🧐

#aphantasia
#hyperphasia

@transponderings

Hi Anna

I reposted/favourited your toot a few days ago, but today reading on, began to think it was people like photographers and film makers who would probably be at the hyperfantasical (?) end of the spectrum, if it is a spectrum.

I'm interested in photography, film, filmmaking and script writing. I think it plays a part in those.

Photography and filmmaking are the more obviously explainable, but write scripts/screenplays perhaps not so.

@transponderings Thank you for the fascinating insights. From your blog post questions: yes, I have the ability to visualize. But I do question if it works the same way in everyone.

My mother and my partner both have a "decorator's eye." They can visualize a room with new paint and furnishing, and in detail. My mother got into real estate and the profession is devoted to helping people "see themselves" in a different house.

I'd watch those real estate shows with my mother where they tried to make the home as bland and UNpersonal as possible. My mother confirmed that the overwhelming percentage of people could NOT "visualze" this new home with their stuff in it. Which is why I believe it's actually kind of rare to have a Mind's Eye good enough to work at the levels practiced by my mother and partner.

For most people, this ability is there, but it doesn't work well enough for house sellers to skip the "make it bland and boring" part. Because I would watch while people walked into a room and say things like, "I don't like that bedspread." And my reaction is, "Why are you even looking at it, it will be in a truck to somewhere else. Look at the BONES of the room and see your colors… your bedspread…"

My mother confirmed, "They can't do it. They make model homes because people have trouble visualizing furniture in an empty room, they have tools to actually change the furniture and colors in a room on the computer, and people still have trouble making these transitions. Sure, buying a house is complicated and expensive, but they don't know what they want without that feeling they could live here, and that's not always possible in their own head."

Because if it were actually common — at that level of useful adaptive visualization — the entire real estate industry would work as though everyone has the ability at the same level.

And the industry does not.

@transponderings our daughter's language tutor has #aphantasia, and she is first person in my entire life that I have spoken with in person about it. ♥️💔

It's surreal realizing lots of other people have it even if it's very rare and, of course, many of us experience / manifest it in quite different ways.

Thank-you for writing about this!

@SleepyCatten
Wow. Thank you! 🙏 I love hearing from others. This video is great.

You are not the Evie in the piece I wrote tonight, are you? That would be too wild.

@SleepyCatten

Wow, same!