Writing Reality: Synaesthetic Scenes
I wholly admit to being a concept reader and writer. Rather than framing my work in concrete terms, pinned to actual events and circumstances, I work best with abstract ideas. Maybe this is due to inhibitions about the quality of my work; certainly, much of my life has been governed by vagueness, with facts and figures substituted for smoke and mirrors, symbolism.
While ill with anorexia nervosa, struggling to recover, I would ask for permission to eat and to rest, and fought bitterly with my therapist when she suggested that I begin to serve myself food, and take steps towards reducing my exercise. As she put it, “No one can monitor you forever. The details are yours.”
The thought of feeling well again, of having energy, was the image I worked towards; but whenever it came to the crunch (as it were), I would buckle under the pressure of taking responsibility for my own actions. My opinions didn’t matter, much less my emotions, because I couldn’t trust them. They had landed me in hot water before, after all.
The same self-doubt appears to have filtered across my life, like ink spilled over a map. It is something I push against every day, when writing, when socializing on / offline. As much as I would like to talk about our contemporary world, and certain economical / political aspects of it, I don’t feel I could do them justice. Not yet, at least – lack of experience, and self-esteem, cause me to stumble on words that should come easily, and I throw away as many blog entries as I begin.
Maybe one day, I will find a way to meld my concerns, and this flowery prose.
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If there’s one thing I hate when writing in free-fall, it is hitting that dead-wall of thoughts – particularly when it comes to description, for it’s here that I’m in my element. With no ready connotations or sensory imagery to hand, the words seem as stick-lines only. While there is a need for a more direct style in certain types of prose, it is not something I can easily maintain. Trying to cut out imagery would feel like cutting off a limb, and I’ve given up trying to walk in the shoes of any author I happen to admire, but could never replicate.
A voice is a voice; mine happens to channel synaesthesia, and it’s to this kind of imagery that I turn when I want to bring a character, a setting or a scene alive.
As someone with Chromesthesia, I perceive colours and shapes/patterns (the concurrent) in relation to sounds and spoken words (the inducer.) Music is a major trigger. A whole song or a single note, the words of a vocalist or the scales played on an instrument – all can spark a response in my mind that is equivalent to seeing the keys of a piano lit up in a rainbow under my fingers, the flick of a whip made of shining copper strands, or a cloud of paint sluicing across the floor.
Vision by Carol Steen; Oil on Paper
I don’t so much “see” these additional perceptions, in conjunction with sound, as acknowledge the presence of them in shapes and colours behind my eyes.
When a new voice is introduced, the sound of a song can lose its original-composition colour. For example, when listening to the lyrics of Nick Drake’s Riverman, the predominant shades are pine green and bark brown; these are the colours of an oboe, which is also the “texture” of his voice, rounded and smooth, lilting.
But channelled through the voice of a cover singer, the words may become copper, or dusky blue, particularly if the instrumentation used is also different.
An artist can have an inherent “colour” of their own, regardless of what they are singing or playing about. In this, semantics have little impact, for it is the sound of the voice / the instruments which creates the synaesthetic impression, with variations of shade depending on pitch and tone; Cat Power is smoky purple in her alto lines, but on the soprano notes of “Colours and the Kids,” her voice comes closer to lilac.
I’m as yet unsure whether these synaesthetic experiences (the concurrent)are due to the emotional reactions evoked by reading a text or listening to a sound, or if is the actual construct of the inducer which is the trigger (the individual graph/phonemes.) One theory points toward crossed-wires activity in the cerebral cortex, which is divided into lobes that govern our thought patterns/processes, and sensory reactions. This would go some way towards explaining how a mood can have a colour – which is my strongest perception of synaesthesia, leading me to wonder whether it is these causing the colour effect, and not the stimuli. But why then should I have an emotional reaction towards the number 3? It is my favourite, and also happens to “appear” to me in my favourite colour, turquoise. Again, this is not something “seen” so much as perceived. The two are intrinsically linked. Likewise, I will avoid the number 5, because it is yellow – a colour I’m not all that fond of.
