Musical Pictures

Gobsmacked, adj. : flabbergasted, astounded; speechless or incoherent with amazement.


It’s been four weeks since I posted my musings on the nature of my ‘verbal’ thoughts and lack of ‘pictorial’ memory. In discussing this with a friend of mine, she suggested something that left me utterly gobsmacked. In fact it has taken me this long to come to terms with just a few of the idea’s ramifications.

What I learned was simply that when people listen to music, they see pictures in their heads. Is this true? Are people really going around watching and making up brand-new Fantasias in their heads all the times they listen to music? Consider my mind blown.

The suggestion was made after I had given a fairly in-depth rant about how London’s best orchestras were lost on me. I’d had the good fortune to see some of the finest musicians in London on a school arts trip in 2003, but within the first movement of each concert I would invariably fall asleep.

To paraphrase dear Alice, what is the use of a song, without words or lyrics? Well, now I know that is quite easy to relax and let your mind make up its own stories for the music--that is, if you have a visual imagination. I’ve always thought of songs as having their own colors, but any pictures in my head I find directly relate to the story in the lyrics or the actual music video. I don’t get the Fantasia Channel, I guess. So even when I can appreciate the skill that goes into a performance, I can't keep myself awake without lyrics.

Now this has got me thinking: what does this mean in other areas of my life? Do I see pictures when reading books? Yes. A book tells you exactly what’s happening, and it’s easy to turn that into pictures. But could I do the same with an audio book? No. I have never been able to concentrate on an audio book for more than a few sentences. What about a play—a book without the easy-to-picture narration? Again, yes, I can make pictures out of the scripts of plays. So it seems that there is a visual element to my verbal thoughts. Just as I “see” the words of my thoughts inside my head, I must also “see” the words coming from external sources, if I am to give them pictures and/or concentrate on them. 

Just how different am I from all these pictorial thinkers? And how many of "us" are there?

Label-Maker

This is my brain—on words. 

While I was in middle school, I attended an after-school lecture regarding sex in the media. I would learn why beer and cigarette ads showed copious amounts of female skin. It was the first time that I had heard that axiom, “sex sells”, yet I don’t recall being surprised.

No, I was reeling from a bigger shock: that I was fundamentally unlike my peers.

In order to introduce his topic, the speaker asked the hundred of us to close our eyes and see what happened when he said a word. We closed our eyes, and he said the word “chair”. After a moment’s pause, we opened our eyes again.

“How many people saw the word ‘chair’ spelled out in their mind?” the speaker asked. I raised my hand high. “I see, okay, a few of you. Okay, thanks. Now, how many people saw the picture of a chair in their mind’s eye?”

Ninety-five hands shot into the air.

The speaker went on, connecting this illustration to the way advertising puts images into the mind, selling sex to sell products and yadda, yadda.

But I couldn’t concentrate on that. Until that moment, I’d thought that everyone sees words in their mind. I was shocked by the idea that people see pictures in their mind.

I mean, sure, if you ask me to picture something, I will. But as for the inner monologue, don’t people read it off the inside of their skulls?

My inner monologue, as far back as I can remember, has been like a ticker-tape rolling through my mind. As a youngster, I imagined my words as white letters embossed on black Dymo-style labels. One of my favorite games was to see how many of these tickers I could get going at once. I’d start thinking about something, then I’d start thinking about thinking it, then thinking about thinking about thinking about it, and so on. Little strips of thought would begin to build up, one in front of the other, and they would all keep going as my thoughts became more and more abstracted.

Of course, there was a time before I could read, but I can’t remember what came before—whether I would see images or words or something else in my head while I thought.

So, how many people think in pictures? How many in words? How many people think in pictures of words? What does it say about who we are and how we learn? And, how does this affect our theories of language?