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I’m on my way to Winchester for a conference on ‘Language,
Poetry and the Brain’. The speakers include an evolutionary archaeologist,
two neuroscientists and a classical violinist. It promises ‘to illuminate
poetic creation’. I’m trying to visualize flaring fountains
and, say, cascades of psychedelic sparks inside the head.
The train passes a small field of thistles. These once outlawed weeds
remind me of the opening of Ted Hughes’ poem: ‘Against the
rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men / Thistles spike the
summer air.’ I used to know ‘Thistles’ by heart but
now can recall only one more image, imprecisely, ‘the stain of a
Viking underground’. I wonder what it would mean if the whole thing
were to come flooding back: might that be the same in terms of neurological
activity as writing the poem in the first place?
It turns out the illumination neuroscience has to offer on creative processes
is still rudimentary. We are shown in red, for instance, areas of the
brain that fire when we do something such as read a musical score—that
is, tasks that are receptive rather than active. I suspect more would
be required of my old brain were I to recover those metaphoric Vikings.
But Steven Mithen, the ‘evolutionary archaeologist’ (whose
books include The Singing Neanderthals), outlines a fascinating theory.
He argues that pre-humans, or hominids, had discrete intelligences for
social activity, knowledge of nature and technical know-how. Creativity
occurred when those compartments overflowed into each other. This notion
of ‘cognitive fluidity’ chimes, I think, with the experience
of writing a poem—when the desultory simmer comes to a boil and
scraps and images from different reaches of the mind begin to jumble together
in novel combinations. Metaphor becomes possible. The brain can see Vikings
in thistles.
The speakers agree music and language are related. As an illustration
of this, the violinist Paul Robertson plays Bach. That is, he plays the
note equivalents of the letters BACH, a motif used in the ‘Redemption’
fugue. Then Robertson plays the bit that says ‘Bach is redeemed’.
Mithen suggests we recollect our evolutionary history when making music.
The witty sophisticated punning of the composer, then, may have a long
backward reach, through evolutionary time, remembering the ancient pleasure.
The creative moment renews the original ecstasy, repeats the primal gasp:
that matter should find expression—aye, that the very stones should
speak.
That same week I’ve been giving workshops in Winchester Prison.
I’ve
asked the men to improvise on the old blues line ‘Woke up this mornin’,
a formula that produces pretty good results. In the evening, we watch
video footage of the prisoners reciting their poems. These may not be
sophisticated but they have the raw noise of poetry. One Liverpudlian,
whose face has the complexion of weathered volcanic ash, comes up with
some 40 inventive, rhythm-ically sustained lines. He ends ‘yeh yeh
yeh can’t stop singin!’
The video freezes on his face, open-mouthed, suffused with glee. We can
say little yet about the process—subtle, complex, chemical—that
has just occurred. But his expression manifests its force; and, as I’ve
learned today, it was first seen around some Palaeolithic campfire.
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