When it comes to writing, there’s no greater pleasure to be had than painting with words. I mean this in the way that Nabokov saw the Russian word, “Tosca”:
“Toska – noun /ˈtō-skə/ – Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.
No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
― Vladimir Nabokov
Such a palette of connotative imagery, attached to one small set of graphemes. I personally “see” the colours deep purple and red, as of an autumn leaf on a bonfire. There is a strong tang of bittersweet regret, like iron rust, in speaking the word aloud.
Nabokov observed that synaesthetes tend not to share the same sensory perceptions, but instead have variations which are unique to them. This discovery was made through the observations of his wife and little boy, both synaesthetes themselves:
“My wife has this gift of seeing letters in color, too, but her colors are completely different. There are, perhaps, two or three letters where we coincide, but otherwise the colors are quite different.”
Still more fascinating is the apparent blending of grapheme-colours in the parental genes, to form a natural progression in the mind of the child – rather like mixing a set of oil paints:
“Then we asked him to list his colors and we discovered that in one case, one letter which he sees as purple, or perhaps mauve, is pink to me and blue to my wife. This is the letter M. So the combination of pink and blue makes lilac in his case. Which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle.”
Another author, Patricia Lynne Duffy, tells of a similar experience in her excellent book, Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synaesthetes colour their World:
‘My father and I…were reminiscing about the time I was a little girl, learning to write the letters of the alphabet. We remembered that, under his guidance, I’d learned to write all of the letters very quickly except for the letter ‘R’.
“Until one day,” I said to my father, “I realized that to make an ‘R’ all I had to do was first write a ‘P’ and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line.”
“Yellow letter? Orange Letter?” my father said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know,” I said. “‘P’ is a yellow letter, but ‘R’ is an orange letter. You know – the colors of the letters.”
“The colors of the letters?” my father said.’
My own grapheme/phoneme combinations possess some spatial relativity to one another. 9, for example, is large and purple, quietly majestic with a faint sheen; 6 is little and silly, light green; 3 is turquoise, medium-sized and slender, with just the faintest sheen of silver. The name of my dear friend Nillu Steltzer, appears to me in white and red. My own name is blue and green, as most words/names with the close proximity of letter A and E, tend to be (interestingly, the co-editor of Synaesthesia Magazine, Carlotta, has a dark blue name; but her Twitter handle, @1chae, is canary-yellow and teal.)
These sensory crossovers have crept into our everyday lexicon. There is the “black funk”, the “itchy mood”, the “cold white light of the moon.” Using these concrete nouns to describe an emotional response to a situation, we can cross the borders into the abstract world, where a mood can have a colour or a texture; and back again, into a sensory-overlap, where a name we see becomes something we can taste, of it is described thus. The text gains what can *almost* be experienced as something tangible.
This is just one way of shaking up the descriptive writing process, giving an audience more variety.
A setting that resembles an empty room can be brought to life by the juxtaposition of what a character knows on a conscious-sensory level v.s. what they perceive on a subconscious-synaesthetic level. If the narrative perspective is channelled through one or more characters, whether in first person voice or over the shoulder, an author can choose to employ variations of sense-imagery based upon life experiences / circumstances. For example, a man who has been down on his luck may perceive the world in shades of rot, decay and rust; he may draw the audience’s attention to the rust on his car – its tangy smell, the rough texture to touch, the strange whorl-patterns to look at – in comparison to the sun sparkling on the polish of his neighbour’s vehicle.
Provided there is enough sensory stimulus and crossover, the relevant connotations and memory-triggers can evoke a “mood” in the audience, which is close to experiencing synaesthesia. In the same way, a film director will employ mise-en-scène – props, costumes, alterations in the colour / shade of lighting – and diegetic / non-diegetic sound, to influence the perceptions of mood from one scene to another.
