Have you heard this expression? Does it ring true? or false?
Men and women might refer to their broad experiences of hormones and behaviour eg. testosterone leads to goal-oriented decision making, while oestrogen enhances the coding of emotion and recognition accuracy for facial expressions.
However both men and women are often confronted by the illogic of ego, emotion, communication and decision making across the sexes. Ultimately our hormones and our humanity make us emotionally motivated thinkers and doers.
Communications and the exchange of value pivots around human desires to be happier, wealthier, healthier, more connected, more loved and admired, more powerful and to achieve deep purpose.
If your communication and message does not connect with the deep desires, dream, fears and worries of the people you serve, then you are missing out on the deep relationship and connection based on a shared feeling of being understood.
Good communication = good relationships and good relationships start with an understanding and connecting with people’s feelings and desires.
I have been making some changes to Bear Skin over the last few days. You may or may not have noticed if you visit the blog site itself.
I have recently made the web url http://www.bearskindigital.com the primary domain of the page to reflect the blog name, and to distinguish it from other websites of a similar title. The old url http://www.bearskin.org will simply redirect to the new address and no links will be lost.
Second, I have updated the ‘About Me‘ section of the blog.
Third, I have rearranged the menu to reflect a new organisation to the blog structure. Basically, I seek to write more frequently. I will continue to post weekly articles about authors, their work, plays, films, and essays and continue to share original poems and writing related quotes. However I’m going to add to Bear Skin more ‘personal‘ reflections, learnings and thoughts.
I enjoy engaging with any comments on the blog and seeing where traffic and visitors are coming to the blog from all around the world.
This article was written by Robert A. Burton and published on Nautilus on August 8th, 2019. To read the original article please read here.
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Without inner narratives we would be lost in a chaotic world.
We are all storytellers; we make sense out of the world by telling stories. And science is a great source of stories.
Not so, you might argue. Science is an objective collection and interpretation of data. I completely agree. At the level of the study of purely physical phenomena, science is the only reliable method for establishing the facts of the world.
But when we use data of the physical world to explain phenomena that cannot be reduced to physical facts, or when we extend incomplete data to draw general conclusions, we are telling stories. Knowing the atomic weight of carbon and oxygen cannot tell us what life is. There are no naked facts that completely explain why animals sacrifice themselves for the good of their kin, why we fall in love, the meaning and purpose of existence, or why we kill each other.
Science is not at fault. On the contrary, science can save us from false stories. It is an irreplaceable means of understanding our world. But despite the verities of science, many of our most important questions compel us to tell stories that venture beyond the facts. For all of the sophisticated methodologies in science, we have not moved beyond the story as the primary way that we make sense of our lives.
To see where science and story meet, let’s take a look at how story is created in the brain. Let’s begin with an utterly simple example of a story, offered by E. M. Forster in his classic book on writing, Aspects of the Novel:
The king died and then the queen died.
It is nearly impossible to read this juxtaposition of events without wondering why the queen died. Even with a minimum of description, the construction of the sentence makes us guess at a pattern. Why would the author mention both events in the same sentence if he didn’t mean to imply a causal relationship?
Once a relationship has been suggested, we feel obliged to come up with an explanation. This makes us turn to what we know, to our storehouse of facts. It is general knowledge that a spouse can die of grief. Did the queen then die of heartbreak? This possibility draws on the science of human behavior, which competes with other, more traditional narratives. A high school student who has been studying Hamlet, for instance, might read the story as a microsynopsis of the play.
Despite the verities of science, we are compelled to tell stories that venture beyond the facts.
The pleasurable feeling that our explanation is the right one—ranging from a modest sense of familiarity to the powerful and sublime “a-ha!”—is meted out by the same reward system in the brain integral to drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions. The reward system extends from the limbic area of the brain, vital to the expression of emotion, to the prefrontal cortex, critical to executive thought. Though still imperfectly understood, it is generally thought that the reward system plays a central role in the promotion and reinforcement of learning. Key to the system, and found primarily within its brain cells, is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that carries and modulates signals among brain cells. Studies consistently show that feeling rewarded is accompanied by a rise in dopamine levels.
