Friday 18 March 2005

Headfuckaroo

I've realized in the last few days that I've had thoughts that are visual, but not about space. I can see a thought, but I can't express it in language, can't even take mental notes on it, not even fragments of words. I say "see" a thought, but I don't really mean that. My eyes are on screensaver mode. I can be cycling down the street on autopilot, eyes open, looking where I'm going; but the perceptive part of my brain is ignoring that input; instead it's looking inward. Sometimes it takes someone else's words to express your thought, or an approximation of it to which you can relate, before the thought is dyed (or died, killed) in language, almost as if it had been intangible before it was given a physical texture (pun intended) - and with the body comes its immortality. I'm not sure that these thoughts have a language. It feels more primitive than that, more gestural.

Sometimes, also, making yourself try to write your thoughts down, or speak them in a conversation can fill them out with the down of language, make you recognize (re-cognize) a thought you've had before and can now have again on demand. This is what some people experience with Muse portraits - both reading and writing them. The Muse portrait is not only a conversation with your readers, but a conversation with yourself and your own thoughts. They are a good way to introduce oneself to oneself - for some people for the first time.

I get this thing, I call it a headfuck, when I'm so far inside my own head that all I can do for a minute or so is realize over and over again, "Fuck, I'm alive. Fuck. This isn't a dream. This is real. I'm here. I'm thinking this thought." I've had an unusually high number of these recently. I wonder what causes them. It's a sort of dizzied tiredness, almost an enlightenment, an awakening, a reality check, as if Bob the Braincell is taking a look around with his torch in the attic of my noggin'.

Is there a non-verbal, non-visual equivalent word for vision or imagination, both of which are to do with sight, inner sight, inward sight. Can you have an internal eye, as you can have an inner ear?

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