Face Blind

I don’t see faces.

Well, I can see them, but not in the same way as you do.

As a seven year old, I spent an inordinate amount of time retreating into my thoughts, bumbling my way through awkward social interaction, and somehow irritating everyone I encountered without ever intending to. As a result, I wasn’t considered the coolest 40 cent Paddle Pop in the tuckshop freezer.

My experience of childhood face blindness is represented by a lone memory. On the afternoon in question, I held my mum’s hand to cross the road after school. As we waited, I could feel the sun’s heat on my black leather school shoes which, on my mother’s ill-informed insistence, were about as cringe worthy as my individually initialled retractable crayon set. As we waited for a break in traffic, I heard someone call out my name. I looked around me for a familiar face but, recognising no one, dismissed the call as a misheard “Brendan” or “Breanna”. I went back to wiping the sticky hibiscus sap from my fingers onto my blue and gold spray jacket. My mum got me into trouble for ignoring what, to her eyes, seemed to be a friend of mine calling out from a car window and being rudely ignored.

My first realisation of face blindness was decidedly more significant. I sat in the morning sun in my front doorway, eyes closed, skin prickling with the cool breeze, dozing in and out of a smoke-induced haze while Dr Karl spread his infinite wisdom through the radio. He began talking about a condition called Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which he’d suffered from his whole life. Suddenly I was snapped into sobriety as the name of this eerily familiar condition etched itself forever into the slate of my mind. As he spoke, I travelled through a montage of realisation – that’s why I thought the two new girls in year 8 were the same person - it puzzled me that the blonde new girl only had an Irish accent half the time. That’s why I was forever stuck in embarrassing situations where I had no idea who I was speaking to, although they obviously knew me quite well. Or why I found it nearly impossible to follow films, why I was constantly introducing myself to people that assured me we already knew each other, why I would obsessively photograph everyone I met at parties so I could learn their face afterwards, and why meeting up with someone in a public place spurred on a sickening anxiety that no one else seemed to experience. Two weeks later ABC’s Catalyst had a user-friendly story on face blindness, and the ensuing online tests confirmed that I had a distinct problem with facial recognition.

People don’t understand. And why should they? If they’ve met me several times, spent nights in long conversation, then met up for coffees and group gallery outings only to be completely ignored or offered a wan smile at our next meeting, they have every right to feel offended and confused. Attempts to explain my condition are often frustratingly misread; people counteract my apologetic and inadequate excuse of “I’m bad with faces,” with the oft-cited “I’m bad with names”. To have my daily struggle trivialised and dismissed so easily makes me want to retreat to the safety of my closest and more recognisable friends, and remain in that warm comfort zone where I no longer have to walk around avoiding eye contact at the risk of offending someone else.

I’ve noticed patterns: Most of my friends are weird looking, by normal standards. Tattoos, dread locks, coloured hair, piercings, and a distinctive face, voice, or style (or, some would say, lack thereof). Their oddities allow me to remember them on our second, third and fourth meetings, so the friendship is allowed to form without anyone getting offended.

I’ve adapted strategies: If I study a face in 2D or photographic form, it helps with recall. If I paint or draw a portrait, I can recognise the face easier. Face Blindness sufferers recognise people not by their face (an instantaneous and effortless system for most), but by consciously remembering someone’s hair, body language or voice. If it were up to me, it would be mandatory for all people to wear a name tag, and to never change their hair style, or for that matter the shirt they wore the night I first met them. Vote 1: Brenna Quinlan for president.

I’ve created analogies: They say that in a bucket of pebbles, all will be different, but our brains aren’t equipped to recognise those subtle differences. Even if you tried, you couldn’t recognise all of the pebbles. We can only recognise faces so well because we have evolved a part in our brain dedicated to this vital skill. In some people, this doesn’t work so well. For me, looking at a face in depth is like saying a common word over and over until it loses meaning. The harder I study a face, the less it looks like the person I know, and the more it creeps toward something distorted and disturbingly unfamiliar. For this reason, no amount of effort makes recognition easier. Furthermore, like a tomato left in the fridge, my ability to recognise someone decays after a few months without contact.

