Do NOT Think About Doctor Fartproblem

He is a villain, and the new name of love

Have you ever been asked to do something like “do not, under any circumstances, imagine a pink elephant”? I have, and every time I’m challenged like this I fail instantly. As I parse the sentence “do not imagine a pink elephant” I wind up imagining a pink elephant almost immediately. 

For some, this illuminates the basic character of human language - the meaning of a word lies in the mental images and experiences an individual has when they say/hear/read/write/consider that word. So, the words “pink elephant” mean the pink elephant image that popped into your head when you read those words to yourself. To continue thinking this way, using a language to communicate means sharing these meaning-experiences from one person to another - reading these words, right now, means you are somehow having experiences transmitted from my head into yours, experiences which I have while writing and that you have while reading.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose writing I am extremely into at the moment, did quite a lot to critique this vision of meaning. One of these critiques of his has especially stuck out to me - if words just mean whatever’s in our heads when we say them, how do we ever have experiences that we report as indescribable? Why don’t we just generate new words for every new previously-indescribable experience we have? Also, am I sure that the experience I have today when saying a word matches the experience I had yesterday when saying that same word? If they’re slightly different, why don’t I invent a new and slightly different word to describe my slightly different experiences?

These critiques are framed as questions because, to me, they are invitations to look at what’s going on when we use language the way we normally do. To me, they are also invitations to get incredibly silly. 

Since encountering this way of thinking I’ve taken on the challenge of naming every single shade of experience I have, a new word for every single moment, especially the moments that have been somehow “beyond words”. On a recent trip to Oregon with my partner I felt so in love and alive while looking into their eyes amidst the natural splendor that words failed me, and so I invented “Doctor Fartproblem” to describe the mystical transcendence I felt. 

I see Doctor Fartproblem as a villain whose schemes have nothing to do with his name. “Doctor” isn’t a title but is instead just the name his parents gave him at birth as a kind of aspirational thing. I see him wearing a gigantic hat, as tall as it is wide, a cross between a top hat and a sombrero, and it stays on his head at all times including during showers and sex. No gastrointestinal issues are involved in his villainy - he just exists to steal attention away from beautiful moments, because the words “Doctor Fartproblem” can refer EITHER to a) the mystical feeling of gazing into your lover’s eyes on a verdant mountaintop, or b) this guy. 

So, the next time you are gazing into someone’s eyes and wondering at the beauty of existence and human connection, do NOT, under ANY circumstances, think of Doctor Fartproblem. At least, not the wrong one.