Can't You See the Connection?

Valentine’s Day is coming up.  Thanks for reminding me.  Yeah, you’re totally right.  It is strange how a manufactured holiday can make so many people miserable.  Seriously, how many people do you know that are genuinely happy that day anyway?  Single people are miserable because they’re alone, the ones in couples are sad because they don’t have the ideal storybook relationship media has fed them.  You said it.  Being depressed because culture tells us is just silly.  

Do you ever wonder if Burning Airlines’ name had anything to do with Jets to Brazil?  I mean, Jawbox and Jawbreaker break up within a few years, and then their singers form Burning Airlines and Jets to Brazil within a couple years.  It can’t be a coincidence, there are just to many parallels.  I mean I’m not saying J. Robbins is copying Blake Schwarzenbach or anything but...

 Where did that come from?  Oh!  Sorry.  Sometimes I get ahead of myself.  Talking about Valentine’s Day made me think of the Jawbreaker song Chemistry.  Make sense?

The Accident shook my brain up, broke the normal connections, and the newly formed associations aren’t necessarily obvious to anyone else.  My train of thought will often jump around capriciously to apparently unrelated topics.  A phrase, word or topic will remind me of something else, and the conversation will zag sharply left. There was a time when I could barely go five minutes without a reference or digression.  Thinking back I marvel that anyone understood my scattered reference-laden discourse.  Over the years I’ve gotten better with my conversational segues, but occasionally I’ll still have to explain. 

 Examples like the one I gave aren’t hard to follow, but when the conversation reminds me of one thing, which reminds me of another, and another then things can get complicated. The connections are obvious to me.  I can explain them, but the transition can be jarring to anyone else.  I used joke that no one who thinks in a linear fashion could possibly track me.   

Happily it is easy to put a positive spin on what could (and has been) be an extremely frustrating effect.  Precisely because I think differently, I come up with fresh ideas.  I offer a unique perspective, and an original viewpoint, and this is an asset in many professions. After experiencing something like brain injury it is natural to gain a new outlook on life.  I am not certain how common this symptom of ‘shaken up connections’ is, but I would love to hear your experiences.