We had this really interesting exercise in Larry Singer's class this morning. Last monday we were instructed to think about a room that we had not been in for at least seven years. That was our homework, to think about a room; nothing more. I had chosen the living room of the house that I grew up in back on Carrwood Street in the suburbs of Sacramento. It's been about 12 years since I've been there, but I figured that since I had spent a good amount of time in there, and it had he'd some pretty amazing memories of some good family times that it would be a fairly easy room to talk about. I hadn't put much thought in to the room over the week (which I can't really feel bad about, because that, too, was a part of the assignment).
The exercise was essentially this. We were to wander the studio space with five other people (in our own exclusive worlds) and examine the rooms as we remembered them. If you're curious, yes, there was some mime involved. What I discovered was that though I could remember the layout of the room (where furniture was placed, entrances and windows, that sort of thing) I couldn't remember the finer details of the room: where pictures hung and what they were, what knick-knacks were on the shelves, generally smaller items. As I was exploring this vaguely remembered room from my past something clicked in, I remembered the feel, the texture of the love seat; and then the wall; the grating of the central heater; the feel of the kitten-destroyed spines of shelves of LPs; the feel of the lacquer on the record player's wooden exterior; the roughness of the short-shag carpet; the feel of the crank as I opened the window and the sound that it made. As all of these things were occurring to me the room suddenly came into a very sharp focus. I could clearly remember everything about this room that I haven't though about since I had last set foot in it circa 1999. It was like a gate was opened in my mind and there was a deluge of sense-filled memories of this place of my childhood. It was fantastic. Other things became more clear to me; sounds and smells became accessible to me, I was looking at an entertainment center and something would knock and a new time that should have already been there would pop in to existence.
I learned today that the sense of touch holds for me far more information than my sense of vision. Things started to make sense in the sense that I have never considered myself to be a visual thinker. I've often had conversations with people where someone will bring up a strange or gross topic and someone else would say something like, "Dude! C'mon, I don't want to picture that!"
I can picture things, but I've always been more interested in the weight of the sound or the specificity of the word... the feel of it as I slowly roll it around in my mouth than the image it evokes. The image was always an after-thought. I've always figured that kinesthetic learning was one of the easiest ways to take something in, though I never really said to myself, "No, I can't learn it that way, I have to get my hands on it." Something else sprang to my mind as I was working over this rather epiphanic realization. I rarely allow others to touch me. I almost hate, hate, hate being touched. The more comfortable I am with someone, the more I relax in to it, but I really feel harried when someone makes contact with me unexpectedly... I guess it's mostly people I consider to be strangers, but if I learn and experience more through the sense of touch, what a great deal of experience I must be missing out on by not allowing that information from a person to pass in to me.
Something to think on, I suppose.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
-R
The exercise was essentially this. We were to wander the studio space with five other people (in our own exclusive worlds) and examine the rooms as we remembered them. If you're curious, yes, there was some mime involved. What I discovered was that though I could remember the layout of the room (where furniture was placed, entrances and windows, that sort of thing) I couldn't remember the finer details of the room: where pictures hung and what they were, what knick-knacks were on the shelves, generally smaller items. As I was exploring this vaguely remembered room from my past something clicked in, I remembered the feel, the texture of the love seat; and then the wall; the grating of the central heater; the feel of the kitten-destroyed spines of shelves of LPs; the feel of the lacquer on the record player's wooden exterior; the roughness of the short-shag carpet; the feel of the crank as I opened the window and the sound that it made. As all of these things were occurring to me the room suddenly came into a very sharp focus. I could clearly remember everything about this room that I haven't though about since I had last set foot in it circa 1999. It was like a gate was opened in my mind and there was a deluge of sense-filled memories of this place of my childhood. It was fantastic. Other things became more clear to me; sounds and smells became accessible to me, I was looking at an entertainment center and something would knock and a new time that should have already been there would pop in to existence.
I learned today that the sense of touch holds for me far more information than my sense of vision. Things started to make sense in the sense that I have never considered myself to be a visual thinker. I've often had conversations with people where someone will bring up a strange or gross topic and someone else would say something like, "Dude! C'mon, I don't want to picture that!"
I can picture things, but I've always been more interested in the weight of the sound or the specificity of the word... the feel of it as I slowly roll it around in my mouth than the image it evokes. The image was always an after-thought. I've always figured that kinesthetic learning was one of the easiest ways to take something in, though I never really said to myself, "No, I can't learn it that way, I have to get my hands on it." Something else sprang to my mind as I was working over this rather epiphanic realization. I rarely allow others to touch me. I almost hate, hate, hate being touched. The more comfortable I am with someone, the more I relax in to it, but I really feel harried when someone makes contact with me unexpectedly... I guess it's mostly people I consider to be strangers, but if I learn and experience more through the sense of touch, what a great deal of experience I must be missing out on by not allowing that information from a person to pass in to me.
Something to think on, I suppose.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
-R
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