By, Suzan Alparslan, MFA
Poetry is: words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you realize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody has realized it. Then you call it poetry later.
~ Allen Ginsberg
It’s been long established by one philosopher or another, that art is an inquiry into, and attempt to communicate, subjective experience, whereas science is an inquiry into, and attempt to communicate objective experience. We live in a world where these dual realities exist, simultaneously, and depend upon one another to fuel an ongoing conversation, without which no cultural innovations or technological advancements would ever happen. Without an openness of perception of the phenomenal world, as well as a natural drive for human expression (in any field, or discipline), there would be no impetus to propel us forward, not just as a culture, but as a species. This manifests differently in the developed world, vs. more indigenous cultures, but still, the inclination to establish where I end and you begin is universal in the world of duality.
Obviously, certain constructions in the physical world require calculated precision and use the tools of today to advance us toward tomorrow. Out in the world of what is discoverable, we are confined by the constraints of this age to be able to enter the next one. We are bound by the laws of physics, which prove there are limitations to what we are able to perceive—right now. And yet, as a species, we still itch and strive to discover not only that which is out there, but also to contact, study and, possibly, translate by scientific methodology, that mysterious, timeless, interior consciousness, in an attempt to quantify it or convert it, somehow, into that which can be measured.
To get a more comprehensive understanding of the cosmos, for example, we have more powerful telescopes than ever, and the technology that helped scientists design these astronomically powerful tools enable even more sophisticated technology designed for the same purpose, but with more efficiency. In this way, progress builds upon itself, accelerating advancements, and in doing so, unearthing, yet more questions which, in turn, lead to more problem-solving efforts, and so on.
Creativity and creative perception, however, exist in a more timeless realm. And therein lies its mystery.
What a paradox—that, literally, the electrical spark for anything that exists outside of our consciousness first is ignited within. And knowledge of personal experience can only be communicated by way of a creative process. Before calculations are involved, there is perception and drive. Before there is any utilitarian designation for an object from a journal entry to a wine glass to a rocket ship, there is an effort to capture and quantify the elusive quality of being that drives our subjective life.
At the core of our individual, and collective, human experience, the creative impulse is the thing that sets in motion a desire to know more of itself. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to those who persisted in proving that our ground is so much more than just flat and that space has the power to distort time, as we know it. And, from within their individual perspectives, we exist in a shared realm of innumerable slants and angles of perception. Once we externalize some aspect of our perception, it gets recycled, and rejuvenated as part of the flow of humanity, the great moving mosaic of existence, whether in the arts, sciences, or areas of civic action. That one human being can poetically filter and name the mood of a flower, or breathe new life into an old melody, is reason enough to stay curious. Whether one beholds the beauty of a rainbow, the hypnotic eye contact of a cat, the greatness of a grand scale architectural achievement, or the sublimity of an operatic aria, the throughline of all of these perceived experiences is a sense of awe derived from beauty.
But can a heightened subjective experience of beauty be measured by empirical means? Maybe. I recently stumbled upon a new word/concept on the web, whose combined prefix and stem word intrigued me; Neuroaesthetics Hmm, what could this, be? It turns out, it is a new sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics coined by British neurobiologist, Semir_Zeki. According to Wikipedia, Neuroaesthetics uses neuroscience to explain and understand aesthetic experiences at the neurological level.
Zeki conducted a study whose aim was to observe and gather any objective evidence, or across-the-board pattern, of brain activity among a culturally diverse selection of participants as they were each offered a different kind of stimuli. Based on pre-established personal preferences, each participant was presented with just the right stimulus to cause a response being, the experience of beauty. According to Zeki, in a 2019 interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for the show Closer To Truth, what the study found was that, in all participants who experienced “beauty, regardless of its source,” one part of the brain lit up. That part was the Medial Prefrontal Cortex. Okay, so what did this mean? According to the American Physiological Society, cited above, “It (the medial prefrontal cortex) plays an essential role in many brain functions, including cognitive process, regulation of emotion, motivation and sociability.” This makes sense in the context of the study, which then reminded me of the 1990 film, Awakenings, based on the true story, and book of the same name by renowned neurologist, Oliver_Sacks.
