“I'm my demographic.”
Potential caption to accompany an as yet unpublished video of me talking to myself for over an hour. — Update one week later: Said video is now on YouTube & YewTube. Look at me, doing stuff as planned!
What could easily be judged as the raving of a madman is an attempt to capture genuine self talk. At least since I first learned of Stream of Consciousness literature I fixated on the seeming impossibility of capturing actual thought. I grant that lack of interest in such a project is a possible explanation. The content may indeed be of no general interest and is nearly incomprehensible to boot. To the best of my ability I am not talking to any viewer other than myself. As with the effect of measurement altering that which is measured, I've long felt that recording changes the behavior being recorded. It has been difficult for me to record thoughts. On video and verbalizing I am much more performative than I would be with no recording. Having said that I do banter with myself, have inside jokes, laugh at myself a lot, sing to myself. None of the behaviors in this video are uncharacteristic of me when not being recorded. There will (hopefully) never be a way to record actual thoughts. If a subject were unaware of being recorded their thoughts would be silent. I consider there to be value in this recording as psychological data. I only know my own brain so I could be an extreme outlier. But I do not believe so. Regardless I'm learning how I think. My brain circles back to topics. What is often considered distractability I view as natural functioning. The work of wise decision making happens in the background, I believe. The rapid cycling of thoughts into focus is how my mind operates. Development of ideas takes place consciously as well as unconsciously. My current take is that the unconscious processing is the more valuable. In other words, during healthy functioning an idea cycles back into top of mind more developed than the last time.