Image courtesy of www.kingsroadrocks.com/
Time can be made apparent in terms of light and dark, with the sun shifting over the far wall in an office throughout a long shift, as well as the systematic ticking of a clock, the precision of numbers (senses Sight and Sound.) A shift in the air – the clatter of pigeons and the whirl of their feathers – can summarize a mood of fidgety discontent (senses Sound and Sight.)
A building may take on a mood, or experience an oscillation of these, depending on the perceptions of the workers within – or perhaps the mood may be unique to the structure itself, as of a sentient being. Your everyday environment can become a living organism, should you choose to open all your senses to it.
At work, I cross all floors of the building at some point during the day. The past 3.5 years have imprinted enough sensory triggers to make a library’s worth of stimuli, ready for recall if I need to describe a setting. The building has the creaking personality and elegance of an aged dancer; she is made up of frayed carpets, panes that crackle and flake plaster like skin, and windows that weep rain. Her coffee rings and energy drink towers, are testament to the state of the shifting moods of colleagues. Standing in an empty stairwell, I have only to listen to gauge the mood of a day (which may remain unchanged for a shift, or change sharply at the turn of events.) There are always little clues to look out for, and it is these shifts in atmosphere – from the normal to the charged, to the downright crucial, that you should make yourself aware of, in your own environments.
Dana Vachon’s “Mergers and Acquisitions” is essentially a book about investment banking; but it is the vibrant descriptions of the characters and settings, and the treacle-darkness of comedy and pathos, which drive the narrative. An average office space is framed thus:
“I settled into the eight-by-eight cubicle whose carpet had once been gray, but over the years had been Jackson Pollocked with tumbling chunks of sesame chicken and spilled splashes of Starbucks lattes.”
Vachon worked as an investment banker, and had apparently stored a vast sum of memories to use as stimuli for later recall, when writing of his experiences on Wall Street. The semi-autobiographical protagonist, Tommy, is not one for emoting with direct words; his narrative is rich with sensory perceptions, which do the job for him.
“She was lying on one of the old, overstuffed sofas, her hair wrapped up in a lumpy, unwashed bun. She wore the same red kimono that she had surprised me with weeks before, but it too seemed different, and as I looked closer I saw that among its bright silken peacocks and dragons were burns from fallen cigarettes and stains from splashed sips of wine….I looked at the frogs and noted that the air in the apartment was nursing-home stale and that the windows had all been closed.”
If your immediate environment is lacking the sparks necessary for a scene, take yourself to an unfamiliar setting. My personal jolt-from-comfort-zone is to wander through the noise and bustle of our local farmers’ market. It’s unnerving – there are a great many people around, with voices thrown like knives – but it’s a feast for the senses, with everything from basic reactions (touch = soft suede, sound = chattering coins, smell = fresh fruit), to more extensive imagery (plums that resemble bullets; a rainbow swathe of macs.)
Make a point of listening to what is expressed through surroundings as well as speech – those pigeons circling overhead, what has disturbed them? Is it relative to the time of day, or to a red kite angling nearby? Can this be used as an image of approaching danger? The slate-coloured nimbus that has gathered on the horizon of an otherwise blue-sky day: how might this shift in the weather be used to convey a change of mood of a scene, from peaceful and scenic to unpredictable and troublesome? Will the characters notice and draw attention to it themselves – as with first person POV – or will the audience be aware of the tonal shift before them, as a form of dramatic irony in third person POV?
