The Pleasure of 'I'm Starting to Not Understand'
A book I bought on a whim a while ago,
the title is "I'm Starting to Not Understand."
It's a collection of essays written by a person named Akio Miyazawa.
(You can buy used copies cheaply these days...)
I feel a strange attraction to this single phrase,
"I'm starting to not understand."
Why state it so definitively when you don't understand?
What is the lingering feeling I get from this phrase?
It's not "I understand," nor is it "I don't understand."
It's this "starting to" feeling.
Even though I'm the one saying it,
I'm gradually losing my grasp on myself,
and yet there is this
strangely definitive, clear feeling in the ending.
This phrase is used by announcers in baseball broadcasts
when a losing team is about to catch up,
and it's a way of clearly declaring
that it has become "clear" that
"the outcome of the game has become unclear."
It's a declaration that you understand that you don't understand...
It's a truly strange nuance.
I get very happy when I find words like this.
This time, I didn't find them myself,
but I did find the person (Mr. Miyazawa) who found them.
The feeling of 'starting to'
For some reason, I really like this state of "starting to not understand."
Sensory-wise, it's like when you've been drinking and start to get a little tipsy,
not quite to the point of being completely drunk,
but still at the point where you start to
"not understand" what you are saying.
That actually feels kind of good.
Usually, when that happens, you've lost yourself,
so you don't consciously realize
that you've "started to not understand."
But very rarely, you might notice,
"Oh, I'm starting to not understand," and unintentionally declare it.
That actually happens.
At that moment, I think,
that version of myself feels good.
In the case of the baseball announcer,
it feels like they are abusing this pleasure.
By saying, "Well, it's starting to become unclear," they are
clearly inciting this state.
I feel like the retort often used by Tomizawa from Sandwichman,
"I don't really understand what you're saying,"
is a similar kind of incitement
of that state of not understanding.
Wanting to share the feeling of not understanding
It means that everyone intuitively understands
that the state of not understanding is interesting.
You understand, yet you don't understand.
I'm starting to not understand what I'm saying myself,
but I think there is a part of humans
that enjoys such unstable sensations.
I'm sorry to have kept you this long, but
since I'm trying to explain something that can't be explained,
I suspect most people
haven't been able to follow along.
While I truly apologize for that,
I would be happy if we could share the feeling of
"What? What are you saying? Fluffy..."
Even if it is irresponsible.