Tried to watch “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” for the second time last week.
Ben, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m sure it’s a great film, but it’s next-level inception depressing just how “it’s me” the issue is. The whole movie’s concept is the “me issue” – I gave this film a second go, and ya wanna know what happened?
I started… daydreaming.
And missed like… all of it.
I’ve always assumed daydreaming is a bad thing, because that’s what they tell you in school (AKA the acquired helplessness institute where I earned an idiocy degree). But after this one article I half read (half daydreamed through), I realized that there is such a thing as “constructive daydreaming”.
When this Einstein doc came on a few weeks ago, I thought it was lame they’d reduce homeboy’s “thought experiments” to trivial “daydreaming”. But, there’s nada trivial about it. It’s all about where your head’s at – starting with what you feed it. If you’re uni-focused and lost in cyclical thought, your daydreams probably will be obsessive and result in negativity and unhappiness. But if we expose ourselves to new shiz constantly, we get new thought fodder, and a chance to relate that new input back to whatever the initial situation was we got distracted from in the first place.
There were some interesting experiments done to test effective daydreaming. (I say “interesting” because I feel like it’s a nice euphemism for “bullshit-’cause-you-can’t-see-my-thoughts). Anyway, these researchers gave subjects and a control group a task and instructed only half of them to daydream during it. The ones who did were more productive. In another test, the same thing was done while volunteers had to generate creative ideas for everyday things.
I like this idea of constructive daydreaming, but my issue is the one voyeurism variable.
The thing is, if people are doing something private like daydreaming, they’re going to behave like quantum level particles: unpredictable when observed. If I know someone is going to be recording my progress, you can be damned sure I’m going to daydream with a purpose. The purpose of serving my ego, that is. I mean, I’ve got a lot of muh’fkkers to beat and a researcher to impress with my witty creative answers at the end, ya know?
But if I’m at home without some bespectacled lab rat to unlock my noggin and watch the chaotic vomit pour out like a fire hydrant of shame, what’s the point?
At home, I don’t have to explain to anyone that I lost an hour’s block of time to daydreaming. I don’t even have to say that daydream centered on looking out the window and witnessing zombies teeming outta the woods.
Or how I subsequently glanced down at the grass below to see if the mythical ambulating corpses could climb up to my window if they pleased.
Or admit my relief upon visual confirmation that no ladders or footing existed to permit the viscera starved creatures access to my elevated abode.
Or my returned concern at the thought “what if they’re like the Z-Day zombies???”.
You see? Absolutely none of this ever needs to be verbally cemented into reality so others can judge me. ’cause there’s no notepad to record my neurotic entropy.
It’s interesting though. Sans researchers, I do best with these “thought” or “concept” experiments when I’m in a minimally interactive, public setting. Somebody will say or do one tiny thing and I make a tiny internal connection with it. After that, my brain’s off to the races.
I can have a whole cascade of “Aha!” moments simply from a little old lady’s gait or some truculent child’s cries of protest about keeping on his shoes. Contrarily, I could sit for hours in solitude and get not shit done.
If you’re in a creative field, the only way to retain these fleeting nuggets of compressed cognitive carbon, is to do the spastic thing and write ’em down right away. None of this “I’ll remember it later” bullshit.
In the end, the whole constructive versus compulsive daydream capacity probably has more to do with location – both physically and emotionally. The latter, we modify by willingness to alter action, reaction, and what we expose ourselves to.
And the former’s not terribly tough to control.
Unless – of course – you wake up tied to a fluorescent lit dungeon pipe against the soundtrack of distantly dripping water and start sorting through the roofie colada fog – only to hazily observe the walls are neatly decorated with easy access torture tools and bits of brain.
In that event, I’d suggest trying your hardest to constructively daydream.
Starting with an escape plan, perhaps.
And, yes. I often imagine a reality where Bates is cradling a sledgehammer in the corner and staring me down as I sit bound to my laptop marinating in the absence of creative inspiration.