Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

I consider myself an advocate of Art. I believe that Art is one of the main methods of human expression. Art seems to be everywhere, from technical careers to artistic ones. When someone hears the adjective "Artist", they tend to think of a painter, a sculpture, or any other collective idea of an artist that media has ingrain in us, however, an artist can be anyone who creates, expresses, or interprets ideas, emotions, or concepts through a chosen medium. Art is the materialization of one's idiosyncrasy via the rules of an expertise. Innately in the word idiosyncrasy there exists the fact that such creation is unique to you, unique to its creator, thereby unprecedented, unparalleled, new, different. Art is beautiful because it cannot ugly, just as people cannot be ugly, just differently seen. There is no right or wrong art, there is Art, which is an instance of human creation.

In this book, Susan and Ivy not only dive deeper into the definition of Art, but they explain the effects of it in your physiology and psychology. They explain the emotional and cognitive benefits that the creation of art has within the Human body via scientific studies, which reinforces the idea that art must be practiced by every single individual in order to not only benefit from such byproducts, but also to see itself reflected upon the real world. Your artistic creation is an instance of yourself at that particular moment of your life, which just as your creation, you yourself are unprecedented and will never be that ever again, which makes such creation even more unique, quite literally.

Art is the essence of awareness

Programming is Art and this quote reiterates that; when one codes, one brings new improved approaches to mind, one is aware of the system one is directly facing. Art.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

This reiterates my idea that one's art is unprecedented, unparalleled, idiosyncratic.

Salience is a word that you'll read often throughout this book, and here's why: You could not possibly pay attention to all of the sensory stimuli coming into your body, or the many emotions and thoughts that emerge as a result. Your brain is expert at filtering out the inputs that it deems irrelevant and focusing its attention on what it believes to be pertinent. Something that is salient is important to us either practically or emotionally; it's what stands out.

I just find that concept interesting, like the crux of all systems is salience. Perhaps salience is similar to versatility in the way they take the most important aspects of a phenomena and act upon them.

Your experiences with the arts and aesthetics are so singular because your brain-connectivity patterns are distinctive. Through your experiences, billions of new synapses form in your brain and these conduits build a repository of stored knowledge and responses as unique as fingerprints. No one else, not a single person on this planet, has your exact brain.

Which is why our idiosyncrasy and all creations derived from her are literally unique. Now, why is this important? Why is it crucial that our creations are unique? Because whatever you make with the concoction of art and salience is unprecedented, previously nonexistent, which gives it the potential to become successfully influential to humanity. Imagine a lottery ticket with an unprecedented set of combinations, it has the potential to hit the jackpot and change your life, or be dismissed, which in that case, is the responsibility of the next creation to take such potential. This doesn't mean that our creations should always aim towards prosperity (prosperity is subjective anyway), however, prosperity is always a welcoming byproduct of your creations.

Emotions are the initial expression of your response to environmental stimuli, inner needs, and drivers, while feelings are the perception of what your body is experiencing: Often the emotion and associated action occur in the brain and body first, then the subjective awareness of these emotional states, reflecting feelings, occur next, if at all. What many researchers have learned over the decades is that, from a neurobiological perspective, multiple systems in the body and brain work together as we engage with the world, and our lives are a constant process of interpreting that incoming data on an instinctual, unconscious, and conscious level. Emotions precede our conscious recognition of a feeling, and often those emotional states can reside outside of our conscious awareness.

Perhaps this is why one shouldn't act instantly after an event occurs, one should remain calm and think about what just happened, of course, if you or any loved one aren't in immediate danger that is. But the crux of this note isn't what we already know, but perhaps a different perspective of this passage. The book states that after an emotion derived from an external stimuli, the subjective awareness of these emotional states, reflecting feelings, occur next. This inevitably leads to the following point: subjectiveness dictates our approaches. Every time we approach something, it is due to an event that leads to an emotion that leads to a reflective subjective feeling. This means that the accuracy of our approaches depend upon the intellectual development of our subjectiveness. The more we know, understand, comprehend, practice, interact, and compartmentalize the phenomena that produced the event that led to our emotion that led to our subjective reflection, the more accurately we respond upon it. Accurate in which way you ask? Well, that depends on your intentions, impetus, and desires upon this phenomena.

Emotions are energy in motion, and each has its own frequency.

I like this analogy. Using this superficial analogy, one can superficially justify or explain the reasoning behind maniac materialization. I am enraged at the system, at the social etiquettes, at the collective "must do's", at my financial situation and the rocks it throws at me and my love ones, I am an angry man, my subjective reflective feeling tells me otherwise: materialize, direct that impetus into maniac materialization of one's idiosyncrasy using creativity, cognition, and myself; the ideal Ménage à trois.

