Irrelevant Stimuli: Welcome to my World.

I have a doozy of a good bad painting in the studio right now, and it's thrilling. It's a large painting- a veritable ginormous surface measuring in at 20 x 16 inches. What makes this so exciting, for moi, is that it's one of those paintings I classify as godawful. I do not start painting with the intent of making a godawful painting. My godawful paintings come about as the result of sheer determination and unbridled lack of concentration and discretion. Seriously. You know those days when you don't feel like a genius, but you show up in the studio anyway? And on top of that, you're thinking about a million things and so you're making brushstrokes, but not really caring whether it's a "good" brushstroke or if you loaded enough paint on the brush, or maybe there's too much turp- or for some reason the painting looks like it got left out in the rain? AND YET, YOU KEEP PAINTING? Yes?! Well, yesterday after a several days of working on and off of this misfit-

it has started coming together. I said, started, mind you. The magic moment happened late last night, (I could have sworn I even heard a 'click', and I know exactly where I was in the painting, what brushstroke I was on-when that moment happened) so I haven't had a chance to revel in my mad geniusness, but I am hopeful- and thrilled, as I said earlier. [At which point I came across:]

Despite evidence of a link between genius and madness, no one has proved that such a link exists. However, scientists at the University of Toronto have discovered that creative people possess little to no "latent inhibition," the unconscious ability to reject unimportant or irrelevant stimuli. As University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson puts it, "This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment. The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities [source: University of Toronto]."

Bingo. Emphasis mine.

It's this inability to reject unimportant stimuli, I find so fascinating and relevant.

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My mother's doctor has recommended we set an appointment with a neurologist. My mother does not want to see a neurologist, so we might have to get there in small steps. Perhaps I can tell her we are visiting a numerologist. All kidding aside, I'm dosing on fish oil.

PS. Yoga is going great. Treated myself to a new skimpy t-shirt and workout bra from Old Navy. Very LA casual of me. Next is the patchouli and an ass-topper.