Art After the Stroke, Part One: Seeing Every Thing

[elisem]

I've promised to write this up for a while now, so here's an actual start on it. This is part one, about the change in perception I noticed after my stroke, which happened in the wee hours of January 5, 2011.

After the stroke, once my recovery seemed to be going very well and I had been out of the hospital for a number of days, the excellent neurologist who treated me had a few things to say in case they came in handy. Those things were about some changes in perception and related matters that apparently some people experience who have strokes in the area they figure I had mine. Dr. Azhar was both clear and kind, giving me some information that I bet has been useful in reassuring a number of people, because the effects he was mentioning can be pretty disconcerting.

(Please note: anything I say here is a paraphrase of what Dr. Azhar said, and whatever he actually said was put much better.)

He mentioned, among other things, that some of my perceptions might be more unmediated than I was used to before. When he got to the part about how some people in some places meditated a lot or did other things to achieve such a state of mind, Juan started to make small amused noises, and I was grinning by the time he looked back at me and said, "You may have some experience with this sort of thing already." I allowed as how I could work with that, and thanked him for telling me.

He was right to tell me, and it was indeed happening to me. I've described it to other people since using these words: "I can look at something, and I see it, and I know the name of it. I know the word for it and I can find that word any time I want -- but the word is not between me and it."

It's hard to convey how precisely I mean those words. (Feel free to ask questions.) I'm not being metaphorical in ways people think I am; I'm saying that my perception of something is no longer primarily filtered through the name-and-identification-and-long-history I have with things-that-also-wear-that-word. I'm seeing the thing, not the word. And it was that way with every thing. I saw every thing. None of it was filtered out. And pretty much all of it was interesting.

If any of you know a Liavek story about an art critic who runs afoul of . . . well, circumstances too complicated to explain, really, and he winds up seeing beauty in absolutely every piece of art, then you might understand why I found this whole thing just a bit disconcerting. Well, I would have said worrisome, but at that point, my worrier was still turned off, which is another happy side effect of my stroke, at least for a while. Still, seeing every thing is pretty amazing. There are reasons why people do all that meditation and other stuff to get there.

The difficult part came when I sat down to sort beads. And I'll write more about that soon. For now, if you have questions, please do ask; answering them might help me make more sense of this in words that can be shared.

Art After the Stroke, Part One: Seeing Every Thing
Art After the Stroke, Part Two: Counting Flax Seeds
Art After the Stroke, Part Three: Frozen in the Fields of Plenty
Art After the Stroke, Part Four: And By My Eyes Be I Open
... and more to come.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Was it strictly physical objects, or did it also happen with music, food, scents, textures...?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I experienced it most strongly when I looked at things -- or at least it was most readily apparent visually.

I do perceive scents more strongly, though, or more emphatically. This has occasionally been a problem; there are things that bug me now that I probably tuned out before.

Sounds, hm. Not sure. Might be not sure because sounds are tricky for me anyhow, as I get less of the total bandwidth there.

Texture . . . again, not sure.

Visual, though? Very sure. Very big. Very very.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Hm. Were you mostly a visual person pre-stroke?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's hard to answer that, because I have synaesthesia, but yeah, probably that's the easiest way to categorize it. (However, visual stuff provokes kinesthetic response, for me. So does auditory stuff, to a somewhat lesser degree -- but I also get taste with auditory, and I rarely get taste with visual.)

[txanne.livejournal.com]

How awesome! I didn't know that about you. Have the combinations changed, post-stroke?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I think there's been some shifting around, yes. I need to listen to more new music, though, in order to check that.

I used to describe my kinesthetic sense as "temperature, density, and pressure" -- catch me in person for a description with handwaving which sometimes seems to make sense to folks -- but I think there might actually be a motion component to it now. Or maybe it's just "reference to a local vertical" or some gravity deal. Hmm. Will have to watch and see.

Good question!

