A psychiatrist called Iain McGilchrist has written what in my opinion is an extraordinary and important book called “The Master and his Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” I feel instantly at home with, and liberated by, its central thesis. Here is a quote from the blurb on the back of the book : “We need both hemispheres [of the brain] : but, McGilchrist argues, the left hemisphere has become so far dominant that we’re in danger of forgetting everything that makes us human. Taking the reader on an extraordinary journey through Western history and culture, he traces how the left hemisphere has grabbed more than its fair share of power, resulting in a society where a rigid and bureaucratic obsession with structure, narrow self-interest and a mechanistic view of the world hold sway, at an enormous cost to human happiness and the world around us.”
More information on both man and book can be found by entering his name on Google and going to his website which is easily found.
Other dualities are suggested by this revelatory finding, but all of those are concept, image, or picture. The tension between the hemispheres of the human brain is, by contrast, a plain discovery from which conclusions are inescapable. Myself I am wary of over-simplifying McGilchrist’s findings and conclusions, but have been moved to write a poem based on this primal duality and struggle which he has been studying for so long. I have dedicated the poem (or poems) to him and to my great pleasure he has accepted the compliment. Here below is the poem, following a short preamble
Cat vies with Hard Drive for my Soul
This poem is suggested by the book “The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” by the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, to whom the poem is dedicated. He writes about the two sides of the human brain and the tension between them, that tension and relationship reflected in the worlds we have made around us as a race. For the purposes of this poem, I have called the brain’s right hand side “Cat” and the left hand side “Hard-Drive.”
A Confession of Bias
I wish myself cat
cats-eyes
cats-ears
I wish myself cat-alive
cat alert
sonar centre
electric
lithe advance.
Hard-drive blunts me
splits
and thickens me
Hard-drive weighs on me
like a hump,
an imperialist
goiter.
Cat asleep
Ears at attention
sharp as bayonets
still scanning
reading.
And eyes though closed
still reckon
keeping the captain
abreast of all our weathers
as he paces
alone
on the bridge.
Any time now
those eyes will blaze
open
and cat will rise
and crouch
and bare teeth
and pounce.
Hard Drive in the bath
Hard-drive specialises
in mean look
and fierce straight line.
Curves dismay him
They hint at softness
and lying back in the bath.
You don’t bathe for joy,
proclaims Hard Drive, but for profit,
an increase of power and standing.
So yes, bathe often
but with vigour
and never lie back.
Hard-drive comes alive
Hard–drive waits for nobody
and never gives way.
To pause is life-threatening
and to make allowance for other life
risks invasion
by gargoyle
possession
by Dracula.
I shall force my will
on the landscape.
I shall stamp myself on the earth
like a brand.
Hey mother, do you see
this corpse at my feet
this victim at my hands ?
Until the moment
of victory
I had not arrived
O mother, mother,
I was not born.
Cat in the Sun
Cat glories in the sun.
He sees it a mile off
and knows he belongs there.
He rolls in the hot dust
and delights in that sliding, grain by grain,
inwards to the skin
to play among the follicles.
Hard Drive can’t bear to look.
Instead he fixes on the horizon
in case typhoon is threatening there
or the barbarian horse
have broken through at last.
Hard Drive busies himself
on his preventive measures,
glancing with contempt
to where Cat lounges,
absorbing the sun’s heat,
cat ears pointy,
muscles flexed.
Hard Drive begs to go hunting
Gimme routine
rages Hard Drive,
you’re unsettling me,
gimme something that stays
the same, gimme repeats,
gimme quarry to
run down, gimme
victims, gimme
leave to blame.
Cat’s astonishment
Cat spends all his life astonished.
His astonishment exhausts him
so he sleeps and then, on waking,
is astonished all over again.
Interview
So what do they make
of each other, these two,
Cat and Hard Drive
forced to travel on opposing sides
inseparable ?
He leans over me
grieves Cat, he positions
himself way beyond his station.
He eclipses my sun.
He has tricked me into a cage.
He frightens me, rages Hard Drive.
Every pace we take on the path
wears on me. It is like walking
chained to a fire-storm.
I never sleep.
Conclusion
It is cat who carries the weight
of true being,
who loves and suffers
in his worn flesh
the seasons, the wild heath.
Hard Drive lives in panic, a life-long
franticness to avoid
being overwhelmed. The fears
of Hard-drive
will overwhelm us all.
Rogan Wolf June 2013