Finding Direction

In “The Sorrows of Young Werther” Goethe expresses the “the unbearable burden of aimlessness”. He’s harsh on the people he judges, who just make the choices given by their culture. We are each born into a web of expectation created by immediate caregivers, and the growing circle of people as our sphere of experience grows. Media and culture also tell us how to be. Sorting out what really matters can be hard. The currents of what’s always happened make the decisions. And if aimlessness is bad then having an aim would be an equivalent good, a direction. One of the tenets of chaos theory is that that chaos combined with direction produces complexity. Michael Faraday, writing to a young student who wanted to know where to start to go into science said to start anywhere, he’ll get to everything he needs eventually. This accords with ancient wisdom. The I Ching often advises having somewhere to go. A purpose is a direction. Once a personal direction is chosen, we know what to do with our time. Margo Jefferson’s book “Constructing a Nervous System” is not a scientific account of it like I originally thought, but better. Her book provided an example of how we build our minds from the things we connect to emotionally. Following our heart interest is how we find direction. Hers is an emotional history, first memory the fascination with the close-up of Bud Powell’s face on the cover of his album when she was nine years old. From there, curiosity brewed a network of connections to his music and his story. Her memories accumulated the artists who moved her. In each of the stages of her life it was the emotional depth reached by artists that articulated the inner self and paved the way for the next place to grow. The fascination with different musicians as she grew older invented an area of expertise that could, once an adult, be a profession, writing about musicians and writers. Whether it’s music, literature, theatre, dance, or visual art, when art leads, we gain access to more of ourselves. The book “The First Idea” describes how “PET scans show that emotionally meaningful experiences are associated with many areas of the brain at the same time in comparison with impersonal tasks.” The more richly interconnected brain is more resilient, has more routes to get around if it starts losing the less used ones. To include the feeling in the idea feels more accurate to mental life. As the authors say in “The First Idea”, emotions “coordinate and orchestrate the rest of cognitive abilities. Each of us can do this. After reading the book I traced my route through my father’s Ella Fitzgerald and Rhapsody in Blue records to Led Zeppelin and the Doors. These were my soundtrack to Tanguy, Escher, Kay Sage, and Judy Chicago. Thinking about the last two I realize how much influence they have on my work now. The wide mesh of circuitry created by our path through the arts shows personal choices and can guide future direction.