[cavyherd.livejournal.com]

Vestibular? (There was a discussion in NLP circles some while back that the vestibular system could be classed as a separate sensory modality.)

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it would be, because I'm not clear enough on what exactly that system feels like when in use.


The handwaving explanation I mentioned before is ... hm. I don't know if I can even approximate it in print. But it's sort of like this: I see something, and I feel a whole-body response, but the response is sort of mirroring the thing, except it's not about looking like the thing. It usually involves shifting my position slightly (either in reality, or in my imagination, which feels like 'argh, i really want to move!' and is kind of uncomfortable in some cases) and feeling tension in whatever the right places are for the thing I'm ... eh. Here's where I'm stuck. What am I doing to the thing? Looking at it? Responding to it? When I was little, I just thought of it as "matching that thing." I noticed that I could do it when playing a game called Scan, where a pattern is revealed and then players scan an array of large cards randomly scattered on the floor until they find the matching pattern. First one to point it out wins. I could look at the revealed pattern and instantly "feel it" in me, and then I just swept my gaze over the scattered cards until something down there made me feel the same way when I looked at it. It took about as long as describing the game has taken me. After a while, nobody would play Scan with me any more because nobody could beat me more than once in a very great while.

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

I do get kinestetic stuff from sound and the reverse, which makes getting a massage really interesting. Let's talk about that, and sensory mediation next time we meet.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Yes, let us. Remind me of it, though, when we meet?

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

I remember that Liavek story. (Aritoli ola Silba, the critic's name, maybe?)

He was right to tell me, and it was indeed happening to me. I've described it to other people since using these words: "I can look at something, and I see it, and I know the name of it. I know the word for it and I can find that word any time I want -- but the word is not between me and it."

Hmmmmmm. *thinks a while*

Whereas my cognitive function thing is what I call a file retrieval error: I look at something, and see it, and I know that it has a name, and I know that I know the name, but I can't find that name. Also with titles and descriptions.

Also also, a question maybe: it seems to me, but it may be perception or misperception on my part - the wire work on pendants you've done since the stroke has seemed more angular, less curving, and I've been curious about that.

*hunts out the "brain" userpic*

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Ah! Some of that will be covered in what I intend to write, quite possibly part three or four. The wirework is different -- though I need to photograph the opal pieces, where there are curves in abundance, but with a difference.


The piece I'll definitely talk about is "What We Don't Know About Each Other," a necklace that is both a recalling of some techniques I played with early on, and a jump way ahead into a new thing.

I'll say one thing now about the pendants: I'm getting the same effects (or better, in some cases) while using less silver than I used to.

[kekhmet.livejournal.com]

I'm getting quite a lot of compliments on "Singing the Equations". I need to take a picture of it still.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

what I call a file retrieval error: I look at something, and see it, and I know that it has a name, and I know that I know the name, but I can't find that name. Also with titles and descriptions.

Aphasia. Yes. This is what I have as a result of my stroke. It drives me insane, and I find it very frustrating.

I also noticed that my writing is... I can't describe it, but it's not as it was, it tastes and feels differently on my tongue and in my head, and I haven't come to terms with that (and it's been nine years).

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

I do know that Liavek story about that particular art critic of which you speak (type), yes. And I think I am of understanding what you are saying, yes. It is of making sense to me, muchly.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I grin at you.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

The mind, the brain...such fascinating constructs. Yes, this is muchly of interest, as well. Thank you muchly for being of willing to write it for other folks to be of reading. Learning, it is a nice thing, yes.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I had a stroke in Nov '09. Now I'm dealing with both tinnitus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus) and mild lethologica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethologica).

Today, I wanted to tell my son to pick up a ceral bowl from the living room floor. I couldn't think of the word for "bowl," but my brain was flooded by "bowl-ness": uses for bowls and the feel on the bowl in my hand and how it's cold and hard and holds stuff and eating from a bowl and the stuff you put in a bowl.

