35 responses to a request to
share thoughts on the brain and/or what's always on your mind by... Alexei Sayle, Anna
Field, Ciara MacLaverty, David Gothard, Deirdre Rusling, Fintan
Mallory, Graham Crowley, Graham Duff, Gyles
Brandreth, Ineska Grabowska-Werner, Jasper Joffe, Jennifer
Higgie, John Aizlewood, John Hegley, John Hind, Kevin Eldon, Kim
Noble, Michael Livesley, Micko Westmoreland, Mikey
Georgeson, Neal Brown, Nick Revell, Nicola Godlieb, Patricia Pye, Paul Foot, Rebecca
Geldard, Richard Cabut, Rose Wylie, Sally O'Reilly, Siam
Goorwich, Sukie Smith, Susan Finlay, Suzanne Spiro, Tine
Frellesen, Toby Winter. Selected by Harry Pye.
1) Sally
O'Reilly:
"In Europe, the first fixed
photographs and modern anaesthetics were developed within a decade of one
another. Photographs record appearances. Anaesthetics turn off consciousness in
such a way that it can be turned back on again. They are the flipside of
aesthetics, which appeal to the senses. Before the 1830s, visible reality (and
more) was commonly translated into pictures by a brain-body coalition called
the artist, and the pain of surgery was dulled by henbane or rum. Today, we
still have artists. And while 78% of the global population might have a camera
in their pocket, consciousness is yet to be understood."
2) Fintan Mallory:
"What is a mind? Descartes said it
was a ‘thinking thing’ that connects to the brain through the pineal gland, a
small gland in the epithalamus that produces melatonin. Classical Abhidhamma
doesn’t speak of a single ‘mind’ but a succession of minds, cittas, rapidly
occurring, with each momentary mind causing the next one. They are happy,
angry, greedy, focused, sad… In this case, the mind isn’t a ‘thing’ or a
substance but there’s a flow of minds. We pick out patterns in this flow and
identify ourselves with them. To say ‘this is me’ is to try to grasp the
current."
3) Kevin Eldon:
"I have quite a problem loading a dishwater
properly so getting to grips with what the brain gets up to presents quite a
challenge for me. There can be no doubt however that it is an endless wonder, a
miracle of evolution and our bridge to the cosmos. Its potential can never be
underestimated. The brain is often perceived as somewhow being in control of
us. I believe it's a two-way relationship. Our brains are certainly responsible
for our behaviour, but we humans are in turn capable of training and changing
our brains and by dint of that our minds, through communication, education and
meditation. We always have the choice to work to transform ingrained thought
and behaviour, based on fear and prejudice, into an infinitely more enlightened
state of mind that knows and reveres the fundamental interconnectedness of all
life and its environments. And somewhere, deep in the mix of everything, that
definitely includes the thorny problem of how to properly load a
dishwasher."
4) Paul Foot:
"The brain is an amazing thing. I used to suffer with terrible
depression and anxiety that made my life endlessly traumatic and hellish. Then,
suddenly, just when everything looked the bleakest, in an amazing, miraculous
event that I still can’t really explain, my brain spontaneously sort of
expanded – well, it felt like an explosion, it felt like my whole consciousness
magnified about one hundred times - quite unexpectedly! Since then, I have had
absolutely zero anxiety or depression. I have no idea how it happened, but my
brain appears to have completely changed its own chemistry, and rewired itself
fundamentally. Who knows how that works? I used to need medication to give me
serotonin because I didn’t have any, and now my brain has just fixed itself! Also, my subconscious seamlessly regulates my bowel.
I’ll be out all day and not even think about it and then the moment I get
through my front door, it’s time to go. Brilliant!"
5) Ineza Grabowska-Werner:
"Understatements"
I over-think-over the things you say
They don't mean a thing, but I care.
Even if you're silent
I know it's the answer,
but can't decide whether it's a 'yes' or a 'no'.
So I overdose your words
'Cause all that is left
are these understatements.
©InezaGW
6) Deirdre Rusling:
That amazing brain
“My
partner died this year. A friend of his asked, "All his thoughts, his
interests and opinions, that were in
that amazing brain of his - where have they gone?"
The
science on this feels quite grim. Somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes
after the heart stops beating, brain activity stops so those thoughts,
interests and opinions are all gone.
But
it seems science also has a sop for us who are left grieving. According to the
book 'The Grieving Brain', scientists can now point to the very places in all
our brains where our memories of him still exist. Bits of him live on in the
memories of his loved ones. There - doesn't that help?
OK,
let's cut out all those bits. Stick them back together. Then we can be dead
too. Then we'll know.
