I was driving home from Sydney this morning and decided to try something. I decided that my very next action in life would be me rolling down my window, taking a deep breath of warm Australian air and shouting at the top of my lungs. For as long as I needed to, in and out of intonation. (When I came up to robots, or stoplights for Americans, I think I transitioned into song just so I wouldn’t scare people). And then I started laughing and then I probably cried. I even threw some words (like FREEDOM!) into the mix. I was going to end with my friend Kmy’s bird call, but decided to save it for next time.

Freedom is this magical state that I long to live in 100% of the time. Not the sort of freedom that means I do whatever I want when I want to (as screaming out loud would not be acceptable in a business meeting or at 3am when my roommates are sleeping).

I’m after the sort of freedom that means I don’t walk around with invisible shackles. The freedom that says I am no longer condemned, that I am a new creation and that a really massive galaxy-eating God would invite me to his dinner table even if my shoes were muddy.

I should have thought about this a little more last weekend when I drove to the beach for some alone time. I sat there watching the scattered surfers, while everything in me was aching to get out of the car and just run around like a little kid. Kick up the waves with my feet, run into the water with my clothes on and drink one or two bottles of sugary (not diet) Coke. I wanted to swim out to the surfers and say, “Hi! Would you like to be my friend?” Instead I just got out of my car and walked pensively towards the water, trying to look like the deep thinking beach-wanderers I see in movies.

Freedom doesn’t mean without boundaries. It just means that next time I’m at that same beach, I’ll make some new friends. Oh, and it also means that I’m not remotely embarrassed about my loud drive home from the city this morning.

In honor of all of it, the working titles for my latest paintings will be a little less confining.

This one is called: AHHHHHHHHH!

This one is called: WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!

And this one is called: sugary (not diet) Coke

Jeff told me that I was a nerd yesterday. I guess I am. As much as I love the arts (and the idea that art will always carry with it mystery), I’ve become a technology/science addict. Jeff, though, was specifically referring to the fact that I was devouring the latest edition of WIRED Magazine as he was driving through rush hour traffic.

The cover story focused on Manga (Japanese cartoons), but that’s not the story that caught my eye. It was an interview with Rhodes Scholar Jonah Lehrer on Art for Science’s Sake. It bugs me a little that he spent so much time dissecting the works of some of our world’s greatest artists, but I was completely intrigued by his assertion that some of science’s most complex questions can be or have already been answered in the arts.

Excerpt from WIRED:

Jonah Lehrer wants scientists to bone up on the classics. A former neuroscience lab drone, the 26-year-old Rhodes scholar would devour pages of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way whenever he wasn’t spinning down DNA. In the process, he made a discovery: Artists have something to teach researchers. In his new book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Lehrer argues that many artists have foretold the scientific future — Proust revealed the inaccuracy of memory, chef Auguste Escoffier anticipated the fifth taste sensation we now call umami, and post-impressionist Paul Cézanne proved that the brain fills in what a painting doesn’t show.

I disagree with some of Lehrer’s ultimate conclusions (click here for the entire interview), like the idea that “there is no you in the brain, no neuron that is you or that cares about you. You’re just a massively distributed parallel network.” I believe that we’re unique, created and impossibly mysterious beings. However, I love Lehrer’s prompt that true science can never ignore the creative, right side of the brain.

I call her water. My kid-like interpretation of aquatic life. It’s what I would love to see most if I jumped off of a bridge and landed in a lagoon where I could breathe with gill-like precision below the surface. It depicts the creatures I’d love to encounter and what I envision would happen if a 4th of July firecracker was ignited below the colorful depths. And if all my visions were edible, I’d expect this one to taste a little like coconut towards the bottom, a hint of lime/salt off to the left and a mixture of tangerine and raspberry off to the right.

But that’s just me. If you don’t see water or don’t taste tangerine, then I’d be so curious to know what you do see. I guess that’s why art doesn’t have an audible voice. It kind of sits quietly and lets you make your own observations, form your own impressions.

Now, if you’ll excuse me for a minute…

Dear water,

I loved painting you. At first, you were shy and kind of mean. And to be honest, pretty ugly. But, I believed in you from the start and you really came through. Now, just being around you makes me happy. Oh… and I’m sorry for leaving you in a cold, white-walled room for two months before finishing you. I would have gone crazy too!

Love,

Leora