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You know when something is second-nature to you--like, say seeing the days of the week in colors in your head--and you bring it up with people over the years only to discover that this is entirely foreign to them--you are the only person you ever meet who does this thing, this thing that never seemed odd at all but is apparently unique to the way you experience the world?
Like that.
I have finally discovered another human being with feet on this Earth who has this way of experiencing people that I have: We both cannot picture the faces of the people we know when we are not around them. Especially (maybe only) the faces of the people we care about or are attracted to.
For me, the harder I try to see their faces, the more their features float away. It becomes a chase. I start to see a collar of a shirt, a brown tint of hair, maybe the squint of his eyes. And then it blurs. I try to imagine his mouth, and it's more of an impression than anything. A muddle of color, reddish.
In the end I am left with more of a music of a person than a photograph. Their image is more a vibration than a still shot. Legato.
posted by TK @ 19:21
9 comments
9 Comments:
It's not that extreme for me, but I've noticed that too. I have a harder time visualizing the faces of people close to me. People less close I can see much more easily in my mind.
When I see the face of my loved ones, it's all the more wonderful because I'm often astonished at how much I enjoy seeing them, it's as though I'm seeing them for the first time, yet again.
wow, mits. it ain't like that for me. no astonishment in that sense. just amazement that, after all these years, all this trying, this haze persists. the realization that some things are beyond grasping.
which reminds me of this quote in kiran desai's "the inheritance of loss":
"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."
Actually, it's more staccato for me. But that's only because the music of my neurons is similar to the "wind chime" effect on a cheap keyboard. Usually with a bossa nova background beat.
i went back and forth between writing "staccato" and "legato." in a way, it's both. the images are staccato, the blur is legato. together it's a little bit rhumba, a little bit theremin. are we talking a small casio? cause i had one of those once. i think it was white.
p.s. mtthw. i'm entirely thrown off by anyone using their real name on this blog. (not you, mits. what can i say? you arrived that way.) but YOU, mtthw. i expected you would allow me to christen you, oh, say, Quart?
I think it has to do with the fact that the people we know well we know from so many angles, in so many moods, in so many different lights, that all we can conjure when we think of them, to do them justice, is a cubist rendition of the many faces of our loved ones, mixed together. For me, it does make it harder to find that one pure image, so I don't even try.
When I see pictures of the people close to me I often think --- that's not what they look like! Only in life do they really seem themselves...http:
Er, ignore the http:... typo.
" it's a little bit rhumba, a little bit theremin"
Mines more drunk punk on a stylophone.
The key to seeing loved ones in your mind is to not try so hard..... they fall into place when they're ready too.
McBickle - you're always wearing agreen inside out top sitting on the floor in MoMa looking up at me....
AD xx
hm, inside-out i'm not sure about, but really, never photograph the people who have no one likeness. it will only prove confusing in the end. there are my two cents for this late, incoherent night.
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