Reading to see the other side of life - Domestic Violets

Flower Family - acrylic paint, magazine
scraps, vintage card and children's book
scraps, and a piece of Wordsworth. 

Reading is one of those ways that we escape from our lives and look to learn about how the other half lives. If we are poor we dream of being rich; live in a city read about village life; and if we are female to understand how men think. We humans use language to convey our thoughts, but does what I see on the page and comprehend the same as what you see? For an excellent explanation about vision and the concept of qualia, watch this Vsauce Video.

I had been in a bit of a rut reading books about women who woke up one day and found that they were pursuing the wrong career, in the wrong relationship, or challenged by some major loss - loved one's death, job termination, etc. I was most likely drawn to those books because I was wondering about my own life and the path that I was on. Lo and behold I found Matthew Norman's Domestic Violets, the story of thirty-five year old Tom Violet - corporate flunky, husband, father, and son.  He and his wife have hit a rough patch in their marriage and both of them end up being attracted to other people. He works for one of the nebulous corporations that don't seem to do anything important but must keep the profits rolling in, he's attracted to his younger co-worker and in combat with a rule following competitor for the next big promotion. Tom dreams of becoming a major author, but he has one major stumbling block - his father - famed author Curtis Violet who has just won the Pulitzer.

Tom has written a novel, but he submits it to his friend a literary agent under a nom de plume, "A family can only support one writer, right?" (p. 157) Tom's belief in this statement prevents him from finding his own voice (my reoccurring theme this summer), from separating himself from who his father is. Turns out Tom discovers that he is more like his father than he would like to be, and finds out that his father isn't so bad after all, "Being your father has always been one of his favorite things to be. He was afraid to admit that when he was younger." (p. 259) Of course isn't that one of our biggest challenges in life - finding our own voice, but learning that it has been shaped by who our parents are. Nature and nurture play a key role in who we become and no matter how much we want to deny it in the end it is always there.

I never thought I would be an artist. In fact, I resist calling myself that mostly because don't you have to sell your work or be recognized by the establishment to use that title? No, you don't. I've come to realize, that if I make art, I must be an artist. My mother is an accomplished artist, and growing up I too had the strange notion that there could only be one artist in the family. Now I know that belief is just not true.

Is your read the same as my read?

Recently my students asked to spend some time learning about neuroscience so we spent a couple of days looking at brain structure, how the sense of sight works, reaction time, and habits and learning. One of the videos that I showed them is from Vsauce, in it we are challenged by the thought question: do you see red the same way that I do? 

Now this whole concept of qualia struck me when I read the introduction to Wendy Lesser's book Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books. First of all, she is absolutely correct when she says that reading can be an addiction. I can't imagine a day going by without reading. In fact I learned the hard way what it would be like not to be able to read when you want to. Last spring when hospitalized with a tick-borne illness I felt too miserable and tired to read. I couldn't find the energy to focus, and that frustrated me. I wanted to read. I was desperate to read as there was absolutely nothing worth watching on television. Thankfully I had my iPhone with my cache of audio-books to listen to. I knew I was better when I could sit and focus again upon the written word. 

Second, she pointed out that for every reader of a book there is a unique experience. Each of us brings a unique perspective to the books that we read. Here's where that concept of qualia comes in. How can you and I share fully our experience of reading the same book? There will always be something missing in our ability to explain how we feel, or what we got out of the book. Same book but totally different. It's thought experiments such as this that blows my mind. So I have to ask you, is your red the same as mine? Is your read the same as mine? Think about it.