How do you "see" imagination?

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That's what happens for me. I call this voluntary visualisation.

However, I sometimes involuntarily visualise things at times. For instance, if someone is vividly describing a horror movie and I overhear, then my mind tends to show that image even though I didn't want to see it.

Generally, my mind tends to visualise random highlights it deems important. Most of the time, I'm thinking by hearing an inner voice. However, if a word has a strong visual attached to it, then I'll likely see the visual instead.

I can usually override an involuntary visualisation. Typically by using lucid dreaming. So if I find myself visualising what that movie being described could look like, I might remind myself that it's my mind and then create a giant red button under the word STOP which I promptly hit. Usually it works.

The only time I can't lucid dream is when I am witnessing something truly horrible and I am in shock. However, I get the impression that this isn't the norm. People tend to tell me that I am unusual when I tell them about the lucid dreaming. I know some people only get to lucid dream a couple of times in their life, but personally it's always come easily for me.

Anyway, when I am reading, I am focused. I try to picture it and I can easily do so most of the time. Unless the author is the type to start bringing exact measurements into the story. The hole is how deep you say? Well, I am going to make a wild guess what that looks like and then change it as the story goes on. Someone fell in it? Huh, not as shallow as I thought then.

Serious answer:

My imagination is projected into the centre of my head with a 3D holographic projector but in SD (standard definition)

Here's the work of an artist named Melissa S. McCracken.

She has synaesthesia or specificially chromesthesia which makes her see music in colour. I have the same thing but it happens when I hear words / music, when I read or say words, and even when I think words. Words are involved since I can't think at all without them. If I hear music with no words I still see colours but it's not as defined. It's more of a mood. It also happens with numbers. Strings of numbers like telephone numbers are usually "coloured" or represented by just a few of the digits which stand out to me, but I can slow down and see the whole number in colour too like a rainbow (not in linear order but in swirls.)

Synaesthesia is a great memory aid. If I forget someone's name or phone number, or even their birthdate, I can usually remember what colour / colours it was, and piece it back together to figure out the name, number, or date which was represented by those colours. Unfortunately this can even cause me to dislike some people if their name colours are wrong. I have subconscious biases I have to overcome. Same with people's birthdates or phone numbers. I struggle to "like" people with offensive colours. Naming my kids was brutal because the second's name had to "go with" the colours of the first's name, and our surname, and have its own unique colours too.

I don't always see this many colours at once for music like Melissa, but I think her paintings show all the colours of each song put together even though they might happen sequentially or in bundles and loops for her.


Check out Melissa S. McCracken on noizr.com:


https://noizr.com/articles/i-paint-musi ... sia/:1510/




This is John Lennon's "Imagine" ^ ,but there are many other song paintings in the above link.
By the way I entirely disagree with her colours for Imagine.


On top of seeing colour like this I feel or see 3D spatial depth and movement in music or even in the meter of written words. Some songs are like a square, other are rolling, some just let me tumble through colours of space with no direction.


Another famous artist with synaesthesia is Kandinsky. I usually say I think like Kandinsky but it's not really the same, because I don't see each colour within a defined shape like he did. My colours have no borders so they're less structured. The shapes I experience are more about the movement of the music, than a visual geometric shape. The motion "shapes" are 3D like I'm in outer space, rather than seeing geometry painted on a flat page.





When I picture the word "car" like Recidivist's example, I think of the colour of my own car first because I guess I'm trying to visualise it. Then I see my car for a millisecond but I don't know if it's inside my forehead or where that is. It's more of a "knowing" I see it, than actually seeing it. It's so quick I can't tell. Then I I get a swirl of the three letter colours C, A, and R which are white, soft lime green, and red. This is also really fast because whoever said car has likely said other words by then, so I'm already imagining those.


TMI but orgasms? Divine - especially with spoken words. *cough* Maybe that's why I play music at those times?

I studied Kandinsky in GCSE art back in school. We had to pick three artists to focus on and Kandinsky was one of the artists I picked.

To see in colour like that... I find it fascinating to think about. My mind works quite differently. Interesting how much the human brain can vary.

