22 different responses to a request to share thoughts on the brain and/or what's always on your mind...
Sally O'Riley:
"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."
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."
Kevin Eldon:
"I have quite a problem loading the dishwater properly so getting to grips with what the brain is presents quite a challenge for me. I do know however that it is a wonder, a miracle of evolution, our bridge to the cosmos whose power can never be underestimated. I also believe that we humans are capable of training our brain, through rumination, meditation and education, to change ingrained thought and behaviour based on fear and hatred so that we instead react to and act upon the world with courage and compassion."
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."
Richard Carbut:
"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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
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."
Suzanne Thomas:
"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..."
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."
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."
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."
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
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.
Michael 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."
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."
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’.
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.
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."
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."
Tine Frellesen:
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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."
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."
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."
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