Are You Listening?
Over the past several months of art classes, I’ve had a broad range of teachers. Some are young (well, at least younger than I am) and some are closer to my age. Some are laid-back and relaxed while others are structured. They are sculptors, painters, potters and sketchers. All are artists, and all of them seem to have a similar way of deciding how to make art. Are you ready? Here it is:
They pay attention to what “speaks” to them.
Time and time again, I’ve heard these words spoken in different voices. It serves both as explanation for how they do what they do, and as advice for how I go about my own art. In fact, I learned very quickly that when critiquing someone’s work not to say “I like it.” Actually, in most classes, I’m not allowed to say these words. The phrase really doesn’t given any information to the artist, doesn’t tell her or him what works and what doesn’t or, more importantly, how the art affects me. We learn to say things like “I notice that you varied the material from the top to the bottom” or “I respond to the color red you used in the piece.”
That’s the way it’s supposed to work: art speaks, we respond. We all know what it’s like to feel moved by art—a vivid painting, joyous music, a great book, a dancer’s movement across a stage. Still, it’s hard to pin down what it is that moves us. Why does my heart well up every time I hear George Bizet’s Adagio for Strings? Why does my favorite William Stafford poem, The Way It Is, bring tears every single time I read it? What is it that I am actually hearing or noticing when art grabs my attention?
It turns out, I’m responding to my own life.
At least that’s what I learned this week when I read an article week about scientists at New York University who just published research on the brain’s aesthetic response to art in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience. The subjects in the study were shown a selection of 109 pieces of art. These works of art came from a variety of cultural traditions, including American, European, Indian, and Japanese, and from several historical periods. Images were representational and abstract, and included several classifications (e.g., female, male figure, a mixed group, still life, landscape, or abstract). Using fMRI imaging as well as behavioral reporting, researchers were able to scan subjects’ brains while they viewed a wide variety of art. The subjects also reported which art pieces elicited an emotional response. In other words, they shared which images “spoke” to them.
Not surprisingly, all the of subjects used the brain’s sensory, or occipito-temporal regions, to gather information about what their eyes were actually seeing, regardless of whether or not the subject reported being moved by the image. However, another pattern emerged . Although the subjects varied widely in which types of art appealed to them, when they did respond emotionally, they all showed a significant increase in activity in a specific network of frontal and sub-cortical regions in response to artworks they reported as highly moving.
What I found even more interesting is that these regions belong to the part of the brain’s “Default Mode Network” (DMN), which had previously been associated with inward contemplation and self-assessment. As the article reported:
The most moving paintings produce a selective activation of a network of brain regions which is known to activate when we think about personally relevant matters such as our own personality traits and daydreams, or when we contemplate our future.”
What is so interesting to me about this study is not that it confirms that art can and does speak, but that it speaks to each of us personally. My response to art gives me information about “personally relevant matters,” relying on the same transmission system used to give me information about my personality traits, my dreams and my future. When I contemplate art, therefore, I am in a way contemplating my own life. Information about my own aesthetic response can very well provide clues about ways in which I can contribute that are uniquely my own.
Maybe this seems obvious to everyone else. Perhaps it is a truism that we are best at creating the things we love in the world. I’ve learned that listening to art feels very much like listening for options in your life. It helps to be quiet and free of distractions. It helps to be curious and open-minded about what you will find. And then you listen. What pushes you to respond? What makes your heart well up, or bring you to tears? What moves you? How can you include more of these things in your life? What does it inspire you to bring to the world yourself?
There is a whole big world of beauty out there. It’s speaking to us all the time. It’s up to us hear it, to decide what it is saying to us, and how we want to respond.
In Defense of Scribbling
I couldn’t resist. This week, during my daily reading of the comics pages, I came across one of Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac strips that was so good, so smart, I had to cut it out. Even more, I decided I needed to share it in this blog.
The story line is that Alice and her brother Petey are trying to decide on costumes for Halloween. Alice is having trouble choosing, but Petey had already decided that the most terrifying thing he could possibly be is a blank sheet of paper. When I read it, I laughed out loud. He’s absolutely, completely right. Very little paralyzes me more than the blank page.
