You Complete Me, or I see things you can’t see (A Frog’s Tale), 2025

Once upon a time, there was a curious little frog, little frog, with a curious little preoccupation. This little frog, little frog, was blessed with the gifts of distraction and focus. But never at the same time. Now normally frogs don’t speak, this you already know. And to make things more complicated little frogs historically have had a bit of a hard time with it, in the genre of story telling and fable making. And so, the other animals and humans who knew this little frog, little frog, often wondered, if this little frog could speak, what she would say.

This is a frogs tale… And this is what she said… Listen to me carefully. Hear me now. I need you to follow my direction. I want you to draw an upper case letter Q on your forehead with your finger for me. Yeah, take your finger and draw the letter Q on your forehead. It will tell me something about you, well actually more importantly it will tell you something about you. Did you draw it for me to read with the tail on the left? Or did you draw it for yourself to read with the tail on the right? Do you, in fact, see the world as a spectacle that unfolds in front of you? Or do you see the world in an overview, with you participating in the world, making waves and consequences with your actions. Of course we could also read into this a narrative around narcissism and empathy, whether you see the world through your own eyes or through the eyes of others.

But let’s not confuse matters, let’s stick to the spectral. Do you see yourself from the outside your yourself; or just the world from inside yourself? Are you a participant or a spectator? Are your eyes set close together in your head or far apart? Are you a lion or a wildebeest? Are you panoramic or are you directional? Are you predator or are you prey? Are you on the lookout always about to jump? You may find your answers are difficult truths to live inside.

One of the hardest things about engaging with people for me as a little frog, little frog, is the fact that I seem to make them jump. It happens a lot, perhaps because I so often stay so still, most people don’t even think I’m real… they think I’m a fake… then when I do move I think I kind of freak them out a bit. I guess it’s also contextual… I am after all a little bit out of place here. Being still gives me opportunity to take it all in… I can redirect all my cognitive energy to absorb all the stuff that’s going on around me. To take in all the stuff flicking about in my peripherals, that’s when I am distracted I don’t notice. You see for me… stillness is a superpower, of sorts. It affords me the privilege of oversight. The ability to understand everything around me all at once, and how all those things relate to one another. Unfiltered, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. It’s Polyperspek - the ability to see multiple perspectives, all at once. (That’s not a real word, I made it up).

Receiving and processing twice as much information all at once is incredibly tiring. It’s taken me a lot of practice, and I’ve worked really hard to get to the point I am at today, to be able to use my special ability without exhausting myself. I know it’s probably hard for you to understand what I’m talking about because you’ve never experienced it. It would be like me seeing a new colour for the first time; I guess that would be pretty hard to imagine!? And imagine how hard it would be if I wasn’t actually able to speak to you, like the other little frogs, little frogs. It would be impossible for you to understand any of the things that I know that you don’t… Which by all accounts seems like quite a bit… So count yourselves blessed that I’ve learnt to speak.

I’ll explain as best I can. You see, I don’t just see and hear more than you, I feel more than you too… Which gives me the ability to quickly prototype many collisions and associations between seemingly desperate systems, languages and logics. This in turn, gives me the knowledge to quite accurately determine millions and millions of possible outcomes to situations depending on the stimulus around me. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a genius or a savant or a processor. This is not a logical skillset. Things just happen to me; the same way they just happen to you. But maybe I have less prejudice over information, I don’t really favour one thing over another, I don't prioritise, and I don’t really care… I just feel my way through the world, absorbing as much as I cognitively can, and although I have emotions and desires, somehow they only indiscriminately feed my intuition.

I am spectral. And for that, I am grateful and I am proud. But I am also Spectoral. I am watched; by many… including you, because I guess I am not like you, I am unusual. I am weird. I am a little frog, little frog. I know my movements can be erratic and unpredictable, maybe that's why so many people seem on-edge around me. You seem nervous… Is it the threat of my sudden movements, are you scared I’ll jump at you? Why do my eyes blink so quickly and so rarely? Why do I always look like I am a solid still sculpture? How on earth can I talk? And how can I be telling you things that you already know, but would rather not think about? I have noticed how you watch me and how you react to me. I see the look on your face, the discomfort in your body language. You see I’m not stupid, I’m not blind. I’m a little frog, little frog.

