Taking a few moments to appreciate inspiration, wherever it may be found.
Something Interesting
A few weeks ago, after famous playwright Tom Stoppard died at the age of 88, an unsolicited tribute was published in a British newspaper. Written by medical researcher Michael Baum as a letter to the editor, the passage tells how a viewing of Stoppard’s play Arcadia inspired Baum’s understanding of the behavior of breast cancer, which in turn led to his invention of “adjuvant systemic chemotherapy.” Baum’s letter concludes with the line “Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia.”
This is certainly a remarkable story, but not one that is particularly surprising. Neuroscientists studying creative insight have found that “eureka moments”, those instances of out-of-the-blue inspiration, often arrive when the thinker is pre-occupied with other activities. In their book “The Eureka Factor,” John Kournios and Mark Beeman note that unfinished tasks remain readily available in your brain and that by taking breaks, or going to sleep, you can clear mental blocks that are preventing you from solving a problem. Taking in a play, going for a hike, or taking a nap, frees your conscious mind from laboring at the task, yet allows inspiration to continue in the background.
It’s also notable that researcher Baum was inspired by listening to the words of artist Stoppard, not by talking with the other scientists with similar training and backgrounds. It took the outsider perspective of a character speaking in the plain language of regular people for Baum to see the particulars of his specialized field in a different light. In his book “Range,” David Epstein writes about how specialists in a field are typically trained to think in the same way as all of the other specialists in a field and that the contributions of a person with different experiences, or just a more generalist approach, can be helpful in overcoming cognitive barriers.
So while the insight that a scientist gains from the perspective of an artist may feel surprising, it’s an unexpected connection that we should come to expect whenever there is some form of innovation taking place. Were it a natural connection, it would not be remarkable.
Something Beautiful
I am continually amazed when I see gifted muralists creating big, beautiful paintings using the tools and techniques of graffiti. There’s just something jarring about seeing paint applied through the aerosol cans that you can find in any ordinary hardware store. Nevertheless, I remain mindful that there is a difference between street art and graffiti, that spray-painting random text on a surface, even in an aesthetically-compelling way, is not necessarily art. Yet I also find it compelling to see how street artists PichiAvo utilize the graffiti script as a motif in their murals, particularly when you see their classical sculpture forms emerge from the chaos of spray-painted nonsense.
Something I Worked On
My creative endeavors have been a little scattered lately, with my time being split between a mini-comic called “Chin Music,” my take on Little Red Riding Hood, and a short story called “Broken Finger Road,” about a young patient trying to connect with his vacationing therapist. Each will be posted on my website and my Patreon, once they are completed.