In her novel, The Story Sisters, Alice Hoffman’s teen protagonists have a unique form of image-notation – by jotting down a single, significant word that is relative to a time and place, they are able to recall the sensory aspects of it, and the subsequent mood that was felt:
“Meg and Claire looked at each other. They could hear the clock over the stove, ticking. They could hear doves in the courtyard. They wanted this moment to last forever. The sunlight was orange. They had to remember that. Meg would make certain they did. She fetched a piece of paper and wrote down the word orange, then folded the paper in half. They could cut up pears and write down all of the colours of the light and listen to people laugh and smell the blooms on the chestnut tree and forget about the rest of the world…they would have this memory of sitting in the kitchen, being happy.” – pg 133, The Story Sisters
Try this in your everyday experiences – particularly when time isn’t on your side – using a word/phrase/idiom to sum up the moment. I use “lamplight haven” and “orange-black” to help recall the sensory aspects of a night-walk; the stirring wind, leaves rattling along the pavement like fallen bones; steps taken a little more quickly than usual, and that odd halo of claws which tree branches make around a lamp. When writing such an experience into a scene, and stuck indoors on a blistering hot day, such sensory recall is priceless.
The trick is knowing when to jot something down on the spot, to record it before the moment is lost. This does involve a fair bit of diving into stairwells and ducking into alleyways. An audio recording / dictaphone app on your phone, is a good way of catching those emotional inflections which snagged you up – how it all made you feel at the time – to be channelled later when writing. Similarly, a photograph taken in-the-moment can help to trace back to the particular image of stillness in an afternoon, when the sky seemed made of lemon juice and fleece, the rain was silver, and the air was purple with the smell of buddleia.
With regards to how light shifts across the walls of a room, perhaps mark its passage in terms of what a character pays attention to, in relation to emotions – do they notice the ruddy tinge of the sun while waiting for an agonizing shift to end? If they are waiting in expectation of a loved one’s arrival, is the light more notable than the creeping shadows; or if the visitor are late, do the corners of the room waver in uncertainty? Does the smell of wildflowers through the open window, unnerve them in the sense that the loved one may have chosen “freedom”, and changed their mind?
The progression of time can also be marked as a seasonal narrative – how does this affect your characters? Do they notice when the sun sets further along the western skyline, disappearing behind a different building each night? When the light shifts from spring’s green-gold haze, to the stark gold bars of summer, and thus into the pastels and burnt palette of autumn and the silver-black starkness of winter, does the continuum leave them melancholic, or edgy with the anticipation of change? In this way, the combination of sensory-stimuli and connotative imagery can evoke an emotional response in the audience. Their memories may be triggered; their thinking may turn to aspects of their own lives, emphasizing relativity, by a description framed in synaesthetic imagery, as with Baudelaire’s “Correspondences“:
“There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant.”
Melancholy
Just stick it there on a page, watch it grow roots to swamp the paper and the book, the shelf and the room. Left to its own devices, it can eat you alive with a beautiful detachment.
Melancholy does not have a price-tag, nor does it come with a prescribed negativity. It’s rather misrepresented, like the Mort card of the Tarot, or the Devil – these are seen as the “blights”, the dark cards to draw, with their connotations of the beyond and the unknown. It’s the Tower you’ve got to watch out for. The Chaos card. Therein lies the real unknown, because it deals with changing situations and circumstances – the universe with its boot up your arse, kicking you out the window, falling to the ground. This can be a token of goodwill on Fate’s part, if you believe in that stuff – a caution to those procrastinators who believe all is well, in stasis. But that upheaval, the rending of roots, can be the loss of everything you stood (and stand still) for. The cutting of your rose garden.
Mine are only ever the blue.
Melancholy, as I experience it, comes with the heads of ripe wheat and old brass sunlight; the flecks in a jaded blue eye. It comes in the sweetly curved smile of birdsong, in the latest and earliest hours of day, when the air’s no longer a freshness of green – it’s the parched throat of a papyrus scroll.
Yellow grass crackles underfoot; baked clay is split right through, so it seems you might look into the heart of the world and find it darker than you supposed. An old, hot wind draws those birds onto the wire, whispering that it’s about time they lost those few pounds of flesh and made ready for the long haul flight.
No extra luggage, please, we’re going away.
But you can’t come with us. This is for your own good, for you to stay, while others leave.
