First I learn that there are people without an internal narrative and now I learn there are people who literally visualize things when they close their eyes. Which ones of us are the freaks? How can the ways in which we experience the innerspace of our brains be so dramatically, drastically different from one another? It makes me realize that technically a line from my bio is more metaphor than description: “If the events of one’s life were pictures and the emotions were sounds, his memories would play as silent movies.” Literally speaking, this isn’t true: my memories don’t have pictures, either. Just the formless conception of incidents and events.
Addenda
- It’s been suggested that I might have aphantasia, “a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind’s eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery”.