This reward system was first noted in the 1950s by two McGill University researchers, James Olds and Peter Milner. Stimulating electrodes were placed in presumed brain reward areas of rats. When allowed full unrestricted access to a lever that, when depressed, would cause the electrodes to fire, the rats quickly learned to repeatedly depress the lever, often to the exclusion of food and water. Realizing that our brains are capable of producing feelings so intense that we choose to ignore such basic drives as hunger and thirst was a first step toward understanding the enormous power of the brain’s reward circuitry.
Critical to understanding how stories spark the brain’s reward system is the theory known as pattern recognition—the brain’s way of piecing together a number of separate components of an image into a coherent picture. The first time you see a lion, for instance, you have to figure out what you’re seeing. At least 30 separate areas of the brain’s visual cortex pitch in, each processing an aspect of the overall image—from the detection of motion and edges, to the register of color and facial features. Collectively they form an overall image of a lion.
Each subsequent exposure to a lion enhances your neural circuitry; the connections among processing regions become more robust and efficient. (This theory, based on the research of Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb, a pioneer in studying how people learn, is often stated as “cells that fire together wire together.”) Soon, less input is necessary to recognize the lion. A fleeting glimpse of a partial picture is sufficient for recognition, which occurs via positive feedback from your reward system. Yes, you are assured by your brain, that is a lion.
THE LION KING – Featuring the voices of James Earl Jones as Mufasa, and JD McCrary as Young Simba, Disney???s ???The Lion King??? is directed by Jon Favreau. In theaters July 29, 2019.
?? 2019 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
An efficient pattern recognition of a lion makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you see a large feline shape moving in some nearby brush, it is unwise to wait until you see the yellows of the lion’s eyes before starting to run up the nearest tree. You need a brain that quickly detects entire shapes from fragments of the total picture and provides you with a powerful sense of the accuracy of this recognition.
One need only think of the recognition of a new pattern that is so profound that it triggers an involuntary “a-ha!” to understand the degree of pleasure that can be associated with learning. It’s no wonder that once a particular pattern-recognition-reward relationship is well grooved into our circuitry, it is hard to shake. In general—outside of addiction, that is—this “stickiness” of a correlation is a good thing. It is through repetition and the sense of familiarity and “rightness” of a correlation that we learn to navigate our way in the world.
Science is in the business of making up stories called hypotheses and testing them, then trying its best to make up better ones. Thought-experiments can be compared to storytelling exercises using well-known characters. What would Sherlock Holmes do if he found a body suspended in a tree with a note strapped to its ankle? What would a light ray being bounced between two mirrors look like to an observer sitting on a train? Once done with their story, scientists go to the lab to test it; writers call editors to see if they will buy it.
People and science are like bread and butter. We are hardwired to need stories; science has storytelling buried deep in its nature. But there is also a problem. We can get our dopamine reward, and walk away with a story in hand, before science has finished testing it. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the brain, hungry for its pattern-matching dopamine reward, overlooks contradictory or conflicting information whenever possible. A fundamental prerequisite for pattern recognition is the ability to quickly distinguish between similar but not identical inputs. Not being able to pigeonhole an event or idea makes it much more difficult for the brain to label and store it as a discrete memory. Neat and tidy promotes learning; loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.
When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are moral consequences.
Just as proper pattern recognition results in the reward of an increased release of dopamine, faulty pattern recognition is associated with decreased dopamine release. In monkeys, the failure to make a successful prediction (correlation between expected and actual outcome) characteristically diminishes dopamine release exactly at the time that the predicted event is anticipated but fails to occur. Just as accurate correlations are pleasurable, lack of correlation produces the neurotransmitter equivalent of thwarted expectation (or worse).
Once we see that stories are the narrative equivalent of correlation, it is easy to understand why our brains seek out stories (patterns) whenever and wherever possible. You may have read or heard about the famous experiment in which University of Illinois psychology professor Daniel Simons asked subjects to watch a video and count the number of times a ball is dribbled by a basketball team. When focused on counting, the majority of viewers failed to see a woman in a gorilla suit walk across the playing area. In effect, well-oiled patterns of observation encourage our brains to compose a story that we expect to hear.
Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them. With a half-story from science in our minds, we earn a dopamine “reward” every time it helps us understand something in our world—even if that explanation is incomplete or wrong.
