Pattern Recognition
“And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.” In this strange passage from Little Gidding, poet T.S. Eliot links the mental image of a rose to the image of an infolded knot of flame. We see the connection; yes, a rose does look something like a knot of fire.
Much has been written about intuition and creativity. Most of it is wrong.
Allow me to explain; Intuition is merely pattern recognition, a principal function of the right hemisphere of your brain. Centered in that wordless realm, intuition whispers, “I've seen this movie, or one similar to it, so I think I know how it ends.” But your right brain is without word-language, so this thought must emerge in your consciousness only as a hunch, a gut feeling, a precognition, an inexplicable insight. When such insights flow unrestricted from the right brain to the left and then out through the tip of a pen, they become powerful, poetic language, such as that of T.S. Elliot above. When from the tip of a brush, fine art. And when from the point of a draftsman's pencil, a new invention.
Intuition and art, indeed all “creativity,” is based upon seeing the link between two dissimilar things that have no obvious connection.
Gutenberg connected coins to books and invented the printing press. The link between them: duplication. “Gosh, if a coin die will stamp an image onto countless pieces of metal to make coins, couldn't the same be done with letters of the alphabet to make the pages of a book? All I would need is something to hold the movable letters in place that could then be easily lifted up and pressed down. A wine press! I'll use the plate of a wine press to hold the letters!” And the world was changed that day.
Your left brain is the home of sequential, logical, analytical thought – business thought – always seeking to forecast a result; “What is the next step? How do I get to the next level? What would be correct?” For those familiar with the Myers-Briggs instrument, left-brain preferences are identified by the S and J designations.
Your right brain is the place of complex, fantastical abstract thought, ever seeking to find a pattern. (Obviously the N and P preference in Myers-Briggs terminology, though to my knowledge the MBTI people have never acknowledged these preferences to be rooted in Dr. Roger Sperry's brain lateralization. Dr. Sperry's findings on the two hemispheres of the brain and their respective functions earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1981.) When the right brain begins to out-shout the left, we begin seeing connections and patterns that aren't really there. Ever see the Russell Crowe movie, A Beautiful Mind? Badda-bing, badda-bang, a right brain goes out of control and now you've got a genius weirdo on your hands. (Chances are you know at least one person who fits this description.)
Symbolic thought is the key to discovery. We'll talk more about it next week. Unless, of course, the beagle in my brain gets a whiff of something more interesting and then arooo! aroo-aroooo! we're off and running. That Russell Crowe character got nothin' on the beagle.
Yours,
Roy H. Williams
PS – I'm aware that today's memo may seem irrelevant and useless to a percentage of my business-minded readers. If so, there is a remedy. Mark Fox, Chief Engineer for the Space Shuttle program, has structured a step-by-step method to achieve creative results. In effect, he's engineered a logical left-brain way to accomplish right-brain creativity. Sound impossible? Attend his class and prepare to be amazed. March 8-9. And if you really want to be able to turn the world upside down, stay on for 2 more days and learn about Marketing to Women from the amazing Michele Miller, that celebrated author and Wizard of Ads partner who is rapidly becoming an international marketing star.
PPS – CRYPTIC – Speaking of movies and pattern recognition, have you seen The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio? It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. Not a surprise really, since it was nominated for 9 the first time it was made 64 years ago… under the name Citizen Kane… yep, right down to the “Rosebud” opening and closing scenes. But I liked it anyway. You probably will, too. – RHW
AND YET ANOTHER POSTSCRIPT – In the memo of Jan. 24 I mentioned bumping into the idea of TV's pervasiveness at every turn. This week it's been T.S. Eliot. Go figure. Just when I thought all this Eliot stuff was in my imagination, a dear friend of many years, Bob Lepine, sent me one of his once-every-2-years emails. The subject? T.S. Eliot.