A couple of days ago I saw part of a documentary (CBC TV) on the creative process. The focus was on the brain activity as seen during musical composition. The researchers wired Sting’s brain to machines and ran him through an MRI scanner while he was creating music. The doctor was very excited by his findings, mainly, the equal use of the right and left hemispheres of the brain when an accomplished composer such as Sting was composing. Apparently this was unusual.
Sting himself was, in the end, not as happy about the research. I was fascinated by his discomfort with the process. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to have his creativity analyzed. His fear was that once it is understood it would loose its magic. That he’d no longer be able to compose, to make music.
To the artist when something works it is not clear how. It just does. It is magic. I can spend hours, days, years trying to figure out why one painting is so much better than another and still not understand how it got to be that way. It’s a process that belies analysis. It often feels like another hand at work through mine. It just feels right. All of the descriptions about what a piece of art means can hardly explain the core of the work. That is untouchable. Only felt.