Following the Newtown massacre, some experts commented on the killer having Asperger’s syndrome, as though that might at least partially explain his behavior. Though Asperger’s syndrome feels like a specific diagnosis, it is, by definition, nothing more than a constellation of symptoms common to a group of people. In the 1940s, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger noted that a number of patients had similar problems with social skills, eccentric or repetitive actions, unusual preoccupation rituals, and communication difficulties, including lack of eye contact and trouble understanding facial expressions and gestures. The 2013 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome from its guidebook for clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V), for failing to conform to any specific neuropathology, underscores the all-too-common problem of accepting a clustering of symptoms as synonymous with a specific disease. Syndromes are stories in search of underlying causes.
Similarly, studies of psychopaths have shown a diminished volume of gray matter in specific regions of the prefrontal cortex. But these findings aren’t the sole explanation for violent acts. Because it is impossible to stimulate a specific brain region to produce complex and premeditated acts, we are left to conclude that while certain brain conditions can be correlated with a complex act, they are not necessarily causing it. Likewise, brain scans that reveal abnormalities in mass murderers may help us understand what might have contributed to their behavior. But the abnormalities are no more the sole explanation for violence than childhood neglect or poor nutrition are. They are stories, albeit with a detailed neurophysiological component, but stories nonetheless.
When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are often moral consequences. How much personal responsibility should we assign to an individual with a damaged or malfunctioning brain? What is the appropriate punishment and possibility of rehabilitation for such a person? Only when we openly acknowledge the degree to which science is presenting its observations in the form of story can we address this moral dimension. We must each work out our own guidelines for when we think scientific data has exceeded its bounds and has morphed into the agenda and bias of story. Of course this is always going to be a challenge in the absence of a full array of scientific data.
But we can begin by being aware of the various ways that storytelling can insinuate itself into the presentation and interpretation of data. Good science is a combination of meticulously obtained and analyzed data, a restriction of the conclusions to those interpretations that are explicitly reflected in the data, and an honest and humble recognition of the limits of what this data can say about the world.
Loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.
As members of the public, we need to ensure that any science we accept as truth has passed through the peer-review process. We should also understand that even peer-reviewed data is not always accurate. In 2011, Nature reported that published retractions had increased by a factor of 10 over the last 10 years, while the number of papers published rose only 44 percent. Also in Nature, scientists C. Glenn Begley and Lee M. Ellis wrote that their colleagues at the biotechnology firm Amgen could reproduce only six of 53 landmark hematology and oncology studies from the scientific literature. Similarly, scientists from Bayer reported in 2011 that they could not consistently reproduce about two-thirds of oncology studies relevant to their work.
When reading science reports, we should also search for information on the limits of the data. Were assumptions made? What do the “error bars,” or graphic representations of variable data, say? We may not always understand the data limits, but we should be worried when some discussion of them is completely absent.
In the end, scientists have the tools, language, and experience to tell us informed, engaging, and powerful stories. In turn, we should judge their studies in the same light in which we judge other artistic forms. Like a literary critic, we should assess the preciseness of language, the tightness of structure, the clarity and originality of vision, the overall elegance and grace of the study, the restraint with which they present moral issues, how they place their studies in historical, cultural, and personal context, and their willingness to entertain alternative opinions and interpretations.
The methodology of science remains one of the great advances of humankind. Its stories, properly told, are epic poems in progress, and deserve to stand alongside the great stories of history.
Aesop, a slave and storyteller is believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE; Herodotus refers to him only 100 years later in his Histories as “Aesop the fable writer” and a slave.
His stories were cleverly told, presenting human problems through the dilemmas of animal characters, a tradition present in the cultures of many different races.
The mice once called a meeting to decide on a plan to free themselves of their enemy, the cat. At least they wished to find some way of knowing when she was coming, so they might have time to run away. Indeed, something had to be done, for they lived in such constant fear of her claws that they hardly dared stir from their dens by night or day.
Many plans were discussed, but none of them was thought good enough. At last a very young mouse got up and said: “I have a plan that seems very simple, but I know it will be successful. All we have to do is to hang a bell about the cat’s neck. When we hear the bell ringing we will know immediately that our enemy is coming.”
All the mice were much surprised that they had not thought of such a plan before. But in the midst of the rejoicing over their good fortune, an old mouse arose and said: “I will say that the plan of the young mouse is very good. But let me ask one question: Who will bell the cat?”
The Moral Lesson: “It is one thing to say that something should be done, but quite a different matter to do it.”