The character in the film, Dr. Malcolm Sayer, is beautifully interpreted by the late, great Robin Williams. The story takes place in the Bronx, New York, in 1969. With the best of intentions, Dr. Sayer gathers up a group of people who had all been stricken with Encephalitis_lethargica otherwise known as “sleeping sickness.” Those afflicted appeared, from the outside, to have been in a “statue-like” state of paralysis for decades, since the outbreak of the disease in the 1920s. There had been varying reports of the participants having had a conscious, inner life or, literally, self-awareness, but for many, it was as if their psychic life had stunted at the age they were when they acquired the illness. Sacks/Sayer had the faith and audacity to try something new to, essentially, thaw out these people’s frozen lives, so to speak. He experimented with a new drug, at the time, L-DOPA which is now widely used for the treatment of Parkinson’s.
In one strikingly memorable scene, the patients are gathered in the cold, sterile setting of a hospital cafeteria for mealtime. Several of them showed very little interest in food until one staff member discovered that having music on made all the difference in encouraging these newly awakened people to eat. However, there was a catch. It wasn’t just one kind of music that inspired every member of the group. In the scene, individuals responded to a vast array of musical stimuli, from classical to 1920’s Jazz, to Jimi Hendrix. It was as if the patients had a neurological instinct or soul-impression that caused them to be moved by one kind of music over another. Clearly, they had subconscious associations with the feel of a particular sound, allowing them to tap into their individual awakenings, in a seemingly, more unique, and meaningful way.
Ultimately, the effects of the L-DOPA proved to be short-term due to neurological side-effects that were unsustainable for most patients. While it may have been the medicine that brought these people back to a conscious state, their subjective responses to the music brought them closer to themselves.
Mahatma Ghandi said, “Truth is one, paths are many.” It seems to me, the impetus to build a bridge between subject and object is as healthy an impulse as is practicing yoga, aka union, and that diversity of experience is a key factor in understanding universality of experience on a new level. I would also make the argument that the practice of art; the need for creative output, is as vital and necessary to the health and wellbeing of the human spirit, as empirical evidence is to a research scientist. It is fascinating to contemplate how aesthetic consumption lights up the part of our brain designed, not just to survive, but to thrive! I wonder what lights up during the creative act, however, that would be defined. Maybe the collaborative nature of perception and interpretation is inextricably being measured in Zeki’s study.
Now that I know Neuroaesthetics is a thing, I am curious about, what it might uncover, as well as what will remain a mystery, leading to more questions, inquiries, studies, and, limitations around what can be known. And, of course, that brings me to the infamous poem on the subject written 167 years ago:
When I Heard The Learn’D Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures ere ranged columns
before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add
divide and measure them ;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he
lectured with much applause the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick ;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’s up in perfect silence at the stars.
~ Walt Whitman
If awe, wonder, and beauty can be measured, does it change the value of those things?
Can we objectively know, but also hold on to some of the mystery, maybe even let what we know enhance our awe even more? There is a kind of objectively-informed perspective that is available to us when we contemplate the vastness of space or the infinitesimally small space of mitochondria or subatomic particles. And, in the meantime, can we just be present to it all, make room for the different kinds of “knowing”, and keep following the urge to process the world through our imagination in order to more fully inhabit what we might grasp, experientially, this moment?
It is first of all necessary to make the organ of vision analogous and similar to the object to be contemplated. Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken the form of the sun; likewise, the soul cannot see beauty unless it first becomes beautiful itself, and every man must make hiself beautiful and divine in order to attain the sight of beauty and divinity.
~ Plotinus
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Suzan Alparslan, MFA, has been a bodywork practitioner for nearly three decades in New York and Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Dance Choreography from Bard College and an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University, LA. She has published poems in several literary journals and is currently working on a collection of poems. She was a mentor for many years with LA-based writegirl.org. Suzan spends time painting, drawing, and living with her fiancé, his 13-year-old daughter, two cats, and a dog. She also happens to be the life-long, proud little sister of NW Creative & Expressive Arts Therapy founder, Sibel Alparslan Golden.