This is in response to the Poetics prompt on silent film @ dVerse.
Note: Spoken and written language, numerical skills, reasoning, and control of the right side of the body occur in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is responsible for control of the left side of the body, music processing, emotional thinking, and perceiving visual-spatial relations. The two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum.
Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog. from Ferdydurke
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it… Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being – subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say ‘I’ I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor.
All the things that really matter to us are impossible…Writing poetry is impossible. I don’t know how to write a poem. A poem – there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don’t know. There is so much that comes out of what we don’t know and what we don’t have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. – from Doing the Impossible
Chromapoetica
like wood cuts best against the grain… I like that line
it also challenged my brain with your vocab usage
this was very creative in response to the prompt.
Thanks Patricia, it’s mostly neuroscience since it’s a love story about the two hemispheres of the brain connected through the corpus callosum.
Lovely music and abstract images.. You caught the mood of the silent movies…
Thanks Heaven, always appreciate your visits and comments!
I am definitely going to have to contemplate this at a time when my mind is more fresh!
Me too, it’s the strangest thing I’ve done all day :).
It may be the strangest thing you’ve done all day but it is also so deep, too …amazing.
Thanks Daydreamertoo, it was a lot of work!
That was incredibly peaceful, Anna. I let the images and complex terminology just sort of blend together visually without worrying too much about latching onto the meanings of individual words, and really felt two sorts of stylistic things going on, as per left and right brain. As a lover of representational art, most abstract is fairly barren for me, but there were a number of paintings in here that just spoke to me, in subtle colors and shapes dancing, while others seemed drab (hopefully intentionally) static and monochromatic–the two lobes in their courtship, is my interpretation, but I’m very ignorant about art. Regardless, I enjoyed it very much, music words and paintings–nice to see all of work together like that. (The credits scrolled by rather quickly, am I right that the music is also yours?)
Yes, the music, called Fireflies was written as a thank you for a dear friend. I post music I compose on my website Chromasymphonic. I don’t think I intentionally paint drab work but that’s because I love nonrepresentational art (it’s almost all I paint though I can draw and paint figuratively). Most people I know don’t respond to it (my stepmother-in-law doesn’t even consider it art – which is a bit extreme – but she’s entitled to her opinion).
The entire enterprise was an experiment bringing music, emotions, and visual art (based in the right hemisphere) together with poetry and science (logic and math) (based in the left) in a sort of love story told through the corpus callosum. Thanks for coming by and reading. I’m glad it was peaceful, it was my intent – to sort of give the feeling of those rosy silent films :).
I thought perhaps you’d intentionally switched between the two styles–some so colorful, others all restricted to variations of one shade, some full of movement, others more linear and “organized.” But I am a total ignoramus about that stuff, so don’t mind me. My bad that I didn’t dictionary it to pick up the meaning a bit better. I’m blaming it on the music which lulled me into a blissfully relaxed fugue state.(Yeah, that’s it.) I really loved your painting of what I decided were red roses in a purple eggplant–or vase, I suppose, but I was having fun drifting off on my own steam there. ;_) Thanks for sharing all your amazing gifts in this one.
The alterations in style resulted from choosing from a broad spectrum of work over the past ten years. Mostly because they were easily accessible on the computer and I was pressed for time. I almost used an album of landscape photographs of Colorado because I thought they’d have broader appeal but my husband thought the art worked better with the theme and poem. He always jokes I should never listen to him :).
It was a high volume action packed movie. I enjoyed it. A lot of effort has been put into it and it is beautiful, thank you.
Thanks oceangirl!
like wood cuts best along the grain…really very interesting…love all the art…i am rather fond of abstract art as much like our poetry often allows the viewer to interpret their own images in them…right left, on may be dominant but we need a bit of each and somewhere along the way they do met in the middle…
Thanks Brian, always nice to have you visit.
Oh, this had beautiful music, beautiful paintings, and creative poetry! What’s not to love? You are incredibly talented, and I really enjoyed all of this. I hope you’ll post more of your other creative sides here again soon 🙂
Thanks Lori for your kind compliments! I enjoyed the stand you took with your poem this evening.
Very clever and thank God for Google so I cold keep up. Luved the music and images. And the wrds fit very well. Excellent. Experiment a success.
Thanks Henry and ack I found two spelling errors on the video so I’ll get those fixed (certainly helps with looking things up 🙂 ). I enjoyed your piece very much!