It seems like there's a large range of experience and most people just assume they way they imagine things is "normal." 75% of people think visually, 20% think in sound, 5% think in feelings. That's an oversimplification people that think visually can also imagine sounds for example, it's just their primary mode is visual.

Weirdly I'm a visual thinker but I don't form images in my mind. Go figure.

I"m always fascinated to learn what's "normal" / most common, and what other people's experience is about pretty much everything. I didn't even know I had synaesthesia until I was in Psychology 101 at Uni. When it was described I thought "Doesn't everyone do that?"

It's hard to describe because I don't "see" it like a visual and obviously it's not "real", but it's there anyway?
I can point at the exact colour match for a letter or number, for example, but I still don't think I "see" them?
I know them?
Does that make sense?
At the same time I have the emotional experience of falling through rainbows and I know the colours are there.
I could do those paintings even though I don't have a visual projected inside my forehead.

It's so hard to explain.

I definitely have a strong visual imagination. I think I have pretty good control over it in the sense that I can ask it to picture things for me, and hold them in my head for as long as they need examination. This works for both remembered things and invented images. I don't know how my drawing process would work without it.

I use visual imagination a lot (though not exclusively) for memory. For example, if I were to think 'Where did I put my hairband?', my mind would automatically show me a little movie in the centre of my brain/behind the eyes of what I saw when I last put the hairband down. It's like it recorded a screenshot without me even knowing, and then it just plays it back. When I was at school I would doodle constantly while the teachers talked, and it feels like I can store my thought processes and what I've learned in those images when I recall them, though I can also store information as language just as well.

When I picture images, I can hold them anywhere I like in the space, whether it's inside my head or behind me suspended in the air - I can still 'see' them. That being said, I think the most automatic and convenient spaces for conjuring images are behind the eyes, in the centre of my brain, or in the top left of my peripheral vision outside of my body. When they're behind the eyes or in the brain, I can almost see two things at once - you have your uninterrupted view with your regular eyes, and then you can also 'see' your imagination. It's harder to see your imagination if you've got a lot going on in front of you, but they're not literally overlaid like you see in Sherlock. The more complicated an image is, the harder it is to hold it and manipulate it in the space, but you can definitely do it. Those IQ puzzles that you get where it's a flat shape and you have to imagine what it would look like if you folded it up to make something 3D, I love those, the process of folding them in your mind's eye.

Sometimes I get invasive thoughts in the form of images, and they're very strong and disturbing. Like I will be minding my own business at work and suddenly I'll think about someone doing something very violent and specific to my mum, and it will be gory and horrible and I'll think, where the f**k did that come from? So that's pretty horrible.

I have really vivid and detailed dreams, I don't know if that's related to visual imagination at all. Usually if I describe my dreams to people they think I'm lying lol, so I generally don't do it. Sometimes I get complex narratives that work out like a whole movie, and they're incredibly rich and detailed. You wake up feeling like you've just been to the cinema. I've even dreamed in animation before.

If you think of a song you know well, are you able to hear it in your head? Visual imagination is like that, for me. Just like you can 'hear' a song in your head without using your ears, visual information is like 'seeing' without using your eyes.

Last edited by racheypie666 on 21 Apr 2023, 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can see why it's hard to explain, because it's just the way things are for you. It's fundamental to your experience and understanding of the world, so maybe it kind of transcends explanation.

I don't have synaesthesia but I do have a really strong sense of colour that is disconnected from my visual imagination. If I'm drawing a picture, I 'know' that there needs to be a hint of this specific shade of purple in that specific place to balance it out, even though I don't know why. My mum is the same. There is definitely a 'sense' for colour in my experience that has nothing to do with the other senses.

I'm obsessed with the science of colour ^ and I feel it very strongly too, even though I'm pretty picky about it. I've been trying to choose a new paint colour for my bedroom for about five years and I've screenshotted thousands of shades in folders on top of bringing home the paper samples from shops. They need the right light reflective quality, the right undertones, the right mood, etc. and I just end up going psycho so another year will go by, I'm sure.

