jotting down ideasJotting down ideas

Lately, I've realized that I started enjoying interviews. Not because I enjoy talking about myself, but because interviews don't really give you time to think. Not in the conventional sense, at least. You don't get to stop, reorganize your ideas, or search for the perfect answer. A question is asked, and your thoughts simply begin flowing. One idea reminds you of a novel, which reminds you of a class discussion, which somehow leads you somewhere completely different from where you thought you were going.

After reading A Mark on The Wall by Virginia Woolf I realized that this feeling wasn't unfamiliar at all. A tiny mark on the wall becomes history, memory, religion, furniture, war, before quietly turning out to be nothing more than a snail. The snail is almost irrelevant. Modernist writers stopped treating thought as something orderly and linear. Instead, they became fascinated by the strange way our minds actually work, through association, interruption, and detours rather than logic. Here the almost sacred stream of consciousness comes to life.

Unlike essays, interviews leave very little room for editing. The interview is like verbally showcasing your mind and your way of thinking to the interviewer. It reminds me of myself preferring recording voice memos whenever an idea comes to me. Typing is often too slow. By the time I've finished one sentence, three more thoughts have already disappeared. Sometimes, editing doesn't improve an idea, it arrives too late.

Perhaps that's what stream of consciousness has always been trying to preserve, not polished thinking but thinking before it becomes polished. I feel like this is getting more and more meaningful as we enter the “AI era”. Most Literature—and occasionally interviews—allow us to witness something much rarer: the unfinished architecture of another person's mind.