Curiosity about modes

[mrissa]

Story research, sort of, and sort of personal curiosity. Define terms for yourself, but if you think you're defining them idiosyncratically, please let me know. Nuance in the comments! Nuance in the comments is always welcome. (The first two questions may not be entirely clear. Basically I think there's a huge difference between being a very visual person and having good eyesight, that kind of thing. Also, you define what senses you feel you mess with in your art or craft. If you write poetry and experience that as a "hearing" art or a "sight" art or a "hearing and sight" art, whatever: put down your perception of it. Thanks.)

[Poll #730569]

Comments

[songwind.livejournal.com]

My "correctable impairment" is mostly an anemic lexicon of taste building blocks with which to create new combinations with any reliability. A skill I intend to learn rather than a malfunction.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So you're saying that you feel your ability to create taste combinations reliably is impaired by your inability to identify what you've got in the first place in so many words? That you can't, say, go to a restaurant and say, "too much basil, needed more oregano"? Or have I misunderstood you here?

[zellandyne.livejournal.com]

For that last question I picked every sense, but I could just as easily have picked none. For me, writing touches all the senses, because, hopefully, you convey enough to have a reader imagine from all the senses. At the same time, they don't really touch, taste, see, or hear the actual art form. I mean, you can argue sight because they read it, or touch because they touch the book, but the creation isn't precisely physical.

[wychwood]

For the last question, I said "sight", because that's true of most of the "creative" things I feel invested in. But I also perform music (singing), and I wasn't sure whether to put that in (I didn't). It's not creative, per se, it's performance of someone else's music, but still...

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Precisely. Mostly because I familiar with the finished flavors, not the components.

So instead of "too much basil, needs more oregano" I get a rather vague and not very useful "that should taste more like spaghetti sauce."

[aet.livejournal.com]

It is a sad one for me, as all my senses seem to be a bit faulty.

I sometimes suspect that this constant shortage of sensations is why I hate to wear gloves (usually it has to be -10 C outside and even if I do know better, I hate working in gloves and often forget) - to give away even MORE of something I so lack is so hard.

It can look cute from outside, though - used to look like caring when I had to ask everyone to taste the food I was cooking. Well, used to look less good when I had people around and asked often : "Please sniff it - is it spoiled or not?"

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

For the last one I picked hearing and sight to represent writing because I know quite a few people who say "I hear the words as I read them." I'm still not sure if that was the right thing, and in spite of reading being a skill that largely relies on vision (except Braille), I don't feel it is a visual thing.

I'm so confused right now...

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

My sense of smell is hypersensitive. I don't know if this is an impairment. It's a damn nuisance. I bake a lot -- is that a smell-focused craft? I regard it so, despite its impermanence. (Well, a song is gone even quicker, and I recognize that as craft. Oh, well.) My sense of hearing is changing, in massively inconvenient ways. I don't think of it as "impairment" exactly, but it is interfering with some uses. I can hear perfectly well. It just takes a lot more work for me to differentiate the sound I want to hear from background noise, and the work is stressful and tiring (the visual equivalent would be squinting all the time) and sometimes it does not seem possible.

More later as time permits.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I'm a very tactile person with a strong visual sense. Therefore, I do radio. (Oddly, that's a serious answer.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I put down sight and touch, although the touch is really movement - I experience music, art, poetry, and writing kinesthetically. That's one of the reasons I love linework, because I can "feel" it better - smooth sine-wave undulations, or staccato, slashing lines, and so on. I think that's also why I like big, brassy classical music and 80s pop/dance music, and techno remixes of songs and loud, rhythmic percussion - because I can feel the movement in my head, and to tie the visual in - I can visualize a music video or a scene that it could be a soundtrack to.

Surprisingly for all that, I'm not much of a dancer, but I think that's more from not getting the right sort of music to dance to as a child in ballet and tap lessons, and then having friends who just don't dance much. :) I liked the dances when I was in the SCA, and I enjoyed ballroom dancing in college, but when you're not that good at meeting and interacting with new people and nobody you know goes dancing ... well, you don't dance much.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Boy, have you chosen the right friends. I will pick apart flavors for you more or less infinitely.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure; I think different people interact with writing in different ways.

I'm interested that you only thought of writing, though, and not some of the stuff you've been making for skin etc. lately.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am not a creativity nazi; I have listened to different enough interpretations of the same song that I can hardly believe some creative effort wouldn't be involved.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

As a daughter of the Romantics, I am highly moved by interior, subjective, "feeling" which is different from touch, being an emotional tone. All my senses serve my attempts to describe this completely subjective experience.

I have exceptional sight. I thought I was losing it when in NYC because there was no horizon to look to. I was growing near-sighted because the only things to look at were up close.

I have a "good ear" but have struggled with hearing problems through out my life. Sometimes I think that the "good ear" thing is compensatory.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I'll have to remember that the next time we eat together. :)

[songwind.livejournal.com]

And yes, you're right - I have definitely picked the right friends.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it still is caring if you have everyone taste the food you're cooking. If you can't taste the difference, making sure people who can are well-served is a considerate thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Aww. Thank you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sometimes confusion is a good thing, thinking about stuff we'd taken for granted. I don't think there's one right answer on this.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I put down sight and touch, although the touch is really movement

Yes!

Well, not about the sight. But I was trying to figure out how to say that for me above, touch = movement/awareness of space.

Oddly enough, I also Don't Dance. Though I watched Mad Hot Ballroom the other day and now I want to make some friends go do this with me:

http://heyletsgo.com/event-60854

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would say of course baking is a smell-focused craft, but I know that's not everyone's experience. And impermanence is no impediment to art or craft, I don't think.

More later as time permits will be much appreciated.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I experience transitory times when hearing or touch (or very infrequently smell) are on par with my vision, but they usually pass very swiftly.

Because I'm nearsighted, I'm oriented toward form, color, and motion. The edges, boundries, and most fine-textures are too blurry for me to make out until I'm fairly close-up. (Conceptually I'm intrigued by where things bleed into one-another, and the fine-distinctions. perhaps I'm compensating?)

Touch hasn't been even a tirtiary sense for me. I'm aware of heat/humidity, but beyond my own body/clothes I only notice touch if I'm specifically investigating something (ie when shopping for clothes or furniture), or if the sensation is painful/dangerous. Even then the impression is usually fleeting and filed away as information rather than direct perception: 'feels good', 'feels rough', 'feels soft', etc. Touch is just not a way I generally relate to my surroundings.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I lied--I forgot that I knit and sew. Touch and sight, I guess...unless I mess up, when you would definitely hear something. And is cooking a craft? OK, I lied twice.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sounds like fun! I'd go, if I weren't in Texas. XD

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about that yesterday: how writing employs all the senses - and it made me realize that also applies to the other arts.

As a visual artist I'm paying attention to the whole range of my experience and trying to convey what I understand through all my senses in visual terms. As a singer, likewise. I think that's one of the things that makes the arts valuable: that ability to convey in a particular mode more than the mode itself contains - it's a way to get through to people who may be overly stuck in some one mode. The literary art can convey the whole world of the sense to people who are overly stuck in a verbal mode.