A Seattle friend, Liz Durkin, introduced me to the world of blogging a few years with her blog
Starworlds. Liz is a brilliant astrologer and writer. Her blog goes into discussions and details that boggle my mind. I find it hard to follow the thread of her discussions much of the time because I don't have the astrological training and my mind just can't link all those pieces together at once. It is heavy duty!
She started a second blog,
Starsync, that follows a tangential discussion of world events that support her astrological insights. It speaks in more simple terms for the lay person. Her recent post on Mercury Retrograde and the brain caught my attention. In it, she pieces together ideas of how the right brain and left brain are influenced by the movement of the planets. Specifically, she posits that the right brain is activated by mercury retrograde. Read the article for info.
But what caught my attention was the spinning lady test. I've seen this test before and love it. It tests whether you are right or left brain dominant, which explains what type of thinker you are. She spins left for me, which is left brained, which means my thinking is more linear, logical, directional, detailed. If I watch long enough, and watch in soft focus, or from the corner of my eye, she spins right, but only for a short while before she switches again. I have to concentrate to get into my right brain mode, but the left brain comes on its own.
Anyway, this related to a discussion I had with a visiting painter friend. I asked her for a critique of my newest paintings - the ones that I'm having such a hard time doing and relaxing into at the same time. She pointed out that I have my "designer goggles" on: goal oriented, detailed, finite. She had her "painter goggles" on: fluid, open-ended, looking at the whole. (Ahem, left vs right).
She compared the act of painting to a chess game, where each move changes the strategy for the entire game. You might have a goal in mind, but at each step you need to let go of the previous goal and reassess the whole picture fresh. It requires constant letting go. (BTW, we are discussion abstract painting here.)
So, true, I have been a designer for most of my career and succeeded nicely at that. It fits my brain well. Painting is so counter to that, that I struggle with my inability to control, (the word she used). Yes, control. I hate it when I am out of control. Painting in a more free form way pushes my buttons.
So why do I do this? Because I am compelled to. It is the only thing that is clear for me right now. It is a good practice, being out of control. Or maybe I need to approach it as being more fluid and open to possibilities?
But my question is, can I learn to be more right brained, to paint and think more open-ended and holistic, or is it an uphill battle all the way? Our culture thrives on left-brain approaches, but it is killing us. I really want to be more right-brained, to not sweat the small stuff. But how? Read less, dance and paint more? It certainly seems the month to try it out.
