The Shape of a Thought
It feels really weird to talk about this because some of the things I mention are tropes in TV shows, Books, or Movies that I relate to, and I'd imagine that's because I can't really know how other people order their thoughts unless we talk about it. The issue being that the topic of how we think isn't very common, but it is something I seek out in the media I consume. Some more of the discomfort comes from the fact that if I try to find others talking about it online, the search results are overtaken by discussions of the media it was mentioned in instead of people who also feel the same way, or even just find that way of thinking interesting.
Suffice to say, I'll be using words and structures similar to some media you might have consumed, but I'm trying to convey something entirley unrelated to the media. The media from which I have taken these words only gave me the ability to comunicate these ideas in words.
I've been facinated by the idea of a Mind Castle ever since I was a child. I think that's in part because I don't really have an internal monolouge like I've heard others descibe in the few times it's actually been brought up. What monolouge I do have is more of a shape that I navigate, but it's so nebulous that I would personally steer away from calling it something as concrete as a castle.
It's closer to a sphere that has everything related to that thing packed into one space, one that I can expand, shrink, or rotate to get varying perspectives on. If you've read my piece called The City of Clay, it's kind of similar to that. In fact, It has holes when there are pieces missing and it comes to mind when the shape of that hole is found somewhere, making it a useful mindscape for mapping out my ideas.
I like to keep problems I'm trying to solve in the back of my mind, anyone who's watched my streams will have seen me talking about something and then out of the blue find a solution to something seemingly unrelated. I wasn't activley thinking about that problem, but the shape of whatever idea that came up in the conversation fit the hole left in my problem and it brought it back to the forefront of my mind.
Any time I've tried to talk about the "advantages" this way of looking at problems gives me, it feels like I'm trying to say I'm special. But I really do think that other people have a similar way of thinking. Not everyone sure, I grant that everyone has a different way of thinking and this is just one of maany. But this isn't anything special. Everyone has quirks to their thoughts and it's a cool thing to talk about pr explore. There are plenty of downsides to the way that I think and ways that it overwhelms me.
With how rarely we talk about how we think, it's hard to even get the right words to express those ideas without sounding like some ancient philospher. That's not what I want to be here, and I think that's the same for most people who want to share the way their mind works.
For me, those spaces left in problems I've put on the backburner can come up at the worst times and distract me. Even worse, they can come up when the "solution" at hand isn't a solution at all or I can have dozens of them come to mind one after another like bees slamming into my head. All of these projects or ideas that I've had that are just not quite right with tons of information attached atacking me all at once. I know that's not a uniuqe experince, and yet it's hard for people to talk it about without sounding insane.
In a lot of ways I love the way I think. I personally find it beautiful, the way my thoughts present themselves internally feel like a moving wave or a motion that leads to it's memory. I used to play the clarinet in my teens and I really want to pick up another instrument, I feel like I could do a lot with that motion if I just had the tools to do so. In fact, that's a lot of what my abstract art is. When I look at the strokes I've started it's just like following the path of my thoughts, knowing exactly where to move to fill in the spaces.
I remember where I was both physically and mentally for nearly every piece of art that I've made, whether that's from me "writing" that motion down, or the emotional connection I have to it, I'm not sure. But the comparsison between the two types of motion will always stick with me.