There are the drifting, dancing fairy-puffs known as Rosebay Willowherb; the bristling green shells we knew as Bombyknockers. when we were kids. Here and gone, and it’s sparks on the wind now – a fractious thing, full of rain, soon to be snow.
Melancholy, your true name is Autumn, and I forgive you for coming around so soon. This year has been hard where the last was bland, and the one before exceptional. I craved change and oh, petty fool, I got it. There was no reprisal, I never got the chance to better explain myself to him. Still. That was then; this is now.
Somehow, I think the bird on the wire has more chance.
I relish this time of year, for its sweetness as bitter as almond paste. The glowing colours die in the heart of the morning, when mist is a silverspun wreath, framing your lashes and hair. Each silver droplet is a second on my clock. Soon there will be the breakdown, the conflict of seasons, as the air draws out its last strangled hot breath, to die in an icy whisper.
They pop in the heat like cereal in milk
–
When nothing else will do, there’s always Shakespeare
My favourite time.
You make it easier to be who I want to be
What does the end of a relationship feel like?
Unzipping a coat shared by two
Unpicking the seam stitching lives together
Finding ornaments, books, DVDs, games
Wondering what belongs to who
Interchangeable things, slapdash time
Standing in the bathroom staring at emptied shelves
A few hairs, flakes of makeup
Crying your face off at the sight of a solitary toothbrush
Feeling terrified and full of white sparks
Wondering if you can go it alone
Knowing you can (full of dark light)
Wiping your face off
Sniffling at the window ghost
Grin-grimacing at the sight of a year backflashing
A year and two
Three four five
2008 to now
Dialing down
A song, a phrase, a face pulled, giggling fits and scowls
Dagger-chin defiance, silence, shared look
Rum and beer, whiskey for hiccups
Lamplight haven and 3am stars
Field and park, mist and rain
Hike and kite, the plastic and the bird
Downs and Beacon, waiting
For friends facing each other as equals
Independence at last, so far behind peers
So far ahead in mind
So old
So young
Trying too hard to be heard, too hard to forget
Or remember what started it all
Random message
Tart reply 😉
Scared of the light
Living in the dark
Not alone with dreams
Knowing another breathspace
Heartbeat
Alone and together, gone and apart
Smile, fate, be brave
These are the days of Now
We were as then
I am that Is.
Writing Reality: Symbolism and Motifs
Symbols are a fundamental aspect of life as well as literature, running parallel with the realism of events and narrative. They represent something else, are defined as “objects, characters, figures, or colours used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.” Standing alone in terms of what they represent, they act in lieu of wordy descriptions. Look around, and you’re bound to find a sign or object functioning as an informative snapshot of what a part of your environment means / does. Some symbols are employed to work in a universal sense, for a wider audience – whether stuck up in a cleaning cupboard or in a firefighter’s office, the symbols relative to COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health)
mean the same thing – they are an appeal to the senses of the viewer, with basic and comprehensible images used to help them avoid danger. This is particularly handy when crossing language-barriers.
It can’t be ignored that symbolism is as subjective a literary device as any other, especially where imagery is concerned. There are no cut and dried answers. What may represent one cultural / religious aspect to a number of people, can be interpreted very differently elsewhere. The colour red in Western cultures is generally accepted to represent intensity of feelings (Holly Golightly describes having the “mean reds” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and peril, or the inference of it (road signs giving orders. e.g. speed limits, are red circles, and mainly prohibitive.)
But in Japan, the colour red is significant of luck and prosperity, particularly when teamed with white. The national flag is made up of a red circle on a white background, and is known colloquially as “Hinomaru” (“the sun’s circle”); Japan (“Nihon”) is thereby known as the “Land of the Rising Sun”. The sun has positive connotations for its life-giving qualities, but subjectivity can break this symbol down further in terms of cultural beliefs, e.g. as a source of photosynthesis for crops to grow, or a heavenly deity, etc.