What was even better, though, was Alice’s response to Petey’s insight.
She scribbled! She took out her crayons (which she conveniently keeps under her pillow) and she scribbled on Petey’s blank page. Not only that, she scribbled a happy face, which could be the subject of a completely different blog post. Still, she defeated the intimidating, looming, scariness of a blank piece of paper with five seconds and the strategic use of a child’s toy.
I need to remember this. When in doubt, just scribble or doodle. Fill in the blank space. Not only does it take away the power of the blankness by rendering it no longer blank, it provides other benefits as well. Studies show that sketching and doodling, rather than being a waste of time, actually improves our comprehension and our creative thinking. Double bonus! Less terrifying and more effective.
I recently watched a TED talk by Sunni Brown, the author of a book called Gamestorm, called “Doodlers, Unite!”, who weighed in on the subject. It’s just the sort of idea that flies in the face of what we all think to be true and isn’t. Brown defines doodling as “making spontaneous marks to help yourself think.” There are many benefits to doodling:
People who doodle when they’re exposed to verbal information retain more of that information than their non-doodling counterparts. We think doodling is something you do when you lose focus, but in reality, it is a preemptive measure to stop you from losing focus. Additionally, it has a profound effect on creative problem-solving and deep information processing.
All this from a blank piece of paper and a crayon, or a pencil, or a colorful marker. Maybe we should encourage students to doodle in class. Or provide pads of paper and crayons to participants of an office meeting.
So what did I do? I opened my art journal to a scary blank page, pulled out three markers in beautiful colors, and I scribbled. My initial goal was just to cover the whole page. But this time, as opposed to the many times I scribble on the back of an envelope while talking on the phone, I paid attention to where my mind went while I was scribbling. It was fascinating. I noticed some of the shapes that I particularly liked. I felt inclined to color in certain sections. I began to understand the wisdom of stashing a few crayons under my pillow. This simple activity felt like a jump start to a more formal creative process if I felt compelled to keep going, and I’m sure I will.
I stopped, though. I decided I’d spend a few minutes first and share the joys of scribbling with you. Give it a try. See what happens. I dare you.
A Woman of a Certain Age
We got the US Census Survey in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and I dutifully sat down to fill it out. I printed my name in the boxes, last name first, and when I came to the space to fill in my age I very carefully and without hesitation wrote “38.” This would be fine, except that I haven’t been 38 years old for 10 years. What’s worse is that it took me a few minutes to realize that it was wrong. How could this happen? How could I just misplace a decade of my life? Memory loss? The dangers of multi-tasking? Teenagers living in my house?
I could have just chalked it up to a “midlife moment” and left it at that. But I was still curious. Why did THAT year lodge itself so firmly in my psyche? If my brain intended to make me feel younger, why not give me the benefit of the doubt and go back 15 years, or 20?
On second thought, no. I wouldn’t go back to being 28 again if you paid me. My thirties were a vast improvement, when my life started to feel like it made sense.
Maybe everyone has a “golden age” when they have really come into their own. I’ve known people who felt they were at their best in high school. Others really identified with their years as single young adults—carefree, exploring. Some people felt like life finally came together when they were new parents, complete with diapers and baby vomit and sleepless nights. Was it possible that my golden age was when I entered midlife?
I did some reading. I came across a journal published by TIME Books in 2009 called Your Brain: A User’s Guide. It included an article called “Gray Hair and Wise Brains,” by Jeffrey Kluger. The article reports the growing conclusion by neurologists and psychologists that the brain at midlife is much more elastic and capable that we thought. He says:
“Far from slowly powering down, the brain begins bringing new cognitive systems online and cross-indexing existing ones in ways it never did before. You may not be able to pack as much raw data into your memory as you did when you were in college, and your short-term memory may not be what it was, but you manage information and parse meanings that were beyond you when you were younger. “
In short, you become wiser. I can’t wait to tell my kids.
