Mental Image
This entry is in response to this. I thought it an interesting and confounding enough subject to make it its own thing.
According to Google:un·hinged: ənˈhinjd
adjective
past tense: unhinged1. mentally unbalanced; deranged.
"the violent acts of unhinged minds"
Not sure if you meant that. I’ll assume you (kind of) did, for now. I also assume you meant you chose a certain reading and are stating now that it may not have been what I meant.
Yes, in this case, perhaps a little unbalanced in that this drawing that I had once observed existed lucidly in my head but was quite different from what I actually observed. When I say “mental image” I mean “imagined picture” or just plain “representation.” I could have easily said “It’s based off a picture in my head of…”
As Wikipedia puts it, “A mental image is the representation in a person’s mind of the physical world outside of that person.” The article also goes on to cover more psychologically significant meanings of mental image, as I believe you were touching upon.
I see now that “mental image” can have several meanings. I like where you were going with it though. It’s got that Charlie Kaufman thing going on, something which seems to have burrowed its way into many of our recent discussions.
Also, I might have fantastically misinterpreted your comment that spurred all this.
Jae-Ho
No I meant that exactly. I am of course familiar with the term “mental image”, but for whatever reason when I read it that time I saw “image that is deranged and unstable”.
Of course, the “whatever reason” is the most interesting bit. Perhaps it’s because in this format I am expecting a certain left-fieldedness. Or perhaps I find these stories, so grounded in reality, to maintain an air of the fantastical.
Certainly while everything is presented plainly enough, almost stylistically deliberate in its plain spokeness, it is also verging on the unreal – or at the very least, the not so common.
Or more to the point – it is so plainly narrated that it makes one wonder if there’s not something else going on. It shares, in quality, the kind of thing I enjoy about Donald Barthelme.
Classic Barthelme – Porcupines at the University. It’s all about a university dean seeing a great stampede of porcupines and rushing out to avert them. But it’s told in a completely newstory style. And thus becomes both more real and more surreal.
So although I know these stories relate an actual happening in your life, the plain tone of voice makes me expect the unexpected.
Mental.
I see. My mental images might be mental.
Just based on what I’ve written, I do seem to be preoccupied with confabulation. Also, I’ve kind of set you up with all my intentional slippages (BBBQ, ricer). I bring the left field everywhere I go.
I should work on a proper Barthelme quote generator and get that to you.