WALTER BENJAMIN

The déjà vu effect has been described quite often. Nonetheless, I wonder if the term is well chosen, and whether the more appropriate metaphor should not be taken from the realm of acoustics. One might do better to speak of events reaching us like an echo awakened by a call, a sound that seems to have been heard somewhere in the darkness of our past life. Accordingly, if we are not mistaken, the shock with which moments enter consciousness as if already experienced in some previous life usually strikes us acoustically, in the form of a sound. A word, tapping, or a rustling noise is somehow endowed with the magical power to transport us into the cool tomb of long ago, from the vault of which the present seems to return only as an echo.