Aesop stories remain in popular culture among them “The Boy who Cried Wolf”, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” and “The Goose that Laid Golden Eggs.”
Philostrates writes best about the enduring power of Aesop’s stories, quoting the 1st century CE philosopher Apollonius, in Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Book V:14:
…he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.
This is the mystery of story told well.
Stories can relate truer truths than history and fact and the simplest of stories can relate some of life’s most profound end enduring truths.
When Bastian Balthazar Bux, a shy, fat and lonely school boy, steals a mysterious book from a mysterious book shop one rainy morning, and hides in an attic to read it – little does he know of the adventurous journey on which it would take him.
Lost in the world of Fantasia, Bastian reads of the adventures of Atrayu, a boy his own age and his friend Falkor the Luckdragon, as they seek a cure for the Childlike Empress. The Empress is dying and with her, the land of Fantasia, a place where every imaginary character of dream and story lives.
What is the cause of the Nothing which threatens to consume all of Fantasia? Can Atrayu find the cure for the Empress and turn back the destruction it brings?
Michael Ende’s classic children’s tale, The Neverending Story was first published in 1979 and has been since made into several films. Originally a playwright, Ende is best known for his children’s stories which have sold over $35 million of copies worldwide and translated into over 40 languages.
The story is a rich tapestry of mythology and legend and like all good works of fantasy plumbs the depths of human identity and purpose via our dreams.
Moreover, like the works of many fantasy writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including JK Rowling, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein, Michael Ende’s fantasy functions as a polemic against modernity, rationalism, pragmatism, and progress and calls readers back to values of the romantic era, values such as the the imagination, intuition, and the transcendent.
One such key message emerges in dialogue between Atrayu, our hero, and the wolf, Gmork, a servant of the Nothing. Gmork explains the relationship between the death of Fantasia and the world of humans.
Humans have stopped believing in Fantasia, Gmork explains, and because they have stopped believing, they have stopped visiting. It is human imagination which gives Fantasia its life and without their presence, Fantasians are perishing, consumed by the Nothing.
When humans did visit, they were able to return to their own world and see it through a more magical lens. In this way, Fantasia and the human world are necessary sides of a coin, each needing the other.
The creatures of Fantasia are not only dying, but as they are consumed by the Nothing, they end up in the human world but not in their fantastical form, but in the form of the lies. They become the vain hopes and delusions of the human world such as ambition, greed and vice.
With this brief parable, Ende manages to sum up the modern malaise. Enlightenment and post-enlightenment rhetoric of the 1700s and 1800s, emphasised the rational and scientific, marginalising the role of religion, myth and legend to the realm of childhood or the primitive man.
The result however was the impoverishment of the subconscious, the dreamscape and the deep psyche which when left unexamined, plagued modern man with unresolved issues such as depression, malaise, unacknowledged vices, greed, self obsession and nihilism.
The Neverending Story is “preaching” the value of dreams, imagination, and story as portals to the depths of the human heart.
Through stories and dreams we can come to know ourselves and we learn to restore our connectedness, a sense of something larger than ourselves, trust in one another and a hope for our world.
This TED talk from 2009 has been viewed over 11 million times and is ranked among the top 20 most viewed TED talks of all time.
It is a powerful reminder that the underrepresentation of cultural differences may be dangerous.
Dangerous? Indeed so.
In this talk, Adiche explains that as a young child, she had often read American and British stories, where the characters were primarily Caucasian.
Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.”
Listening, empathy and truly understanding the “other” as a nuanced person with perspectives, memories, dreams, loves and fears, is the heart and soul of true relationships.
When we listen to the stories of those who are unlike us, we can enter into true relationship with them.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian born author who is an alumnus of Yale, Princeton and Harvard.
Imagine that you invented a devicethat can record my memories,my dreams, my ideas,and transmit them to your brain.That would be a game-changing technology, right?But in fact, we already possess this device,and it’s called human communication systemand effective storytelling.To understand how this device works,we have to look into our brains.
This awesome TED Talk by Uri Hasson illustrates the power of “neural-entrainment” a process of creating synchronicity between brainwaves among groups of people, by simply telling a story.
Hasson shows how story telling creates shared feeling and shared thought in much the same way that metronomes will syncronise their rhythms when sharing a vibrating base.