It was weird and kinda cool. After a couple of breaths, I was able to say, "Hey, pick up that bowl and take it in the kitchen."

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Hmm! I have had tinnitus since a head injury in 1982. It's not one of my favorite things, though I mostly don't think about it these days (except when it gets louder and adds a few higher octaves, which it seems to like to do with the whole blood pressure foolishness).

Is yours in any particular key?

That's quite a thing, the bowl thing. Lethologica is quite the term, too.

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

Yep, that too. That is especially difficult when one is giving a lecture to a 100+ students and English leaves the building.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

The tinnitus is annoying. Mostly, I don't notice it except when I do. Mine gets lounder when I'm heading toward a migraine, which makes all kinds of sense with the big increase in cranial blood pressure during migraines. Also, the pitch changes now and then. Mostly it's high, around the "rockets red glare" range, but it's not really any key -- there's enough overlap to have a white noise effect.

I'm beginning to hear snippets of music. I don't know if I have hearing loss or the tinnitus just drowns stuff out. Sometimes when it's very quiet, I hear music -- yesterday, it was a bit of Melissa Etheridge. Which, hey, if I'm going to have auditory hallucinations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_ear_syndrome), Etheridge is a win!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

True thing.

[light-of-summer.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad you're writing about this, and even more glad that there is a "silver lining" to having had the stroke. I am fascinated, and await the next installment eagerly! (Might have questions later. I often do. ;-)

YAY, YOU!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's quite the adventure. Laurie pointed out that there must be more people than just me having experience with this, and that it needs to be written about so people know they're not the only one.

[pameladean]

Wow.

I remember that story, I think. Maybe it was Kara's?

Is it things only, or people too?

P.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's everything.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

And with people I love, it's quite something. It's like seeing them right then, with amazing depth.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

That makes me want to see you that way.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Y'know, the other thing is that looking at myself in the mirror is really weird.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I have a similar thing since my stroke: not my perception -- that sounds pretty neat, to me -- but my appreciation. Especially music: my appreciation has increased, and the amount of it; I like, oh, three or four times as much. Sometimes I think now I look for anything that can be liked about a piece of music. I listen to music at least eight hours a day, if allowed, since my stroke; mostly more.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's quite something, yes? Like a door opened and they said, "Oh, the rest of the fun is in here! You can have that too."

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Now, language; well, you know about that. I struggle to communicate just how much I'm affected; apparently I sound better than I feel. "I can look at something, and I see it, and I know the name of it. I know the word for it and I can find that word any time I want -- but the word is not between me and it" is not quite it, but I know perfectly what you mean when you say that; I think you will know what I'm saying when I say every word I say has to be thought, with intent. (Or every clutch of words, in the case of cliches; and every cliche or standard bunch of words cannot escape my mouth without knowing.) It makes normal everyday conversation exhausting.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

That I do know. I definitely do. And could see it from the earliest phrases and sentences I saw you make. (You were making them before I got there, but still, I saw it when I arrived.)

I also remember the expression on your face and whole body when you remembered and enunciated Patrick's name.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

What's reading been like for you since?

K.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's... interesting. I don't read as fast as I did before, though I am pretty sure I could do so if I wanted to, but I don't want to. Going through the words, letting them play themselves, is more enjoyable than just picking up a pageful of concept like a blotter, these days, if that makes any sense.

Maybe I appreciate the written word a bit more. Hm. Hadn't really thought about that, but... hmm! Must ponder this!

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember the salsas from my last visit. Salsa at Victor's is quite different than salsa at Blackbird. I'm so glad you are documenting this! And awesome about using less wire!!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the less wire thing is VERY interesting.

[redbird]

It sounds like you may be generalizing things less: the word "bowl" or "cat" might be there, but that's a word for a class of things, not for this bowl or this cat.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

No, it's definitely not something about words at all. The word doesn't need to be there. I mean, it's perfectly accessible -- but I no longer have WORD/THING as my primary experience of it.