In writing, symbols and motifs create an alternate message that runs in the background of your more direct approach – narrative, characterization, dialogue. Were you to stick predominantly with these aspects, a story could soon begin to resemble a screenplay or technical manual, full of information but little colour. The trick is to keep the audience semi-aware of what is going on, where imagery is involved – I can’t emphasize enough the need for understatement. The worst possible reaction from the audience would be to slam the book shut, cursing an enormous bear-trap of a symbol they saw ahead on the path – one gleaming through the leaves, barely covered and shining with teeth to pierce their suspension of disbelief. It’s a surefire way to piss off a collective.
Ideally, a symbol doesn’t choke up the narrative; it drops into the subconscious-flowerbed and sews its idea in the minds of the audience, waiting for realization to grow by degrees, or not at all. You yourself may not explicitly know where the plot is going yet, what the characters have to say or what they mean to one another – there’s little point working in the weave of symbolism when the construct isn’t yet safe. More often than not, their observations will crystallize the nuances of symbolism without you even realizing. What one character “reads into” as a sign, another may not; the same holds true for the audience, where it’s the completion of an image via 50/50 perspective – what you, the creator, intended and what the reader (through experience and personal beliefs) chooses to see and relates back to the narrative and characters.
Often, a charged event will be marked symbolically. In the Dragonlance series, the three Gods of magic are represented by colours: White (Good), Red (Neutral) and Black (Evil). Mages studying and practicing the arts of a God, must adhere solely to that colour in terms of the robes they wear, marking their allegiance. A symbolic event for a mage is the changing colour of their robes:
“‘Our bargain remains. What? You ask for more?’ Raistlin was silent for a moment, then he sighed. ‘Name it!’
For long moments, the mage listened, absorbing. Caramon, watching him with loving anxiety, saw his brother’s thin metallic-tinged face grow deathly pale. Raistlin closed his eyes, swallowing as though drinking his bitter herbal brew. Finally he bowed his head.
‘I accept’
Caramon cried out in horror as he saw Raistlin’s robes, the red robes that marked his neutrality in the world, begin to deepen to crimson, then darken to a blood red, and then darken more – to black.” – pg 110, Dragons of Winter Night, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman.
Note the relative connotations too – “crimson” and “blood”, denoting danger/violence, deepening further to the black of night/death.
Look to your own reality for inspiration. What do you see everyday which, when placed in a changing-circumstance context (an “off” day, a moment of true clarity after walking out of a job, the death of a loved one or birth of a child) turns the mundane and ordinary into something blindingly meaningful, and somehow relative to your life?
In my novel End of the Line, I make a point of citing several instances in which petrol rainbows go slick-sliding down rainy gutters, or where the colours turquoise and brass appear (flying ribbons, an autumn sunset.) These tend to occur with references to a missing girl, Siobhan, who is the pivot on which the novel spins. Her personality is described not so much in the words of those who knew her, but by the symbolism speckled throughout the narrative – she was “beautifully intoxicating” like the smell and texture of petrol, slippery with the danger and effervescence of its colours. She preyed on the minds of men and boys while in town, eluding them all (for their own good, too.)
Similarly, I reworked the myth of the blue rose to become symbolic of another character – a girl-woman, a wanderer between worlds, whose pleasant and intelligent nature is at once appealing and frustratingly mysterious. She is impossible to pin down to any one time or place. The blue rose tattoo at her shoulder is symbolic of an elusive nature; it’s also the burden/blessing she carries. As the rose genus cannot naturally produce the Delphinidin pigment necessary for this hue, it’s reliant on synthetic production and yet has maintained its status as a near-universal symbol of the unattainable, the mysterious.