Such synchronicity is powerful and dangerous as it illustrates how bias can easily be transmitted among groups. However, the onus is on us to consider what stories we absorb, and what stories we share. We should continue to share stories and ideas freely, since together we are more powerful than we are alone.
This wonderful TEDxSeoul talk [yes it’s got subtitles] reminds us of how we can over-complicate and overthink creativity.
Every child is born an artist and does not think to create for payment or accolade. We never lose this creativity but we learn to listen to the devils of doubt who would question “why” or “what for?”
But art is not for anything.Art is the ultimate goal.It saves our souls and makes us live happily.It helps us express ourselves and be happy without the help of alcohol or drugs.
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[Transcript]: The theme of my talk today is,“Be an artist, right now.”Most people, when this subject is brought up,get tense and resist it:“Art doesn’t feed me, and right now I’m busy.I have to go to school, get a job,send my kids to lessons … “You think, “I’m too busy. I don’t have time for art.”There are hundreds of reasons why we can’t be artists right now.Don’t they just pop into your head?
00:39 There are so many reasons why we can’t be,indeed, we’re not sure why we should be.We don’t know why we should be artists,but we have many reasons why we can’t be.Why do people instantly resist the idea of associating themselves with art?Perhaps you think art is for the greatly giftedor for the thoroughly and professionally trained.And some of you may think you’ve strayed too far from art.Well you might have, but I don’t think so.This is the theme of my talk today.We are all born artists.
01:16 If you have kids, you know what I mean.Almost everything kids do is art.They draw with crayons on the wall.They dance to Son Dam Bi’s dance on TV,but you can’t even call it Son Dam Bi’s dance — it becomes the kids’ own dance.So they dance a strange dance and inflict their singing on everyone.Perhaps their art is something only their parents can bear,and because they practice such art all day long,people honestly get a little tired around kids.
01:51 Kids will sometimes perform monodramas —playing house is indeed a monodrama or a play.And some kids, when they get a bit older,start to lie.Usually parents remember the very first time their kid lies.They’re shocked.“Now you’re showing your true colors,” Mom says. She thinks, “Why does he take after his dad?”She questions him, “What kind of a person are you going to be?”
02:16 But you shouldn’t worry.The moment kids start to lie is the moment storytelling begins.They are talking about things they didn’t see.It’s amazing. It’s a wonderful moment.Parents should celebrate.“Hurray! My boy finally started to lie!”All right! It calls for celebration.For example, a kid says, “Mom, guess what? I met an alien on my way home.”Then a typical mom responds, “Stop that nonsense.”Now, an ideal parent is someone who responds like this:“Really? An alien, huh? What did it look like? Did it say anything?Where did you meet it?” “Um, in front of the supermarket.”
02:52 When you have a conversation like this,the kid has to come up with the next thing to say to be responsible for what he started.Soon, a story develops.Of course this is an infantile story,but thinking up one sentence after the nextis the same thing a professional writer like me does.In essence, they are not different.Roland Barthes once said of Flaubert’s novels,“Flaubert did not write a novel.He merely connected one sentence after another.The eros between sentences, that is the essence of Flaubert’s novel.”That’s right — a novel, basically, is writing one sentence,then, without violating the scope of the first one,writing the next sentence.And you continue to make connections.
03:40 Take a look at this sentence:“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”Yes, it’s the first sentence of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”Writing such an unjustifiable sentenceand continuing in order to justify it,Kafka’s work became the masterpiece of contemporary literature.Kafka did not show his work to his father.He was not on good terms with his father.On his own, he wrote these sentences.Had he shown his father, “My boy has finally lost it,” he would’ve thought.
04:10 And that’s right. Art is about going a little nutsand justifying the next sentence,which is not much different from what a kid does.A kid who has just started to lieis taking the first step as a storyteller.Kids do art.They don’t get tired and they have fun doing it.I was in Jeju Island a few days ago.When kids are on the beach, most of them love playing in the water.But some of them spend a lot of time in the sand,making mountains and seas — well, not seas,but different things — people and dogs, etc.But parents tell them,“It will all be washed away by the waves.”In other words, it’s useless.There’s no need.But kids don’t mind.They have fun in the momentand they keep playing in the sand.Kids don’t do it because someone told them to.They aren’t told by their bossor anyone, they just do it.
