SPECTATORS - Part 115
Plus, what the hell is APHANTASIA?
No sleep ‘til Cleveland!
Brian here, taking a slight detour from my Impossibly Intriguing Secret Canadian Business Trip to briefly visit family in Northeast Ohio. But this giraffe ain’t gonna explode itself, so I’m typing today’s dispatch in shotgun while my charming chauffeur takes the wheel.
First up, some lovely new pages of Spectators from artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon and letterer/amazing human being Fonografiks, as our spectral protagonist Val has some followup questions for her ghostly companion Sam. As always, new readers can catch up on their entire relationship so far in our handy Archives…
Never enough opportunities to use “petard” in a sentence.
This is normally the part of our weekly missive when I invite you to join your fellow paid subscribers in The Tower, and while we still welcome any/all generous newcomers…
…this week, I’d instead encourage any of you fortunate enough to have some extra ducats at the moment to please consider making a small donation to your favorite charitable organization, many of whom struggle during these summer months.
And since I’m headed back to “The Land” (still coming around to that one), I wanted to shout out the excellent work of Cleveland nonprofit Motogo, which is trying to “bring back shop class,” and teach students to learn from their failures and build self-confidence through the art of motorcycle repair.
It was founded by my kid sister Molly Hayes Vaughan (the inspiration for/embodiment of the super-strong Molly Hayes from Runaways) and her gentle genius husband/my brother-in-law Brian Schaffran, who you can watch explain more about their important organization in this broadcast:
So proud of them both!
If you missed last week’s epic Q&A, there were a lot of excellent questions from readers like writer Jon Auerbach, who wanted to know if I had any advice for someone sitting down to write the first issue of a new comic series.
At his own Substack, Jon has since compiled a lot of great quotes about that very subject from Kelly Thompson, Kieron Gillen, Ryan Kelly, and a bunch of other wonderful writers:
Speaking of words of wisdom from authors, I was cackling with recognition at this recent piece from the NYTimes by 83-year-old The Mosquito Coast novelist Paul Theroux:
After 60 years of writing and publishing — and almost 60 books — I feel ordering my thoughts on paper to be not a job but a process of my life. You always hear writers complain about the hellish difficulty of writing, but it’s a dishonest complaint.
So many people have it much harder — soldiers, firefighters, field workers, truckers. The writer’s profession is a life of self-indulgence. With luck and effort, you make a living. The only difficulty is its necessity for solitude. Writing is not compatible with anything — its utter self-absorption is generally destructive to family life and friendships — and yet I find it joyous. All creativity is uplifting; I finish a book in a mood approaching rapture.
That whole piece is worth a read, so says this solitary, self-indulgent weirdo.
And while we’re on the subject of atypical brains, a question for you:
Close your eyes and imagine a red star; which number most closely describes what you see?
Please feel free to share your response with us here:
I was stunned that the vast majority of people in my life answer #6… especially because I have trouble comprehending anything other than my own response, a hard #1.
This was brought to my attention by my family, who’d been listening to a Radiolab episode about something called aphantasia, “the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present,” a condition that apparently affects about 4% of people.
In this mind-blowing article (to me, anyway), Guardian editor Betsy Reed sums up my feelings precisely:
A quick at-home test for aphantasia, I learned, was called the red star or red apple test. Close your eyes and picture a red apple. How well can you see the apple visually on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most vivid? Can you see its color, shape and the length of the stem? Is it a bit hazy, coming in and out of focus? For me, I saw nothing – no fuzzy outline, no hint of any image at all. While working on my story, I thought, “Well, no one can really see an apple when they close their eyes. It’s just a metaphor.” Then, I asked some friends. Not everyone was a 1, but most could see between 1 and 4. (There’s also a more official questionnaire, called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, or the VVIQ.)
“But can you really see it?” I pressed, confused. I know what an apple looks like. I can easily describe many varieties of apples to you right now, even the subtle differences in their coloration. But when I do so, I don’t “see” anything – I retain these details in a different way.
I’ve just begun researching this topic, and I clearly have a lot to learn, but I’ll say that all of my friends and colleagues are highly suspicious that I could really be an “aphant” (what a shitty new label to be saddled with!). After all, for the last nearly thirty years, I’ve been imagining images for a living.
But as Reed goes on to say:
Andrea Blomkvist, a researcher in philosophy of cognitive science at the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience at the University of Glasgow, said that her group had met aphants who are not just skilled at non-visual jobs and hobbies, but are artists, writers, animators. “Aphantasics have no problem producing highly creative work,” Ebeyer said. “Our process can be very different.”
For instance, visualizers might imagine their work before they begin. “Aphantasics, myself included, tend to have a general ‘sense’ or idea of what they want to create,” Ebeyer said. Ebeyer begins working, then edits and refines until he is satisfied. He often hears from other artists with aphantasia when they’re in the process of making art: I know it when I see it. This teaches us that imagination extends beyond mental imagery.
Zeman has written that people with aphantasia may have more of an interest in the visual arts, because their minds are devoid of it.
I love visual art – I originally majored in art history alongside journalism – but it makes sense to me that my medium is words. They suit my internal sense-making best, as well as the concepts and monologue that constitute my daily experience. In October, the writer John Green tweeted about the red apple test, revealing that he can’t see mental imagery either. “I always thought ‘visualize’ meant thinking of the words/ideas/feelings associated with a thing, not actual visuals,” he wrote, adding that his choice of profession aligned with this. “For me everything has always been made out of language, so language is a natural fit.”
Yes, precisely! Everything is made of language… isn’t it?
I’ve been gradually imagining much of the universe of Saga since I was a child, but it was more like an old-fashioned radio drama than some kind of Hollywood blockbuster magically projected into my consciousness (can the rest of you do that?!). Characters like Marko and Alana didn’t start to become “real” to me until co-creator—in every sense of the word—Fiona Staples transformed my vague notions of them into living, breathing people.
So do I really have this condition, and if so, is it a minor disability or my secret superpower? And is this why I’m increasingly obsessed with collecting/lining my walls with comic-book artwork?
Anyway, our weekly chat threads are usually reserved for you members of The Tower, but this week, I hope you won’t mind if I throw open our comments to everyone, especially any of you longtime lurkers who might have some insight to share:
And whether or not you respond, all current Tower members will be automatically entered in this week’s random drawing for a cool prize that’s somewhat related to the divide between visuals and language, a fun new book that I just finished reading:
(Despite my multiple submissions over the years, this supposed award-winning comic creator remains a perennial loser in The New Yorker cartoon caption contest. I blame my newfound neurodivergence.)
I’ll be interested to read your responses this week, but for now, time for a quick pitstop before we hit I-90.
Hope you and your loved ones have been having a visually spectacular summer (if only in your mind’s eye), and Niko and I will “see” you back here next Monday evening for more free Spectators.
Peace,
BKV
As an artist, not only do I visualize what the finished painting will look like but also what it will look like after each coat of paint to get there. That way I know if it’s working or not. I also ‘hear’ full potential conversations in my head before they happen and every variation of how I think it could play out. Apparently all of this is tied to attachment injuries from my childhood where I had to plan every way something could go wrong so that I could be prepared. Things you learn in therapy!
I spent years working with middle schoolers, which is the age when kids start asking questions like “what if the blue I see is different than the blue you see?” Telling them about aphantasia was a great way to:
1. Blow their minds.
2. Have a conversation about differences in how people perceive the world around them. It’s a lesson in empathy waiting to happen!