Know about things and know about how to do things, the gap between them is similar to the gap between theory and experience.
I stumbled upon created realities that bridge this gap in ways I didn't expect. So far, the term attributed to these created realities are simulations of feeling.
E.g an interesting movie like the Whiplash hacks your brain into thinking you have lived through something you haven't. They fill the void between "hearing about it" and "living it" which leaves you with phantom memories of choices you never actually made and places you've never physically visited.
Uniform blend
Some creators tend to display this ability for cooking many ingredients into a single bowl with a terrifying level of precision.
The sound, visuals, dialogue, pacing, i.e elements that should feel separate are stir together until the seams disappear.
I think it is a specific talent coupled with a lot of hard work for producing a uniformly convincing texture that blurs much of the line between consumption and experience.
Of course, technological advancements also help but when it works, you don't notice the individual spices anymore, say the "acting" or "lighting" or "mechanics."
You just taste the soup, so to speak and it becomes a singular atmosphere where nothing feels out of place, and because the illusion is so complete, your brain stops fighting it and surrenders to the recipe.
Surreal experience..
Stickiness of subjective worlds
All these subjective worlds that I subconsciously inhabit are starting to have a stickiness that makes it hard to switch back to another subjective world or back to reality.
After spending hours inside an arguably all-consuming book like the ASOIAF series, I normally don't just snap out of it the moment I stopped reading. The logic of that world kind of clings to me and I find it particularly interesting to observe that when I walk into real reality, my mind is still operating on the physics of the world I just left.
It’s a sort of cognitive lag, a fog that makes the real world feel flat and boring by comparison, does takes time to "wash off" that other reality before you can inhabit your own skin again.
getting zapped
On the top of my head, movies and video games made up a good chunk of them, i.e getting zapped into a rectangle of light(smartphone) until the room around me disappears.
I could swear that it's a literal "zapping" of consciousness.
One minute you are sitting in a chair, aware of the active scenery outside and the temperature of the room. The next, your awareness has been transported into the interior of someone else's imagination and often it's the loss of time or rather noticing that time has passed is the only price of admission.
Impulse of creation mode
Arguably, being in "creation mode" is also a world of its own, nothing matters when you have this impulse to build something from scratch.
This is the flip side of the coin. As in instead of consuming a world, you are spinning one out of thin air.
For me, the heart of the experience seems a bit like a trance state where hunger, sleep, and anxiety are muted.
The only thing that is real is the project in front of you and in this state, you are the god of a tiny, private universe.
Perhaps, it's also the most dangerous world of all to get stuck in, because while you are busy building the walls of a new reality, the roof of your actual life could be falling down, and you wouldn't even look up to notice.
I think such is the danger of becoming a tourist in one's own life. And tourists, by definition, always go home eventually. But where is home when you've been away too long?
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