These words as I write encompass possibilities. Yes, if I wanted I could choose to defy the linear nature of the structure and conventions of the written paragraph. I could explode the visual layout and present in an alternative format but I think this would be too easy. Instead I’d rather utilise what we think we know, specifically to play with it; re-framing those coded understandings that allow us to exchange language to communicate a premise. Slants of light and shade can mask the reading in front of us.
The borders that make up a sentence; the capital letter, the comma, the full-stop, give us a beginning, a pause and an ending. But it is not as simple as that. What else comes into play in our compositions? What particular words are enclosed and what do they suggest to us? We can so easily assume certain words and phrases can mean the same thing to everyone, particularly when it is spoken or written in the same language. Yet the constant impossibility of language translation to articulate everything as it is meant to be understood surely is evidence enough that language is malleable and fluid. Everything is in a state of constant flux and that certainty of what I see and understand is as stable and unmoving as a shadow on the ground.
Magician, psychologist, anthropologist, film director – when we communicate each of us throws into the ring an array of possible readings and transformations. The paint upon the canvas, the movement of the gesture and mark making, the tone of the composition, the fetishes we reveal and display. Words and sentences are not solitary entities. They are alive and potent, carved and sculptured, an orchestra of history, culture, interconnections and displacements cast out into the air and falling differently every time. Even a copy or reproduction is not the same as the one before. It sits in a different place of time and reading.
I pass by some windows and what I see reflects so much more than the physical environment outside. The images and shapes shimmer, dance and entrance me. What I see today will differ tomorrow as the surrounding world changes and my imagination is stirred.
