Hello Science, meet Art.

There's a certain image that is conjured in one's mind when one thinks of a scientist, and perhaps a doctor.  When I was a child, if you'd told me I'd end up doing what I do now, I'd have laughed.  Psh. Sounds boring.

It's not, of course.  It completely rocks (except when your gel doesn't transfer to your membrane because you thought the bottle said 'methanol' when it actually said 'transfer buffer'.  Doh.).

However, I like to think of myself as a bit of a chameleon, not least because my own family is a bit of a pick-n-mix of skills and activities, and therefore the notion of just being interested in your own field is a little alien to me.  But how well do science and art really mix?  They are different worlds.  The first inhabited by bespectacled nerds, often in white coats with beige outfits underneath, hermitting away with a pencil tucked behind their ear, muttering mysteriously and scribbling away in what might as well be Klingon.  The second, perhaps also bespectacled but undoubtedly more trendy specimens, not an inch of beige in sight, pondering life and the meaning of it all.

(Those were stereotypes I just described there, by the way, in case you missed that.  I'm not trying to suggest these are accurate or fair.)

I'd like to think I inhabit the former whilst having all limbs healthily outstretched to the latter.  I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York this weekend and embraced the opportunity to stretch my thoughts to, well, MY thoughts.  The feelings evoked by paintings I've only ever seen on my computer screen, as well as those I've never seen before.  I went to listen to the poet laureate, Charles Wright, who gave a reading at Yale.  Sadly I suspect copyright laws prevent reproductions here, but having reread some of his work at home I was struck for the second time (the first obviously being when I heard it in the flesh) how some of his words resonated with me.  And yesterday I went to hear a piano recital by Boris Berman, master of all things Prokofiev.

Even Rabbie Burns (Scottish poet) features in NYC!

Interestingly, I think the main value to me of keeping my head in the artistic world is that it keeps me human.  When I'm being a doctor, it gives me a way to explain or explore my feelings and emotions.  When I'm being a scientist, I think it reminds me that really science is art, shrouded in formulae, chemicals and protocols.  I don't think either of these should be underestimated.  As a doctor, I am so often required to have emotions and feelings on an 'as required' basis, as if feelings were controlled by a tap, and sometimes that's really hard.  There are patients whose final hours I remember so vividly that I still see them now; the look on a patient's face when they know their hour is here.  There's something reassuring about listening to a piece of music or seeing a painting that evokes those feelings again, but in a safer environment.  Perhaps the composer or artist had a similar experience?  It is almost a relief that someone has managed to convert that emotion into another art form, and you can find a way to deal with it.  Equally as a scientist, it is so easy to get bogged down in this, that or the other assay, and forget that it is flipping amazing what you are doing.  That sort of helps when your experiment doesn't work for the twentieth time.  Because when it works the twenty-first time, it's beautiful.

So I'm quite content to be a bunch of contradictions; I think without it, science or medicine would have no meaning or joy to me.  It does mean you'll have to tolerate my hippy music if you're working near me in the lab.  Soz.