About Face
Do you suffer from pareidolia?
Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈
Three dots—that’s all you need. Two eyes and a mouth.
You don’t even need a nose dot.
A fourth dot is a visual waste of brain-calculating space and is not necessary for facial recognition cognition.
You just need the general sense. A suggestion of. That’s all you need for face pareidolia.
Two eyes for the seeing and one mouth for the accusatory whispers.
Three dots.
Pinholes in the world for hallucinatory expression to shine on through and trick you.
Three dots.
A visage, not there, thrown upon the mind wall by your treacherous projector.
Three dots.
Two non-blinking eyes and a static mouth.
Three dots.
In the toast. In the trunk of that tree. In that leaf on the street. In that sportscar’s grill. The manhole cover hides its below-deck fatberg secrets right there under your feet, behind its steely eyes and stoic mouth.
Face, face, face, face, face.
A sly grin, a twitching wink, and BOOM! There’s your illusion. There’s your pareidolia paranoia.
A facial sea of fake humanity.
Three effin’ dots.
We are stalked by these fraudulent faces wherever we go. The there’s not there, playing tricks on our brains and making fools of us all. These faces—wary, suspicious, jolly, confused—appear in everyday objects without summoning or ceremony.
Our brains simply join the dots.
Three dots.
That house has a face. That mailbox, a mean mug. Even the parking meter on Main Street wears a snide expression on its dial. There. There. There. Another. They don’t even try to look away when you catch them staring.
Their expressions are fixed. Their moods do not alter.
Startled. Sad. Surprised. Angry. Aloof. Shocked. Judgmental.
What do they want?
Why are they looking at us?
If we ignore them, will they go away?
Three dots. Two eyes and a mouth.
That’s all you need for perception poison.
We are surrounded.
Faces, faces everywhere, and all a mask, you fink!
Moon, cars, bread, Mars.
This is madness.
The squat red-brick house with a wrinkled forehead observes your approach with its half-lidded eye, its red wooden mouth shut fast with one brass tooth glinting in the sunlight. The tongue of a welcome mat suggests anything but.
What are you looking at? What do you want!?
A closer look reveals the truth. Ah. Just two windows and a red door. The half-closed blind—or is it half-open?—projects the hooded lid of accusation. A wariness undeserved. Repeat: That is not an eye, that is a window. That is not a face, it’s an overpriced rental on a back street with cracked plaster and collapsing smile lines. Not face, face, face. House, house, house.
Two windows and a door.
Three dots.
Two eyes and a mouth.
“Where are you going?” says the house as you pass by. “Ducking out on the dishes again?”
“Shut up, Face!” you mutter, scuttling off, jamming your hands in your pockets and shouldering your shame.
What’s that now, mailbox? What does your expression mean? Are you afraid? Are you judging us? Do you mean us harm with your slot for a mouth, a slot eager for gossip as your eyes yearn for correspondence from far-off places? Eaten any good bills lately? Chewed up a notice for jury duty for anyone? Whose side are you on, mailbox? Do you accept impending financial ruin into your flapping maw? Or do you just flash a no junk mail warning on your toothless grill?
Phew! Friendly face-face-face. Mailbox.
The news states that Jesus is in a tortilla at the taco truck on San Simeon Road. Or is it Elvis? Why is it never your brother’s face? Or that dude who makes your avocado toast at that café you like? The bids are up to $10,000 on eBay for the Jesus.
Someone, attempting to capitalize on a smudge in the calories. A smear on the starch.
Three dots. Two eyes and a mouth. And a beard in this instance, so not Elvis. Either way, these carbs won’t save you. That face won’t talk you out of your insanity. Not that face. Not that serene and delightfully edible and divine face.
There’s a face in the cheese grater. Do you see it? And one there, in the bottle opener. There’s a corner on Alpine Road with a guidepost that when viewed at a certain angle looks like a penguin with reflector eyes and a dot for a beak. What part of your brain thinks ‘yep, penguin’ in that second? And why is it the same part that sees the laughing face made by the faucet in the basin in your bathroom? Real-world Rorschach.
A therapist would have a field day with this.
Eggs on a plate with a bacon rasher mouth, laughing at me. Gossiping with the toast about the pimple on my chin, no doubt.
Faces. Everywhere.
I’m not insane. Human beings see faces in everything. It’s a feature, not a bug.
When I was a small girl, living on a farm in Australia, there was an old sea Captain in the tree bark on the ancient eucalyptus outside my bedroom window. I told my dad about it recently, having never mentioned it as a child. I can still see it. At the edge of darkness, the light from the living room barely touched the shape of its evil, its glare—but I could see it. Three dots, I guess. Two eyes and a mouth. Looking back at my terrified, little-girl face as I peered at the captain from the safety of my bedroom window.
