The Seeing Event

Is seeing separate from touching, or hearing from tasting? And what about seeing seeing? Or to hear hearing, taste tasting, smell smelling, feel feeling? Despite these possibilities—and yet, precisely in and of the possible—it seems seeing, and seeing alone, is privileged. Why, and what space can such occupy? Let’s try to, um, see.

Look at the person next to you and into her eyes. What do you see? It’s not just her eyes. You see her seeing you. And stranger, you see her eyes seeing you seeing her. Eyes, then, perform multiply: they are at once seer and seen, at once consuming the world just as they are playing the world back. But, alas, seeing is not alone—touching inaugurates a similar experience. Try touching her: a carnal intertwining at once a touching and feeling, at once changing the world and changed by it.

Now turn away from her and look at a work of art, a portrait if you will. You may see two eyes peering out at you, but they are not seeing you per se: paintings and photographs and film, then, remove you from your space. Or not so much remove you as enfold you into their visual fabric with an alien posture and gait, a thoroughly foreign mode of seeing. What is this seeing of seeing? It is an alien seeing, and it is because seeing alone is framed, is closed and bounded, that seeing can be alien, that seeing can see seeing. That is to say, you can see another person seeing and see through another person’s very seeing as if it were your own.

But just as in The Matrix, when Neo opens his eyes for the first time, he is blinded by the light, learning to see seeing hurts, it blinds till you emerge a whole new seer. To persevere, to finally open your eyes, however, explodes the world. Representational art becomes the norm, a mere replication of your familiar world. But so-called non-representational art, abstract art: ah, here we have the inauguration of whole new modes of seeing, whole new worlds to explore, to sense and create and become with.

May I say, though? The notion of privileging sight above the other senses, still, seems odd. Perhaps it is a symptom of language? Perhaps, just as we can see seeing, we can see sounds, see palpably, even see palatably? But I wonder, what about synesthesia? Can we see synesthesia itself? What would such an undertaking entail? Such will be the focus of this blog: to explore this strange space, and perhaps look at a film or three, analyze acid-induced synesthesia, and occasionally just wonder at the beauty of such a multiply single sensation.