Finding Blake creator and filmmaker James Murray-White checks in from a four-day retreat in Tewksbury, where he’s been Exploring the Divided Brain with fellow participants and been sharing Finding Blake.
I’ve been lucky to have been invited to come and film this deep immersion into the divided brain with renowned neurosceptic philosopher and noted Blakean Iain McGilchrist.
Organised by powerhouse trainer and facilitator Samantha Field of Field & Field, this retreat has run for the past four years, and participants gather for four days to go on a deep journey with Iain into the thinking and research behind his work looking at our divided brain hemispheres, its relevance to modern life, and the implications of left-hemisphere dominance for our humanity, health, and happiness.
Iain has been taking us on a journey through fourteen detailed lectures, ranging from ‘The value and limits of Intuition’, ‘ The value and limits of Imagination’, ‘What is language for?’, ‘Are we becoming machines?’, and so much more. The days are long and intense, and the thirty of us participants roll into bed late in the evening full of stimulation and questions; Iain’s talks are complemented by a range of optional workshops from within the group.
I offered a workshop on the first day, explaining the Finding Blake project, showing a few clips of the film so far, talking about why Blake feels so relevant now, and encouraging the participants to respond creatively to Blake in their own way, using a quote from Iain that very morning: “attention is how you dispose your consciousness into the world”. One participant wrote a magnificent poem about a tree, which she has given permission to share later.
I’m delighted to have been invited to come and film and participate in this retreat. It has pushed at the edges and given the tools to see and sense the world in new and exciting ways, ever mindful of this divided way of thinking; and some new tools to heal this split, which clearly manifests in humanity and the external world. Iain is a big believer that the arts stimulate the imagination, and without that we are nothing, hence the relevance of Blake. I’ve been invited to do a few more Blakean workshops across the summer, including one in early July in Nenthead in Cumbria with the noted poet Josephine Dickinson.
The media from the retreat will be available once Samantha and I have had time to work through the images and footage and decide how best to use it to promote the next retreat, next year. But I can give Finding Blake readers one wonderful shot, of Iain discussing Blake’s use of the spiral in his work.
Notes
Iain McGilchrist gave the 2016 Blake Society Lecture, The Infinite Brain and the Narrow Circle. You can explore Iain’s ideas and work at his website — including a download of the introduction to his 2009 book The Master and His Emissary. There is a 2015 interview with Iain McGilchrist at Interalia Magazine.
Kevin Fischer drew on Iain’s work in his Finding Blake post Imagination, Experience and the Limitations of Reason.
You can find more about the workshop Exploring the Divided Brain at the Field & Field website.
Update: Another participant at the event, Jenny Mackness, has also blogged about her experiences there, including her workshop exploring the implications of Iain’s work for education.
One thought on “Exploring the Divided Brain”