Heroes Not Zombies

I was in Saint Remy de Provence recently and spotted these two windows. Nostradamus was born there in 1503, and that window on the right depicts him with his scientific instruments gazing out at the world. He remains famous for his predictions, and, science is in the business of making predictions. The scientific method has evolved over the years and is now focused on making measurements, carrying out experiments and seeing what can be predicted from “reliable” measurements.

The window on the left is a real window, with glass in it. In this photo you can see what the world was like in the moment when I took the picture. Blue sky, early trees without leaves or blossom yet. A beautiful, early Spring day.

When I look at this image again I’m struck by how the window on the right is a work of art, the produce of a creative imagination. Back in the day when Nostradamus was alive, art and science were not as divided as they are today. Both disciplines require a good imagination and skilful observation. The focus of the window on the right is the future….what’s coming next?

The window on the left, you could say, is more utilitarian. It’s part of the architecture of the building. It’s designed to let light in and to allow the inhabitants to see out into the street below. Its focus is on the present, but from my perspective as the photographer, it’s showing me a reflection, not what can be seen directly by looking through the glass.

Both windows are a re-presentation – one through reflection, the other through painting.

They make a nice pair, don’t you think?

It’s easy to think that creativity is what professional artists, musicians, poets and inventors have. But actually creativity is a fundamental human characteristic. We all have the gift of imagination. We are all born with the ability to play and experiment.

We are adaptable problem solvers, and we are great storytellers, telling ourselves and others the stories which make sense of our lives and allow us to connect with others.

We have the ability to express our feelings and share our experiences through art. This is how we connect subject to subject.

Creativity doesn’t need to be serious. It begins in childhood with curiosity and play.

Have you had any fun creating something recently? This photo, by the way, is of an external wall of a shop in Saint Remy de Provence.

Here’s how our brain works…..all the signals from our environment, and from within our own body, flow up from our sensory organs, through a vast network of nerve fibres to the right cerebral hemisphere which then hands off the information to the left hemisphere. The job of the left is to abstract, to focus on parts, to label and categorise. In short, to re-cognise, in order to help us grasp, both physically and mentally, the world, so we can manipulate it. The left hemisphere, having done its job hands back its work to the right which contextualises it all….puts it all back into the vast web of connections which the left extracted it from….so we can see the whole, so we can see the connections and relationships.

The left hemisphere fundamentally creates a re-presentation of reality. It’s a map, a model, an abstracted layer. It’s not actual reality. The right deals with reality as a whole.

OK, that’s all a vast over-simplification of the process, but it gives you a basic understanding of why we need both halves of the brain – it’s not a matter of one side good, the other bad. They do different jobs and we need them to work together.

But there’s just one more nuance to lay out here – they are not equal. The right hemisphere should be in charge. Iain McGilchrist’s thesis in the Master and His Emissary, is that we have developed cultures and ways of thinking where we give greatest credence to the left hemisphere….even to the extent of dismissing what the right can tell us. This separates us. It’s separates us from each other and from the rest of the world. It’s not real.

Whether I consider the physical changes I make by living on this planet…the oxygen I breathe in, the water and nutrients I ingest and digest, the molecules I excrete, the radiation of heat from my body…..or whether I consider the impact of my words, my creations and expressions….the intense interconnectedness of being a live human being means that every day I change the world a little, just as the world changes me.

So, I’m reminded of a much taught piece of advice – if I have a choice I should choose kindness. Whatever I pay attention to, I should pay a loving attention to. Whenever I can, I should care.

We make this world a better world by building and nurturing integrative relationships – mutually beneficial bonds between well differentiated parts.

One knows nothing save what one loves, and the deeper and more complete that knowledge, the stronger and livelier must be one’s love – indeed passion

Goethe

Love is fabled to be blind, but to me it seems that kindness is necessary to perception

Emerson

Both Goethe and Emerson agree…..we can’t know, maybe even can’t even perceive, unless we direct our attention in a loving, or kind manner. I found that was a foundational principle to medical practice. Unless you genuinely cared for the patient you never got to know them, never really understood them. I’m sure that’s why many patients would say after a good consultation that they had felt, not just heard, but seen, or even “felt” for the first time.

I do believe you can teach that to doctors, but I think it should be taught explicitly. We should be taught not just the importance of the “necessary distance” to see the whole picture and to be objective, but the importance of genuinely caring and engaging with the patient in a kind, even loving manner.

It’s the same in an ordinary day. When we pay loving attention to whatever we encounter, be that a flower, a bird, a person, a work of art, then we really perceive. When we drift carelessly through a day, we don’t perceive reality at all.

Love and kindness are important principles if we want to live a full, expansive, and satisfying life. It matters not just what we pay attention to but the manner in which we attend to it.

One thing which catches my eye time and time again is a flower, a leaf, or a tree, lit by sunlight. I love to get down and frame a photo which captures the impression of a natural glow. In a picture like this you have the idea that the light is emerging from within the plant. Even though the light is actually shining through, not from, the plant, I think a scene like this always puts me in touch with the sense that there is a life force, a vital force, which enlivens all that is alive….call it a spirit, call it a soul, call it a consciousness, call it the vibrant, glowing energy of LIFE.

The light which shines THROUGH leads us to what is vital, what is alive.

“The trees made the past seem within reach in a way nothing else could: here were living things that had been planted and tended by a living being who was gone, but the trees that had been alive in her lifetime were in ours and might be after we were gone. They changed the shape of time.”
Rebecca Solnit. Orwell’s Roses

What a great phrase….”they changed the shape of time”.

We tend to think of ourselves as being at some peak of evolution, but when it comes to longevity, we humans are surpassed by many other life forms…not least trees, some of which can live thousands of years, and many of which can live for several hundred. If we stop to think what was going on in the world over the many years since a tree was planted, or since its seed first sprouted, we get a totally different perspective on life. It’s a bit like the temporal equivalent of the “view from on high” – we stand back and see a much greater whole – and in so doing we situate ourselves differently. We experience the “change in the shape of time”

There’s an Etruscan word, saeculum, that describes the span of time lived by the oldest person present, sometimes calculated to be about a hundred years. In a looser sense, the word means the expanse of time during which something is in living memory. Every event has its saeculum, and then its sunset when the last person who fought in the Spanish Civil War or the last person who saw the last passenger pigeon is gone.

Orwell’s Roses. Rebecca Solnit

From time to time I muse about what it is to be a person, and whether or not that uniqueness of an individual is bound to the presence of their physical body. It seems clear to me that it’s not. Great artists continue to have an impact on others and on the world through their art, long after they are gone. Great musicians and composers too. Great writers, thinkers, inventors, also. But even within a family, a loved one has never completely gone…..maybe not ever, but at least not until there are no more stories told about them, no more memories lodged in the minds of the living, no more of their creative works still in existence, whether that be a poem, a song, a garden, or a something made by their own hands.

I’m sure that what it is to be a person, a unique, individual, is not bound to the presence of a physical body, nor is it limited to the short span of life that any of us are likely to experience.