Mental Radio

by Upton Sinclair

Series of February 8, 1929

Tests with drawings in carefully sealed envelopes.

1. Agt., a coiled snake (Fig. [45]); Per., no drawing, but this script: “See something like kitten with tail and saucer of milk. Now it leaps into action and runs away to outdoors. Turns to fleeing animal outdoors. Great activity among outdoor creatures. Know it’s some outdoor thing, not indoor object—see trees, and a frightened bird on the wing (turned sidewise). It’s outdoor thing, but none of above seems to be it.”

This is much more interesting than if there had been the perfect success of writing the word “snake,” because we seem to get inklings of the internal process. “Saucer of milk”—observe that the serpent’s coil plus the unattached ellipse in the center (due to Mr. Sinclair’s confessed bad drawing) really does look like a saucer. “Something like a kitten with a tail”—why mention tail? Most kittens have tails. But a tail sticks up back of the saucer. Later neither kitten, trees nor frightened bird is it, yet something is causing great commotion among outdoor creatures. It is an outdoor thing, therefore not a kitten, but evidently something alive. The scene is very appropriate to the appearance of a snake. Mr. Sinclair tells us that his wife’s childhood was in part spent where there were many poisonous snakes, and that fear of them was bred in her. As he conjectures, it is very likely that dawning in the subconsciousness, not fully emerging in the conscious, the subject of the drawing stirred up imagery from childhood. I surmise that, if the truth, which she may not consciously remember, could be known, she saw while a child a kitten fleeing from a snake.

2. Agt., a daisy (Fig. [59]); Per. got what is very like the petals around the disk of the daisy, also two stems, also various curving lines more or less like the daisy leaves or vegetation at least (Fig. 59a).

3. Agt., an axe, seemingly a battle-axe, with AX printed (Fig. 145); Per., as in Figure 145a. Note the parallels: (a) “letter A [right as far as it goes], (b) with something long (c) above it”; (d) “there seems to be no end to the handle”; (e) the drawing much resembles the original, in fact one type of ancient battle-axe was very much of the same shape. Although she finally guessed that it was a key, yet a suspicion of military use enters in the conjecture “a sword,” which is perhaps all the more striking since the drawing bears little resemblance to a sword.

4. Agt., a crab (Fig. [48]); Per. drew as in Figures 48a, 48b, and wrote “Wings, or fingers—wing effect, but no feathers, things like fingers, instead of feathers. Then many little dots which all disappear, and leave two of them, O O, as eyes of something.” And again, “streamers flying from something.” The reader will judge for himself whether the drawings do not suggest the crab’s nippers, and one of them the joint adjoining. “Wing effect but no feathers, things like fingers”—especially the lower pair in Mr. Sinclair’s remarkable crab do look like fingers. “Many dots”; well the original has four. Then she sees but two of them and they are “O O, eyes of something.” True enough, two of the “dots” in the crab are O O, and they are eyes.

5. Agt., a man in a sledge driving a dog-team (Fig. [60]). Per. by accident opened this drawing, so of course could not experiment with it. But after she had made her drawings for No. 2 she wrote “Maybe snow scene on hill with a sled.” On the back of No. 3, which was so brilliant a success, she wrote “I get a feeling again of a snow scene to come in this series—a sled in the snow.” It is unfortunate that an accident prevented her trying No. 5 when she had actually reached it, but she certainly got it by anticipation.

6. Agt., a tobacco pipe with smoke issuing therefrom (Fig. 37); Per. first drew an ellipse and wrote “Now it begins to spin, round and round, and is attached to a stick”; (2) next she made the conventional “curl” which usually means smoke; (3) then she made another curl of smoke and pushed the open end of an ellipse into it,[^[13]] joined a line to the ellipse just about where the stem of a pipe meets the bowl and at the end of the line made a small circle, which certainly is not found in the original but may express the feeling that there is a circular opening (Fig. [37a]).

7. Agt., a house with smoking chimney; Per., two figures, each very like the frame of a window lacking the upper side, or like the crenels or openings in the battlement of Figure 36a, but longer. In connection with that drawing (Experiment of January 28–29) we made the remark (which may have seemed fanciful) that the number of these openings or uncompleted rectangles was the same as that of the windows and door in the original drawing. Here the uncompleted 2 rectangles equal in number the one window plus the one door of the house. She also wrote “There is something above this—can’t see what it is part of.” True, the roof and chimney are above the window and door.