05:00 When you were little, I bet you spent time enjoying the pleasure of primitive art.When I ask my students to write about their happiest moment,many write about an early artistic experience they had as a kid.Learning to play piano for the first time and playing four hands with a friend,or performing a ridiculous skit with friends looking like idiots — things like that.Or the moment you developed the first film you shot with an old camera.They talk about these kinds of experiences.You must have had such a moment.In that moment, art makes you happybecause it’s not work.Work doesn’t make you happy, does it? Mostly it’s tough.
05:37 The French writer Michel Tournier has a famous saying.It’s a bit mischievous, actually.“Work is against human nature. The proof is that it makes us tired.”Right? Why would work tire us if it’s in our nature?Playing doesn’t tire us.We can play all night long.If we work overnight, we should be paid for overtime.Why? Because it’s tiring and we feel fatigue.But kids, usually they do art for fun. It’s playing.They don’t draw to sell the work to a clientor play the piano to earn money for the family.Of course, there were kids who had to.You know this gentleman, right?He had to tour around Europe to support his family —Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart —but that was centuries ago, so we can make him an exception.Unfortunately, at some point our art — such a joyful pastime — ends.Kids have to go to lessons, to school, do homeworkand of course they take piano or ballet lessons,but they aren’t fun anymore.You’re told to do it and there’s competition. How can it be fun?If you’re in elementary school and you still draw on the wall,you’ll surely get in trouble with your mom.Besides,if you continue to act like an artist as you get older,you’ll increasingly feel pressure —people will question your actions and ask you to act properly.
07:02 Here’s my story: I was an eighth grader and I entered a drawing contest at school in Gyeongbokgung.I was trying my best, and my teacher came aroundand asked me, “What are you doing?”“I’m drawing diligently,” I said.“Why are you using only black?”Indeed, I was eagerly coloring the sketchbook in black.And I explained,“It’s a dark night and a crow is perching on a branch.”Then my teacher said,“Really? Well, Young-ha, you may not be good at drawing but you have a talent for storytelling.”Or so I wished.“Now you’ll get it, you rascal!” was the response. (Laughter)“You’ll get it!” he said.You were supposed to draw the palace, the Gyeonghoeru, etc.,but I was coloring everything in black,so he dragged me out of the group.There were a lot of girls there as well,so I was utterly mortified.
07:51 None of my explanations or excuses were heard,and I really got it big time.If he was an ideal teacher, he would have responded like I said before,“Young-ha may not have a talent for drawing,but he has a gift for making up stories,” and he would have encouraged me.But such a teacher is seldom found.Later, I grew up and went to Europe’s galleries —I was a university student — and I thought this was really unfair.Look what I found. (Laughter)
08:23 Works like this were hung in Basel while I was punishedand stood in front of the palace with my drawing in my mouth.Look at this. Doesn’t it look just like wallpaper?Contemporary art, I later discovered, isn’t explained by a lame story like mine.No crows are brought up.Most of the works have no title, Untitled.Anyways, contemporary art in the 20th centuryis about doing something weird and filling the void with explanation and interpretation —essentially the same as I did.Of course, my work was very amateur,but let’s turn to more famous examples.
09:01 This is Picasso’s.He stuck handlebars into a bike seat and called it “Bull’s Head.” Sounds convincing, right?Next, a urinal was placed on its side and called “Fountain”.That was Duchamp.So filling the gap between explanation and a weird act with stories —that’s indeed what contemporary art is all about.Picasso even made the statement,“I draw not what I see but what I think.”Yes, it means I didn’t have to draw Gyeonghoeru.I wish I knew what Picasso said back then. I could have argued better with my teacher.Unfortunately, the little artists within usare choked to death before we get to fight against the oppressors of art.They get locked in.That’s our tragedy.
09:48 So what happens when little artists get locked in, banished or even killed?Our artistic desire doesn’t go away.We want to express, to reveal ourselves,but with the artist dead, the artistic desire reveals itself in dark form.In karaoke bars, there are always people who sing“She’s Gone” or “Hotel California,”miming the guitar riffs.Usually they sound awful. Awful indeed.Some people turn into rockers like this.Or some people dance in clubs.People who would have enjoyed telling storiesend up trolling on the Internet all night long.That’s how a writing talent reveals itself on the dark side.
