Interpretations

World can be split into 2 things: reality and its numerous interpretations.

You can feel reality, but you can not think about it. You can only think about your own interpretation of it and adjust it when it doesn’t match your experiences. Dreaming, daydreaming, doing psychedelics or simply sitting on your ass and thinking only gives you access to your own interpretation of reality. It might expose you to new sides of your interpretation, show parts you neglected, or make internal contradictions more obvious. Any new information or ideas that you come across while doing so are your interpretation of the background noise in your head or are only guaranteed to be true in your interpretation of reality (and must be tested before you accept them as true). When you experience something man-made, be it literature, games, movies, even documentaries, you only get access to your interpretation of the authors own interpretation of reality, not the real deal.

Any time someone tries to describe how games, art or anything involving a creator and a reader works - they are doomed to be right in one way and wrong in all others. They will tell you their own interpretation of this process but it will be only one interpretation of something that is too complex to understand. This is what i am doing right now. I too will be right in some ways and wrong in most others. Here’s my interpretation of this process:

• creator perceives world and distorts it with their own interpretation
• creator selects portions of it to show to the observer when creating something
• observer attempts to reconstruct the meaning using their own experiences
• observer distorts the creators work with their own interpretation of the world even further, sometimes adding associations that have not been there originally

(this is why any attempt to analyze art which ignores the context in which it was created and meant to be read is silly)

I would also like to remind you that the same process happens in its entirety any time you listen to someone talking or read something (like right now). The sounds and letters are meaningless, they simply act as an instruction which you use to recreate the intended meaning out of your past experiences. It looks like a similar process also occurs any time you remember something.

(Side note: even if we assume platonic ideals are a thing, they would be a part of reality and impossible to think about without interpreting them first which would ruin their entire gimmick)

Another fun aspect of these layers of interpretations, is that whenever you read someones critique/reading of a work, you are now perceiving it through the critics distorted interpretation of reality(on top of the authors and your own), unrelated associations included. As a result, the more a creation is discussed, the harder it is to separate the original text and intent of the author from the interpretations by other people.

Also note the fact that one persons interpretation of the world changes a lot throughout their life. Writing down your current interpretation of something can act as a snapshot of your worldview at that time. What’s even more interesting is seeing how the commonly accepted interpretation of a work changes as the zeitgeist shifts around over time.