More fun about brains between me and Sy Montgomery:
"Continuing to read "Birdology."
Re studies of brain damage and music; my own childhood accident (hit myself in the head with an axe - don't ask) gave me the ability to see whatever I wanted as though it were really there. I used to play with real dragons. Probably why I wanted a TRex.
Over the years I've lost this ability. Brain growing up and re-configuring? Healing? No idea.
For the last 30 years I've asked artists and writers if they've suffered head trauma. The only one I'm not sure about said, "I don't remember." The rest described what had happened.
Supposedly, some South American tribal peoples hit promising kids in the head, to further their path to becoming a Shaman. I once wrote a short story about someone talking to a kid, describing what life was like back before everyone was hit in the head as a normal procedure for furthering brain development ("Cracked.").
I've described what happens as "Living on the glass prairie" -- we can suddenly see everything in our heads, all the time. Many of us suffer from insomnia, and have to take valerian or soymilk just to calm our brains down so we can sleep. The mention of one thing leads off to all the scenes and files in the head. We have real Junkbox Brains.
When someone says something like, "Mommy can see angels now!" I always want to ask when Mommy got her head accident.
That's just some personal experience - I don't know if it will be of interest to anyone doing brain development studies. The one thing I know about science or the arts or any other field of endeavor, we all live in our own file in society, like files in a healthy head. Passing on odd bits of information helps hook up worlds.
(I have a strange ability to be able to translate between worlds; I once stood in the San Diego University booth at San Diego Comicon and translated between the world of drawn books and academia. Maybe all research needs one Junkbox Brain on staff? Not really joking.)."
Sy:
"Holy God, Donna. This is very, very cool. Lately I have been researching ocotpuses, and this has heightened my interest in exploring different kinds of consciousness. (Octopuses, though neither social nor long lived, are extremely intelligent. Their intelligence evolved completely separately from ours. And about half of their neurons are not in their brains but in their ARMS, which if severed can go wandering about catching food items, which they then try to pass back toward the mouth, which of course is no longer nearby.)
I love the title of your story "Cracked." Where can I read it?
How long ago did you lose the ability to see your thoughts as if they were really there? I only once had this experience while waking and it was after taking ayahuasca with a shaman in the Amazon. In my vision, which hit long after the first two and I had gone back to bed, the star ship Enterprise (the old version) appeared under my mosquito net and slowly cruised through it.
Cheers"
Me:
"First of all, my apologies for sending a pdf file, but it's the easiest and most direct way of seeing the story, "Cracked Baby" (I forgot it was a pun).
Got a bit of a jump when re-reading it; the Tsunami/earthquake drill siren went off this morning. I'm getting so many of these jumps lately - read a word, hear it on the radio, or see the situation or image in reality (or is it just September, and the black fluttery things and noises about? :)
Octopusses (Greek plural) are the embodiment of "THING" in "The Adams Family?" Authors really do have some kind of weird insight.
Does this mean that "blob of neurons" or whatever it is in the Stegosaur's hips could be extra file attachments? How does this relate to phantom limbs? Do our brains function more like those crab parasites that take over the whole body? ("Parasite Rex").
Is our mental capacity, that seems to make humans act like a disease instead of a mammal, the result of symbiosis with a parasite? Like the toxoplasmosis that makes rats love cats? (And don't we catch it too? There's internet film of a dog and a deer happily licking a cat - it's SPREADING! Ha).
And with parasites controlling actions, did Star Trek and the XFiles have it right (and aren't those little crawly things ladybug larvae?).
(A friend works on Star Trek - and yes, the Ferengi tooth sharpener IS a nose-hair plucker with the top off. And are most of the sets are based on these convention hotels?)
Well, you've just flipped the switch this morning."
"Continuing to read "Birdology."
Re studies of brain damage and music; my own childhood accident (hit myself in the head with an axe - don't ask) gave me the ability to see whatever I wanted as though it were really there. I used to play with real dragons. Probably why I wanted a TRex.
Over the years I've lost this ability. Brain growing up and re-configuring? Healing? No idea.
For the last 30 years I've asked artists and writers if they've suffered head trauma. The only one I'm not sure about said, "I don't remember." The rest described what had happened.
Supposedly, some South American tribal peoples hit promising kids in the head, to further their path to becoming a Shaman. I once wrote a short story about someone talking to a kid, describing what life was like back before everyone was hit in the head as a normal procedure for furthering brain development ("Cracked.").
I've described what happens as "Living on the glass prairie" -- we can suddenly see everything in our heads, all the time. Many of us suffer from insomnia, and have to take valerian or soymilk just to calm our brains down so we can sleep. The mention of one thing leads off to all the scenes and files in the head. We have real Junkbox Brains.
When someone says something like, "Mommy can see angels now!" I always want to ask when Mommy got her head accident.
That's just some personal experience - I don't know if it will be of interest to anyone doing brain development studies. The one thing I know about science or the arts or any other field of endeavor, we all live in our own file in society, like files in a healthy head. Passing on odd bits of information helps hook up worlds.
(I have a strange ability to be able to translate between worlds; I once stood in the San Diego University booth at San Diego Comicon and translated between the world of drawn books and academia. Maybe all research needs one Junkbox Brain on staff? Not really joking.)."
Sy:
"Holy God, Donna. This is very, very cool. Lately I have been researching ocotpuses, and this has heightened my interest in exploring different kinds of consciousness. (Octopuses, though neither social nor long lived, are extremely intelligent. Their intelligence evolved completely separately from ours. And about half of their neurons are not in their brains but in their ARMS, which if severed can go wandering about catching food items, which they then try to pass back toward the mouth, which of course is no longer nearby.)
I love the title of your story "Cracked." Where can I read it?
How long ago did you lose the ability to see your thoughts as if they were really there? I only once had this experience while waking and it was after taking ayahuasca with a shaman in the Amazon. In my vision, which hit long after the first two and I had gone back to bed, the star ship Enterprise (the old version) appeared under my mosquito net and slowly cruised through it.
Cheers"
Me:
"First of all, my apologies for sending a pdf file, but it's the easiest and most direct way of seeing the story, "Cracked Baby" (I forgot it was a pun).
Got a bit of a jump when re-reading it; the Tsunami/earthquake drill siren went off this morning. I'm getting so many of these jumps lately - read a word, hear it on the radio, or see the situation or image in reality (or is it just September, and the black fluttery things and noises about? :)
Octopusses (Greek plural) are the embodiment of "THING" in "The Adams Family?" Authors really do have some kind of weird insight.
Does this mean that "blob of neurons" or whatever it is in the Stegosaur's hips could be extra file attachments? How does this relate to phantom limbs? Do our brains function more like those crab parasites that take over the whole body? ("Parasite Rex").
Is our mental capacity, that seems to make humans act like a disease instead of a mammal, the result of symbiosis with a parasite? Like the toxoplasmosis that makes rats love cats? (And don't we catch it too? There's internet film of a dog and a deer happily licking a cat - it's SPREADING! Ha).
And with parasites controlling actions, did Star Trek and the XFiles have it right (and aren't those little crawly things ladybug larvae?).
(A friend works on Star Trek - and yes, the Ferengi tooth sharpener IS a nose-hair plucker with the top off. And are most of the sets are based on these convention hotels?)
Well, you've just flipped the switch this morning."
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