I make recordings of myself talking. It’s intended as a warm-up for a podcast which might never come to be, and it’s also just a way to get some ideas out and eventually into type. What surprises me on listening back to that stuff is how much is unsaid. I hear myself saying things and I remember how much else was going on inside that either never was uttered or that came out in very abbreviated form. I suppose anyone could say the same, that any medium is going to shortchange you as far as being a vehicle for any kind of expression. I think back to how the typewriter I used throughout high school and college just could never keep up with the rapid fire of my thoughts. Cheap plastic computer keyboards seemed like a smoother ride but before long those, too, felt like inferior vehicles. I guess it was never lost on me but today I remind myself that even speech is, of necessity, a constantly filtered and newsified version of everything going on inside. It’s akin to my feelings about the brain MRIs I had done. You could photograph every slice, every blob of fatty matter, every last drop of brain goo and still, no one could tell you what is going on inside of there.
All of which reminds me that one of those MRI images seemed to show that my brain is haunted by Edgar Allan Poe:
Haunted Brain
