Missing from the discussion is the idea that to say a heart is a heart is also simplifying, because no representation of a thing can ever match that thing completely; it is always simplifying and reductive.
I liked this conversation, however, because it dovetails nicely with my previous posts that discuss, and then try, not a non-representation of a thing, but at least perhaps a less ideational or conceptual one. So for those of you who were so kind as to click on my post from yesterday, I apologize for what you found, which was my poor attempt to represent a plant, in this case my hoped-for field of dymondia margaretae, which remain healthy but more or less the same size as when I planted them, despite my seemingly constant efforts at watering, weeding and feeding. Well, not constant, but certainly diligent.
I have to admit that it was inspired, or at least was later found to be consonant with, a memory I had of an image found in the 18th century novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne (1759). As you can see in the image above, Sterne chose to represent the twirl of a cane not with a narrative description but with a graphic depiction. While I am thinking that this addition certainly began with an idea, it was not as controlled in its execution as it might have been using the more precise and bounded instrument of language. At various points in the drawing, which we might compare to a phrase, a sentence or maybe even a paragraph, this or that curve must have emerged from an accidental or random slip of the hand or an impulse driven by visual or haptic stimuli rather than by a controlled implementation of an abstract model. The texture of the paper, the nature of the pen, or any other number of material or other conditions must have influenced the final outcome.
I found this to be true when drawing my field of dymondia. In fact, the idea was simply to start drawing, something that was vaguely a plant. As you can see the composition is made of a series of quick scribbles that each have the basic contour of a plant, say a small bunch of grass, which is generally what I was thinking about when I began. But I had no intention of filling the entire page with these to produce what became in the end a representation of a field of dymondia, conforming I must say to the straight boundaries of the piece I paper I chose to draw it on.
No, as I drew one, and then another, finding the previous drawings insufficient, I fell into a bit of a trance, no longer thinking at all about what I was doing. At several instances in the few minutes that it took me to do this, I really think I had achieved the kind of empty mind that is the goal of meditation. In other instances, I was moved not by an idea of a plant, but more by the raw requirements of the composition itself, filling in a blank spot where I saw a blank spot. Eventually this sensation gave way to an idea: fill the entire paper to make a field of dymondia. But the idea of a field of dymondia, let alone the idea of a single dymondia plant, was not in my mind at the beginning.
I suppose all creative activities, if I can use this word for my simple scribble, follow this or a similar trajectory, although I understand that there is a story that relates how Beethoven composed an entire symphony in his head while walking and had to run back to the house to write it down before it escaped from him.
I want to say more about metaphor, and I will do so in a future post.
No comments:
Post a Comment