I suspect having WORD/THING as the primary experience is so fundamental in fandom (as in certain other places) that I'm trying to talk about airbreathing to fish. It feels like for at least the first three go-rounds, the fish are saying, "So you gather water from the air, and then extract the oxygen, then?"

This probably isn't a phrase that'll be all that familiar, but it's almost as if things have shifted to an I/THOU relationship.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

And thank you for provoking thought, here! Useful!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you are experiencing a kind of lowering of latent inhibition, maybe?

That's cool.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Apparently the response I wrote got et. Hm.

Yeah, that does sound like it or very similar. And since I had some of it already, it's not totally disconcerting or unfamiliar, but it's definitely an increase and takes more skill to manage.

I intend to put visual links into one of the following posts, to show some of what I mean.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

<3

Also, we had squeeze fish for breakfast. And I thought of you.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Obviously you've done some writing since the stroke—since I just finished reading one piece. Do you find the experience of writing significantly different?

Is the idea of the word being 'between' you and the real thing the way you saw it pre-stroke, or is it one of those things that only became apparent when it stopped?

I've never been at all confident I really got what Buber was on about, but it does seem that at least one aspect of it was perceiving completely without pre-conceptions, which sounds entirely compatible with what you're saying here.

Fascinating to read about the experience, anyway; thanks!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Writing doesn't seem hugely different, but it does seem some different. After I do some more fiction writing, I'll be able to say more about that. (I did some right after the stroke, to see if I could. (http://elisem.livejournal.com/1661783.html) I still want to go back and do a few more of those, too.)

Non-fiction writing is close to what it was, except that I feel a bit bemused by everything. I'll try to unfold that sentence sometime; for now, all I can say is that it might be a non-paralyzing amused form of Centipede's Dilemma, where watching myself write and watching myself make choices is sweetly funny somehow.

On the "between" thing: I did not think of it that was pre-stroke, but the difference afterwards was so startling that there was no way to miss it. "Perceiving completely without pre-conceptions" might fit on it, though I do know what things are, and don't sit transfixed with the newness of everything. (At least, not at this point. There were a few days there, though, where that might have been the case now and then.)

It's akin to the feeling I used to have when I was little, sometimes, and woke up on a perfect summer morning when rain had washed the air during the night and sun had dried the grass, and I'd walk out past the lilac bushes and their deep green shade against the cool silvery curve of the big LP gas tank, and just look at everything: the limestone wall, the little ants working on ant cities and civilizations, the way the poplar trees stood against the sky at the top of the little hill, the hairs on each staghorn sumac branch, what each pebble in the gravel out front said to the next one. that kind of thing.

And now I should go look up Buber.

[vass]

Your description of how you perceive things reminds me very much of the protagonist of Starhawk's novel Walking to Mercury (which is a prequel to her utopia/dystopia The Fifth Sacred Thing.) The protagonist, Maya, is a pagan witch, and she has deliberately isolated herself from other people, stopped reading entirely, and immersed herself in nature in order to produce just that effect. When she comes back to society, she still distrusts words and prefers direct experience, and her political friends call her 'anti-intellectual' for it.

It sounds like an amazing state to be in, but very difficult too. I know for myself that too much direct encountering of things sends me running back for numbness and peace.

Do you get sensory overloads? Or rather, did you get them before, and if so, how does this new thing affect that?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I did indeed get sensory overloads sometimes before. I was known for having to sit down in certain art museums because so much good art was making me tipsy. Also, I have been much given to saying "My head is full of art!" when no more can go in right then.

It still fills me up, but dealing with it is a little bit different. Maybe I've learned to let go and let it wash through me without knocking me over. (Suddenly something Jane Hirshfield said to me about "streamwinners" comes to mind, and I will have to go reread that note.)