Of
course it's more complicated than that. Multiple areas of our brains are called
on to work together depending on whether we're remembering our loved one's
face, or where they lived, and whether we're remembering with happiness or with
a wave of grief.
And
all our memories of him turn out to be slightly different in odd ways. If in
some kind of art therapy group grief workshop, we were to stick those memories
back together, whatever simulation of our dead friend we could construct would
be a nightmarish AI-like travesty. We'd do better than AI on getting the number
of fingers right but we'd probably argue about the exact shade of blue his eyes
were and his opinions on the Northern Ireland peace process or the Eurovision
Song Contest. We'd be nowhere close to putting back together that amazing
thing, our friend's brain, which has gone.”
7) Anna Field:
"2022 marks my
ten-year anniversary of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and I
still don’t understand what is going on. What I do understand is that a human
has nerves which carry important signals like ‘this coffee is hot’, ‘this is
enough money to buy a Kit Kat’ or ‘you are not being stung by bees’. The
message travels from your body to your brain for processing. When the special
coating of those nerves in your brain and spine becomes damaged, as in MS,
things start getting mixed up. You can start bumping into things and falling
over and staring blankly at sales-assistants asking you for money. However, you
learn to adapt so that people don’t notice that your brain is broken. Humans
are brilliant at adapting. I recently found out that fungi are also good at
adapting. Fungi react to their surroundings; they hunt down food and recognise
threats. When a member of the colony is injured, it reacts with
self-preservation and sends out filaments to patch and repair the wounded. A
fungal colony can be classed as an organism with a primitive mind, but research
shows that they can also operate as individuals. They have a memory and are
capable of learning. I don’t expect that a Shitake will be writing poetry
anytime soon, but the next time you eat one, it’s worth thinking about what
that fungus could have achieved."
8) Richard Cabut:
"On the subject of a thought process, I
remember in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville Anna Karina as
Natacha von Braun’s reverie-soliloquy, the best sort of soliloquy, an
adaptation of Paul Éluard’s poem So, What is Love, Then?:-
Your voice, your eyes, your hands,
your lips
Our silence, our words
Light that goes, light that returns
A single smile between us
In quest of knowledge I watched night
create day
Oh beloved of all, beloved of one
alone
Your mouth silently promised to be
happy
Away, away, says hate
Closer, closer, says love
A caress leads us from our infancy
Increasingly I see the human form as
a lovers’ dialog
The heart has but one mouth
Everything by chance
All words without thought
Sentiments adrift
A glance, a word, because I love you
Everything moves
We must advance to live.
It is transcendent. Not just her
words. Perhaps we could have done without the words, in fact. But the way her expression, her physiognomy, changes from frozen to alive and
points away from the calculated determinism that looks at the past, present and
future as merely a consequential formula – one that allows no individual
thought or, yes, desire, or tears."
9) John Aizlewood:
"I’m not sure
whether I like my brain. I certainly like the non-emotional – the areas
without, for want of a better word, soul – parts. The moments I manage a
magnificent piece of parking (I mention it because it’s so rare and such an
unmitigated triumph) or remember the differences the Cold War governments of
Bulgaria and East Germany and can explain the nuances of each Sparks album. I’m
at one with all that and they make me interested in me. It’s the other parts I
can’t fathom – the areas with, for want of a better word, soul – the
sanctioning of bad decisions, of wrong paths and of damaging idiocy. And the
inability to forget them."
10) Jasper Joffe:
"I think
therefore I am etc. My mind goes round in circles trying to solve problems that
don't exist (creating them?). The hammer sees nails everywhere. However all
credit to my mind, it is in fact quite good at working things out. I always
feel lucky to just be me, thinking about stuff."
11) Ciara MacLaverty:
"I've always been fascinated by
the body-mind relationship: where does body end and mind begin? Our brains look
like cauliflowers and yet we are infinitely complex. I was ill with ME/CFS - a
profoundly physical illness- I felt poisoned and was bedbound in constant pain.
After twenty years of relapsing struggle, a controversial talking therapy
helped me recover. I could feel the 'whoosh' as my cells changed tack. In
midlife, I get debilitating migraines and I'm still trying to crack the
'body-mind' code to escape those. Is that even possible? Life feels like a
constant work in progress, but that's okay too."
12) Dr Mikey Georgeson
"Rather than placing my brain outside nature, I'm
happiest feeling part of a materially vital entangled cosmos. It’s my sense
that feeling or concern is ubiquitous that gives access to reasoning as a calm
way of navigating the really real. I'm keen to escape the idea of thinking
based on pregiven values as if life is past and settled because everything
really real is an intra-relational haptic dynamic. One way to experience this
thought in becoming is, as an artist, to create real life as an emerging fiction
- there is only one life so let it be as materially vital as possible."
