At long last “magnetic resonance imaging” is at that stage of completion where any further work on it would be as likely to do harm as good.

I am proud to have seen this tricky, demanding image/poem to its appropriate destination, but not so proud as to ignore its defects. It doesn’t have the visual impact that it could, if I’d done it in a larger scale than 7 inches by 10. (Would the two weeks or so be worth the finer polish I could put to it if I redid it at 20 inches by 30? Undoubtedly. Would I be willing to do it? Not for its own sake. I could make at least 10 new images in the same amount of time, and use the Idea part of my brain and not the Reporter part of my brain. I vastly prefer using the latter. But if I had a guaranteed sale at $2 per square inch,  which is what my friend Vivian Andersen was charging when we were gallery-space partners, that would be $1200 US gross, and good practice to boot. So, yes, if I were incentivized by a sure sale, I would get right to it, and it would be a bargain for the buyer at twice the price, because this is one of the more important image/ideas within my capability. (Friends, I am high now, not on drugs nor alcohol, but on having finished this ungainly thing, so forgive, please, my delusion of grandeur.)

Defective or not, delusion of grandeur or not, this acrostic image is a success. I fit an array of meaningful words into the straitjacket I’d built in its early stage, and it is definitely about both the Brain and the Soul, and for a bonus, its parsing and slicing is superbly analogous to Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Please see my previous work-in-progress post for notes on the first four lines. As for the last four, three elements might need clarification, but I will point rather than blather on and on. “Dendritic” refers to Dendrites, and there is an excellent discussion of their form and function in Wikipedia. “Electrochemic nets” capture our thoughts and memories, per our current understanding of brainwork. And “bands for Gideon” refers (metaphorically) to Gideon’s Band, loyal stalwarts that may be found in the Bible. Many hotel rooms have had Bibles placed in them by a group of proselytizers known as…the Gideons.

Finally, the last three panels at lower right were done without looking at the MRI photo sources, but rather relying on my memory of them. When I reviewed the images, I saw that with a little exaggeration, a top-down view of the centermost cross-section of the brain could be made to resemble the stylized heart shape we use to symbolize Love.  I also remembered that one of the “with contrast” images had flared contrast-wings remindful of a butterfly. Brain, Butterfly, Heart: that is the best of us.

magnetic resonance imaging

mazes, spark plugs, forests, thruways make us cognoscenti
an arabesque or two or four comprise an idiom
gendarmic membranes won’t enshroud nor would they be placenta
nor would they glad participate in telepathic gleaning
eloquences wax dendritic make a foe effendi
then electrochemic nets bind bands for gideon
it’s all subject to indecency like stroke-lost meaning
confectionary at its best, though–to Divine we’re leaning