Moments Are Not Shared in Pixels

Words Do the Magic

Read the following very carefully.

For just a moment I thought I was back on the second level, but I saw the room was smaller, there were fewer ticket windows and train gates, and the information booth in the centre was wood and old-looking. And the man in the booth wore a green eyeshade and long black sleeve protectors. The lights were dim and sort of flickering. Then I saw why; they were open-flame gaslights.

There were brass spittoons on the floor, and across the station a glint of light caught my eye; a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced at his watch and frowned. He wore a derby hat, a black four-button suit with tiny lapels, and he had a big, black, handlebar mustache. Then I looked around and saw that everyone in the station was dressed like eighteen-ninety-something; I never saw so many beards, sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life. A woman walked in through the train gate; she wore a dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves and skirts to the top of her high-buttoned shoes. Back of her, out on the tracks, I caught a glimpse of a locomotive, a very small Currier & Ives locomotive with a funnel-shaped stack. And then I knew.

If you read it consciously without skimming through it, your brain was forced to recreate the scene the author was trying to describe. You had to make the mental effort to imagine the eighteen-ninety-something scene by visualizing the details given in the prose. Your brain pieced together bits and pieces of what it knows about how eighteen-ninety-something looked like from the various movies you have watched, or pictures and paintings you have seen in your lifetime.

Sometimes, reading such vivid descriptions of events and scenes might not seem as effortless as simply watching motion picture or a photograph. Of course, If I just had to convey the information from the scene to you, I could simply show you the following picture and call it a day.

⊕ Train Shed at Bangor, ca. 1890 Bangor Public Library.

But you wouldn’t have to use your imagination as much. Sure, the mental picture you created might not be historically or factually accurate, as you might have accidentally imagined the wrong kind of hat, or the face of the man with the big black moustache might not be how he actually looked. But, that would be it. You will still sympathise with the authors experience.

Mind Creates the Information #

Most people I know of, are delusional about photographs. What often happens is, when you look at one of your old photos, you don’t exactly see what’s captured in the frame, but you see what happened outside the frame when it was captured. You might see an old family group-photo from a beautiful mountain-scape, but you don’t necessarily pay much attention to how your hair looked, for example. What you actually remember is how funny the van sounded, or how everybody laughed at that boy who slipped on a rock, or how you almost had to vomit from motion sickness in the curvy roads.

All that was needed for your brain to trigger those nostalgic memories of your moments, was a photograph which represents a certain time of your life. But if you pay close attention, you might notice, you had to recreate a lot of scenes in your head. Again, the dress of the boy you just recalled, might not exactly be the same as he wore that day. But it doesn’t matter.

You know what else made you do this exact mental workout? Exactly. Verbal descriptions. It triggered the same process. You see where I am going…

The Best Way to Make Others Feel Your Experience #

So, when I was young (er than I currently am), me and my friend were trying to create a tree house in a remote junkyard at the border of our colony. It was remote. The living-being most frequently noticeable was a mongoose, and a few ants on the trees. We collected some cranky old wooden planks that were thrown away in the junkyard, and some jute strings we found nearby (by trodding through what seemed like a hiking adventure). We tied the planks and put them up on a tree branch like a bench to sit on. I had the higher one, being the skilled climber I was. This arrangement which we were particularly proud of, was called our tree-house (and another secret name).

We also had a different project at the same location, of creating a large pit deep enough that two or three of us can cram in and be “hidden” from the world outside. Unfortunately, it simply turned out to be a tiny hole that could only fit a small box. So we did that, hid a box which we ourselves never found again. Some kids probably saw us digging from a distance.

Reading this might have been a fun experience for you. Now I can finally give you the only video I possess of this place,

That’s it. That’s the only media I have captured from this place. But I only need to look at it once to remember everything I have to know. Had I simply given you the video, it might have been boring. Even more so if it was just my face taking up half the frame while I tried to pose.

It might come to you as a surprise(1) (1)In this day and age that all you need to make people feel your experience, is to simply tell them. Moments are best shared verbally, with a bit of visual assistance from a photo or two to act as a trigger for the memories.

Contrary to popular belief, I actually think bulk photos of events with just dozens and dozens people’s faces in them trying to pose(2) (2)aka being fake in what they deem to be the latest trend, is actually counterproductive. It creates too much information, so much so that the brain doesn’t use it’s imagination anymore. Essentially, disabling the entire process of vividly remembering the experience, or making someone do so even if it wasn’t theirs. It is simply one of those hundreds of occassions when you wore a pretty dress. Not much if you think about it.