Doodles – so what?

This morning I found myself flicking through a folder of hard-copy, hand-written diary notes from 2005. The collection included more than twenty elaborate doodles. Most are based on the human head but there are other more abstract ones.

The doodles were produced in ‘flow’. ‘I’ was not present while they were being constructed. The process was therefore peaceful and relaxing. But it begs the question of agency and thus of meaning. Is it a form of creativity, of invention? And if so, so what?

Michael Shermer (2011 “The Believing Brain”) reckons that the human brain is hard wired to see ‘patterns’ in the inputs from the sense organs (including when these are mixed with inputs from memory). The brain is also hard wired to postulate human-like, causal ‘agents’ behind events. So there is an ongoing and vital churn of patternicity and agenticity generating ‘reality’ on a moment to moment basis. It can never be the real reality but it serves its purpose if, when faced with a hungry lion, it allows for fast cognitive closure and thus freedom from a slow paralysis by analysis. (ref Daniel Kahneman (2011 “Thinking fast and slow”).

I am inclined to view my doodles as the result of a wakened brain ticking-over in neutral. In limbo. Well fed and watered and with no immediate threats from social or other sources. There is possibly a research-based literature mapping a typology of doodles and linking this to a variety of psychosocial and cultural factors. I might get round to looking it up!

On a whim I extracted the 2005 doodles from the folder and then photographed and digitally edited them before putting them online using Picasa. You can see them HERE.