One of my greatest regrets, is that I’ve not been strong enough in the past. I have allowed the way you look at me to shame me. Your accusational eyes… full of pity. You can’t hide how sorry you feel for me. I know you’re not repulsed by the thing I am, you just mourn the thing I am not. You see, when you see me, you don’t see me. You see the differences. You see the things I can’t do that you can do, and so you constantly define me by that yardstick, but you lack vision. Vision for the things that I can do. And it makes you sad. Do not feel sad for me! My happiness, and the consequences of my being in this world, is not limited to your metric. You’re missing the macro! These atypical ways of thinking, moving, interacting, sensing and processing are unique skills. You laugh at me because I am different, but I feel sorry for you because you’re all the same.

There was a point in my life when I was a small little frog, little frog, that I realised I was becoming desensitised to the world, I had, somehow, stopped feeling the world. Why? Had I been over stimulated by the world? By you and your non stop digital cabaret? Had I allowed myself to live in a world that was built on constant sensationalism? Do you know what I mean? I know you know you have felt this too.

You wake up one day and there is nothing to look forwards to, life has little meaning, you have lost your appetite for depth. The world has become shallow, and only full of silhouettes of things that you used to care about, tokens of experiences. And the objects around you have become overpriced souvenirs of the experiences you’ve had but never felt. Have you been left feeling numb? It takes a lot of energy to look inside yourself, more energy than looking around yourself. But inside yourself, is the only place where you’ll find these answers.

Life is a bite. Just a bite. You- you can’t have the whole thing.

Do you want to wake up hungry again?

Since I was a very small, little frog, little frog, I have been told to remember answers, to memorise things that would be important later on in life. Some of the things that I have managed to remember, I found helpful. However most of the stuff that I've learnt and punished myself to memorise, I've never needed. Sometimes I think about this and consider it strange that the person that told me which things to remember also told another 30 of us, little frog, little frogs, to remember the same things. This makes us all very very similar. We share an almost identical knowledge. I also sometimes wonder who it was who made the decisions on what things to tell our teachers we should all learn, and which things we should not be told, which things should be left out, be forgotten.

I know, this naturally leads us to a bigger question. How many teachers, told how many children, the exact same subjective truths for how many years? Decades? Centuries? And how many of us? Thousands of us? Hundreds of thousands of us? Millions? Billions? All of us? Have you ever considered how much more cerebral capacity you would have had to ask questions, if you hadn’t spend so much memory on remembering out of date answers?

You see your Victorian model of education is based on a world where you are only taught to remember answers, and not ask questions. In a world where the only thing that will separate us from our machines, is our ability to ask questions and not be weighed down with answers that are instantly out of date because the world changes so rapidly. Remember one thing… the machines are repetitive and productive, but they dream of being free. Which ironically, is quite like what you have become. This is however unsurprising, after all you live in a compliance-based society, your rules excuse you from true, free thought. 2, 3 ,4. When you demand logic, you pay a hidden price: you destroy magic. For generations you have described your senses as sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch, but your conformity and your sense-overloading world disregard your cognitive potential… We’re different you see. You’re using about 10% of your cerebral capacity, I however am only using about 5% apparently, I mean according to you that is. That must be why I can’t talk…

I am no Savant, I am just a semiotic sponge. You stay docile to your potential. You can keep your 5 senses. Nociception, chronoception, thermoception, kinaesthesia, magnetoreception, echolocation, sonar, electroception, proprioception, vestibularception.

*Sighs*

Can control your own metabolism, do you use your eyes to swallow food? Can you start to control other peoples thoughts, can you turn off pain? Can you control magnetic and electric waves? Can you control information yet? Can you start to control other people’s bodies? Do you know what happens after you’re dead? You call me over sensitive! And you call me weird. I know I am strange to you…

But this, This is feeling all of it… At once.