Drawing On The Inside

The other afternoon I experienced one of those miracles of 2023, unimaginable when I was born in 1981, wherein I found myself looking at my own brain while surrounded by commuters on a downtown F-train. The experience made me surprisingly emotional. It’s not that I don’t know, logically, that I have a brain, but, if I’m honest, I think I picture it (if I picture it at all) as one of those cartoon brains – not a lot of definition or segmentation, mostly just a mush of pink wrinkles. But one look at an fMRI reveals the intricacy and visual complexity of this exquisite mass of cells. I found it both a bit overwhelming and incredibly beautiful. There was only one thing to do: draw it.