I wanted to ask, at what point were you able to connect the dots and begin to frame this as a kind of origin story for yourself as a writer? You mentioned the Zoom call with a friend. Was it like a slow realization, or was there a pivotal figure (like McGilchrist or the "Stroke of Insight")?
That call was not the first time I framed it that way, but it was the most solidly formed and it fully occurred to me a bit all at once in that moment. It has just been getting more detailed since then, reading Walker Percy, McGilchrist, etc.
I understand that writing is a compensation: when I was a child I stuttered. Unfortunately, I didn’t have patient parents, so I had to overcompensate the lack of speech with writing.
it sounds like not having had access to words made you prize them when they came back. i wonder if that's because you were young when it happened.
i had a concussion when i was 27 that took away my ability to read for an hour or two and for somebody that had built his whole life on research and was about to start a doctorate that was pretty terrifying, to realise it could all be taken away in a moment
im pretty sure thats why i stopped trusting words and now prefer images. its interesting how that works out differently for different folks
that being said, i do think making images of things and developing symbols into things that can be understood is an essentially left brained thing to do. iconography anticipates the alphabet after all.
ironically, i took the hit on the right side of my head. i don't remember exactly where but i'm pretty sure it was the prefrontal cortex. maybe we have more in common than it seems from the ways we respectively responded to our brains going wrong.
I need to read Lost in the Cosmos again
So well described. I'll be mulling over this.
I wanted to ask, at what point were you able to connect the dots and begin to frame this as a kind of origin story for yourself as a writer? You mentioned the Zoom call with a friend. Was it like a slow realization, or was there a pivotal figure (like McGilchrist or the "Stroke of Insight")?
That call was not the first time I framed it that way, but it was the most solidly formed and it fully occurred to me a bit all at once in that moment. It has just been getting more detailed since then, reading Walker Percy, McGilchrist, etc.
Stunning memoir!
I understand that writing is a compensation: when I was a child I stuttered. Unfortunately, I didn’t have patient parents, so I had to overcompensate the lack of speech with writing.
My wife and I use "dyslexic lawyer" as a shorthand to mean "someone who has become great at something because he is naturally bad at it."
Wild! Loved reading this
Woo! Thanks, Grace.
🙏🏽🙏🏽
Bless
it sounds like not having had access to words made you prize them when they came back. i wonder if that's because you were young when it happened.
i had a concussion when i was 27 that took away my ability to read for an hour or two and for somebody that had built his whole life on research and was about to start a doctorate that was pretty terrifying, to realise it could all be taken away in a moment
im pretty sure thats why i stopped trusting words and now prefer images. its interesting how that works out differently for different folks
that being said, i do think making images of things and developing symbols into things that can be understood is an essentially left brained thing to do. iconography anticipates the alphabet after all.
ironically, i took the hit on the right side of my head. i don't remember exactly where but i'm pretty sure it was the prefrontal cortex. maybe we have more in common than it seems from the ways we respectively responded to our brains going wrong.
That's very interesting that it was your right frontal. No surprise it took away your ability to read (we use both). I wonder what that was like.