The loss of reading
By FARHA GUERRERO
I’ve been thrown into a world of non-reading. I read very little now, and how I read is mostly in the form of audio—the spoken word rather than the written word.
In this orality of my new life, I find that I’m thinking more than before. Contemplation. Pondering.
When I “read”—that is, when I listen to something I’m learning about—it seems that I absorb it more.
I noticed something that feels very relevant to my illness: with the loss of one faculty, I seem to have gained another.
Would I have written these things prior? There is something changing. This could be a powerful testament that this illness might be a kind of blessing.
No philosopher can exist without contemplation. It’s not just producing words; it’s thinking about them deeply.
I wonder now if I’m living in a moment in my life where that advantage is quite real.
Have I ever been this philosophical before?
Is it thanks to my reading epilepsy? Is it thanks to the loss of a faculty that has brought me here?
Often when I use voice to text, I feel I am writing every time.
The brain seems to know the economy of time one has when dictating. When I dictate with my voice, there is much more coherency.
When I use the read-aloud function after something is transcribed, I can hear the parts that should be cut out.
It becomes an easier choice by listening than by looking.
The cadence, the rhythm, the structure that oral writing has is what I love about writing.
The poetics. The sound.
If we look at someone like Socrates, he never wrote a word down, and we know him only through Plato.
He engaged with people in conversation.
For thousands of years humans used their voices.
Writing, as we know it today, is quite modern if we look at human history.
So there is certainly power in what I can do with this.
I am a thinker who speaks aloud, one who speaks their thoughts aloud.
Walking and talking with a companion has always been part of my life.
I sometimes wish there was an invisible scribe writing everything down.
This new way of writing pairs very well with who I am.
More deep thinking. Only the use of the voice.
I think there is something very powerful about this moment in my life.
Something is changing.