Recent advances in brain imaging make this easier to see. When we learn something, our brains wrap nerve pathways with fatty sheaths of myelin. This myelin sheathing serves to insulate the nerve signals and make transmission more efficient. The more myelin sheathing, the more “hard-wired” the connection. Kluger cites a study showing that healthy adults had more myelin in the frontal and temporal lobes, where reasoning and “big thoughts live.” What’s more, “the quality of sheathing reached its peak at around 45 or 50.”
To top it all off, the temperaments of older adults change to match these new skills. They become more comfortable with ambiguity and frustration.
We get wiser and more patient. This is all good.
So I’m feeling better about getting older. Maybe midlife will be my “golden age,” which is fine with me. But still, why 38? Maybe I’m being a little pedantic here, but I’m still wondering if there is some larger meaning in that age for me.
I thought back to what was happening ten years ago and couldn’t remember anything dramatic. I lived in the same town, the same house. I was married to the same person, still had the same four kids. So I dug out the Christmas letter we sent out that year to see if it I recorded some momentous event. Nothing stood out. We took some fun family vacations. Our oldest child started junior high and our youngest started preschool 4 days per week. I decided that year to start writing a book.
Oh, wait. What was that last one? Now it’s coming back to me. I was 38 when I took the first step toward my lifelong dream to write as a job. I’m sure it was no accident that it happened at the same time our youngest daughter was finally in school four days a week, of that the oldest was at an age she could reliably baby-sit. It was a small shift in the day-to-day life of my family, but a huge leap in the way I saw myself. That was the fork in the road that took me to the place I am today. I finished writing that first book about 18 months later, and put it in a drawer. But then I wrote a second one, and started a company called I Am Story. That initial step brought me to today, when I sat down at my computer to write this post.
So yes, my 38th year was a good one, a marker for hope and intention and the beginning of good work. Not a bad place to hang out for a while.
Why I Can’t Hate Video Games
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever played video games. The one time I tried to play a car-racing game on my kids’ X-Box, I started to get motion sickness after about five minutes and never picked up another controller.
I have, however, resisted the somewhat popular opinion (at least among many of my Baby Boomer generation) that gaming is a complete waste of time. I am reminded of the criticisms aimed at the “damned mob of scribbling women” of the 19th Century who churned out popular novels, edging out demand for more “literary” books. These novels—which I ended up studying in my college literature classes–were denounced as worthless, trivial, and morally unsound.
Sound familiar? World of Warcraft, anyone?
Not so fast. As much as I get vertigo from the flashy, fast-moving graphics, and as little as I understand the draw to “blow stuff up,” I’m willing to give the whole business another look. Why? Because gaming lives at the intersection of two very powerful forces: story and play.
Story
Ryan McDougall is a Marketing Coordinator for Capcom, the company that publishes Lost Planet. Capcom will soon launch a sequel, Lost Planet 2, and Ryan talks about the game (while simultaneously playing it!) on a gameplay video (at http://www.gametrailers.com/video/x10-character-lost-planet/61902 ). There’s a lot of dark footage of soldiers slogging through rough terrain, writhing monsters and lots of explosions. McDougall uses terminology that would probably make sense to your average 14-year-old, but is lost on me — four-player co-ops, thermal energy, bosses, skins and factions.
But then he starts talking about narrative, settings, character, and story, and I am back on solid ground. Scoff if you will, but many video games, and I’m guessing most of the popular ones, are story-based. This one is about a civil war that has developed over limited resources on the lost planet, EDN III. Furthermore, in this game at least, it is the player’s responsibility to design and dictate the story of those characters, and move the storyline forward. Just like those silly novels written by the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot and Co., the stories and the characters draw you in. And sometimes you actually learn something from them.
But the potential for video games doesn’t stop there. When asked about the features of Lost Planet 2, McDougall says,
“What Lost Planet does in terms of storytelling is really unique. You get the chance to tell the Civil War story from different perspectives. Throughout the game, you’ll be playing as different groups of pirates, different heroes. You get to see that war as [it] evolves from different perspectives.”
