Before The Eye - An Aphantasia Blog

 In the post Times Past and Times Future we spoke about how the limited ability to visualise the past or the future led to the Aphant potentially ‘living in the moment’. Superficially ‘living in the moment’ sounds quite attractive not dissimilar to ‘living for the moment’, that heady rush of being exhilarated by and having a heightened sense of the now, enjoying every breath “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven” and all that. The Aphant though is perhaps more caught in the moment than living for it as in the absence of the cushion of visualisation the Aphant is forever in the bright headlights of the now.    Thoughts and ideas will pop into the Aphant’s mind sometimes fast and furiously. Unaccompanied, mediated or delayed by any accompanying visual images this rat-a-tat-tat of ideas means the Aphant can often think and respond faster than the visualiser. In certain situations like for example a quick-fire quiz round or a brain storming s...

 One area in which the Aphant is at a disadvantage when compared to their image conjuring cousins is in dealing with time past and time future. We might be tempted to call this memory and forward planning but that would be to oversimplify. Lets take memory first, the Aphant can perform as well or even better when remembering dates, phone numbers, titles or other data driven memory recalls. Similarly the Apahnt has no trouble in plotting out a series of to do tasks on a chart or diary. The Aphant struggles though to remember detail about their past for example time spent at school, in a job or even a relationship. The general mood and outline of the time as well as key dramatic moments will be recalled but the latter may amount to only a few incidents in say a five-year period. The average visualiser will be able to recall considerably more of the day to day.    An anecdotal example - I recently joined a Facebook group for former members of my primary school. I have a fond...

When the nascent Aphant first discovers that the majority can visualise or shall we say conjure images at will their first reaction is incredulity. What is this magic trick, how is it done, why do more people not discuss it more often and why is it not seemingly put to greater use? For example in a court of law one almost never hears a lawyer asking a witness to close their eyes and call forth an image of a scene or a culprit – instead they are asked to verbally recall from memory what they saw - which would seem far less accurate than calling the image to mind. Similarly the Aphant artist immediately assumes that the ability to conjure images of people and places would be an undoubted advantage when trying to create a life-like representation in pencil or paint and yet there seems to be a considerable gap between the conjured image and the ability to render it on paper. Similar arguments can be made in film and media in general having the ‘sandpit’ of imagining a scene should be a mar...