Sometimes I ponder the most stupid, weird things in the world. When I sit with my thoughts, I wonder if people ever think the same way as me and I laugh. I think about things that seem to utterly ridiculous and out of the ordinary, I have a hard time imagining people would ever think like me, and if they did, that they’d ever admit it.
What if you could enter someone’s mind? What would you see? Would the experience you encounter depend on what you imagine it would be, or would it instead be shaped by the subject?
Would it be like an art gallery or a movie theatre? Do you think you’d be walking through a memory, seeing what they believe they saw? Would you recognize all the things they witnessed, but never consciously understood? Do you wonder what people would see in your own head?
In the 1999 comedy/drama “Being John Malkovich,” the plot revolved around people literally going into John Malkovich’s head. They saw what he saw, heard what he heard, experienced what he experienced. The characters went as far as even being able to control what he did. The premise was funny, but the more I think about it, I think I also found it scary.
Most of the time, I don’t even know what’s going on in my mind from one moment to the next. When I’m not on medication, my thoughts come and go so quickly I don’t even have time to process them, so what would someone else see? Would there be doors? Windows? Filing cabinets? What about floors or departments?
What if the mind was like a mall? First floor: pleasant memories, video games, and comic books. Trauma and repressed memories are in the basement, and memes and pop culture are adjacent to the food court. Would there be a memory store, as it were, for nightmares? What would that look like? For me, I bet it would have clowns…or my Dad…or my Dad in clown makeup. Yikes.
This mall would be unique, though. You could buy anything you wanted; you just couldn’t take it with you. Or could you? Would it be almost like a facsimile? A copy of a memory or a thought, nearly as good as the original, but not quite as real or powerful?
And what about other guests? Would the mall be filled with different versions of ‘you’? Small characters, similar to those in “Inside Out,” each with their own unique attitudes and qualities. Would they know they were in our minds, or would they see themselves as individuals trapped in this odd space?
Welcome to my mind. Please remember we have a no return policy, and if you break it, you bought it.