nietzsche's metaphor about separate worlds. It hit home, brilliantly.  Suddenly it became clear that attempting to create harmony of an experiences between two people, one of who lives primarily in their right brain (who might appear like this:)

and the other, a dedicated left brain person who approaches life like this:

...is impossible if neither realize the underlying dynamics influencing their individual assessments.  Left-brain persons simply do not hear or understand the music that artists dance to, and right-brain artists generally postpone their time there, before entering the linear left world to process their experiences!

Neuroanatomist Jill Taylor Bolte, in her YouTube TedTalk, STROKE OF INSIGHT, had this to say about how the two halves of our brains function:

"Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about "right here, right now."

 

Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like.

 

I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family.

 

And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful.

"My left hemisphere, our left hemisphere, is a very different place.

 

Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it's all about the future.

 

Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities.

 

And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It's that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you've got to remember to pick up bananas on your way home. I need them in the morning." It's that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry.

 

But perhaps most important, it's that little voice that says to me, "I am. I am." And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you."

So how does it happen that some experience the world predominately through one side of the brain than the other?

Pyschologist Arthur Janov, writing about influences during childhood that shape how we deal with overwhelming situations, observes, “When we become detached from our feelings we also lose the meaning of our experience."   Art is a right brain, emotional experience.  Artists are able to express their emotional experiences because their feelings are accessible, but they have also learned how to move between the two hemispheres of their brain, utilizing their left side's critical thinking skills to communicate their emotional connections to a subject. 

"Euphoria! NIRVANA!" says Jill Taylor Bolte, of when she slipped solely into her right brain during the strokes that disconnected her from her left lobe. 

And it is an other-worldly experience when artists' emotions are engaged. The process is one of immediacy, of simply accepting the experience, the immersion in complex sensualities that are loosely collected, acknowledged, but not organized--not until later when the whole can be brought under critical scrutiny of our left brain's analysis.  The epiphany I had while working my way through a recent onslaught of clinical decisions while I was still floating in space, was the need to become acutely aware of practicing balance if I wanted to avoid future such encounters. Recognizing which hemisphere--mine as well as others--is present in social interactions is vital to good communication and positive relationships.

In closing her STROKE OF INSIGHT, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor asks this of us:

"So who are we?

 

We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world.

 

Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are. I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is.

 

Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid. Separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: intellectual, neuroanatomist.

 

These are the "we" inside of me.

 

Which would you choose?

 

Which DO you choose? And when?

 

I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.

 

And I thought that was an idea worth spreading."