13) Neal Brown:
"I don’t find it easy, being conscious, and
nearly died through my mismanagement of it. Many people do not survive it at
all. I am now grateful to be part of the mystery of consciousness – a mystery
reassuringly unexplained by science, philosophy, priesthoods, drug users, art
magazines, and pop stars. I am blessed to receive and give love, and for
the examples of high consciousness provided me by pristine natural creatures,
such as those outside my window, right now, in the trees."
14) Suzanne Spiro:
"I s'pose....
It's best to be friends with your
brain. Its when you're not that big trouble happens. Many people -
probably all of us at times - think our brain is in charge and calling the
shots. But actually WE are - to a larger extent than we sometimes
imagine. And if you take response-ability for your thoughts suddenly you
have the ability to respond. You're in the driving seat - not your brain - and
you have choice (obvs only to a degree... I know). And that way....
freedom lies.
So-best to be friends with your
brain.
But maybe I'm confusing the brain with
the mind..."
15) Toby Winter:
"The way I see it there is the
mind and then there is the brain. The brain is the
receiver, a staggering but finite piece of hardware that filters and receives
the vast contents of the mind. But the brain, unlike a radio, does not arrive
fully formed – it must be built. A new-born baby arrives with a
kind of core brain, concerned with little more than survival.
But what separates us from the animals is our predisposition for social
interaction. A baby’s neurons literally fire when they see or hear you. If
there is one bit of the brain we could call the emotional bit, it’s
probably the orbitofrontal cortex (stay with me!) This is the part that
makes it possible for us to empathise. But it cannot grow by itself, it
requires play, touch and interaction. Without lots of this, it just won’t grow.
So while our thoughts so often leave us feeling isolated and apart, it’s worth
remembering that there really is no brain in isolation – we all exist as part
of a giant social matrix, with all our neurons firing away at each other. So
the next time you see a baby on the bus, smile at it – you’re actually helping
its brain to grow. And not only that but you’re helping it become a more
loving, empathic member of the human race. Everyone wins."
16) Nick Revell:
WOWWWW!!!!! An exhibition!! all about ME!
Sorrry , I’m
interrupting- forget I’m here.
Just
concentrate on the exhibition. Did I lock the back door? (And enjoy.)
[With mindfulness…as
they say I say these days…] Must text Chris later they…
I’ll be quiet
now.
I’m just the
means of your perception. Nothing more. Your servant…(Or not enjoy…up to
you…or ME perhaps)…tonight…
An exhibition
though!, all about ME!
About time
too.
(Shut
up!…Sorry, that’s just ego talking.)
…Or are
you my servant?
Concentrate! Trying to… Be at one!
With the art.
Just shut up!
Who said
that? ME or you?
Don’t
blame me! Wow look at that…(Shouldn’t that be did you back the
lock door?)…that…particular exemplar of the object of
my/your/our/their/tree-frog sexual desires…fucking libidos eh? DISGUSTING I’M
DISGUSTNG… Ids…dirty…these shoes…comfortable…oh just
Concentrate
on the
toilets - exhibition.
enjoy.
did I use
exemplar right have the pasta tonight need more parmesan I like that
one.
17) Micko Westmoreland:
"From
a discussion about the brain, must surely at some point come talk about the
mind and from that the inner, interior mind. Heaven forbid! There is nothing
more personal than your own thoughts after all. The world of the subjective. What
I think is really important is not so much the outer state but the inner state,
this seems to bare direct relation to how your life plans out, your attitudes,
the actions you take and values you hold. In turn it seems to effect the
exterior world almost by default. Viva interior! Always make a point of being kind to
yourself and those you are around."
18) Susan Finlay
"COVID Brain
The hippopotami have
crushed my hippocampus
with a memory palace
that grants us admission
to the zoo or theatre of
fat animals wailing
19) Sukie Smith
Who makes this music?
Who knows these things?
Who speaks to the earth's core and the sky like old friends ?
Who answers me when its dark telling me we are fucking fighters?
Who is the keeper of the secrets?
Whose kingdom is this that we can range freely in and explore as if its
new territory?
What place is this?
Where is my mind?
Where?
Where is my mind.
20) Micheal Livesley:
"Alfred North Whitehead, said 'The
purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.' Bust what is
thinking? In the Gravedigger scene from Hamlet, Shakespeare offers an
examination of human consciousness. What is the mind? Does it reside within the
human skull, or is it more nebulous concept, a collective entity which we are
constantly tuning in and out of? 'Where be your gibes now?'
