When left brain tries to imitate an absent right brain

When you are connected to the right brain and the creativity is flowing you may be only dimly aware of your ‘framework level’. All right brain activity- intuitive, creative, problem solving, insight and foresight generating must be channelled through the left brain interface or framework. In the classical analogy of the driver in the carriage, the driver is the left brain and the passenger is the right brain (the horses are emotions and the carriage is the body). The passenger has no grip of the reins, no commands for the horses and no knowledge of the road’s condition- only where he wants to go. The left brain is how we interact with the world (the analogy isn’t completely airtight but it works well enough). The right brain- though we hear it speaking to us through hints, coincidences noted, inspirations and dreams, cannot be ‘commanded’ into action, only lured by the existence of a functioning carriage set up.

Now a clever driver, observing that when the right brain is in control that the carriage may take a scenic route, may try to imitate that himself by wandering around, acting in a random way and generally being ‘undirected’. This is the left brain imitating the right and it is the scourge of hippies, artists and creative types the world over. The key is: the left brain has no knowledge of the right- yep- it can only copy and follow orders. Give it an inch, though, and it’ll try and run the show. The right brain is moody. If the left brain takes over it may simply desert. If the carriage is broken it may decide to take a holiday elsewhere. If the horses are out of control it will sit tight and say nothing. The right brain is the only one that can give orders but you have to have the right conditions for it to do so. When they are absent the clever old copying left brain tries to imitate the right through being random, slovenly, staring out the window in a ‘stuck’ manner, spiralling inwards into introspection (the left brain trying to ‘solve’ directional problems without knowing the destination) or by becoming obsessed (ie. repeating the same thing over and over again). Being ‘passionate’ about ‘your art’ can often mean simply a left brain obsession has taken hold. Watch it flower into a photo collection entitled 57 Trig points- each one identical to the last except for the identifying number…

You can reconnect often to the right brain by giving it a command structure that works. The more rigid the set up (as long as it doesn’t choke the right brain with boredom) the better the right brain can operate. Hence artistic rules and conventions (and the need for the poor modern artist to invent his or her own). Hence the use of unvarying routine by writers to get work done. Hence the use of rhyme in poetry- as a handmaiden to the emerging ideas of the right brain.

But take away the handrails and the right brain gets scared- takes a look over the edge and retreats. It happened to me while doing my first novel. I thought I could write it as I wrote a non-fiction memoir- just sit down each day and splurge on. What I didn’t realise was that the memoir was already ‘written’ in the sense of having a rigid structure based on what really happened. With the novel, I had set nothing in stone- it was all up for grabs- and that’s what freaked out the right brain- it was having to find more than one destination at a time. Maybe that is the best way to look at it- only expect the right brain to find one destination at a time. Just as Shakespeare started with borrowed stories or a crime writer uses a conventional template so the novelist must give the right brain something to ‘grip’ on to. Many contemporary novelists have as their ‘handle’ some trauma that occurred to them in early life. This is the rigid structure on which the right brain may freely invent.

But without that there is just grey gunk being stirred by an increasingly nervous left brain ‘operating system’. Often it resorts to puns and reworked micromemories- as Joyce did in Finnegan’s Wake- which, unlike Ulysses, has no confining structure. Puns and other fancy filigrees are mechanical left brain creativity and hence well liked by people on the spectrum, Aspergers being, largely, a disorder that seems to display marked left brain preferences. Beckett’s use of mud and crawling through mud in his short stories is again a left brain form of creativity. You thought only the right brain could create? Not at all. But only the right brain can make counter-intuitive leaps, inspired choices, really connect. The left brain does inversions, copies, random squiggles, mixes and matches- all the stuff a computer program does when ‘composing’ a poem or making ‘modern art’. This is a clue- if you can write a program for it then it’s left brain activity.

Now, it may well be, that, like Shakespeare you have a very powerful creative sense- therefore match it with equally rigid structures to work on- so the right not the left is favoured. As TS Eliot found out- either copy another poets structure or use a myth to ground the freeform basis of much modern art.

But ignore this and the left brain will strike out on its own. It will see subtlety where nothing real exists. It will become entranced by trivia. It will circle endlessly an idea best left well alone. All because it doesn’t KNOW. Only the right brain has certainty.

And when we just don’t know we panic. We get nervous and stressed and anxious. Sound familiar?