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When you are recalling a past event, do you imagine the transpired events as a series of still images of as “clips” of videos? Or as something else?
When people who can’t imagine things vividly in their mind’s eye are recalling something from the past, what exactly are they recalling? Words?
After a few seconds of trying the only time that 'still image' is the best description is remembering seeing Notre Dame or other nice looking places, but I'm not sure how much of that is true memory and how much me recreating the place in my imagination. Some memories are almost purely emotional because nothing interesting was happening around me except for the thoughts I was having, at most I have my eyes closed or I'm staring at a book. I'm sure some of this is corrupted by my reliving that thought each time I think about it but it does feel like the original moment is still there somewhere. Most memories are clips of a sort, though they're not consistently vivid all the way through and with effort I can usually unlock more details and lengthen the memory.
One thing I've noticed about my memory is that I'll remember very random things at times where no trigger seems apparent, it's a fun game to ask 'why am I remembering this now?'.
Another interesting thing I've noticed is that in certain emotionally salient moments I'll take on a sort of 'life history' perspective of all the other moments when I felt this way. My perspective is narrowed so that I'm not looking back on things linearly but thematically, all the parts not relevant to the current feeling feel extremely short compared to this series of important moments. The present is experienced linearly, but I wonder if 'looking back on life' is more a series of concurrent themes that fall in and out of prominence? The feeling of 'has it been three years already?' makes a lot more sense when most of the time in between these important points is being excluded (even though it may become relevant in some other narrative), especially when being reminded of where you were only a year ago makes it feel long again.
The moments that trigger this feeling don't have to be extreme: the change in seasons takes me back to the long evenings of previous summers, a good book takes me back to my first books, the taste of beer after a period of sobriety ensures I'll have plenty of stories to tell in an hour.
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