“You’re not there,” I’d whisper, attempting to blink it away. “You’re not real.” And then I’d peel my little fingers off the sill and scoot into bed and under the covers. But even with it out of sight, the three dots of it remained in my mind, projected in my head.
Watching me. Facing me with its… face.
Dad had never seen the face. The three dots did not reveal themselves to him.
I’m not insane.
Humans see faces in everything. Everywhere where there are none. They are hallucinations of our imaginations and I want to know why. What purpose does this ability serve? It is survival? To make us feel not so alone? To keep us vigilant?
And why are we so adept at seeing fake faces in things—with only three dots—and so hopeless at acknowledging the real faces right in front of us, trying to connect?
I may not be insane but I am guilty of this. I look down at the phone in my hand, and in an instant, it recognizes MY face and opens up its world—our world, our relationship—to me. I lose myself in it. It is safe, warm, and secure. The reflection I see is my own face and it means me no harm.
I am three dots. Two eyes and a mouth. Two eyes that turn away from the contact of a conversation that could get ugly. A conversation I don’t want to have with a real person. Or even just myself. Sad eyes. A mouth that says to a mirror: Who am I? Why am I here? What will I become?
Humans—now more connected than ever—have never felt so alone. So isolated. I know this because I keep reading about it. It pops up as news on my phone. As a recommended video on my YouTube. There is a loneliness epidemic sweeping the world, they say. We are soloing into the abyss.
Alone. With our phones.
Pandemic, epidemic—it’s always something—and loneliness is not a new thing. It wasn’t recently invented. It’s always been there for those who care to admit to it. And it’s easy to admit it to everyone now. People are real hot on it.
Just press a button.
Broadcast your three lonely dots to the world.
Our two eyes and a mouth, seen by the algorithm. Sometimes not.
Dots or no dots, it’s all about the faces.
Faces can be fraudulent.
Faces can tell the truth.
Faces can calculate action and say so much without ever opening the mouth dot at all.
Lonely faces. Loving faces. Caring faces. Hateful faces. Bored and yawning faces. We talk out both sides of it. We turn it away.
We save it.
In your face, about face, face off.
Read with it. Eat with it. Love with it.
Faces move.
The eye dots are more than dots. They express. Crinkle at the corners to indicate all sorts of emotions. The mouth dot is bracketed by lines that set themselves in a sort of experiential concrete in your skin to remind you of living. Of having lived. Of life.
To see a face in the crowd at a party, one you know and like, one smiling back at you—what a relief. The emotion lights it up. Your face comes alive.
But the faces in things? What is the use of that? They aren’t real. They provide no service. They instill no joy, so…
Pay them no mind. Laugh at them. Push them out of your head cinema. They have but one expression to wear to the end of time. The fronts of cars look happy. Wall sockets seem startled. Sewer grates are downtrodden. Houses are staunchly against things, or openly hostile to the presence of history.
They say it takes the brain about a quarter of a second to recognize an object—car, glove, chair, croissant for example. But face recognition is much faster. About a tenth of a second. Faces and the ability to read them are important in social relationships because you need to know: Is this friend or foe? Am I about to be eaten or fed? How shall I react based on the emotional signals being transmitted by this face?
Is this love coming towards me, or just another selfish mailbox?
The face in the mailbox is a whimsy of sorts, and while you could argue that it’s impossible to feel lonely while surrounded by faces and maybe that’s why we see them, that too is a flawed theory.
Because real or not real, we all know that the loneliest place is a crowd filled with faces you don’t know.
Real or not real, there or not there, we are more than three dots.
We are delightful constellations of our universes.
Connect the dots to remind yourself daily.
Two eyes to see and appreciate you.
One mouth to express the joy we feel when we see you.
And a whole body to love you with.
Ain’t that a picture?
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
"For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don't."- Jorge Luis Borges
On Rotation: “Statement of Intent” by Chris Knox
Back in the early days of lockdown, Marc Maron used to play Instagram Live roulette with his record collection and play records based on the Letter and Number on his (extensive) shelves. The day he played this I wanted it instantly. Down the rabbit hole. A New Zealand artist I’d never heard of. This record came out in 1989, the year I finished high school. I want it on vinyl… it’s… expensive because it’s not in the USA. One day, it shall be mine!
Now that I think about it… is it REALLY expensive, Janeen? You did pay to have an obscure copy of Ten Benson’s “Hiss” sent from Japan because it was the only place you could find it at the time, so…
I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with miniatures, but I like them in no “small” way. See what I did there? Adelaide-based artist, Joshua Smith, makes some rippers. Check out his Instagram for more, and here’s a little piece in Colossal about his work.
Via Colossal
Via Boing Boing