When my mum was growing up, people thought she was slow because she had trouble reading. She grew up thinking there was something vastly wrong with her intelligence, a self-image that still affects her today. Now, however, people understand dyslexia, and no child is told they are stupid because they get things confused. I hope that when my children are growing up, prosopagnosia will be a recognised and understood phenomenon that sufferers needn’t feel shame about.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1982889.htm

Did you know Oliver Sacks and John Close are face blind? I only heard this after I wrote this blog. Very interesting parallels:

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/jun/15/strangers-in-the-mirror/#commentform

A good deed from a stranger

I've had the remaining six works of my Dead Bird Series on display at Milk Thieves for a week now. Today Emma Lee sent me a text saying that two more have sold! When a work sells to an absolute stranger, it's a huge compliment. This is the perfect way to gain that all-important momentum as I begin my Road Trip series. Thankyou stranger, you've made a big difference to this young artist's day.

The top ten fine things of the past fortnight

1. Hello, silver lining. I realised that losing one's job is a licence to call oneself a full time artist.

2. The indulgent anticipation of travel. I woke up on Sunday morning next to the boy that I’m crazy about. He hugged me good morning and whispered, “Just imagine what country we’ll be waking up to in four months”.

3. Trying something new. Spending the night asleep on the floor, just because we could. I woke up feeling delightfully aligned and surprisingly well rested.


4. Inspirational women and mutual admiration. Van Badham: internationally renowned playwright, lecturer, and (as of this week,) successful author. She epitomises all that is young, vibrant, and ever so wonderful about the creative world. I last saw her in London in 2009, but she was back in Oz this week for her packed-to-the-rafters but somehow still adequately supplied with wine book launch in Leichhardt. Last night in Wollongong she reappeared; thin, fabulous, and self-assured (as always) in a gorgeous yellow cardigan and those divine silver tights. With her “low threshold for wank”, she undermined every pretentious hipster in the room (and there sure were a lot of them) with her sharp wit, infallible intellect and natural eloquence. “Brenna is fabulous,” she said to her friends, “journalist, writer, talented artist - and she organises exhibitions.”

5. Being able to let go. My book collection, which has sat neatly stacked in six storage boxes for over a year, has been halved. I now own only the best, most treasured stories, and can pass the others on to new homes. The romance associated with traversing the globe, free of possessions, with no reason to return and nothing to tie me down (you know the script) has outweighed my previous penchance for op shop bargains and darling bric-a-brac which would have otherwise beautified the fictitious home of my dreams.

6. The first day of spring smelled like cut grass, salt spray, jasmine flowers and warm earth – every cliché I had hoped for. Also, the grass is growing faster than the guineapigs can eat it.

7. When experiments just work. Strawberry sorbet and rice milk makes the best non-dairy strawberry milk. And the vegan chocolate cake, which called for silken tofu instead of eggs (I only had firm tofu so I was sure it would be lumpy), the batter of which was so runny that I never thought it would set, was absolutely divine.


8. The excitement and anticipation of change. When all your friends have the same colour hair, it’s time for something drastic. My hair doesn’t define me anymore. It’s high time I cut it off.

9. Define success. My measure of artistic triumph has always been superficial: artists sell work. I concluded that those ‘sold’ dots on the wall would be my only ticket to that painfully elusive club which I had craved membership to since, as a guilty five year old, I secretly and indulgently paged through mum’s copy of ‘Nudes of the Renaissance’. Selling my first works was exhilarating, but I have since realised that I became an artist long before the frames were on the wall. I had organised and executed an exhibition, I had made art for this exhibition, I had filled diaries with sketches, and (may I indulge myself briefly,) I had three exhibitions running simultaneously, at the same time, concurrently, in chorus, and all together at once. I had made art because I wanted to, not because uni declared that I should. I had become an artist without even realising it.

10. Staying positive at your worst. Now, I’ve filled out a lot of those mental health questionnaires in my time. There are two questions they always ask: “How often do you feel worthless?” and “How often do you have nothing to look forward to?” I realised this week that I always answer these questions the same. No matter how bad things get, I know I’m special, and that there are always things to look forward to.