Creation and criticism

I found it.

I found the sentence in my $60 textbook which made it worth the outlay of almost half my hard-earned, pitiful daily wage.  Here it is:

         "It is claimed that the creative facility resides in one hemisphere of our brain and the critical in the other, and that our brains are not capable of creating and criticising simultaneously." (Marshall and Rowland, 2006, pg 196)

(Sorry about the indent-fail, purists. 'Tab' doesn't work like that in Blogger.)

Well, after reading that I stared at the wall until my partner was moved to ask me if I was alright. Staring at the wall is actually a good sign in me (a fact my partner still hasn't quite absorbed- but I digress).  It means I'm deep in thought. You see, I know- know- that that statement isn't true.

Well, it's not true for me, anyway.  And that made me think, is my brain innately different to other people's brains? Am I the only person who simultaneously creates and criticises as I write?

I haven't given my evidence.  Backtrack.

When I wrote my sonnet 'First to Go', which won the Sydney Morning Herald Great Sonnet Competition 2000, the very first lines to form themselves in my head were the final couplet:

At last I stand. Let others judge: we know.
Your eyes demand it. I am first to go.

They came into my head fully-formed and perfect.  They were created with not only the exact meaning I wanted to convey as a summary of the poem's content, not only with impeccable iambic pentameter and rhyme, but with something I originally deemed serendipitous and that struck me later as incredible: an internal rhyme, 'stand' and 'demand'.

So which of these elements are creative, and which are critical? The content, the meaning is what would normally be deemed 'creative', while the structure of a poem as formal as the sonnet- concluding punching summary, metre and rhyme- is usually the result of painstaking writing and rewriting over many hours, days or even months. To add a craftsman's touch like an internal rhyme for extra subliminal punch- well, that requires luck and creative judgement as well as bloody hard work.

Yet my poet's brain was able to create and criticise at once to produce a perfect couplet which I never touched from the moment it was born to the day the poem was published.

And thus to my thesis, formed whilst staring at the wall.

A successful poet's mind is intrinsically different to that of other people, in that it has sufficient cross-hemisphere communication to simultaneously create and criticise.

Yep, that thought was worth $60.

And that brings me to the value of reading material with which I disagree.  This textbook has irritated the hell out of me, largely because I agree with nearly everything it says and resent the waste of money and time reading a text that preaches what I already know. It didn't make me think until I disagreed.

Here are the cognitive cattle prods that work for me:

Disagree.
Enlighten.

Yep, probably in that order.  Followed at a distance of some zillion kilometres by...

Confirm.

If I read something I disagree with, my brain goes into overdrive to examine which of us is wrong- I'll call that 'argumentative mode'.

If I read something that provides an 'aha' moment, I go into reflective mode and start to apply the new information to familiar or recalled situations that have puzzled me- let's call it 'solution mode'.

And if I read something that confirms what I already know or believe, it slides into the bank of facts I can pull out at whim to prove I'm right about something, making barely a ripple unless it's so bleeding obvious that it causes irritation. (Sorry, Marshall and Rowland, but you generally send me straight to 'PIA' [pain in the arse] mode. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.)

I am a terrible know-it-all. It irritates the hell out of people. Sorry. It's not my fault that I was born with a retentive mind, but I could probably work on the delivery. I mean well, truly I do, and I do try to be diplomatic. I know I irritate people. I have an enduring image in my mind of my very first serious boyfriend breaking his guitar over the end of the bed and screaming 'You're always bloody right!'

(He wasn't my boyfriend any more after that. Not because he'd shouted an unpalatable truth at me about the balance of intellectual power in the relationship, but because he'd wantonly broken a beautiful musical instrument. End of story.)

So one of my big challenges in doing this course will be to be patient and wait for the things that provoke 'argumentative' and 'solution'.  The other will be to cultivate some humility and try to assume that my lecturers will know more than me about some things- things that I will find useful in my practice- and will have the skill to both help me change my mind and shepherd me past 'PIA' mode.

(Warning: I'm singularly unimpressed by academic hubris. Knowledge had better be relevant and clearly expressed, or I'll get grumpy. I did like this line in Marshall and Rowland: "...terminology can easily degenerate into jargon if used carelessly or to impress" [pg 195], though I suspect the concept might be lost both on the average 17-year-old and some lecturers I've met.)

Cultivating humility will mean sometimes writing in the way that is expected, rather than trying to sneak around corners with my engaging (but sometimes academically inappropriate) personal literary style.  That will be difficult and irritating for me.

(For example, I'll have to curb my fondness for parentheses, italics and truncated sentences that start with prepositions and conjunctions. Like this one.)

(Yep, that paragraph had both creative flair and intrinsic critically formed structure, and I did it simultaneously. I'm being a smart-arse, but it does support my argument.)

It will mean forcing myself to sift through haystacks of 'PIA' material to find 'argumentative' or 'solution' needles. Patience is not one of my virtues, not with adults.  I can be patient pretty much all day, every day with children. By the end of that, I'm all 'patiented out', and that's when I'll be studying. There's a challenge in itself.

But rest assured, one little needle can go a long way with me.  I've already used this one to darn a hole in my understanding of myself versus the rest of the world. Yes, I know, that wasn't what it was meant to teach me, but hell- since when has that mattered, as long as I'm learning something?

Dammit, there are those italics again.

References

Marshall, L and Rowland F (2006). A Guide to Independent Learning (4th edition). NSW, Australia: Pearson Education.