There was a point several days ago, though, where overload happened, and I cut short an experimental bicycle ride because of it. I said, "Too much input. Can't do this right now. Better go back." We found out later that the air quality index and pollen count meant that I definitely wasn't breathing as easily as I needed to be (which makes sense, given my increased need for using the asthma inhaler this week), and the presumably diminished oxygen supply meant I couldn't handle the flood of information that being on a bicycle was giving me, on top of everything else I get when I go out on a street with traffic and lots of things going on.

I don't distrust words, myself. They just aren't taking up the room in my immediate experience that they used to. They no longer jostle the thing itself out of line-of-sight in my consciousness, or something. They're fine, but they're not the same thing as IT, y'know?

[shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com]

Elise, have you seen this? I immediately thought of it when reading your entry.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

[unhappytriad.livejournal.com]

Elise, your mention of unmediated visual experience sounds like a lot of what Temple Grandin writes about her autism (especially in Thinking in Pictures)--she identifies this as one of the major strengths in her professional life.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that my perception of something is no longer primarily filtered through the name-and-identification-and-long-history I have with things-that-also-wear-that-word. I'm seeing the thing, not the word. And it was that way with every thing. I saw every thing. None of it was filtered out. And pretty much all of it was interesting.

This (and the comments) are really interesting to me, because what you describe here sounds more like the way I see the world normally than the way you describe your pre-stroke experience does. The exception is emotional processing - at some point in my childhood, probably around the time my body image issues started, my experience of my own emotions started to be filtered through words, so I couldn't feel things unless I could name them (but equally, could avoid feeling something by refusing to name it.) I un-learned that, as an adult, because it was causing relationship problems. But the idea of processing objects like that is alien and slightly alarming to me, and yet apparently "normal" to the pre-stroke you and to most of your commenters. I find that fascinating, and I find myself wondering whether this difference is related to other differences. djm4 and I increasingly believe that the intensity and immediacy of my spirituality is partly due to something unusual in the way I perceive ordinary objects, so it would fit with that, maybe.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Ooh. That is fascinating! I am going to ponder the thing about spirituality and perception; my immediate gut reaction to reading this is to go, "oh, yes, that feels accurate to me."

The emotions thing is hard for me to imagine -- I mean, not being able to feel things unless I could name them is VERY hard for me to imagine.

Hm. Words collide. I have to think about this a bit more.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I will be interested to hear any further thoughts you have, if you care to share them.

The emotions thing was very broken, albeit better than some of the other coping mechanisms I used. That's a big part of why I was so struck to see that most of your commenters seem to consider that kind of processing "normal" in other contexts - because the only internal reference I have for that kind of processing is in a context where it was clearly the result of some kind of damage. I guess it's one of those things that works in its "intended" context, but isn't so good elsewhere.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to find a description of what "seeing" was like, before, and the closest I can come is:

I saw what I thought I knew about things,
rather than just seeing things.

That's not entirely accurate, and it's not entirely fair, but it's heading in the direction of being able to describe it.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Something like that does sometimes happen to me - I see something, identify it as X, then realise I was wrong and it is in fact Y, and the visual image noticeably shifts to match. I think for me, that mostly happens at the level of sensory pattern-matching rather than words, though. It does become more verbal as the patterns get more complex, because my inner monologue starts prompting me for what features to look out for. If I'm trying to identify a bird and the possible candidates are very similar species, for instance, I'll start getting verbal thoughts like "Are the chest markings more like blotches or more like stripes?" But the better I know the particular species, the less verbal it will be. The words nudge the process along if it seems to stall; it doesn't feel like they're fundamental to it.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Interesting! The bit about sensory pattern-matching reminds me of a bit near the beginning of a Spider Robinson story, where a man walks into a closed bar where the lights are out, sees something very weird, and it takes him three tries to identify it. He then has a brief meditation on the hierarchy he perceives in his choices.

If anybody's got the book handy and can quote, I'd be very grateful.