Numerous studies using this same writing paradigm confirm that when you intentionally tap into personal and emotional stories through writing, it helps reduce both mental and physical ailments. The act of putting words to our emotions and feelings can help us contextualize, and better understand difficult events in our lives at a neurobiological level.

Not only does this help with psychological stability and emotional relief, but writing also helps to contextualize, systematize, and construct a comprehensive mappable structure of abstract ideas or mechanisms of a phenomena. It gives such abstraction a direction, or map via words. Writing about ideas gives you a map to materialize them and test their functionality in the future. Besides, everytime you revisit a passage written about abn idea, you will always generate a new mutated idea since the perspective at that moment would have changed. When creating, practice (actively materializing) always reveals the accurate path; writing is the practice of materializing ideas.

He wanted to generate heart tissue in the lab in order to create models that would help explain certain cardiac diseases.

This is the first time a fragment has nothing to do with the passage of the book directly, but it indirectly does as it was that passage the one reason I evoked this abstraction I will explain soon: A good and efficient way to not only study a phenomena, but also begin creating using its innate mechanisms is by replicating the instance of one (or more) of its mechanisms, plagiarize it, and from such copy, study other mechanisms, approaches, innovations, and actions; reverse-engineer it even. In a phenomenon, we need to be able to create instances of one or more of its mechanisms as we please in order to never run out of attempts. To learn and create.

The more salient something is, the better we learn. This is why a dynamic presentation grabs your attention and also excites you. It's not the boring lecture that helps you learn, it's the salient experience that helps you consolidate that memory.

This is why design is so crucial in the development of a project. I believe the following are the vital components of a project: functionality and design. The former is the impetus of the project, the purpose of the project; the functionality is what you are contributing to humans in a respective field where the creation is developed. The latter is the embellishment of such functionality, let me explain why this is also a crucial attribute: Utilitarianism and pragmatism might argue that all that matters is functionality, which then raises the question, matters for who? The answer depends on how individualistic you are. Design expands the possibility of such functionality to be used by the greatest number of people. The less design you apply to a project, the more idiosyncratic the project becomes accustomed to its creator. Design broadens the use of such projects by ornaments and embellishment, easy usability, enhanced comprehension, and aesthetic appeal.

Learning involves clusters of neurons making new connections throughout the brain; the more you train those neurons to fire together, the easier it becomes for a pathway to form and become strong, and this is why practice and repetition are keys to mastery.

I just saw this passage as necessary to write down due to its acute and crucial accuracy. I believe that a concoction of mastery and creativity makes you a genius in any field, hub, expertise, or phenomena.

Defining myself is like confiningmyself
So I undefined myself
To find myself

Wow, what a phrase. Deconstructing yourself via introspection, clinical psychology, anthropology, and other expertises sure helps you to learn about one's own behavior and history, but what we miss is that every definition or narrative we conclude with at the end of such deconstruction is inevitably continuously distancing from reality as one, right after such conclusion, begins changing from that definition we just concluded with. To find oneself is to undefined oneself, and the only way to undefined oneself is via creation as is creation an ever-changing progress, one creation is always new and different from the prior one, just as yourself is often each definition; creation is the closes act to the present where yourself resides.

Take just one area that they studied: purpose. This is, essentially, your sense of self. Empirical studies are beginning to illuminate why purpose in life has such a strong effect on us. Having a sense of purpose in life has shown a reduction in the negative effects of chronic stress and, in some cases, higher purpose in life "also predicts accelerated recovery from stress in the elderly, as measured by salivary cortisol levels," researchers wrote. When we intentionally include certain acts in our lives that bolster our sense of purpose, it "increases resilience, promotes healthy behaviors, and alters the brain and peripheral biology in meaningful ways," they wrote.

An impetus in life (a purpose) is a lighthouse that gives a direction to row towards when you find yourself amidst fog, thick fog. This fog is inevitable as life will always surprise us with new events whether good or bad depends on actions one takes on a daily basis, but sometimes mere actions do not change the situations in life; three things might be the reason for such shortcomings: 1) lack of expertise on the area of interest; 2) events out of our control (we keep trying); or 3) both.

Art-making is, really, about feeling more alive in your life. The creative path is an unfolding process of becoming ourselves and it's a wonderful journey we get to take. Creativity is, put simply, the ability to imagine and come up with original ideas and solutions. It's a willingness to leave what is known, what exists, and open up to what is possible.

Creativity and Idiosyncrasy seem to be synonyms in this matter. What's more idiosyncratic in a human than her/his creativity? His/her ability to "connect the dots" in a certain way? Its ability to use certain expertise(s) and create a new innovative concoction with a mix of the rules from these expertises?

First Read: March 2, 2025