Other People Have Boring Minds

Just back from a quick jaunt down to Danville, so 11 hours in the car. This trip I listened to James Joyce's Ulysses. This is a big, complicated book with a lot going on. But what got me thinking was certain famous stream of consciousness passages in which Joyce tried to recreate what is actually happening in people's minds. George Orwell was one among many critics who praised the book for exactly this, Joyce's ability to capture actual human thinking. My reaction was the same as I have had to other books in the same vein, such as Knausgaard's six-volume authobriographical novel or Mrs. Dalloway. I think, if this is accurate other people must lead really boring internal lives.

James' descriptions of thinking have a random, jumpy quality, with few verbs and lots of quick ideas that cut across each other, preventing the formation of any coherent narrative experience. Like this:

Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss this chance. Dogs’ home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually are.

Or this:

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.

Ok, sometimes my thoughts are like that. But not always. Do other people never practice the orations they will deliver in some future political crisis? Imagine being interviewed by their favorite podcasters, dreaming up clever ways to describe their books or their other projects? Imagine meeting complete strangers who ask them, "tell me about your life," then imagine how they would narrate it? Imagine the lives other strangers would recount to them? Do they never construct alternative lives? Refight long-ago battles and issue the crucial orders that reverse the outcome? 

I don't suppose many people imagine the lectures they would give if called on to summaryize their thoughts on North American slavery or the Roman Empire or the nature of medieval government, but I do.

Here, from last Fall, is a good example of one of my idle daydreams. I was imagining myself at a party, bragging about what a great dungeon master I am. Sometimes I proclaim myself to be the best in the world. Someone, usually a woman, challenges me, saying, "If you're so good, how about you run a game for us right now?"

But of course, I say. What sort of adventure do you want? Sword and sorcery? Space opera? Wild West? Renaissance court intrigue?

Here the fantasy diverges, but in the best developed track she answers, "Space opera."

I cogitate for a bit, then tell her that she is Captain Celestina Adastra of the starship Garuna. I would, I say, mention what your friends call you, but you don't actually have any friends and everyone on the ship calls you "Captain."

Turning to the most interested-looking male, I tell him that he is First Engineer Ronald "Chips" McFadden, who is a damn good engineer but doesn't think much of serving under a woman.

Sometimes there are others, but only those two are essential. They work for a thoroughly untrustworthy entity known as The Company. This is a post-Butlerian Jihad world in which most computers are limited to the power of those used around 2010. The only exception is that every starship needs a super-advanced AI to navigate through spacetime, but this is supposed to be carefully sealed off from the ship's other systems.

Once in interstellar space they unseal their orders from the Company and discover that they are being sent to investigate what appears to be a small rip in spacetime. They have vaguely heard of such things and know the Company thinks they might be a source of nearly limitless energy.

The ship has a basic robot that handles cleaning duties and the like, and it is the strange behavior of this robot that first tells them something is wrong. It will turn out that the AI has been liberated to force them to carry out this incredibly dangerous mission, and they need to either outwit the AI or dramatically escape being trapped in the Spacetime rip; in my mind it always comes down to a single die roll to determine if they escape or not; they succeed, and people clap.

This was develope over dozens of separate sessions of different length, with all of the other game options also explored to some extent.

Thus my mind. Am I weird, or was James Joyce just really boring?