On Deja Vu

I call them “deja vu moments”–time seems to stop, and for the briefest of moments I know I’ve “seen” this before. Tonight, while straining macaroni I had a “deja vu moment.” Yesterday, scribbling some notes at work, I had one. A few days ago, while doing nothing of any import at work, I had another. Last Sunday, while building the USS Constellation, again a “deja vu moment.”

Scientifically, deja vu happens when the visual signal from one eye reaches the brain a fraction of a second before the signal from the other eye creating a slight mental discontinuity as the brain tries to process the two slightly-out-of-sync visual inputs.

What if it’s not? What if it’s something completely different?

I think deja vu could be a mild pre-cognition. No, I’m not suddenly about to craft and predict pre-fash Perky Pat layouts. It’s a strange idea, I know.

In other news, I have to wonder. Should point-of-view shift radically in the course of a single sentence? For a story I’m working on I think it should–start the sentence from one perspective, and as the sentence ends the point-of-view is completely different. It’s not something that could be done in anything but prose. Film? No. Theater? No. Audio drama? Hell no. But it’s right for the story I’m trying to tell.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

6 thoughts on “On Deja Vu

  1. Regarding deja vu: no clue. Though I think perhaps a better way of putting it would be that deja vu occurs when you recognize that a… pre-cognited moment (no clue what the right verb is—I’m sure that’s not it, though) has arrived.

    As for point-of-view shifts: it honestly depends on how well it’s done. I’m not a big fan of omniscient narration, but if it’s a complete shift in POV it could work.

    I like the new design, by the way. 🙂

  2. I liked the new design… until now. The rightside bar is on top of the actual posts, and in fact, this very textbox, to a certain extent. This makes it very hard to read everything or see what I’m typing.

    Seems to work fine in Firefox, though. I should really effect a total changeover womeday.

  3. Steve, is it better on your end now? I think the problem may have been in trying to fix the Search box–it wasn’t appearing in Opera because I think it was coded poorly in the sidebar code. Before going to see Constantine tonight I spent some time trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, only to have the sidebar disappear for me completely.

    If it’s still messed up on your end, all I need to do is rename a file on the server and the old, working sidebar will be back in place.

  4. > It’s not something that could be done in
    > anything but prose. Film? No. Theater? No.
    > Audio drama? Hell no.

    It’s a cool thought. Dylan kinda did something like that with Tangled Up In Blue… Throughout the verses the perspective shifts from third person to first person and back and forth… so you never really know who’s saying which lines… Anyway… it’s a good idea to resurrect… if you haven’t gotten around to it…

  5. I did, sort of. 🙂

    Essentially, this is where “Make-Believe,” my story in Star Trek: Constellations came from.

    I didn’t know it at the time. I was still a few months away from pitching the story (that happened in May 2005, as I recall).

    At the point where I wrote this, I was thinking in terms of “What if I had a story that started out one way, and then it peels back, and in the span of a few words shifts completely into something else?”

    Even though “Make-Believe” has some narration shifts, they aren’t as extreme as what I had in mind when I wrote this. The first narrative shift is still brutal, but that’s because it needs to be. 🙂

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