In this digital Age, we are bombarded
with twinkling lights and shiny buttons, seducing us with dopamine hits whilst
infiltrating our subconscious and shaping our perceptions. Whitehead concluded
that the metaphysical substructure of reality was not composed of matter, but
rather 'what matters'. Our perceptions shape our behaviour, which creates
'reality.' So be careful what you drip-feed your subconscious. It
matters."
21) Gyles Brandreth:
"This is one of my favourite quotes from the Dedicatory ode by Hilaire Belloc. I
have no idea how the brain works but I know this to be true...
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends."
22) Patricia Pye:
Having undergone brain surgery
back in 1984, I feel I should be able to say something profound about this
mighty organ. I can’t, but there is something I have often wondered about. It
does seem odd that, in the intervening years, I have never once dreamt about
this experience. Perhaps this means I am about as deep as a puddle and so my
subconscious was left happily unscathed. Or maybe the brain has autonomous
qualities of self protection? I like to imagine my resilient brain having a
mind of its own. ‘This is your brain speaking. Don’t put me through that again,
thanks very much. I’ve deleted the memory from my hard drive. It may always be
on your mind but it sure as hell won’t be on mine’.
23) Nicola Godlieb:
Fluttermind
Some fall flat, eyeless and fledgling
Some roost, jammed years
between the fixed bones of your skull, scratching and gabbling for
space
Some hit the window at the force of flight
But those mornings you can open
your mouth and they fly out clean and pure, you know
this will be a good day
Recovering from a
coma I experienced the life of an automaton. I had to invent a way to think
again. When thoughts started to come back they were like birds.
24) John Hind:
"I remember 20 or
more years ago, Dame Barbara Cartland - a health-fiend - telling me that if one
is put under anaesthetics then one should do that before one is 60 years old,
as "later in life anaesthetics can wipe out a third of one's
brain". Hopefully anaesthetics have been developed since which aren't
quite so dangerous, or the Dame was plain exaggerating, but her claiming
that has stuck in my mind."
25) Rebecca Geldard:
"There’s a
small but significant tonal tweak The Pet Shop Boys make to Elvis’ ‘Always on
my mind’. I’m not sure why I noticed it - perhaps it’s the unapologetically uptempo
nature of this rendition, or because I like to sing exactly in tune with what
I’m listening to, or that the early days of electro offered new routes into and
out of what we understood about song writing. I don’t have the lingo to
describe what is actually happening in musical terms as the notes shift, but
its effect is universal. It occurs during the second time the refrain “You are
always on my mind” is sung during the chorus, towards the end of “mind”. In
Neil Tennant’s synthtastic vocal Elvis’ knee-trembling note encounters the
associative equivalent of a mic drop. What we expect from recollections of its
iconic delivery shifts: from a held certainty into an offhand elsewhere.
Boosted by the techno logistics, for a second, you can imagine
this note (and with it the word “mind”), extending indefinitely - into an
abstract electro-audio landscape of its own. But of course this is a pop tune
and we are quickly lifted to the next lyric: “Tell me that your sweet love
hasn’t died”. Hearing it for the first time, if aware of the original, it was
an irksome thing. We knew how it was supposed to sound, were historically sure
of the sonic framework we were being held in and the narrative mood it set up.
But, in hindsight and with many listens, the tinkering offers much more than
putting a new stamp on the old. It loosens the word from expectation, and the
song from whimsical sadness to a more open space for thinking about love and
desire. This unhinging allows for a moment without markers synonymous with complex
dalliances, but also the essential need at the time this reboot was made to
unpick the heteronormative coordinates of the traditional ballad, so that it
might be afforded the ability to speak about experiences of every
kind."
26) Tine Frellsen:
Once I was
out of my mind
or my mind was out of me.
I woke in the night
observing from high above
myself asleep on the bed.
The room shone a slow blue
coated in live electricity.
Nothing was solid
just molecules buzzing
like swarms of tiny insects.
I closed my eyes (how could I close my eyes?)
But I closed my eyes intensely
willing myself to get back down,
and I did.
The mind is not always inside the head
And we can’t understand how it’s possible.
The mind knows more.
More than we
do.
27) Graham Crowley:
Thoughts on Thought
“When asked to think about thinking, I have two
thoughts. Firstly, I've never been able to differentiate thought from mind. And
secondly, how can what is being discussed express what it is that's being
discussed – if you get me? Any kind of self awareness seems to construct a
roadblock.
