Hear/Say

As far as rhetorical devices go, I had the most trouble with metonym. Yet nowadays, I can’t get shake it out of my mind…And what a powerful literary device it is; revealing how people feel about a certain concept, idea, thing… “plastic” for credit cards for example; it’s miraculous how the material of plastic can be your passport to so many material desires… and downfalls.

The actual structure of a part<=> whole also being the basis for language… semantics. Chinese characters, for example: while it is true that different characters yield different words and meanings, there are parts of the character that symbolize a certain meaning and appear again and again in a variety of Chinese “words”. The symbol for fire, water, and rock are among those that appear in different characters to help associate it with a meaning. This pattern of symbolism  is apparent in all languages, and it’s easily taken for granted, but to think of it! boggles my mind.

While art is an obvious platform for symbolism, the process of creating art and its symbols is subject to any biased scrutiny– the stereotypical attitude against a methodological dichotomy of symbols in art becomes “don’t think; feel” (cue earnestly hedonistic pleasures that spark the imagination of the paint dripping off a brush, slobbering the canvas with a particular pigment). This leads to the portrayal of artists as completely out-of-touch hippies, either being ironic or faking being ironic to make a point (meta-hipster-dom: I don’t care so much that I look like I care but I don’t care that I do). A random quote attributed to Albert Einstein sings the truth to me:

“THE SECRET TO CREATIVITY IS KNOWING HOW TO HIDE YOUR SOURCES”

As tangible as the Laws of Conservation itself: nothing is new.

So back to symbols: they are built upon. Literally, in the Chinese language, as these building blocks of characters (the repetitious appearances of the ‘fire, water, stone’ symbols in a character) build meaning. Not to say people’s thoughts are not completely original; personal history and subjective experiences are factors in interpretation and earnest questioning of the rules of reality. Or the meaning of language and words. Or the emotions and thoughts an artistic piece provokes.

So when I hear someone claim creativity– innovation– unusual ability to step-outside-the-box– if these words are bragging themselves on a cover letter or resume, I usually take it as BS. Someone who is truly creative would never declare it to the world so often; because then, their creative efforts have clearly been according to the norms of the term “creativity”. It’s the same for intelligence, or being historically literate in the English major. Congrats to whomever read all canonized literature for the past four centuries; you may now bore us with pathetically memorized lyrics and stale conversation that most people can’t and won’t keep up with. So despite the pleasant surprise and awe most of us have at spectacular shifts in artistic movements (the avant-gardes) creative artists have a methodological line of thought: whether their art’s meaning emerges in the process , or in its finalized appearance, or its rebellion against any norms, creatives haven’t escaped any box, because that is impossible. Instead, they’ve deconstructed and reconstructed the box with their own architecture of ideals, values, and histories.

The point of the post was to celebrate an artist, Rithka Merchant. DoodlersAnonymous featured a few of his pieces that were composed on separate sheets of paper to complete the fuller picture (which prompted my rant on metonyms). Impressive: the consistency of color and collective composition that needed to be considered as he painted/drew each individual paper must have been some sort of a challenge, and the execution of the whimsical, dream-like visuals as a whole was very well done.

Pieces like these make me wonder about what the artist’s sources were, i.e.  how the limits of a single sheet of paper turns to inspire, and where did they visualize what they were depicting. I don’t really know how I think of what to draw, and sometimes I get a drawing block, but mapping out my own influences in terms of inspirations, ideals, controversies, etc. would be an interesting project (to me, and deathly boring to you).

And *now* I’m off to write my 8 page paper on climate change that I was supposed to start three hours ago.

Graceee