When referencing their growth, I put a further slant on this pathos by having them bloom almost exclusively on the graves of those bound in a love-bond with people left behind. The rose itself feeds the bond while carrying the message of eternity. By virtue of this, the rose won’t die whether at growth or cut and carried (the character referenced has a blue rose crushed and mixed into her tattoo’s ink, thereby marking her as one “cursed by life” until death reunites her soul with the fallen.) This becomes further subjective to the personality of the carrier – some may wander for years, uneasy in crowds but forever lonely and unable to give/receive love again; others languish and die among the blue rose garden-graves. Whatever the outcome, their choice – and it’s always a willing love-bond – sets them apart for the rest of their days alive, ensuring that the blue rose is not a gift lightly given.
Telling your audience that a man is a fraud is one thing; showing him to be so via colour symbolism, as in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatbsy”, can make the difference between a fairly decent narrative and a real palette of a story, full of subtext. There’s the green light on Daisy Buchanan’s dock; the continuous presence of yellow, as a veneer of gold. Yellow can represent many things – madness, gaiety, sickness, friendship. When placed in the context of Gatsby’s circumstances – particularly at the first party – it screams of little substance, and frivolity.
“‘You don’t know who we are,’ said one of the girls in yellow, ‘but we met you here about a month ago.’
‘You’ve dyed your hair since then,’ remarked Jordan, and I started but the girls had moved casually on and her remark was addressed to the premature moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine…” – pg 51, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Notice the use of “gold” for the quiet dignity of Jordan, as opposed to the starkness of “yellow” that exposes the girls as crude by comparison.
“‘Let’s get out,’ whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half hour. ‘This is much too polite for me.'”
Gatsby’s recurrence of colour-coded symbolism, is a motif. While a particular symbol relates to one concept (e.g. despair shown in falling autumn leaves) a motif is a repetitive element running concurrent with narrative. In music, a motif is a passage repeated in melody and/or rhythm, to instill a certain theme in the audience consciousness. In Watership Down, Richard Adams builds up the flight from Efrafa through careful selection of symbols, to create a tension-motif with a resounding conclusion:
(Narrative) “Bigwig’s first impulse was to fight Woundwort on the spot. He realized immediately that this would be futile and would only bring the whole place around his ears. There was nothing to do but obey…”
(Symbolism) “Despite the sunset, the evening seemed heavy with cloud and among the trees it was sultry and grey. The thunder was building up.”
(Symbolism) “As they set off up the left bank, the wind began to blow in fitful, warm gusts, with a multifoliate rustling through the sedges. They had just reached the plank bridge when there came a rumble of thunder. In the intense, strange light, the plants and leaves seemed magnified…
(Narrative) ‘I think this is going to be a rough business,’ he added quietly to Hazel. ‘I don’t like it much.'”
(Narrative) ‘”Frith sees you!’ cried Bigwig. ‘You’re not fit to be called a rabbit! May Frith blast you and your foul Owsla full of bullies!’
(Symbolism) At that instant a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky… Immediately upon it came the thunder; a high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces close above, which deepened and turned to enormous blows of dissolution. Then the rain fell like a waterfall.” – Watership Down, Richard Adams.
Look for concepts/themes relative to the world you’ve created; how the narrative framed within it observes and reacts. Notice how with the rabbits, the use of nature as a recurrent motif ties in with their constant prey-instinct awareness of surroundings, always alert to its signals and dangers. Their relation to symbolism pivots on contextual awareness:
“It did not occur to Hazel that there was anything unusual in this. The idea of a bridge was beyond him. He saw only a line of stout posts-and-rails on either side of the road…Hazel saw without surprise the road crossing the river. What worried him was that where it did so, there were only very narrow verges of short grass, offering no cover. His rabbits would be exposed to view and unable to bolt, except along the road.” – pg 301, Watership Down, Richard Adams
The bridge doesn’t represent a symbol of safe passage; it’s overall mass is incomprehensible in a rabbit mind. Rather, it’s dialed down to what can be understood, a lack of cover – symbolic of exposure, danger, the prey-instinct of flight kicking in.
