How many people think what the world would look like to an alien visitor? Seriously, the amount of times I look at some every day object or action and think- how wierd is this, really? Like clapping... look at clapping- how odd is it? How strange is it seeing a packed theatre full of humans all slapping the ends of their limbs together?
I realised how numbed out I was becoming, how 'adult' and dull, on a trip to an art gallery in London a few years ago. My friend and I stood looking at an abstract sculpture for a while. It was by Raymond Duchamp- Villon. A mother with a toddler walked by, and the child looked in bewilderment at the sculpture, tugged on his mom's arm and said- "look, mommy, a horse"... Holy. Crap. This sculpture was a horse... a Cubist Horse. Two art students hadn't worked it out, and incidentally hadn't read the label!, but a two year old saw it straight away... we were both amazed. We felt damn stupid but amazed at the same time.
I miss that. I miss that ability to see differently, with fresh eyes, so open to new things, able to see so much more than adults can. Obviously innocence has many many disadvantages but in terms of seeing- as adults we lose out big time. I don't want that. I don't want to ever get bored of seeing. Children find excitement and intrigue in normal things. A simple train ride and you see them pointing out the window at pretty much anything- a building! another train! Yeah they have the energy, and they haven't seen it all before maybe, it's all new to them... but how cool it must be to see everything with that much awe. I guess with that can come fear... this world must be pretty scary too to innocent eyes, but to have such a strong physical and emotional reaction to just seeing- THAT is priceless, and I never want to lose it. Plus it explains why imagery can totally freak me out. It's a basic instinct that gets lost early on as we start to try and explain things with words rather than feel how we react to them. Bloody words... they always get in the way. Here I am writing about it all rather than illustrating it- I guess that says it all!
I keep getting told that age brings wisdom and tolerance and all that crap, but does it? Or does it bring cynicism, numbness, monotony and narrow vision. That could be the cataracts though.
My mum has a fridge magnet that states: Age is where a broad mind and a narrow waste exchange places. So true.
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. "
Proust
7 comments:
beautiful. true.
Another argument says that age brings a greater power of reason: The ability to see more tonal width between the starkness of black and white.
My personal argument is that age brings a greater hankering for savoury foodstuffs and less ability to climb large volumes of stairs or to catch a frisbee.
Maybe that's just me though!
Being young minded is definitely the way i afraid...yes it's good to have the reasoning and tolerance of age but without the inspriation, motivation, enthusiasm and willingness of youth it's pretty dull and lets face it, the truly successful people, no not just in terms of financially but those which achieve great things have something resembling this ideal. Patrick Moore, Bob Geldoff, Dickie branson, oh and so many more, better examples......
I completely agree. It's good to know there are other Patrick Moore fans out there too!
maybe it shows you appreciate shape, style, colour or whatever more than just by naming an object. Not everything is restricted to the name of an object!
And i'd jsut like to say that, your word verification thing makes it really hard by putting loads of v's and w's next to each other! How do we know which one to use first ????
Yep, beautiful! Can I use you as a character in a story called Space Rebels, Slink?
I sometimes have those moments where dull familiarity is jolted with "WTF is that I've been doing?!" and it's definitely 'scary' as you put it.
But psychologically speaking, it's not so much age as the human mind that is to blame Slink. Our brains never really 'see' things like a camera does. When you look at a car, your mind does something similar to this: "boxy shape, windows all around, rolling tires, headlights... CAR!". And from that point onwards it doesn't waste any effort looking at the details, it knows it's a car and it moves on.
Our mind is always trying to label the things we see, identifying the general categories and acting accordingly. Which is why optical illusions exist, to a camera they are what they are, but our mind gets bogged down trying to make out if it's a vase or 2 faces.
A child doesn't have that ability well-tuned yet and so sees things without preconception of what they 'ought' to be. Which is why it is said that to draw something well you should look at it upside-down. And why it is rumored that Monet had cataracts and Van Gogh was schizophrenic!
Sorry for the blabber, I got carried away...
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