I am a neuroscience geek. It was my favorite class throughout grad school (although, it’s been so long that I’d need a refresher to intelligently discuss most of the terms you used here 🙂 )
It took me about 90 seconds before I realized what (I think) you were doing – alternating the complex language scenes (L brain) with the visual art clips and over-laying it all with the classical music (R brain) – all the while leaving this viewer alternating between my L brain reasoning skills (what does this all mean – what is she trying to do?) and my R brain emotional processes (oh, I like that one, those are happy colors, those are angry shapes, this music is relaxing) and then back to those big words which, by the end, bombarded both sides of my brain at once (what does that term mean? Does it correspond to the artwork she shows before or after it? I’m sad – I want to look at the pretty pictures again. I’m still liking this music!) – definitely a love story between the two hemispheres or maybe a love-hate story for me – lol
Even the way in which you organized your explanatory paragraph appears to be a choreographed dance between the two hemispheres (as indicated below by the way I number-paired the opposing skills together)
1. Spoken and written language
2. numerical skills
3. reasoning, and
4. control of the right side of the body occur in the left hemisphere.
4. The right hemisphere is responsible for control of the left side of the body
3. music processing
2. emotional thinking, and
1. perceiving visual-spatial relations.
1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1 – not sure if you listed them this order on purpose but that is how my R brain visual-spatial relations area perceived it or was it my L brain language, numerical, or reasoning skills that picked up on that? Oh, man, now my corpus callosum hurts! As an aside, I worked with a little boy (for about a year) who was born without a corpus callosum (yikes!)
You seem very well-versed in music, visual arts, creative writing, and now, I see science as well which makes me curious about your career and/or educational background. (not that I expect you to divulge such information. I’m just sharing my observation of how many talents you possess 🙂 )
Yay, a neuroscience geek! My degree is in Biology and I have taken Psychology. I wanted to get a PhD in psychology (was initially interested in Industrial/Organizational since I have experience in healthcare risk management, human resources, and I spent 7+ years running a nonprofit arts center where we offered art therapy to vulnerable populations). However, the nearest school is much too far away and I’m not moving again (already done it 46 times). As for the music I studied opera under a woman who sang at the Metropolitan Opera for 20 years, I’ve sung most of my life and played the flute for 28 years. I’ve played in orchestras and sung in choirs. I compose music on Finale. I’ve been painting since 1999 and am self-taught.
I like your analysis of what I am doing. I like using experimental forms to form new neural associations both in myself and hopefully in readers. In all of my experimental pieces I’m trying to get the reader to really think and be present to the particular words while luring them into it a bit with beauty and emotional engagement. For this particular piece I wanted to alternate these images and snippets of scientific (and sometimes poetic) words to get the viewer’s corpus callosum revved up. I saw it as adding another layer of meaning to the poem that creates itself in the mind of the viewer as I’m calling attention to it. The anisotropy results from the tortuosity of myelinated white matter like the crooked path the film takes towards its goal. It changes depending on your vantage point (I put a picture of the pathway of water through the corpus callosum up under the work if you’re interested). Thanks for your deep engagement, fascinating comment, and thought provoking prompt!
Oh, and you’ll get a kick out of this – on YouTube, because of the title, the video links by it are all on brain surgery :).
Lol. Well this might be over those brain surgeons’ heads.
Lovely synergies between the words, images and sound
Thanks marousia, your poem was lovely.
I’d only say WOW
Thanks Jyoti!
Another Annarrheaic Montgomeran spiral challenge, here a sort of 3-D chessgame or triple dog dare ya sufi challenge, patting the head, rubbing the tummy and flapping the ears … I’m ribbing, but it is a fantastical mix of media, throwing all of your arts into one spinning creation. All of it bespeaks how neurlogical engagements create the dance, two hemishperes dancing cheek to cheek. The mix of the media was a bit jarring to me — each media soaked in different distillates — abstract expressive paintings, very lyrical synth music, and those flash cards that seem penned by the synapses themselves. I don’t think it quite works — yet — how to revise three media into one artistic piece? — But I sure would like to see more efforts. I love neuroscience, too, and my reading in Julian Jaynes has been instrumental in seeing how modern conscioiusness is really a creation of writing, the naming of the complex whorl of thought that projects an inner world on the screen, self writ large. The paintings are soft and vibrant, the music lush, the words drill into their making with names for the process.: More, please … Brendan
Brendan, it is intentionally jarring because the poem is also about how water diffusion is anisotropic through the myelinated tissue of the corpus callosum which results in the tortuosity in one direction (the twisted path). You could think about it like the grain of wood. It is much easier to cut wood with the grain than against it. This silent film experiment takes the winding path the way that love is ever working against all the forces that detour it if that makes any sense. At another level I was trying to comment on the era – suffrage, prohibition, the end of the war, the coming Depression, things weren’t flowing easily. My goal wasn’t to create an integrated whole but to highlight the jagged edges. Now that doesn’t mean it was a good goal, or that I was effective in accomplishing it. I just thought I’d clarify (to you and to myself). Mostly I should have spent more time on it, finding a way to make it all clearer. Thanks for playing along; Tuesday’s entry will be less puzzling for all of us :).
Stunning… I’m sitting here with my morning coffee absorbing the peaceful sensations. Thank you.