Having said that, my thought processes were thrown into
stark focus recently when I had a Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) attack caused
by the statins that I'd just started taking. The experience was awful. For
about six or seven hours I felt as if I had become another – a terrified,
older, confused other. I became acutely aware of just how little 'control' we
have over thought.
Not only had I forgotten all my passwords but I'd also
forgotten how to play the piano – even badly. This was doubly devastating as
I'd recently decided to learn in order to enhance my mental acuity. I believe I
had a terrifying glimpse of dementia. I hope I've recovered my memory. But I'm
not sure, as I no longer feel certain – about anything.”
28) Siam Goorwich:
"I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to understand my mind and
control of my thoughts – and yet I feel no closer to either. From counselling to self help books,
meditation to mindfulness, CBT to sertraline, psychodynamic therapy to
journalling – I’ve thrown myself on each one, desperately hoping to finally
unlock the world inside of my head, ease my anxieties and blast away my depression. For
years now, I’ve thought of my mind as my greatest enemy – a problem that needs
to be fixed. Which now I think about it, is cruel and unfair. Maybe I don’t
need to understand my mind, but just accept it, warts and all? Maybe the fact that
my mind has a mind of its own is OK? Maybe I’m just overthinking it all."
29) John Hegley:
Mental Health Poem
When he went out of his mind
we helped him find
the key to get back in.
It was behind the dustbin.
The one that had it in for him.
30) Jennifer Higgie:
"I have never seen my brain but
(obviously)could not do without it. Perhaps that’s what religion feels like to
some people. It’s my personal museum, my god, my instructor. It’s a sceptical
friend, a tormentor, my eventual assassin. It’s a drop-in centre, an oasis, an
engine. It’s an idea as much as an actuality. Odd to think it’s directing the
writing of this. I wonder, really, if I’m in control of it, or it of
me."
31) Rose Wylie:
“One thing I find friendly about the brain is that
if it’s cut into, (operated on), it doesn’t hurt. That’s what I’m
told. And secondly, it always reminds me of a walnut, (inside-the-shell,
inside-the-head), which is not a bad connection.”
32) Alexei Sayle:
"One evening in 2015 I suddenly
lost my balance, most of my sight and began projectile vomiting, I was taken to
hospital by ambulance where after a week of tests I was diagnosed with an auto
immune condition called neuro sarcoidosis, a condition which is most commonly
suffered by black women who live near pine forests. Though now eight years later symptom
free, there remain lesions on my brain, I literally have brain damage! I tell
young people this on the bus but they still won’t give me their seats."
33) David Gothard CBE:
“Bruce McLean and I have a friend called Hanif. His blessed brain has been creatively embracing folk since a tumble on Boxing Day which has left him, not just as a Cartesian ghost in the machine on the one hand, but explosively and generously in touch with a universe of language and art in a daily newsletter . The newsletters are dictated through Sachin and Carlo, his sons. His daring to shape and catch in the dark of his mind is shared such that light shoots across the hug of the reader's mind. Bruce once painted my portrait as a "Figure of Eight", capturing my brain's apparent space and vision in motion ,that way. The jolt, even the injury, catapults. Yet since the first day of Covid, for most of us the brain's air, light, darkness and space has been even more maze-like than before. We retain our Vermeer-like definition of the brain with doors to open with unexplored adventures, day by day. Should we have the courage to open tomorrow's door, to force the torch into its recesses has recently become a familiar experience for the mature. Through the painted doorways fluidity dribbles, then flows such that the Renaissance age of defining the brain, Hamlet-wise, is opening up beyond our very noses. "To be or not to be" was to define the brain's space by decision and action as answers to questions. Human disasters ,a holocaust and beyond, drove that into an apparent last-ditch with Samuel Beckett attempting to heal the creative mind, half-expressing the irrepressible need to strive and try again , to signal and make code. Every attempt, every measurement from a mere mortal is affected by the attempt itself, even in its measurement ,according to Wittgenstein. Thereby to laugh, to feel and to shout. The options and the possibilities are released."
34) Graham Duff:
“There are some really good things on my mind. Although, there are quite a few repeats on as well. I can binge a whole series of thoughts. As soon as one ends, I’m straight into the next. I can’t keep up with everything that’s on my mind. I don’t even try. There’s so much content, it’s impossible. So many series of thought to choose from. You have to search for the stuff that’s really worth thinking. To be honest, there is quite a lot of rubbish on my mind. These days, more than ever. There’s way too much reality on. I know some people love all that. But it just doesn’t appeal to me.”
35) Kim Noble:
“I’m keen on removing my brain for a while. It’s just become a real bore. I’m thinking of putting it on eBay or Freecyle. Or if you want it just text me on 07957 616615”
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