Turns out I literally have a disability where I can't create images in my mind as I read

iktf

I just don't see anything. the images are threadbare and more ideas than things... :(

>Still a subby.

I have something mildly similar, but actually diagnosed.
The doctor described it to be a semi-Prosopagnosia. I can't pin point facial features, or even picture in my mind what my wife or best friends look like unless I'm staring right at them, and often don't recognize them in person unless I've seen them recently. During the entirety of a book I haven't the slightest idea what a character looks like aside from maybe hair colour and length

This is so fucking extremely different to the thing OP described, but thanks for sharing.

I thought it was similar since he said he can't create images in his mind. Oh well.

I don't care. I hate images. I wish I was dead so I can escape the images!

Keep trying, user. You're young, but you've got potential. The correct shitpost was:
>I don't care. I hate images. I wish I was dead.
No elaboration needed.

People would've understood.

Sounds like a benefit to me, since you're free of primitive picture-thinking and can move straight to concepts.

it's okay, lots of retarded people lead fulfilled lives

Yeah that's why born-blind people are retarded right?

no but there's no chance of them being schizophrenic

Read Gass's essays. Image-making is secondary.

I feel this is more common than people think. It's just a bit of a harder time reading. Try to imagine it like a history textbook for events or like a memory might formulate to you. Searching descriptors for images online might also help if you really want to visualize.

Is there such a thing as a medium in between literature/film? Almost every description I've read is pathetic, would be nice if books had something close to art in them. No, comics arent even close.

VNs are closer
or you can just watch your movies with subtitles

Not OP but I generally don't visualize what I'm reading as I read it. Sometimes I do but I generally don't I just process it as words and their meaning. In hindsight I used to imagine what I was reading as a child quite a lot I don't anymore tho

Audio? Accessibility of tone and inflection being communicated with the ideas most likely intact.

I feel for ya OP. I don't visualize much, just the characters usually, sometimes even doing shit that isn't relevant to the plot. I also have trouble reading long paragraphs and there's a lengthy enough delay in my head between hearing someone speak and actually processing what it means that I come off as an autist or retard or just plain antisocial to a lot of people.

I'll do it myself then. It will be called literakinoture. I'm assuming VNs are visual novels, which seem to be nothing but weeabo shit.

No, because that'd be a regular shitpost. As it is, he sounds like a speech bubble extracted from a Junji Ito comic, which is cool.

I can't do it very well either. I appreciate the prose and flow of sentences and structure in general, but I generally find more beauty in the words themselves and how they sound than what they describe. I can understand the context and appreciate the story, but as far as the the descriptions created in my mind, I have trouble forming a view.
Pro is I can read very fast because of it.
Con is I feel I miss out on a lot of the depth of books unless I actively try to create a vision in my mind as I go, stopping to visualize these things.

>Pro is I can read very fast because of it.
no, you can't
>I actively try to create a vision in my mind as I go, stopping to visualize these things.
This is what reading is.

I can't really do it either now that I think about it. I have to reference images I saw previously if I want to see something in my brain and those are less image and more remembering. I don't think this is the same thing but I empathise, which is more than I have seen a lot of people do when it comes to anything mentally abnormal. It annoys me.

I think I might be the same. I can create "images" in my head, but they are all blurry and I can only see them for a fraction of a second before they disappear.

It's only a disability if you see it as one. You don't have to see it as a bad thing because people say so. Make it your power and overcome the difficult part of it. You can do it!

Is this a thing people can do?
Every time I try and visualise a scene, something will happen that shows my picture was completely incorrect and I have no idea whats going on

Really? That's the first time I heard this, color me interested.

Naked

It's only common that you completely visualize a scene with placeholders ahead of the author's details.

do you have a good memory? I feel like I suffer the same inability as you to visualise, and that my memory is above average to compensate

I can visualize well to the point that my fantasies are vivid enough to masturbate to without any actual physical images
Anyone else like this?

What syndrome or disability have they coined this? I have been diagnosed with the Almond-Henderson Disability, which means that i'm incapable of running 100m in less than 10 seconds and it also means that i'm bad at twin-stick shooters.

I read Crime and Punishment and the only face I pictured was Svidriguylov's, and that's just because he's fat. I imagined Raskolnikov's and Sonya's hair, body, walk, cloths, but the face is just blank, even if I try really really hard. I can't even put a face I already know on them. It sucks

It happens to me sometimes, it's frustrating....Also when you picture a character in a certain way only to find after that he/she's totally different

Any specific essay you would recommend?

I have the same thing user—I have no idea what my parents look like if I'm not looking at them—, but don't worry; just enjoy the language of literature, be it prose or verse.

I got news for you.

Schopenhauer/Nietzsche argued against associating music with images (and vice versa). Regarding music, they insisted upon a pure/aesthetic musical experience.

So congratulations, you can listen to music in the way it should be listened to.

How would music and images even work together?

Don't know about him but, when I stop to analyze it, most music brings up the image of where I first heard it / heard it most.

It isn't in the forefront of my mind, but somewhere hazy in the back is always an image.

Lots of the music I listened to as a kid brings up the image of my dads smoky car and the countryside near his house. I can date when I started listening to songs this way.

>argued against associating music with images
>insisted upon a pure/aesthetic musical experience.

these two things kinda contradict each other

opera, tv shows, films, music videos. I mean, you can never listen to LOTR soundtrack without the association to the movies (assuming you've watched them).

It's interesting to me that Joyce never described what the main characters in Ulysses looked like, aside from how they were dressed

Well what do you think people did before porn? Or what do you think I did before I knew porn existed?
Everyone has done that

Only if you have an inflexible definition of aesthetic.

I'm the same way, but no disability. I just lack imagination and comprehension

Wait. So do people literally see images in their head?

I create an image of a particular word, but I don't create a setting in my mind. Like, if a book is talking about a shoe, I'll imagine the shoe and the leg and the foot, but only for a moment until I discard that image for whatever next comes up. This actually makes it difficult for me when an author is especially descriptive, because I have to keep modifying the temporary image I already have in mind, and then I have to keep that image in mind until the author is done being descriptive.

I have a question.

What happens when you dream? Do you even dream? Surely if you can't imagine images you either don't dream or dream exclusively about locations and people you've seen IRL?

No.

When people say they "imagine" things that happened in a book, they don't mean it plays out in their mind like a movie. They mean the words formed a sense of it, like a sensation. Like the sentence "his face was cracked with age" doesn't pull up a definite image of a face, but the sensation of it.

It's like a dream where things aren't definite, but come at you in impressions or sensations.

I think OP misunderstands and thinks people see HD movie quality reels that play out.

Practice makes perfect.

I think I know what you mean. I only have it in dreams, though. Like, you know what you're thinking should look like, but you can't visualize it.

That blows.

Speak for yourself. Most people visualize what they read. That's the fun in reading.

Does anyone else struggle to visualise literature from the ~1900-1950 period in colour? I remember reading The Trial and the whole thing was gray-scale in my head, no matter how much I tried.

Ah, thanks. That's the best way i've seen it explained.

I think you may have the same disability because I definitely picture everything I'm reading.

Sometimes it is a sensation, especially when dealing with people and faces (I have a hard time imgaining faces in detail)

But if the author describes a room then I pretty much see that room in my head.

Not the best at visualising though. When I was a kid it was top notch but now, eh, could be worse.

>Like the sentence "his face was cracked with age" doesn't pull up a definite image of a face

Yes it does.