Don't believe anymore...

Than you have to

What defines you as a person?

How do you see yourself?

If you had a bio done on you, of absolute truth, what would it say?

It has been suggested that we are the sum of our memories, lose your memories, lose yourself.

But I’ve watched friends with dementia and alzheimer’s lose their memories and yet there is part of them that remains. Some times quite a sharp bit.

I suspect that is because our beliefs shape our experiences.

And memories are for many, not static experiences, they are more like guidelines than actual set in stone rules.

So we can be reinventing the past to match our current beliefs. You’ll likely know someone who never tells the same story the same way each time they tell it.

Is that because they have nimble neuroplasticity when it comes to story telling, or is it that their ventromedial prefrontal cortex is having trouble connecting to their parietal lobes?

How does our amygdala influence our memories at any given time?

My amygdala was pretty sure that monsters lived under my bed at night when I was young - these days it remembers to set an alarm at 3am for very different reasons.

What we train our amygdala on will govern how we feel - do we have self-worth, a sense of security, things to fear, squirrels to feed, subs to read, subs to avoid… all those beliefs are getting processed in that tiny organ which is then laying colour on our experiences.

The thing is once we believe something it gets enmeshed in our experiences. Which is why people can experience the same thing and remember it very differently. Which makes justice problematic and explains why corporations do the most stupid and cruel things to humanity as they have no amygdala to regulate their beliefs.

Beliefs can cause the greatest of divisions over the most non-issues available.

Have you heard of the Paragone Debate?

The Paragone Debate raged in the Renaissance period. Paragone means comparison in Latin. What were they arguing about? What was the most important expression of art, which one expressed the most intellectual and creative output. Does that sound familiar to the creator debate today?

Representing the artists was Leonardo Da Vinci who argued that painting was superior. He wrote that painting required fatica d'ingegno, which means it takes more work, because artists had to manipulate light, shadow, and atmospheric effects to create the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface.

Actually I’ve seen a lot of art that looks very two dimensional - no 3D pop as my favourite camera conspiratist would say. When a painting looks flat everything can be in focus or they not be any variation in the light - it looks like it was painted under a spotlight - actually I paint under spotlights and they are both annoying and incredibly useful - especially at night.

Today I watched a video where an artist critiqued an ‘amateur’ painting for having strong lines everywhere and said that the key to great painting is to know when to have blurred lines.

My amygdala rejects that belief and says art is whatever you want it to be.

Leonardo loved losing lines and then Michelangelo came along and painted strong lines everywhere just to spite him.

Speaking of Michelangelo he was on the other side of the Paragone Debate and argued that sculpture was where the real work happened.

This opened a side debate as he felt a true sculptor reveals what is inside a stone whilst (oh I haven’t used a whilst in a while) other sculptors who used clay said real sculpting came from adding and molding and God molded man out of clay so there!

Off to the side were the poets who said the real art came from composing something out of nothing - good grief - clearly poetry hasn’t ever won that war but to be fair Paul McCartney made a fortune out of silly love songs so there!

What you believe in can be strengthened or weakened - I believe cookies make me feel good - later in life I don’t believe that so much but the belief has become a habit which can be stronger than a belief. Be careful of cookies could have been an excellent subheading for those article.

So who won the Paragone Debate? My guess is the smart poets who added music and stayed out of the debate completely.

Even the artists would argue that the real accomplishment of intelligence and creativeness comes in knowing how to draw. I think Jackson Pollack missed that memo.

So some believe that if you don’t do a drawing then you are not an artist - well my amygdala rejects that belief as well.

In fact my amygdala is set to reject lots of beliefs that don’t line up with the experiences I’ve seen and been in. One of the most prominent beliefs we have is that art is a talent inherited or gifted by some divine force or a skill that can be taught for many thousands of dollars at a college or maybe for only $5 a month if you subscribe to my substack…

I’m not a teacher… or at least not an art teacher… I’m on a journey of discovery which often feels like clambering over too many boulders to find that one spot of beauty that makes you wish you’d remembered to bring your camera. Anyway, I don’t teach art as I am still in the experiencing phase, I don’t hold a set of beliefs about how something should or should not be done. I do hold a belief that says go try.

Lots of people have beliefs that can hold us back.

Yet beliefs are what underpin motivations.

We move based on our beliefs, or we stop based on our or others’ beliefs.

When painting I constantly have to believe that I can do this… yes it is hard… but the vision in our heart can come out through our fingers and land somewhere… and when it lands well then these are the moments that strengthen our beliefs, create our memories and what define us.

I have not finished this painting - but it is shaping my belief that I can achieve something more than a replication of a photo…

I believe art can be a visual reality of what could be - where memory is not written in rules but is fluid - finding a new story to tell.

Thank you for joining the journey

May all your beliefs reward you - otherwise go check if they are worth holding onto… I think I might take Helen out for a cookie now…