Mnr AM de Lange says:
"This is a long contribution because of its complexity. It boils down to
this: by using a metaphor/parable of a higher level of complexity we can
say much less, requiring the listener to fill in the details. Hence we
promote the non-linearity of whatever we wish to talk about."
This reminds me of a woman I know who is a portrait painter. She was
dissatisfied with her work and asked me to look at it. These were very
large canvasses. After a while I told her that she was putting too much
detail into the portraits, and that if she left more out, it would give
the viewer more to do. It would provide the viewer a doorway into her
paintings. A year later she was painting less detail and was much happier
with her results.
The business of "leaving out" is important to most artists, whether a
painter or writer or musician. You have to leave some openings or some
vagueness so that the person who is seeing or reading or listening to your
work can take part. I came to this through the American poet John
Ashbery. Here is a section from his 70s poem 'The Skaters' from the book
"Rivers and Mountains." In it he talks about the value of 'leaving out,'
and the error of 'precision,' and 'meaning,' 'wanting to put too much in,'
and 'this madness to explain.'
It is best to remain indoors. Because there is error
In so much precision. As flames are fanned, wishful thinking arises
Bearing its own prophets, its pointed ignoring,
And just as a desire
Settles down at the end of a long spring day, over heather and watered shoot
and dried rush field,
So error is plaited into desires not yet born.
It is time now for a general understanding of
The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting, etc.
A description of the blues. Labels on bottles
And all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.
But can one ever be sure of which ones?
Isn't this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in
So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or a piano-legged girl
And the whold house of cards comes dinning down around one's ears!
But this is an important aspect of the question
Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to,
This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what's novel
Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention
To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention
Isn't the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not ready
To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not,
Will not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivourous
Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves
presence, but still.
Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off
themselves.
This, thus is a portion of the subject of this poem
Which is in the form of falling snow:
That is, the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the
whole's becoming so much of a truism
That their importance is again called in question, to be denied further out,
and again and again like this.
Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
Nor the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is
what it is,
But the rhythm of the series of repeated jumps, from abstract into positive
and back to a slightly less diluted abstract.
Mild effects are the result.
It is this madness to explain...
Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phony explanations,
Think them important? So back we go to the old, imprecise feeling, the
Common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional glimpses
Of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert's lieder. I am fascinated
Though by the urge to get out of it all, by going
Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But I'm afraid I'll
Be of no help to you. Good-bye.
*********************
Tim Trummer
aen1997@aenglobal.com
--Tim Trummer <aen1997@TheRamp.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>