Migraine and Visual Arts
| Author: Klaus Podoll | 18. July 2008 |
| Edited by: Klaus Podoll |
Masonic Boom
Masonic Boom, Floaters, 2008. © 2008 Masocic Boom (larger image see here)
"Bloody vision problems! But at least I managed to get a sketch of the bloody things this time. These kind of flickering, flashing filaments that start small, and then expand over my entire field of vision in highly psychedelic fashion - while completely sober!
I have discovered that my condition has a name - 'flashing lights' or ophthalmic migraine - so I'm not going mad! (Just yet)
This is probably the second, maybe third time it's happened. To start with, it just looks like a kind of afterimage, or maybe dead cells in the eye fluid, but it doesn't fade and it doesn't float off. Doesn't matter if your eyes are open or closed, it stays in your field of vision, at first tiny, about the size of a pea, but slowly it grows and expands.
This is the first time I've noticed it from the very start - the last time, I only really noticed when it was in its last stage, a huge, neon snake across my peripheral vision. They glow, they flicker - I can't really convey it in a static drawing. The colours are stark black and white, with prismatic edges, and do not remain constant, cycling through the colours of the rainbow like an LSD hallucination, though I assure you, these things happen when I'm completely sober.
It starts as a tiny circle, barely enough to notice. The circle elongates, then bursts at one end, so that it forms a snake-like shell. I've tried to draw them to scale, if you imagine the whole image as the entire field of vision of one eye. They float on top of, and only partially obscure my vision - kind of like the distortion in a badly compressed jpeg. But it's distracting, and makes concentration difficult and reading almost impossible. You can't look directly at it; if you try, your eye slides off it, driving it across your field of vision. But try to stare at something else, a black dot on a sheet of white paper for example, and you can study it in detail.
The first time it happened, I thought I was going blind or going mad. But the 'snake' continued to expand until it hit the periphery of my vision and then faded from view. The only thing for it, really, is to lie down in a dark room and close your eyes, try not to think about it.
I have no idea what causes them - fatigue, eye strain, LSD flashbacks, caffeine overdose or what. But they are strangely beautiful, once I stop being terrified that I'm going to lose my eyesight. Again, I have to wonder how they have subconsciously affected my drawing style!"
(Masonic Boom, Artist's webpage at Flickr, May 27, 2008)
Masonic Boom, Heaven's Head, 2008. © 2008 Masocic Boom (larger image see here)
"A GK Chesterton quote I came across in John Barrow's "Impossibility" (The Science of Limits and the Limits of Science.)
This describes so accurately how I have always felt... (and why I'm a scientist and not a poet.)"
(Masonic Boom, Artist's webpage at Flickr, February 8, 2008)
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