Now I’m as excited as that 14-year-old. Gaming—or at least this game– provides a platform to experience a story from different vantage points. This probably makes the game more interesting. I also happen to think that being able to see a story from someone else’s viewpoint (whether that of a pirate or a hero) is a helpful life-skill.
Play
Yet, that’s not all. Video games take the compelling nature of storytelling and combine it with play, making them an intriguing avenue for learning. As Albert Einstein said, “Games are the most elevated form of investigation.”
Daniel Pink, who wrote A Whole New Mind, devotes an entire chapter to the benefit of acquiring Play as a tool for navigating the 21st Century. A good portion of that chapter discusses the advantages of video games. He quotes James Paul Gee, a professor and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, who argues that “games can be the ultimate learning machine.” He goes on to say, “[t]he fact is when kids play video games they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they’re in the classroom. Learning isn’t about memorizing isolated facts. It’s about connecting and manipulating them.”
I would go further to say that storytelling is also about connecting and manipulating facts in order to express an idea. Maybe one of the best, most enduring ways to learn is through story and through play, something any two-year-old could tell you.
From novels to video games, from Jane Eyre to Albert Wesker, maybe those scribbling women and geeky game designers are on to something.
Tell Me a Story
Imagine that you are attending a lecture, a workshop, or a class. You’re sitting at table, a notebook in front of you, a pen in your hand. You may or may not be paying attention. A person stands at the front, explaining some fact or idea. Then that person says,
“Let me tell you a story.”
What happens to you when you hear these words? I’m guessing here, but I imagine that something in you lets go, relaxes. You might sit back a little in your chair, put your pen down. But you also start paying attention.
For me, hearing those words puts me back to a place where I am sitting on my mother’s lap, listening to Harold and the Purple Crayon for the 100th time. Or relaxing over pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving while my grandmother talks about her hardscrabble life in the mining towns of Colorado. I somehow know that I don’t have to work so hard to understand this information. I trust that my brain will “get” it – completely, accurately, and with little conscious effort. It feels safe and easy, and I let my guard down. Maybe you feel the same way.
In fact, that’s exactly what recent research on brain function has found. Our brains perceive, organize and store information in the form of story. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, argues that familiarity with the use of Story is one of six critical tools or concepts necessary in the 21st century. He states:
Stories are easier to remember—because in many ways, stories are how we remember. ‘Narrative imaging—story—is the fundamental instrument of thought,’ writes cognitive scientist Mark Turner in his book The Literary Mind. … ‘Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories.’
Our brains are familiar with the patterns and structure of story, and readily accept and assimilate information presented in narrative form. What is more, reading or listening to a story appeals to different parts of our brains. According to Susan Weinschenk, author of Neuro Web Design, storytelling activates both the auditory and visual parts of the cortex, as well as the emotional parts of the mid brain. As Weinschenk says, “A story not only conveys information, but it also allows us to feel what the character in the story feels. . . . When we read or hear a story, our brains are partly reacting as though we are experiencing the story ourselves. “
Stories make intuitive sense to us. They help us grasp both the information and the emotional impact of a message, and they can do so almost effortlessly. This is the power of story. We breathe story as easily as we breathe air. We create stories to explain our experiences to ourselves and others, selecting some details from experiences that match the “theme” of the story, and let other details go. We do this so efficiently that we are often unaware that we are making stories about our lives. We assume that our stories are our lives.
This is a critical distinction. If we are unaware of the fact that we create the stories we tell about our lives, we are also unaware that we have the power and author-ity to change or re-tell them when they aren’t working.
Start with something simple. Someone asks you, “How was your day?” You probably had any number of things happen in your day, some positive and productive, some challenging or difficult. How do you answer? Whatever you say, you are writing a story. No matter which details you choose, your story is supported by accurate information from your life. The only difference is the perspective you choose to take. Was it a good day? A bad day? Which story will be the most satisfying to live, to share, or to remember. It is truly up to you.
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