Seeing is Believing

[Lalwendë]

Real food for thought…the human mind…

According to Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques, there are many different ways of thinking, and often one way will be dominant in a person. I know someone who thinks in a highly visual manner; she uses diagrams to explain concepts, and speaks in phrases such as “I can see…” or “The shape of the issue is…”. I am apparently a kinaesthetic thinker; I respond to taste, smell and texture; I say “it feels…”, or “I think…”. Such things affect our thinking and perceptions at the most basic level.

To add to this, apparently we all have a tendency towards a particular type of intelligence. There is an interesting test which can be taken here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/ A few months ago, I passed this around to a few friends; of the Tolkienians, all three women (including myself) came out as existential thinkers, while both men came out as logical thinkers. This rang true from discussions we had all had; the existentialist thinkers amongst us often talked of why things happened, while the scientific thinkers seemed to talk of how things happened.

And finally, to add into the psychological mixture, there is the life experience which we all gather. I am very different to the person I was three years ago, and at that stage I was very different to the person I was when I first read Tolkien.

With age, I see that all these things and more are brought to the text by us as readers. And so the question/s:

What did you see in Tolkien? What do you see now?

Way back when, I was little more than a child, and I viewed Middle earth as a merely fantastical new world. I stumbled across it somehow at an important time in my life, and have walked there ever since. I see it as a traveller might, with wide eyes. But while back then I met a Gandalf who was simply an untouchably clever wizard, a Gollum who was faintly creepy and a Frodo who was heroic, now when I take a walk there I meet different people. Gandalf is wise and something of a moral relativist, Gollum is a broken creature who I want to help yet can do nothing for, Frodo is in real and tangible despair.

At 12 I was steeped in mysterious folk tales and fairy stories, and some of those creatures were very much real to me. When I discovered the weird creatures of Middle earth, the Dragons and Elves and Orcs and Balrogs, they were also real; how could they not exist? And now I am older, and after that first reading have ventured into learning of many things which are not of this world; whether of the mind or of something more spiritual. The creatures are still real, but they are mixed with ideas of other creatures.

The places of Middle Earth remain much as they ever did. It took a lot of effort to take that journey to see those places, so they are pictures that aren’t easily shaken off. As I have visited new places in the real world, they have sometimes added to my picture of Middle Earth. I have at various times tried to draw or paint what I saw, but it is like trying to hold water in my outstretched hand, it is impossible to convey quite what I have seen. I love to see paintings of Middle Earth, but it’s as though everyone who goes there has taken a different type of camera with them, or as if the world itself changes for every visitor.

I used to think Middle Earth was pure perfection, but now, with familiarity and age, it is not perfect. I see that it has troubles as much as my own world does and I can’t pretend that I’d like to be chased from my home by a bunch of Orcs, or be expected to be a woman who must simply ‘sit and wait’. Even this in its way is changing, as I think how nice it would be to take up the philosophy of downshifting.

When I’ve walked in Middle Earth, I’ve been able to smell the flowers and the grass, and the burning stench of battle. I’ve imagined drinking the cool Entdraughts and wondered whether those Elven cloaks are as itchy as I imagine.

This is a bit of “This is my Middle Earth, tell me yours”… but this is an interesting thread, tempting me into the twin areas of philosophy and reflective thought at the same time. I firmly believe that once a work leaves the hands of its creator then the creative process has only been half begun, as readers inevitably bring themselves to bear on a text; they do not change it physically, but it is different for everyone metaphysically.

[Rimbaud]

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title."


Interestingly, prior to posting, I took the test to which you link, and came out as a 'Linguistic Thinker'. Although such devices are to be approached not so much with a pinch of salt as an ocean's worth, the result tallies with what I was planning to say.

There are two levels within me on reading Tolkien. These I shall call, for simplicity, the Child and the Critic; the latter is now always in play with all my reading, the former only with books of a particular hue (JRRT and similar being a good example).

I use a colour-based metaphor with deliberation, for as the test result above suggests, it is the material, the fabric of the thing that affects me now, the warp and the woof of the words that stitch together my experience. The Child was and is awakened by the heady rush of story, the impetus, the turns, and later in life now, by the shimmer of well-worked language - the Child wants to be transported. The Critic (for wont of a better term, although critic has unwelcome connotations in this analogy), when reading JRRT, is enthralled by the language as the work itself, by the structure, the pacing, the tone. The words themselves, the phrase and the poise are what this half seeks. Absorption is desired, yet always kept at hand's distance. The Critic is like the ancient paradigm - how to you discuss consciousness from a viewpoint that will never be outside of it?

It is also, naturally, this half that also finds the disappointments within the books, but yet sometimes, the very greatest pleasure. For often now, the Child remains unawakened, that sense of wonder diminished as I read more and more, and review, and reccommend, and critique, but the older half can sometimes lead the Child to see new benefits. Very few works awaken this more primitive sense of wonder directly now, and it is to the credit of the ME mythologies that they rouse both to wakefulness.

So here, two levels: one is feeling the crops in the fields around the Shire brush against my head and arms (bringing personal memories of childhood, often spent in such fields back to me), the other is noting the well-cut sentence, the finely tuned chapter, the awkward shift of tone; yet these come together, to leave the cloth of the whole to be admired.