At the turn of the 20th century, a Belfast grammar school head teacher named John Jackson argued that with training, we could educate ourselves to write a letter with one hand, while playing the piano with the other, without affecting our ability to concentrate. The result would be “a brave new world of two-handed, two-brained citizens.” So I ask myself, what happened to my other brain?
I confess to only having the one brain, like everyone else. Yet, when you’re in the business of creativity, it’s hard to resist fantasizing about a secondary brain, one that catches thoughts that breach their banks and helps make sense of things.
Imagine you’re a pinball bobbing in all directions, rerouting nonstop. That’s how an idea lives inside my head. I blame this affliction — or blessing — on my ambidexterity. I write with my right hand, throw with my left. Born left handed, they educated me in right-handedness. My brain is trapped between hand worlds, and it’s a wonder I don’t go through the day feeling handcuffed.
I’m thankful that I don’t — and that I sometimes do. There are moments when my mind is running up the score so dizzyingly fast, the numbers become a blur, and in the midst of all the (com)motion, I become… inert.
The truth is I was never particularly good at pinball. Evidently, I play a great game inside my head. There is plenty of science to support the notion that forced right-handedness alters the brain. After being born left-handed, and therefore right-brained, perhaps I am now right-handed and right-brained. If the realignment has made my thinking imperfect, more circuitous, tortuous — and yes, torturous too — I firmly believe my enforced dextrality has also rendered it more dexterous.
Still with me?
As creatives, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to silence the mental chatter to make room for a clearer voice, until we realize clarity has been hiding in plain sight all along.
When bouncing ideas around becomes abusive, your brain risks shutting down hard, or if I may speak pinball, tilting. Ouch! The idiom alone evokes physical pain.
But here’s the thing…
All that relentless colliding triggering all those rogue thoughts has begotten a fair amount of creative output for my clients over my 30 years of writing professionally.
It would seem the inertness I arrive at amidst all the chaos is not paralyzing as much as it is liberating — an invitation to slow motion, press “pause,” allow speed of thought time to spark an idea.
I’ve come to appreciate that every clash of pinballs results in a Big Bang moment, the origin of a new way of observing, interpreting, communicating that could only have formed inside my head.
In my inner pinball machine, there is no drain. The game never ends. It is a perfect brainstorm.
If you’re running a creative practice, you want to be smack in the eye of it.