Nodal panoramic / panachronic vantages from three farflung street corners (Amsterdam, Chicago, and Krakow), followed by a surprising thread on what we do or don't "see" with our eyes closed...
Like many people who discover they have aphantasia, she assumed "picture this" or "close your eyes and picture..." was a metaphor.
Since then I've been listening to creative people who have it, like Ed Catmull, and I've discovered that as with many disabilities or differences, it's a bit of a creative superpower in the right context.
It basically means that instead of getting hung up on getting what's in your head onto paper (or the screen, etc.) you have to push things around on the page until they're right. (Catmull talks about how important sketching is to artists who have it.)
A very simple, concrete example: When Meghan is rearranging the furniture in the room, she has to push everything around before she can see whether it will work or not. This used to strike me as terribly inefficient — I could tell her, just from looking, that the couch isn’t going to fit there — until I realized that the novel arrangements she came up were because of her method. She will try out arrangements I wouldn’t bother with because I couldn’t visualize them. She doesn’t try to make the space something it’s not. Her eye isn’t clouded by visions, it’s focused on what’s actually in front of her. So her aphantasia, in this context, becomes a really powerful thing.
It can be fantastically helpful for some writers, as they don't have to "translate" what they "see" in their heads onto paper, they can copy down what's playing on the "radio" that's playing in their minds.
There's basically a spectrum at play here from hyperphantasia (someone like William Blake) to aphantasia and we all fall somewhere on it...
I find that I don’t even have to close my eyes to visualize. I can picture my grandson’s face or the euphorbia growing in the backyard or my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table decorations with my eyes open or closed. Some times it’s a bit spotty—not a fully covered picture plane, but more of an unfinished canvas with corners turning grey. But the image is in color.
I wrote about aphantasia on my blog and my wife, who has a master's degree in architecture said, “I have that.” https://austinkleon.com/2021/06/10/when-the-minds-eye-is-blind/
Like many people who discover they have aphantasia, she assumed "picture this" or "close your eyes and picture..." was a metaphor.
Since then I've been listening to creative people who have it, like Ed Catmull, and I've discovered that as with many disabilities or differences, it's a bit of a creative superpower in the right context.
It basically means that instead of getting hung up on getting what's in your head onto paper (or the screen, etc.) you have to push things around on the page until they're right. (Catmull talks about how important sketching is to artists who have it.)
A very simple, concrete example: When Meghan is rearranging the furniture in the room, she has to push everything around before she can see whether it will work or not. This used to strike me as terribly inefficient — I could tell her, just from looking, that the couch isn’t going to fit there — until I realized that the novel arrangements she came up were because of her method. She will try out arrangements I wouldn’t bother with because I couldn’t visualize them. She doesn’t try to make the space something it’s not. Her eye isn’t clouded by visions, it’s focused on what’s actually in front of her. So her aphantasia, in this context, becomes a really powerful thing.
(more here: https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-vision)
It can be fantastically helpful for some writers, as they don't have to "translate" what they "see" in their heads onto paper, they can copy down what's playing on the "radio" that's playing in their minds.
There's basically a spectrum at play here from hyperphantasia (someone like William Blake) to aphantasia and we all fall somewhere on it...
I find that I don’t even have to close my eyes to visualize. I can picture my grandson’s face or the euphorbia growing in the backyard or my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table decorations with my eyes open or closed. Some times it’s a bit spotty—not a fully covered picture plane, but more of an unfinished canvas with corners turning grey. But the image is in color.