David's World

June 18, 2005

Linda Going in Circles

A Friday night, at a bar in Edinburgh: Linda.

Linda and her husband invite us to take the empty seats at their table, right near the huge windows overlooking the waters of the port of Leith. Linda might be in her forties. The gentleman next to her is her husband Paul; he wears a black leather-coat. Witty eyes.

Linda tells us straight away, Paul had a form of cerebral palsy. He's got his wheel-chair by the table. I feel she wants to manage expectations. I suppose she has some kind of handicap, too.

No, we're not here to see a movie. Just for a quick drink. "Oh, I love the movies. American ones, only American ones." She asks me when I'm born. "March 5", I reply. - "So what sign are you?" - "That would be Pisces." Linda is excited. "Oh I felt it. I'm a little psychic." Her husband smiles. Paul is an actor at one of the local theaters.

Linda fetches two more pints of lager from the bar, to go with her half-empty one and her husband's red wine. "So, what movie are you going to see tonight?"

We talk about the movies again. She likes Jane Fonda. "Oh, is she still around?" I ask, and I am met with disdain. Of course she is. She's probably the best-looking 68-year-old on the planet. Conversation in circles. Star signs, pisces. Life is a history repeating. "What movie will you you seeing now?"

Sudden moment of clarity. Things fall into place. We all know, Hollywood flicks are simplistic in a way. They tell the same story, over and over again, the theory of epic theatre applies. But more importantly, scenes are tightly coupled. Stories are told step by step, one scene connects to the previous one.

"Oh, no movie tonight. We're just here for drinks and to enjoy the view." My replies show little variation, either. "Are you from Edinburgh originally?"

The continuous stream of story-telling, that's something found not only in Hollywood movies. Texts show a similar property. Sentences in text pick up concepts from the previous ones, one thing builds on the other, and you end up with chains of topics, threading through your text. That is, if the text is what we call coherent. Why do people prefer to read coherent texts? One possible answer is: because it's easier for us. It's easier to deal with previously encountered topics. We're all limited, just like Linda: we can't keep much in our working memory at the same time. Some are better, some are worse, it may as well be a question of degree. That's why Linda has a hard time learning things: because she can't shuffle them around and play with the ideas until they settle.

Tonight's little revelation for me is that Hollywood movies accomodate for the Linda-phenomenon. They are easier to understand for people with little short-term memory. People like you and me! The same criterion applies to series: they make very little backreferences from episode to episode. But even within an episode, we don't need to remember what happened 10 minutes ago. We only need a short window of attention if we're allowed to focus at one thing at a time. Maybe that's why watching movies is relaxing. Maybe that's why Golf is fun, when you have to juggle many ideas at the same time in your professional life. Just concentrate on getting the ball from here to there.

I wonder if Linda knows Dory from Finding Nemo, the fish with short-term memory loss. Dory is amicable, yet difficult to talk to. I bet Dory would like Hollywood movies, too.