Beth
Thank you Beth, I loved your take on the prompt.
hi anna – had computer issues last night so i am i little late – my computr like me is a strange loop – isnt everything?????? you have had many great responses and your fine compilation has sparked some very intelligent conversation – this response and reaction is exactly the kind of thing i was tring to illuminate on thursday – this is why your intellectual art – for want of a better phrase – (we wil have to come up with an ism for the sake of critical anaylasis) this is why what you do is both geniunely your own, ergo ligitimate and authentic and of use to others – essentially a worthy enterprise – and ultimately worth while. enough of the theorising.
i really enjoyed this composite – particularly your paintings – abstract expressionism being a specific realm of intense love and much study – some pieces reminded me of late de kooning – and being that he painted them as his dementia worsened i linked them to the neoropoetry – critics are divided over his work from this period however i think he achieved singularity of intent and touched the void expressing the pure notion he had always sought and painted around therfore his journey was complete…
music is perfect too
Have you ever watched or heard koyaanisqatsi – philip glass – marvelous
Koyaanisqatsi was introduced to me in Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. I have not seen it in its entirety though; I’ll have to put it in my Netflix queue, thank you. Regarding de Kooning I have his late work in a wonderful book put out by kunstmuseum basel. I think his sobriety, along with the assistance of his (ex)wife Elaine (she returned late in life to pull him from the brink) aided that clarity. ”A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.” – one of Elaine’s sagacious comments. He’s certainly the artist I respond to most from that period (all my favorite works of his are from the 60s forward once the art world looked away a bit). Do you know Gerhard Richter? He’s one of my top ten. Thanks for the encouragement and kind comment, it is very meaningful to me.
Hi anna – i have an understanding of a painting being a verb – a very clever explanation – re de kooning – i would recommend ‘de kooning an american master’ – the best art based biography – although i love the man and his art so i may be biased – i think Richter is a fantastic artist and love his work also.
‘ i care about what you do because you care so much… thats all it takes’ – a wise man once said to me – a lot of sense in that too – nice one anna – a stimulating post
I’ll keep that quote close, check out the book, and I’m excited you are also a fan of Richter!
Anna, I thought this a most successful experiment. Should have visited here BEFORE posting to soak up some of the inspiration to be found within the brilliant art pieces. The music was incredibly soothing, the entire presentation wonderful…I will have a better day because of it! Bravo…triple threat in the dVerse house! 🙂
A better day, hooray! I felt the warmth of your smile from here :).
I studied nursing eons ago at a hospital in Phoenix that opened one of the first neurological institutes in the country and was able (at the time) to immerse myself in the field of neuroscience. I’d have to say that now, 50 years later, most of what I learned is stashed somewhere deep in the cerebrum. But your work resonates so well…the art depicts your goal of marrying the right/left brain, a task I view as something we need to do in the latter part of life in order to become whole persons. Anna, I marvel at your brilliance and talent. Wow!
Thanks Victoria, I like how you talk about marrying the right/left brain. It’s certainly helped me be more centered. Always lovely to see you :).
Returned for a second viewing. I’m assuming that the art is yours, correct? And that you used pastels. Ah, makes me want to break mine out. Never had much luck with that medium.
Good eye Victoria, some of it is mixed with pastel or oil pastel. Many are oil or acrylic.
Gorgeous offering, Anna. And it looks like it may have taken a while too. I truly am in awe of your vast talent–left and right!
Thank you Bodhirose, that’s very kind of you to say.
A very interesting and enjoyable experience. A wonderful combination of visual, audio and literal art. I just really like what you did here. The flashes of art and the music are very relaxing. (I like going to museums to look at art because I just find it relaxing, even if I don’t understand what a drawing is about.) I like how the poem ends because the poem seems so scientific and anatomical, the mention of love which is something on the fuzzy side seems to bring it back to being human and natural, also makes one appreciate the complexity of the interactions.
Thanks Ravenblack, I too enjoy going to museums. There’s something meditative about simply viewing and letting the thoughts drop away or freely associate.
Hi Anna! Sorry to be so late to the party…my power has been out!
As a double gemini, you KNOW i like this. Like binocular vision, two that work as one lend depth to perception, don’t you think? Marvelously imaginative and original take on the prompt, dearie!
Thank you for reading, I was so happy to see your post up at Hedgewitch’s site. Love your reference to binocular vision as binocular cues are a part of depth perception in art too.
Anna…arriving a little late to comment, but I am so happy I didn’t just respond based on the email received on my Blackberry, because I would have missed your silent film, and just responded to the words only…So…..hmm lovely, I saw repeated shapes, near motifs i guess, across your individual paintings, almost as if there was a narrative between them, your narrative, and enjoyed your music too! As for your words, really enjoyed the love story, i appreciated the love story between the hemispheres, (some peoples’ hemispheres have more connections, are more in love with each other than others!! – as you will know), but I also felt, or responded to it, as if it was a lovely way to represent the structure and chemistry, the biomechanics of external love, whether or not there is any similiarity in process, i.e biological factual truth….it rather pleased me to imagine it so!! Ha