I remember reading this very book by Flaherty and being impressed, exceedingly impressed, and also inspired. The links between creativity and mental illness are worth exploring. I've even created a character based on her story, though I am not hypergraphic myself! It's nice to see this as a reminder of my initial inspiration.

Fascinating. It's interesting how often colloquialisms that last, like 'tortured artist', end up having real basis in physiological processes. It's as though we knew it all along, even named it, before science had a chance to prove it. Kind of like chicken soup actually being medically good for the cold and flu symptoms. Sometimes you can literally feel your frontal lobe seizing up when overridden with excessive need or control - and writer's block ensures. It's a bit of a free spirit, that frontal lobe. It will work with you but not FOR you.

There were so many aspects of the interview that made me go "Wow!" One of the most startling is the visual image of a character in such a writing frenzy, they literally scrawl words on their arms, their entire length. I mean that in itself could be an interesting starting point to a story. I guess Leonard had important information tattooed onto his body, so similar. But there's something riveting about that image where the character can't even imagine taking a break for one second to grab some paper to write on, compelled to get the information down right now even if it's on their skin.

So true. The visuals are spellbinding. And the underlying wow moment for me, personally, is the realization that it's all in there. All those words, those ideas, those connections. It's already inside us. Part of me believes that ALL knowledge from all time is genetically encoded in there. What is revealed is revealed in quantities that we can handle at any given moment and most of the time it's not very much because we are so consumed with the external world. We wait for those ideas to 'come to us'. No such thing. The magic is already in there and silly us, we keep it under controlled lock and key most of the time. What if there were a place, in a parallel or holographic universe, that encouraged and nurtured those states. What if the answers we seek in war and peace and famine and power and saving the environment are all accessible - there. What if it's our society's discomfort level around those who veer just a little too far off the median that keeps us fearful and powerless? What would happen if we discovered such a 'place'? Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight is a genius piece of work exploring similar neuroscience. We are so much more than we can ever imagine.

Wonderful stuff, thank you, Scott. The need to find pattern, meaning, that's human. Artists just do it with style, and produce work we can all enjoy. So yay for obsessed artists. I'm fascinated by this turf, creativity, etc, and I've noticed a convergence between one end of bi-polar spectrum and one end of ADD. The same turf being described, and claimed as their own, by two different sets of eyeballs. So much we still don't know. And in the meanwhile, artists keep making work. I've decided we are that little spark traversing neural rails, and how we drive, and what we drive, far more complex than has been measured and seen. And if that car drives through verbal brain terrain, and can't stop driving, you get brilliant written work. And if you're Jack Kirby, visual artist and writer, you produce work at an inhuman rate, (6-8 pages of work a day, vs the usual 1 page per day for top of the line comic book creators). His production rate was stunning, came to mind reading Flaherty's words. I am so, so glad she wrote about her experience, and gave us stuff we can.all learn from, esp the emotional connection, that's fresh stuff.