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Lost wonders
Jun. 7th, 2002 09:13 amI haven't read for a while; I subject myself to the slavery of computing more usually, typing away in order to create and react through what I tell myself is a more creative process than watching the TV, which I still don't really do that often.
TV has no creativity, TV has no input. You are just medium for it to project it's message onto, theres no room for your own input, your own thoughts or views - you don't contribute anything to the process.
This, I told myself, was why I didn't read anymore; because - again - it's not creative, but this is entirely untrue, and I'd forgotten that. Reading, like radio, only provides you with a single input to your senses, it's not even audio so in that sense it leaves more for the mind to create from; because that is the wonder of reading, you are given a story or a thought or a view and from there you create your own sounds and images of the scenes at hand, in your own mind, a very personal vision of what the author originally conceved. This is why no book survives translation to film (even a good film) because there is no more room for interpretation, you are given the directors view of the film, no longer your own and all your images are skewed away from what you have imagined to the actors, the voices, the sounds images and special effects that have put together the experience in total.
This isn't to say I don't like movies, I do; I like them to have messages you can interpret however, ideas you can play with. Two of my favourite films (and possibly a third) Fight club and Contact both have underlying messages about life and existance which I have come to look into and read in my thoughts about - although admittedly you could dissect them forever, but that is part of the fun.
So, whats this rambling? It's probably just a slightly more coherant brain dump than usual, dreged up from the recesses of my mind that have just been awoken after reading again, something thats been asleep far too long and reminded me of the world as I used to see it perhaps.
Clay. Thats a word I thought of last night when reading, we are clay. A malleable piece of material molded by the words, images and ideas of the world around us; moulded to form and figure by experience until something slowly takes flesh, sometimes we fight to manipulate ourselves as well and change what we are or define our shape in order that the information from the world doesn't entirely swamp and define us, before we're swallowed up and tin-canned into whatever the production line is making.
Edited after I re-read and caught the threads that jumped as I typed
TV has no creativity, TV has no input. You are just medium for it to project it's message onto, theres no room for your own input, your own thoughts or views - you don't contribute anything to the process.
This, I told myself, was why I didn't read anymore; because - again - it's not creative, but this is entirely untrue, and I'd forgotten that. Reading, like radio, only provides you with a single input to your senses, it's not even audio so in that sense it leaves more for the mind to create from; because that is the wonder of reading, you are given a story or a thought or a view and from there you create your own sounds and images of the scenes at hand, in your own mind, a very personal vision of what the author originally conceved. This is why no book survives translation to film (even a good film) because there is no more room for interpretation, you are given the directors view of the film, no longer your own and all your images are skewed away from what you have imagined to the actors, the voices, the sounds images and special effects that have put together the experience in total.
This isn't to say I don't like movies, I do; I like them to have messages you can interpret however, ideas you can play with. Two of my favourite films (and possibly a third) Fight club and Contact both have underlying messages about life and existance which I have come to look into and read in my thoughts about - although admittedly you could dissect them forever, but that is part of the fun.
So, whats this rambling? It's probably just a slightly more coherant brain dump than usual, dreged up from the recesses of my mind that have just been awoken after reading again, something thats been asleep far too long and reminded me of the world as I used to see it perhaps.
Clay. Thats a word I thought of last night when reading, we are clay. A malleable piece of material molded by the words, images and ideas of the world around us; moulded to form and figure by experience until something slowly takes flesh, sometimes we fight to manipulate ourselves as well and change what we are or define our shape in order that the information from the world doesn't entirely swamp and define us, before we're swallowed up and tin-canned into whatever the production line is making.
Edited after I re-read and caught the threads that jumped as I typed
