The creative impulse is a tricky one. These paintings were done by my dad while somewhat high on morphine for his cancer. They’re different than any of his other paintings and I’ve always loved them. Well, in truth, I finished the pregnant lady one for him – he’d drawn it but not painted it.
I have several of my dads paintings – one of his very first, and three of his very last. He became freer as he got older, most free when his brain was a little unhooked from its moorings with medications.
I’ve spent the day today listening to the Teaching Company’s excellent series of lectures on the brain and how everything links together and learning how if we lose our emotional cortex we can no longer make decisions, and I’m left with two questions.
1. Whose bright idea was it to arrange for everything to cross over in there?
And 2. Why?
Seriously, though, if you haven’t studied the mind, you should. It’s astonishingly marvelous and quite unbelievably wonderful. It makes me believe in God. Literally. There’s a god- belief spot…
And from somewhere in there we create paintings of blue ladies and stories of murder or romance or love or hate. Or poetry, buildings, craftwork or vaccines.
But it’s important to let ourselves be free – not suggesting we should all take morphine or anything, but we need to get to that wild don’t give a damn spot and let the ideas spring out.
For me, NaNoWriMo and such usually do that. This year, pain didn’t let me free as much as I’d like. But every once and awhile I could shimmy past the gate guardians and head out to play.
Still two more days to go!