On poor ‘undersiding’ of an embroidery
A telephone conversation floats down the year 1990. I can’t remember
whether I made the call or if Kanishka Goonewardena did. He was in Los
Angeles and I in Boston. We were both students and both having a tough
time with respect to heart-matters. I think we discussed how one cannot
really articulate sorrow or be talked out of it. ‘Kaniya’ insisted,
though: ‘Give me a word machang, just one; or give me a thousand
pictures!’
We laughed. I think that helped us trip sorrow at least for a while
and long enough to talk about other things.
Kanishka was twisting a well-known phrase, ‘a picture is worth a
thousand words’. Word captures so little of landscape, I’ve often
lamented. So little of all landscapes, I should add, for words try to
gather river and mountain, rock and pebble, sky and cloud, light and
shade and also the articulation of these things in people, their
interactions, in their tenderness and volatility, heart and
heartlessness, togetherness and self-absorption, the sharing and
selfishness, dream and dreamscape, reality and distortion. There are
times when the images are so vivid and numerous that I wonder why I
bother to use word. It is more noble to be silent, I feel, considering
how flawed word-representation can be, in the representing and in the
misreading it feeds.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Picture by Hiranya Malwatta |
Political cartoons
I think of cartoons and political commentaries and conclude that the
accomplished cartoonist is a superior article than his/her
column-writing counterpart. I am not talking about those any-old-joker
types who can play with line and space, throw some witticism and believe
they are producing political cartoons of course. I am thinking of
exponents of the art such as the incomparable Wijesoma of ‘Punchi Singho’
fame, Shantha K Herath, Dasa Hapuwalana etc.
It is the same with photographs. I see a photograph that cuts my
arteries even as it unclogs blood-stream and see in the play of object,
line, space, colour, light, shadow and frame a poem or a piece of
exquisite music. They make me want to write a poem that makes it
ridiculous for me to ever write again and I try to too. I fail again and
again. I feel that one cannot write a poem to describe a poem and that
certain photographs are so poetic that they resist poetic rendering in
the form of word.
Wordless music
A picture is worth a thousand words but even the most versatile
wordsmith would be hard pressed to gather the thousand words in an order
that does justice to the image in the matter of ‘equivalencing’. Of
course one doesn’t have to use all 1,000 words; I don’t think that was
what was meant. I think the line refers to the fact that you need a
1,000-word pool to work with in order to get the five or 10 or 20 or 100
or 999 needed to ‘capture’ image in word. Or even all of them, yes.
I’ve wondered if words, not one but say five-10 or even a book-worth
of them, can conjure in the mind of a reader images as sharp, vivid,
colourful, made-for-meditation etc as would a singularly profound
photograph in the mind of a viewer. Words are image-generators, there’s
no doubt about this; but just as wordless music can take one to places
that are beyond description, so too does the image make irrelevant the
word.
These are days of digital-assistance when it comes to photography.
These are days of photoshop and other software made to play with
whatever one ‘gathers’ by viewing ‘viewer’ and clicking shutter. These
are days when technology can shave off the mediocrity-edges of a bad
photographer. Well, the connoisseurs will know, but then again, as long
as sufficient numbers are fooled, the mediocre really don’t give a damn.
But then again there’s photography and photography, photographs and
photographs.
Ordinary thing
I was stunned recently when I saw some photographs taken by someone
who insists she is an amateur who is still in the baby-stage of
photography. Natalie Soysa’s Facebook album titled ‘Urban Fragments’ was
truly amazing. They made me see architecture with different eyes, taught
me that the eye can frame in astounding and simple ways that turn the
most ordinary thing into something utterly magical to behold.
Unfortunately Natalie is not around; I wanted to get her permission to
share a couple of pictures with the Daily News readership.
More recently, I was privileged to see the photography of Hiranya
Malwatta. I am not student enough to compare and contrast, but these
photographs moved me in very much the same way. There is so much to see
around us. So much poetry, short stories, novellas and novels. There are
so many screenplays waiting to be written, so many plays awaiting
playwrights and philosophies patiently anticipating sages who have
language and silence to obtain, synthesize and share.
I cannot render these things into poetry that does justice to
photograph, photographer and the object(s) captured. Read the following
therefore as the underside of an embroidery, the poor transliteration of
a great work of art by an unqualified translator lacking fluency in both
languages. It is the best I can do.
There are worlds out there
in colour and shade
contoured and free
made of elements
named but unseen;
there’s a universe
that pours from your eyes
that draws mind wave
from the depths of the deepest oceans
to break at your feet,
with penitence and request
for residency
in that singular vantage point
of heart-mind intersect;
to see the ways of re-mapping
and to inhabit the most ancient lands
with paint so fresh
it is ‘news’.
Kanishka will prefer an image fragment, I am sure.
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