I need to talk about my brain. For years I have noticed this problem where I have a really hard time recognizing faces. I have discussed this here before. Even the faces of people I know pretty well, or have spent a lot of time with. It has nothing to do with not remembering the person–I always remember them, intricately and very well. It’s just that their face is unfamiliar to me. Sometimes once I hear a name, the face springs into focus and I recognize it, but other times–the worst times of all–this doesn’t happen and they go on looking like a completely brand-new stranger even as I simultaneously remember all kinds of anecdotes involving them and experiences we’ve shared. What does it mean? I know about face-blindness–Oliver Sacks has it!–but this is nothing near that level of dysfunction. Like Oliver Sacks not recognizing the house he’s lived in for 20 years; people not recognizing their husbands; etc. It’s not nearly that bad, it can’t even be compared. Once a person is consistently in my life I do always recognize them. But it just takes way too long for a person to finally get to that place in my brain. Freakishly long. It used to embarrass my old boyfriend so much, rightfully so, that he started anxiously narrating things to me in social situations, like Beethoven’s brothers only with vision. “That’s John, you met him at that benefit 3 weeks ago, you talked about going to the gym.” “Here comes Anna, she’s in that band we played a show with in Seattle.” etc. After a few truly excruciating interactions where I introduced myself to someone who then literally said “are you serious??” and then revealed that, like, a few weeks earlier we had spent 3 hours together talking, or some such, I started sweatily trying to plan backup maneuvers. For awhile I would see someone looking at me and I would say “I’m really sorry but I have facial recognition problems, do we know each other?” but this doesn’t seem to mitigate the awkwardness. It’s just inherently felt as a diss when someone doesn’t remember your face, and I get that.
I really want to emphasize that I don’t think it’s narcissism, although of course I am hugely narcissistic. But I don’t think it’s just that I’m not paying attention. I remember everything about the person! They just don’t LOOK FAMILIAR to me. This has been happening more and more often lately, and I’m getting pretty genuinely disturbed. Maybe it’s because of moving back to a city where I lived for so long? I keep running into people who joyously say my name and they are a FUCKING STRANGER to me. Then, in disbelieving confusion, they say their own name to me and then I am like “Oh HI!!!!! God, I haven’t seen you since that canoe trip” or whatever. But I really feel like there is forever a blight upon our relationship because of me not recognizing them instantly, as they recognized me.
I am amazed when people recognize each other. My husband recognizes people on the street who he met once 14 years ago in a different country. A couple of times someone has recognized me and said hi and before I can catch myself I wonderingly say, “wow, how did you recognize me?” and they look at me like….uh, I used my human vision to notice your face, what do you mean. The other night a lady said my name and of course I felt I had never seen her before in my life, and it turned out it was this person I’d spent hours and hours with over the course of several years, I’d stayed in a hotel room with her, I’d had so many conversations with her, I remembered everything about her, where she’d worked, where she’d lived, who she’d been dating, conversations we’d had, and yet it took her saying her name to me for me to know who she was, and even then she barely looked familiar. And I said “how did you recognize me” and she was surprised and said “…you look exactly the same.” But everyone does! Everyone looks exactly the same, all the time! What’s wrong with me?
And now actually it’s getting worse, like do I have dementia. Because now I am starting to no longer remember details, in addition to faces. My old man will say “don’t you remember when that person came over to our house and we talked about Pink Floyd and you gave them popsicles,” and I have ABSOLUTELY NO MEMORY of it. How is that even possible.
Meanwhile I can recite to you probably 100 full Simpsons episodes verbatim. WTF
We had an emo conversation about it recently where I felt on the verge of tears. I’d just encountered someone who recognized me and remembered all this stuff about me and all these experiences we’d shared and, while I totally remembered the person, I didn’t even vaguely remember all these experiences (and, needless to say, I didn’t even vaguely recognize this person’s face). I couldn’t even remember how we’d met, how I even knew this person, even as I simultaneously totally remembered them and so many cool things about them and their life. On the drive home I felt like crying, is this what getting really old feels like? But I’m not old yet, it’s not right. Is this degenerative, do I need to see a doctor, etc. We talked about vision and how more and more it is turning out that I am a profoundly non-visual human being. This is fascinating to me, that this could be a way of processing information that is just super stunted in my brain. It’s also amazing that you can live so many years without realizing a fundamental thing about how you process information.
To begin with, I have been basically blind since I was 7 years old. The glasses just keep getting thicker and thicker. Since at least high school I have been unable to make out even the broadest of facial expressions, without my glasses. So my entire life has been overshadowed by this inability to see. For decades I have had these recurring dreams where I can’t see even though I can. Like, I am seeing the people and objects in front of me but I somehow can’t see them. Classic dream, impossible to explain. But the dream is really wrenching and disturbing.
So then I think I told you about this realization awhile ago about how I just don’t really get into the visual arts, no matter how much I learn about them or ponder them. Painting, sculpture, installations….99% of it leaves me completely cold and alienated. I also recently realized I am terrible at fashion, which is also visual. I don’t get it, I’m bad at it, I am dimly aware that I don’t look right compared to all my friends but I don’t have the first idea about what to change. Also interior design, setting up a home…it’s like I recognize good interior design when I see it but I have no ability to implement it on my own. I hold an item in my hand and I say “is this cool looking?” and then I am not surprised by any possible answer. “it is the coolest looking thing in the world” or “it is so ugly I can’t even look at it” are both possible judgments, neither of which I feel I have any ability to make.
The visual arts I feel I have access to (film, dance) all involve temporality–movement. Film and dance are visual but they are defined by movement, by moving through time. Moving through time is something my brain is super attuned to and interested in. This is also the defining quality of music, which of course I am deeply involved in on multiple levels in my life. I think the experience of temporality is so powerful for me that even in film and dance my innate inability to respond to visual information is overridden. I was even trying to remember a visual artist that has spoken to me and the only one I can come up with is Andy Goldsworthy–who I know real art people find kind of naive and dumb. But I really love that dude’s stuff. So at first I was like “no, I DO like visual art!” but then I realized that literally the main thing defining Goldsworthy’s work, really, is its temporality. It’s like, the entire point of what he does. It’s all about stuff moving through time. Building a weird rock egg and then letting the tide cover it up. Weaving together a pattern out of twigs and then letting the wind slowly blow it away. Arranging wet driftwood so that when it dries certain color patterns are revealed. Ice sculptures that melt, etc. Temporality. That’s obviously what I’m responding to in his work.
So now it is seeming like this is maybe part of my face problem too. What I remember are events, conversations, personalities–the mutable, fluid aspects of a human or a relationship, the things that are experienced via movement through time–and I don’t remember the visual indicators of the person so much. Actually, I just remembered that one time I literally spent two full days with someone who had a FAKE LEG, and I didn’t notice it until someone was talking about it later. And I was like “wait, what?” and everyone was baffled. How could you not notice that someone was missing a fucking leg? But the fact that it is getting worse is really disturbing. Is studying music so intensely making my already-malformed visual processing ability even worse?
Anyway, I am working on some tactics for being less socially dysfunctional. But please just know, if we see each other and I act weird or re-introduce myself to you, it is (probably) not because I don’t remember you, or because I am just a huge dick.