10:27 Sometimes we see dads get more excited than their kidsplaying with Legos or putting together plastic robots.They go, “Don’t touch it. Daddy will do it for you.”The kid has already lost interest and is doing something else,but the dad alone builds castles.This shows the artistic impulses inside us are suppressed, not gone.But they can often reveal themselves negatively, in the form of jealousy.You know the song “I would love to be on TV”? Why would we love it?TV is full of people who do what we wished to do,but never got to.They dance, they act — and the more they do, they are praised.So we start to envy them.We become dictators with a remote and start to criticize the people on TV.“He just can’t act.” “You call that singing? She can’t hit the notes.”We easily say these sorts of things.We get jealous, not because we’re evil,but because we have little artists pent up inside us.That’s what I think.
11:34 What should we do then?Yes, that’s right.Right now, we need to start our own art.Right this minute, we can turn off TV,log off the Internet,get up and start to do something.Where I teach students in drama school,there’s a course called Dramatics.In this course, all students must put on a play.However, acting majors are not supposed to act.They can write the play, for example,and the writers may work on stage art.Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show.Students at first wonder whether they can actually do it,but later they have so much fun. I rarely see anyone who is miserable doing a play.In school, the military or even in a mental institution, once you make people do it, they enjoy it.I saw this happen in the army — many people had fun doing plays.
12:23 I have another experience:In my writing class, I give students a special assignment.I have students like you in the class — many who don’t major in writing.Some major in art or music and think they can’t write.So I give them blank sheets of paper and a theme.It can be a simple theme:Write about the most unfortunate experience in your childhood.There’s one condition: You must write like crazy. Like crazy!I walk around and encourage them,“Come on, come on!” They have to write like crazy for an hour or two.They only get to think for the first five minutes.
13:01 The reason I make them write like crazy is becausewhen you write slowly and lots of thoughts cross your mind,the artistic devil creeps in.This devil will tell you hundreds of reasonswhy you can’t write:“People will laugh at you. This is not good writing!What kind of sentence is this? Look at your handwriting!”It will say a lot of things.You have to run fast so the devil can’t catch up.The really good writing I’ve seen in my classwas not from the assignments with a long deadline,but from the 40- to 60-minute crazy writing students didin front of me with a pencil.The students go into a kind of trance.After 30 or 40 minutes, they write without knowing what they’re writing.And in this moment, the nagging devil disappears.
13:48 So I can say this:It’s not the hundreds of reasons why one can’t be an artist,but rather, the one reason one must be that makes us artists.Why we cannot be something is not important.Most artists became artists because of the one reason.When we put the devil in our heart to sleep and start our own art,enemies appear on the outside.Mostly, they have the faces of our parents. (Laughter)Sometimes they look like our spouses,but they are not your parents or spouses.They are devils. Devils.They came to Earth briefly transformedto stop you from being artistic, from becoming artists.And they have a magic question.When we say, “I think I’ll try acting. There’s a drama school in the community center,” or“I’d like to learn Italian songs,” they ask, “Oh, yeah? A play? What for?”The magic question is, “What for?”But art is not for anything.Art is the ultimate goal.It saves our souls and makes us live happily.It helps us express ourselves and be happy without the help of alcohol or drugs.So in response to such a pragmatic question,we need to be bold.“Well, just for the fun of it. Sorry for having fun without you,”is what you should say. “I’ll just go ahead and do it anyway.”The ideal future I imagine is where we all have multiple identities,at least one of which is an artist.
15:21 Once I was in New York and got in a cab. I took the backseat,and in front of me I saw something related to a play.So I asked the driver, “What is this?”He said it was his profile. “Then what are you?” I asked. “An actor,” he said.He was a cabby and an actor. I asked, “What roles do you usually play?”He proudly said he played King Lear.King Lear.“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” — a great line from King Lear.That’s the world I dream of.Someone is a golfer by day and writer by night.Or a cabby and an actor, a banker and a painter,secretly or publicly performing their own arts.
15:58 In 1990, Martha Graham, the legend of modern dance, came to Korea.The great artist, then in her 90s, arrived at Gimpo Airportand a reporter asked her a typical question:“What do you have to do to become a great dancer?Any advice for aspiring Korean dancers?”Now, she was the master. This photo was taken in 1948 and she was already a celebrated artist.In 1990, she was asked this question.And here’s what she answered:“Just do it.”Wow. I was touched.Only those three words and she left the airport. That’s it.So what should we do now?Let’s be artists, right now. Right away. How?Just do it!
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