I haven’t written in this notebook for a long time – judging by the cut-ups of photo contact sheets, probably at least several years – but when I stumbled across it today, it felt more like a relic from the future than from the past.
At the time I started this notebook, I was reading essays in theoretical neurobiology, one of which described the neural processes that occur during perception – in particular, how AM (amplitude modulation) patterns change and adapt over time to a repeated stimulus (Freeman, 2000). Apparently, when AM patterns were first observed as a response to a stimulus, neurologists believed that these modulations were “representing” the stimulus in the brain – taking on a predictable shape (Freeman, 2000, p. 212). This, however, proved false, because the patterns changed with repeated exposure to the same stimulus, suggesting that the patterns actually represent “the meaning of a stimulus,” or in other words, what we have learned about it over time (Freeman, 2000, p. 12).
I cannot help but think about how the act of writing – which necessarily organizes memories and perceptions into structures and shapes – changes my AM patterns in response to experience (and perhaps even in response to memories, which after all, are “perceived” again in imagination and dreams). Revision, too, raises interesting questions: Is the act of revision a process of actively trying to change an AM pattern? Or do changes in AM pattern – perhaps during the act of writing – generate the impetus to revise?
Maybe AM pattern assimilation is the whole point.
It also explains – at least metaphorically if not literally – why I write at such a slow, deliberate pace, and why I often wait years before I feel ready to give shape to experience. Maybe my brain needs to assimilate first – in other words, to give my perceptions a shape I can work with. Perhaps it even explains the particular forms in which I write.
I have never believed in transcribing experience in some “pure” form, but I cannot help but wonder about the implications of AM pattern assimilation for my adversarial writing process. I like to play prosecution and defense – to build a case and tear it down with reasonable doubt, only to rebuild a new case and continue the process. I not only destroy evidence, but my perception of it as well.
References
Freeman, W. (2000). Brains Create Macroscopic Order from Microscopic Disorder by Neurodynamics in Perception. In P. Arhem, C. Blomberg, & H. Liljenstrom (Eds.), Disorder Versus Order in Brain Function(pp.205-219). Singapore: World Scientific.
