Blue Moon Blog

Being a creative person, one might think my Right Brain would be in charge. Not always so. I’ve also got a logical streak, so sometimes my Left Brain is in command and dictates. My pal, Mitch has coined a term to describe the condition: Corpus Callosum Dominant.

The corpus callosum is that thing in our little mammal brains which connects the left and right hemispheres, a bunch of white matter that handles much of the correspondence between the two. I’m not sure if too much communication is ever a bad thing, but the good ol’ CC can sometimes cause me some real headaches, blessing me with perhaps an enlarged or overactive conduit. Depending on the personal situation, I’m not always sure which half will take the lead. At times of indecision or agitation, I wish one of the sides would just take over, making it easier on me. It can get a little goofy in here, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone to get a glimpse inside my sometimes confused mind!

Of course, being Corpus Callosum Dominant can have its advantages for work, coming in handy for running a business, or when assessing, planning and executing creative projects, especially those large or complex. The left brain kicks in overdrive when: taking direction, asking specific questions about details of a job; figuring measurements and specs; or doing multi-panel and multi-page breakdowns. With those last two items, we start to enter areas where both sides work together, not entirely analytical nor creative, but rather a synergy of the two. That’s when it’s best, when there’s a balance and one gets in a groove to solve creative problems and challenges.

Sometimes it’s tough to sustain that balance during the creative process. For me, the danger comes in over-thinking a piece, where the art can become stiff and I can wring all the life out of it. I can run into this while songwriting, as well, find myslef trying to shoehorn a melody around a buttoned-down song idea, or well-thought-out lyrics. Sure, sometimes it takes extra work to fashion something worthwhile, but work it too hard and you can kill it. And while it’s nice — essential, actually — to go totally Right Brain and play around without thought about a finished product or piece, in the end an artist still needs a more reasonable voice to find structure in a work or make the call that a piece is indeed finished.

I’m sure I’m not alone. All of us dance back and forth between logic and emotion every day, every second. And maybe my case isn’t all that extreme, really. But sometimes it sure feels like it! What a relief and pleasure it is when things are clicking on all cylinders, to tap into a small portion of the power of that incredible lump in our skulls.