The Engine Upside

I’ve always been fascinated by the creative process, the hunger for more, a need to succeed, distrain for the status quo and a willingness to rise above one’s raisin. What fueled that drive? What causes two siblings, raised in the same household, to take such different steps in life? Why did two people raised under the same set of parents, education, upbringing, social, cultural ethnic environment take such different steps in life? What innate, indiscernible, invisible source powered that desire and drive in each individual?

A fascinating article appeared in the Tidbits tabloid awhile back. In an article written by Kathy Wolfe, she examined this phenomenon. I’ve borrowed from some of her thoughts and ideas here.

One answer to this question lies above our eyebrows. It’s amazing that a small three-pound organ located between our ear’s controls just about everything throughout our entire body. This amazingly complex control center powers how we act, move, and think. If there is a key to ambition and the creative process it lies, well hidden, within the 100 billion neurons, or brain cells, which gather and transmit signals throughout our body, twenty-four hours a day and all of it occurring in micro-seconds and on a level well beyond our consciousness.

It's those nerve cells that compose what is often referred to as ‘gray matter.’ About 100 trillion connections exist among those cells, and no one neuron touches another. These connections are known as synapses, and they allow the information impulse to flow from one neuron to another. Each individual nerve cell can have up to 40,000 synapses.

My upbringing was different than most of the other kids on the block. Without a father around and a mother struggling to make ends meet, I was pretty much left on my own most of the time. This absence of parental oversight along with concern and caring caused me to escape into my own little world of Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and pre-teen pop music.

I loved the Errol Flynn medieval knight movies and Tarzan novels. It seemed natural for me to create my own version of the same with colorful knights and a Tarzan comic book. Cowboys and Indians seemed a real attraction too.

In retrospect, I wonder if my own early sense of isolation stimulated my brain to compensate for that absence of love by my drawings and rudimentary story-telling. So, what was it about my brain matter makeup that caused me, at a very young age, to begin drawing pictures, creating comic books and reading vociferously anything I could get my hands on? Where did that hunger come from?

Research has shown that those who grow up in a stimulating environment where education and learning are stressed can develop up to a 25-percent greater ability to learn. So, did this account for my mediocre performance in grade school, high school and college with a C average as about par for the course?

Why did it take me forever to gain some level of maturity until my mid-twenties? What accounted for my difficulty in girl-boy relationships, an aversion to smoking like all the cool kids did and a real fear of taking drugs? I was out of the loop long before I even knew there was a loop.

What I find fascinating (and my wife finds perplexing) is my inability to remember much of my youth growing up with my sister and mother on Randolph Avenue. Studies have shown that the horseshoe-shaped hippocampus is critical in the process of transferring short-term memory into long-term memory. Is my hippocampus misaligned or something?

What was absent in my brain, not developed, hindered, stunted, or lacking that caused this hollowed out memory of mine and yet kept a detailed recollection of minute details of obscure facts on a wide variety of topics. I can remember the color of the dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in ‘Charade’ and yet can’t remember going to the Highland Park swimming pool with my sister.

So here I sit at almost 81, struggling to find the right lyrics for nine new songs my collaborator and I are writing for my play ‘PTV.’ After a lifetime of listening to great songs, why do I think I can write one myself? I have no idea.

You might ask my brain.  I’ve tried to but I can find no answer among the 100 billion neurons bouncing around up there. I guess it’s just part of my ‘gray matter’ makeup. An engine that keeps churning along, introducing new thoughts, ideas, song lyrics, story lines, honest dialogue and dozens of ‘what ifs at the rate of (it seems like) a million-a-minute.

Makes for some great novels and plays and (I hope) new songs. But it renders hell to a good-night’s sleep.