Lawrence Jamieson: Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn’t very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.

The brain is composed of two hemispheres, interconnected. Each is somewhat specialized, but both exchange information and there is considerable overlap But most important, each observes the other at work, making suggestions AND taking advice.

Consciousness arises when each of our personalities observes the other at work, but the duality is lost, or not perceived. The way we perceive consciousness is an illusion. We are not watching ourselves think, each of the hemispheres is watching the other but we fail to see the duality. We just get the illusion of watching ourselves think.

Actually, we are watching each other think, yet neither of us is aware the other is there.

As far as I know, only vertebrate brains are bi-lobal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlL0NtRbU88
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Alternate audio – better quality sound, but no video of Amazing Grace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVCScAfbWlY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MZQizUv1IQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mAFBG_s_aA
The Airplane never played the same song the same way twice.

***

You want two heads on your body
And you’ve got two mirrors in your hand
Priests are made of brick with gold crosses on a stick
And your nose is too small for this land
Inside your head is your town
Inside your room your jail
Inside your mouth the elephants trunk and booze
The only key to your bail

Want two heads on your body
And you’ve got two mirrors in your hand

Two heads can be put together
And you can fill both your feet with sand
Noone will know you’ve gutted your mind
But what will you do with your bloody hands?
Your lions are fighting with chairs
Your arms are incredibly fat;
Your women are tired of dying alive
If you’ve had any women at that

Wearing your comb like an axe in your head
List’ning for signs of life;
Children are sucking on stone and lead
And chasing their hoops with a knife;
New breasts and jewels for the girl
Keep them polished and shining;
Put a lock on her belly at night, sweet life
For no child of mine

I’m not stuck on a sonnet for the cat. I could write a whole short story about P cat, but sometimes a poem captures better. Boiled down. Distilled. Good prose is poetry.

After days it faded, finally from my fingertips, when the last bit of her
returned to air and the disappointment of my memory.
It came back to me when we met and touched, as welcome
as her laugh, her smile, her voice, her eyes,
the curve of her hip, the turn of her spine, the silk in her hands.

It was always there with us, or at least with me.
But she knew not her own and I doubt that she knew mine.
Our time grew short, our love grew sour,
but her scent remained long after she was gone.
The last shred of her memory to fade.

A long time passed and then some more, until
I woke one night from a dreamless sleep,
alert, awake, eyes staring at the dark,
bedclothes dripping from my sweat,
that smell clinging to my skin.

So strong that I could not escape it,
so strong my bath would not erase it,
so strong it followed as I raced it
to another room, weeping in the dark;
deeply breathing in her last farewell to me.

But it is hard.

I have the ideas, a handful of iambic pentameter phrases that don’t rhyme, and I completely lack a slam dunk final couplet.

You may not have any musical talent, ER, but you do, actually. Your prose. That’s your piano.

But I still enjoy it, and learning more always increases my appreciation. Ever see the movie “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”? (1988). Michael Caine’s character talks about this very thing in a memorable scene.