Over a year ago I launched a project asking you to artistically express “Your Brain on Arousal.” I received incredible, arousal-filled submissions throughout the year! I was very impressed by the thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and creativity that was shared. So, thank you to all who participated!
As promised I picked a winner for the free session – an incredibly hard task amongst all the great submissions. I have selected Amos, who created a metal sculpture of a naked woman and photographed it over the ocean. I’ve also featured a few of the other submissions I received below.
A poem:
Wow.
It’s like an amusement park. Like a sound factory, a smell bazaar. A tactile place, filled with love, lust, touch, caresses, strings of wet kisses…
Think fireworks, joy, energy, heat, passion, warmth, fun, happiness…
Connections between touch and taste, scents, beauty, feelings…
It’s like eating gooey, warm, out-of-the-oven chocolate cake… delicious… satisfying… heavenly…
It’s fun. It’s real. It’s mesmerizing.
In the moment.
In my heart.
With you.
Together.
Laughing.
Touching.
Loving.
Smiling.
Breathing.
Hugging.
Holding each other.
Happy.
Heaven.
That’s my brain on arousal.
Sigh.
Captions on above photos:
2 – I was lucky enough to have had a brain scan while being aroused… it looked something like this…
6 – For me, an aroused brain is something like trying to navigate a strange landscape with a single illuminated path. The aroused state is really about functioning on a more instinctual level, so my choices of speech and action are constrained. In this imaginary landscape, I’m aware of other paths to take, but they’re obscured by shadow or tunnel vision, or they branch off in directions that don’t make sense. Because the landscape is also in darkness, I’m also only dimly aware of how precarious or difficult the obvious path is. Only after the arousal has subsided does the entire terrain get illuminated for me to truly consider how I got there.
