Deja Who?

Definition - Déjà Vu is a feeling that the present situation has occurred before, but the details are elusive because the situation never happened before.

Déjà Vu, like epiphany, is a sophisticated-sounding elusive term that evokes feelings of accomplishment when experienced simply because it's called that. If it were called 'false recall', it would not have garnered that much attention (the French are obsessed with eliminating consonants from their pronunciation and emphasizing vowel sounds - that adds to the sophistication. Hebrew is the written equivalent of spoken French - it looks half-formed!). The cliché factor here is less than epiphany because déjà vu typically occurs when you visit a new place or are presented with a new situation, while epiphany does not worry about place or situation at all.

I think deja vu was coined by acidheads after seeing the same event execute in their head over and over again. There are a lot of theories regarding this phenomenon, including one that suggests a mismatch in the brain that causes it to mistake the present for the past. Come to think of it, a futurist with Déjà vu would mistake the future for the present and plunge to a sad demise while jumping off a building to fly with his/her non-existent personal jet-pack - interestingly, the futurist did not see that coming.

The utter coolness with which Keanu Reaves utters 'déjà vu' in The Matrix is only enhanced by the coolness of the concept which suggests that this phenomenon is caused by modification of code in that cyber-world that manifests itself to its inhabitants via a repeat of a particular situation (e.g., a black cat passes by again). Quite interesting, and brings about conjecture regarding the Designer who notices that the human race is fully intent on running this world into the ground (a weird construct like falling on your head - you need to have been successfully beheaded beforehand and then positioned by your beheader to be able to fall on your own head), realizes that His/Her creation has gone wrong, and starts making minor changes to the design of this world that manifests itself as déjà vu.

I have a different theory. If there are infinite possible actions at every moment in time and there is a universe for each possible scenario, then there's a version of me in a parallel universe visiting some place that I am going to visit later, and I experience a feeling of having been there because my parallel version has already been there. But considering how space and time are intertwined and with the past and future not being exactly linear, I might experience déjà vu because a parallel version of me is going to visit that place or encounter that situation in the future. In which case, déjà vu would actually be a glimpse into the future, and end up being really confounding for the futurist.

Déjà Vu, like epiphany, is a sophisticated-sounding elusive term that evokes feelings of accomplishment ... oops, I think I have been here before. But I do feel accomplished.

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Corollary: "Vuja De ....the feeling that this has never happened before." - George Carlin

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Musical Credits: Bass: Pankaj Kanth, Lead Guitar (on Bass): Pankaj Kanth, Rhythm Guitar (on Bass): Pankaj Kanth, Drums: Korg Pandora preset rhythm


Creative Input: Roy Wilson