Jonah driving, using his Right brain, a total disaster...
I mentioned in my last blog about coming out of my “right brain” mode. How I came rushing back to reality because my stomach was growling in hunger.
Allow me to tell you a story that will illustrate the fact that we as humans are literally “of two minds”. A right brain and a left brain. And that these two halves are both equally capable and complex and valuable but very different, and necessary. This is a true story.
My wife (Wilma) and I took a little holiday this past summer. We were on our return journey home from BC, driving through the northern states, when we stopped in a small village designed to look like a western frontier town. Taking a break from driving we walked up and down the boardwalk and noticed a library. Intrigued we stepped inside. We each found and purchased a book we liked. Mine was called “The New, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. Later when it was Wilma’s turn to drive I grabbed this book and began reading. Before long, since Wilma is also an artist (writer and author) I began reading aloud as she drove. It was fascinating.
For over an hour I would read, we would discuss the subject matter, back to reading and so on. We were engrossed and lost in the subject.
Suddenly, I’m in mid-sentence and Wilma exclaims, “Hey, there are lights flashing behind me!” I glance backwards and sure enough, an SUV type patrol vehicle is on our tail with all his lights flashing!
“Wow, how long has he been there?” I exclaimed.
“I don’t know”, she says, her voice going a few notes higher and up in volume. “This can’t be about us, I’ll turn off and see if he follows me, then we’ll know,” she moans.
Since we are in a small town she turns right at the very next street. Yup, her worst nightmare has come true, he’s still right on our tail. “Oh no, I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m just staying with traffic, why is he after me?” All this while she’s pulling into a strip mall parking lot. He follows us like glue, parking behind us in a classic cop-movie pincer move. She waits moaning with her hands over her face as I’m scrambling in the glove compartment for our “Canadian” vehicle registration card.
He is tall, blond and handsome. He seems like a very nice guy. He explains how he’s been following Wilma for the last 7 or 8 miles. He explains how he noticed us because she was speeding at the time but slowing down to the speed limit. But in following, noticed that all speed signs were apparently being ignored. Her driving did not correspond to the speed limit signs at all. So, he put on his lights so as to stop her and see what exactly the problem was. But, she did not stop. He explained how that was a problem and so had called on his backup “friends” who were planning to converge on her vehicle and force her to stop. He explained how lucky it was she’d stopped when she did as they were about to execute the maneuver to bring her to a standstill.
Then as he’s detailing again her going under and over the speed limit randomly, he suddenly stops in mid sentence, pauses with this sudden new idea, and asks, “Do you actually know what the speed limit is?”
Wilma turns to me, horror written all over her face, in a kind of urgent whisper, “Cliff, what’s the speed limit?”
My warm and cuddly husbandly response, “He’s asking you wifeee, you have to tell him!” (Oh that hurt!)
She turns to him, “I’m so sorry, I have no idea, I haven’t done calculations from Canadian metric to American miles, and my husband was reading to me, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the speed limit signs, I’m so sorry…”
“Yes,” he smiled, “my wife also reads to me sometimes when I’m driving and it can be a bit of a distraction at times.”
Here I feel I need to chime in. Maybe a little levity will make this a warning instead of a ticket so I interject with, “And, you know what we are reading?” I show him the cover, “Right brain, Left Brain!”
He laughed and explained he was going to his vehicle and would be right back!
This incident, illustrates exactly the differences between the Left brain and the Right brain. Two ways of knowing, two ways of working out the same information. Look at the list of words below, the first word is the Left brain’s work and the second is the Right brains work: “lineal/holistic,” “rational (or logical)/intuitive (or non-rational),” “analytic/synthetic (meaning to put things together to form wholes),” “objective/subjective,” “verbal/non-verbal,” etc.
To do the charcoal drawing of feet for the Holy Ground series I was talking about in the last blog, I had to go into my Right brain. I had to move from a “verbal” mode into a “visual” mode of thinking. My left brain often will resist this by arguing with me about why not do it this way, like you could measure this, name every part and aspect of what you do…and so on. Or even, resist the whole project and tell me this is a waste of time. It is the same with dancing, acting, singing, playing hockey or even a doctor doing surgery. You have to move past the instructions and into a world of intuition and natural reactions that cannot really be explained in each situation accurately enough or fast enough to make it work. Betty Edwards in her book says it this way, “…accessing the visual mode of the brain – the appropriate mode for drawing- causes you to see in the special way an artist sees. The artist’s way of seeing is different from ordinary seeing …” (pg. 55)
One learns to consciously move into this “visual” mode. Time disappears, you move your 6B pencil this way and that way intuitively to match with the whole image in a way that makes sense only to you subjectively and intuitively. Also, often it is only in this way you can move your creative work beyond the normal to a new level of originality, or level of expression in feeling or emotion or even technique. When it is all over you may not even know how that happened or where it came from. It is a wonderful place to be.
The right brain is great to go to when creating, not so good when driving a vehicle!
I had to use my left brain in calling the sheriff’s office and paying the fine with my visa card. (verbal, numbers, logic etc.)
“They fashioned the breastpiece—the work of a skilled craftsman. They made it like the ephod: of gold, and of blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and of finely twisted linen.”Exodus 39:8
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