Vox:
If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. And Mom’s face? Of course.
You experience this differently, sure. Some of you see a photorealistic beach, others a shadowy cartoon. Some of you can make it up, while others only “see” a beach they’ve visited. Some of you have to work harder to paint the canvas. Some of you can’t hang on to the canvas for long. But nearly all of you have a canvas.
I don’t. I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on 10 minutes ago. I thought “counting sheep” was a metaphor. I’m 30 years old, and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamn mind.
While I’m not as afflicted as the story’s writer, I have many of the same issues. When I say/type the word “cube”, the vast majority of you will see a three-dimensional cube in your mind’s eye. I don’t have a mind’s eye. I see the actual word “cube”. It’s the only way I can visualize it. It’s probably why I have such an incredibly bad sense of direction. I can’t visualize the three-dimensionality of geography and place myself spatially. Maps mean nothing to me because I can’t imagine my place in the in the 3D space.
I absolutely have this, but also had no idea I was ‘different’ until this article started being shared around on Facebook a short while ago.
I thought when people spoke about visualising things it was a metaphor, ditto ‘photographic memory’ which now I assume is more of a literal concept as opposed to just ‘really good at remembering things’
Same here. My wife, on the otherhand, has extremely vivid visualizations. We figured that’s why she doesn’t like my favored reading (old-school sci fi, which typically doesn’t have a whole lot of descriptive imagery) and hers (sweeping epic million-page sagas.)
Like, I find the Lord of the Rings books insufferably dull and wondered why anyone would subject themselves to the torture. But I guess if you can see all the stuff being described ad nasueum, it’s a lot more interesting.
I am like this also. I can’t visualize like other people can at all. My memories are not in images or sound. Its more like a list of facts and feelings. I just say I live in the moment. I can dream in images, but as my mind starts to walk up and realize I am dreaming the images are gone and its more dreaming in plot lines. At that point I could not bring up an image if I had to. I guess my dreams are not as vivid as other peoples. I know other people could actually visualize in their mind things but I just thought I was bad it at for it not working. Also with directions. I can’t visualize directions but I can recognize signs and places to know I am on the right track. If I try and memorize something its like muscle memory not something I can see. I love to read books but I can’t see what is described. I just thought everybody was like that. Which is strange since besides being a software developer I am also writing some fiction. Guess now I know why my writing is less descriptive detail and more dialog and narrative. I don’t see in my mind what I am writing. It just comes out, and without the visual clues people get. At least I know I am not alone in this.
Fascinating stuff.
While I have the mental eye, and can hear songs in my head, I don’t know if I have what he describes as a “milk voice”: a flat inner monologue. I have a monologue, but it’s much more textured than that. It gets excited, bored, friendly or angry.
My experience is very similar to the author’s, except I am older (when he was watching O.J. Simpson on his tenth birthday I was getting married) and I realized sooner that internal visual blackness was unusual. In elementary school my mom explained that when she was trying to spell a word she would see it in her mind, just like watching the Electric Company on public television. All I saw (and see) is blackness. I was a terrible speller in school but am perhaps above average as an adult.
Here’s a few spots where I differ from the author.
1) I can, and do, get songs stuck in my head. I don’t “hear” them or anything, but I keep humming/singing them, or at least wanting to and having to squelch myself.
2) I am good at navigation and directions. I don’t “see” a map or anything. I can’t really explain how I do it. I was a math major in college and I was pretty good (at least compared to most of my peers) at thinking in 4-dimensions or about transfinite objects. Perhaps this is because, since I can’t really “see” finite or two- or three-dimensional objects, not being able to visualize four-dimensional or transfinite was less of a handicap for me.
3) I do dream, but not very often. 99.44% of the time all is blackness (and soundless, and smellless). It’s sort of like I’m reading one of those choose-your-own-adventure books (except I’m not reading, because in the blackness there’s nothing to read). I’m in a room with two exits, which do I want to take? Like that. That leave’s the remaining 0.56% of dreams, where I actually, shockingly, do see things. This has happened maybe a dozen times in my life, most recently a few of months ago (before that, several years ago). It’s almost scary, not the contents of the dream but just the fact that I was seeing anything. When I wake up I think “wow, that was crazy” but the experience soon dissipates. I can’t remember anything about the visual dream I had a few months ago, except I think there was a bright red object of some sort. If you had asked me as soon as I woke up, I would have been able to provide some (but probably still scant) details.
4) I’m pretty good at detecting changes in places I visit. Like I’ll be in someone’s kitchen for the first time in a year and I’ll say, “I like the new floor you put in,” when most people didn’t notice. I’m not sure how I do that. I’m not good at noticing when people make changes to themselves, like differences in hair style or clothing.
5) Even though I realize that most people could “see” things in their minds, not until reading this article did I realize that people actually counted sheep when they “counted sheep.”
But Shawn, you say that you see the actual word “cube” so you seem to be saying that you do indeed see something in your mind, which I find confusing.
Fascinating. Thank you for this. It’s as amazing to me, a very visual thinker, as the linked article, and a new perspective for me that I didn’t know before.
Wow. I can’t imagine what it’s like to not be able to visualize something. Almost every activity I consider vital to the creative side of my life is dependent upon it.