I like books, and I like poems, and I like songs. These are mediums of art that are written, meaning that someone builds an idea in their imagination, a workshop where they possess god-like powers of universal manipulation and understanding. They fuse together electrical winds and impulse glows in the surging symbol-less language of cognition to sculpt a perfect artefact. Completely pure, powerful and unquantifiable. Impotent. Next the architect must tear it all down so that each molecule can be analysed, packaged and translated into a comprehensive set of instructions. These instructions can then be written in physical or digital space or projected into sound vibrations which may or may not be converted into data in physical or digital space for later reproduction. The words are not the thing, they are simply the directions for reconstructing the thing in your imagination’s own dimension. Well, maybe not that simply, because to me this is really where a lot of the art is, in the accuracy and conveyance of this translation in and out of unspeakable brain language.
When you paint by numbers, the number ‘3’ might be for green. But what green do you have? Is it a dark pine or a bright teal? Is it acrylic or oil? Enamel or spray paint? What art supply store did you visit? How long have you had it? Did you mix it yourself? What brush are you using? How fast does it dry? How runny is it? How workable is it? How many of these have you done before? Do you even like the colour green? How shaky are your hands? How hard are you pressing? How tired are you? How long do you spend on the delicate edges? How secure are you in your painting ability? Do you even care about this picture? Are you following the instructions? Are you even using green here? Are you adding shading without realising? Has the doorbell rang and startled you in the middle of an important stroke? Are there some sections where there isn’t any number? What are you going to do about those? Do you do this in your spare time or as a serious hobby? Are you embarrassed or proud of your work here? Is this the first moment all week you’ve had to yourself? Is this relaxing or stressful? Was this set a gift? Are you only doing this because the person who gifted you this set keeps asking you about it? Are the numbers just guidelines or absolute law to you? Do you enjoy following instructions? Do you wish to one day paint without numbers? Is this green from a memory? Is this the green of the coat you lost, the tree you climbed, the bottle you drank, the note you found? Is it an envious green? Is it a healthy green? Is it a green for GO? Is it a putrid mouldy green? And that’s just green.
Sentiments can rarely remain completely true and unaltered when translated into different languages. They can be completely misunderstood even with only varying colloquialisms. When another person builds your glistening idea in their own head using those instructions, that when compared to the precision of the original build, are impossibly vague, their artefact will not mirror yours. Because it is not yours, it is theirs. And this is the joy of books and poems and songs, they can only ever be descriptions of an idea for you to assemble for yourself at home. The emotional colouring can be as specific as it wants, the setting can be meticulously defined ad nauseum, the plot details can be entirely unwound, explored, and examined. And yet still. I see the world differently to you. I am incapable of constructing your pure masterpiece in my own dimension, because the physics there are completely different to the ones in the incommunicable place that you originally built it. And maybe that is what makes it a masterpiece. Each word delivers me your meaning. And after each word there is a space. A mystery. A void where I can fill in everything that you could never tell me. Everything that makes your ideas real and personal to me, that allows them to ring and resonate through my inner dimension as it did yours, even though they are different shapes. Everything that casts my artefact as perfect and pure as yours, despite unimaginable variation.
Quit Vision 