I like how you described the temporal space where you picture things. I do the same thing with information when I have to memorise for an exam or remember something critical. Each piece of info gets "put" in a spot in my head so I can retrieve it. I might put a maths formula behind my left ear so it won't get mixed up with a poet's name which is behind my right eye. Yeah I'm weird like that. When I had to study I bought big white poster boards and made colourful "mind maps" with Crayola markers so I could visualise or remember what colour each thing was and where it was on the page.

If you close your eyes what do you see, without thinking anything specific? Right now it's all orangey-brown. If I clench my teeth I see white rings around the outer edges. I actually "see" them. Rubbing my eyes right now I see black and red and a lot of dots. I have Visual Snow Syndrome, or at least I think I do -- because again I have no idea what's normal. I can always see dots or molecules / atoms in the air like pixels.

^

If I close my eyes without trying to picture anything, I see a mass of particles on a dark background that change depending on what I'm doing with my body (if I scrunch my eyes up, for example, they change). The colour of the background depends on the light levels in the real world. At the moment, the background is black because it's quite dark in here. Sometimes when I'm completely relaxed, I can watch the colours and particles become shapes and fractals. I remember one morning when the view with my eyes closed was running through this crazy wave of colours, and the particles swirled like smoke or chinese dragons against it, it was awesome.

I definitely see visual snow. One of those things I thought was completely normal until I described it to people and found out it wasn't. Later I read about it and felt so vindicated! If I look at anything in the right way, I can see the light particles that make up the image and sort of deconstruct the colour, which I assume is related to visual snow too.


Also I feel you so much on the paint!! I was 'redecorating my room' for years, and one of the main barriers to getting anything done was that I couldn't find the right shade for the walls. I found it eventually, but every so often I'll find a little stack of paint swatches and samplers in all these subtly different shades of grey blue, none of which were quite right. When I was 12 we painted my room pink (my favourite colour), and I lay in the room and cried myself to sleep for the first few nights because it dried to the wrong shade and felt horribly wrong. I got used to it eventually, but it was never quite my room because the colour was oppressive.

I need a neutral that is dark enough to feel cosy but not so dark people think I live in a cave. I face North East and don't like morning sun or light / bright / reflective colours because they'll wake me. It has to go with navy but also with maroon and some warm pine wood. There's a lovely sage green in my snug downstairs but sometimes it's a bit yellow for my taste when it's sunny. I don't want beige or cold grey. I've been through a million taupes and greiges but they're all "meh" and not exactly fun to pick after five years of searching.

I feel your pain about the pink. That's so sad. When I was young I went from pink to a light blue / grey room with some foil wallpaper. It was really "cool" (cool colours) and I loved it but I don't want blue here because I don't have blue anywhere else in my house and things need to vibe. Once I went on holiday and came back to discover my partner had painted my kitchen, main hallways, and bedroom something I can only describe as "Dog Dick Pink".

Do the visual on that.

It's not there anymore , but I replaced it so quickly it was all rather drab for a long time until I actually chose new colours. Now I'm stumped again because my bedroom is too dark and people laugh at me for living in a cave.

Rinse and repeat.

Admittedly, no. That's alright though, some things don't translate well. I lack the frame of reference and experience to fully understand.

When I close my eyes, it's grey. Various shades of grey depending on how light or dark the lighting of the area I'm stood. I don't get any visual snow.

The way I pick colours is pretty mundane. I decide on a base colour, a complementary colour and then some shade of black and / or white. When I painted my room, I flipped through a book, thought 'Huh, that's a nice shade of teal' then I found a silver which I thought looked nice next to the teal.

Lmao that sounds horrible, never mind the overall experience of going away and coming back to find your house a different colour.

I really hope you find the perfect shade. In the meantime, a cave room can be quite nice though. I have blackout blinds and it's a dark North-facing room, so I can pretty much have the cave experience at will, especially because my room is a tip and I sleep on the floor lol.

Uhhh -- Maybe we're the same person.

I wondered after I wrote that about "people laugh at me ... "
Who are the people parading tripping through my bedroom, I wonder?

Hehe, I did wonder who was judging your bedroom!