They say good art changes how you perceive – whether it be of yourself or the world it adds something. Or perhaps it takes something away from your perception that allows you to see something more clearly. One way or another, art allows you to recognize things that you might not otherwise recognize through mundane life.
I’ve been exploring the backrooms of my mind lately, revisiting memories and past decisions. Memory is a fickle thing according to experts, it is well known that eye witness testimony is incredibly unreliable because memory is unreliable. One of my earliest memories is from before I was barely conscious of my experience as a living body. In that memory I was in my bedroom looking up at the ceiling – the issue with that memory is it took place in the wrong room of the house according to when I had a crib. When I was a baby/toddler I was in a different room than when I started forming memories through conscious experience. People claim that when you recall a memory you change it slightly, I think this is most certainly possible but not guaranteed.
In more recent memories, of just this year alone… I have returned to a few memories more than once in order to review my behavioural and emotional patterns. The more I do, the more I recognize certain perceptions are actually reflections of my own psyche. Symbols, ideas, experiences, senses… they all end up coming through in reverse – some of the time. The memories themselves, in order to discern deeper and deeper truths, become more and more distorted as a result. Until eventually one finds themself in an empty room in the back of their mind.
Perhaps we start in an empty room though, and we construct our loops in order to fill that room. To modify the experience of existing in an empty room. Why do we exist at all? Was their a being of infinite dimensions and potential that got bored one “day” and decided to create time and life to distort their experience of existing in an empty room?
I don’t find the ideas of solipsism particularly appealing as an internalization or theory of reality. Yet I find myself, alone in my rooms for the majority of my experience. It might very well be the most truthful articulation of my experience of life. Should it be false though, I wonder where these backrooms connect with others.
Are there rooms in which we truthfully connect? Where you see what I see, and vice versa?
I have more than a few experiences with people in which what someone else’s experiences of the room we find ourselves standing in is very different from my own. Just the other day I was having a multi-hour discussion about religion with a man. It ended when I expressed a deeper confusion I have around Christianity which he found disrespectful. I had said to him:
The weird thing about Christianity is you guys accept the OT and some of you become fundamentalists truly incorporating that into their faith.. and then others have it there but then say yea but we don’t really talk about the OT cause it’s not the point.. God used to be a dickhead but then he killed himself as his own son so that he could be a nice God.
Which in hindsight I should have likely framed this better. This is how I perceive Christianity as expressing its doctrines, and it doesn’t particularly make sense to me. It seemingly fails to perceive the “evil” God of the Old Testament as good – while simultaneously refusing to perceive this God or His actions as evil. As a result of contemplating the exchange, which resulted in the severing of a new connection permanently, I learned something about how others experience sacred objects. As requiring and demanding respect from those who do not share the same view.
I have known, mostly, that which I hold sacred to be mocked or shamed or both. Yet in spite of this, I rarely will sever a connection. I will push through conflict towards deeper clarity with anyone who continues to engage with me. Only disengaging once it becomes clear enough that further communication will not produce further understanding. Yet even in those situations all one must do is trigger defensive action to keep me engaged – such as intentional shaming.
Interestingly, I have not experienced identifiable shame in such a long time that I have failed to identify this emotional pattern in which shaming triggers defense in me. Which is to say, I am not sure if I engage in conflict to avoid feeling shame or because I feel shame. And I can’t help wonder how often others find themselves repeating behavioral patterns due to an emotional blindspot.
Often people go to therapy in order to obtain outside perspective that reveals their blindspots – not my experience regarding therapy. I do not think anyone can help you perceive what is inside the backrooms of your psyche. All they can actually do is help you to rearrange the distorted furniture most of the time. Without first knowing what is inside the room, describing the room is a bit like trying to describe a dog to someone who has never seen a dog before and asking them to draw you a picture so you can know what the dog looks like.
That said, if you’re lucky.. I think.. you might find your therapist well versed in what a distorted dog looks like.
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