For further commentary on symbolism in writing, read the responses 16-year-old Bruce McAllister received when he mailed a four-letter survey on the use of symbolism, to 150 accredited authors. My personal favourite has always been from Joseph Heller, Question Two
(“Do readers ever infer that there is symbolism in your writing where you had not intended it to be? If so, what is your feeling about this type of inference? (Humorous? annoying? etc.?)”
This happens often, and in every case there is good reason for the inference; in many cases, I have been able to learn something about my own book, for readers have seen much in the book that is there, although I was not aware of it being there.
You’re looking for that hurt look around my mouth
So you can make another claim – well, go ahead and make it.
This Friday sees my new life begin. The solitary writer blossoms at last, after a handful of years spent with a partner of trust, love and banter; carer and caring, the two went together like snowdrops and blood, sad to say. Both as vivid as the other, too apparent at first, and our bickering arose from my inability to see every tree for the wood. Sorry became my dying breath, while his rose through lies. Many times I thought we were finished, that the way back was too long and the bramble-talons too sharp; that his hiding around every corner, waiting for me to catch up while seeing further along the path than I was able, would see me stumble once too often. Sure, but it felt like home, and hell, sometimes.
I was a gunslinger with his heart. A bladed touch. Too bad my aim was off most of the time, but hey, I’m only human yet.
Now he moves on, away, and I stay. This city holds my bones for a bit longer, and I’m happy with its rough-hewn stones, its ancient walkways, its Roman tilt to the tongue. Everything ends in -ium and starts with V; has more than a hint of the antiquity that breeds dignified silence, while we cough into our beers and cokes and rum, grin-grimacing in the quick wind that races down the hill, up the park, to the font of the Abbey, where Gods and Masters linger no more. We wonder if they were ever present, if the warmth outside ever made itself felt indoors, for stones harbour chill like a human heart deadened to love. It’s the beating within, the blood of the book, that keeps us alive and aching for new stories.
Mine finds itself at the end of this week. An eyrie at the top of a house of strangers, and I’m perfectly content with this anonymity. I can eke out my days in pleasant silence, when the inside of my head is a maelstrom. Writing can flow, as I watch the sky from three directions (have always wanted a skylight, now I am stoked by the 360 view) and wait for a red kite to angle past one day, my dark-eyed angel. Hooked claws for my heart. Belittle this strange girl-child, for she only knows the way Home by the breadcrumbs of her soul, flaking a bit more each day but still somehow intact.
My brother lives and breathes in my mind, and I try to support his, to glue together the fracture lines. His soul is another matter. I don’t think even mine could face down its strength. He needs no help there (though he doesn’t know it yet, as a sword doesn’t know itself until the cold plunge of water comes, after the tempering.)
My sister, keeper of a small soul placed in her haphazard, beautiful care, is doing what she can for the girl who would dial down her days into screamed silence, food no longer a friend, sleep no longer necessary for those who stay awake long hours to count count count count count count count count count –
No, I wish I was talking about Sesame Street.
Ah, time. You’ve got a crooked back, what with all I’ve heaped on you lately. This latest story stands above the water in 7,000 or so words, still incomplete, still beating out the pulse to make walls tumble and shake, liquid black, eyesore green. Two kids who ought to have known better, but the adults are the truth behind (anti) matter.
We’ll see where it goes. If I don’t end up hurling it into the Clock’s heart (Metropolis notes abound) then perhaps it’ll wind up on an agent’s desk.
I always did pun unintentionally. So I left that one in, for our mutual shit-eating grins.
It’s good to return to the base, where the wind cranks through rotting fields of wheat, and trees grow through the roof:
There are some who would look to me for a stepping stone, a purchase, a blade, a Like, a handshake, a fuck and / or a page turned. I say, “Easy, all. I’m a namesake only.”
When I said what I said, I didn’t mean anything –
I was afraid I’d eat your brains (’cause I’m evil.)
Ways part. Water flows. Walls crumble, my heart dies a little more, rebuilds itself on new days, strangeways, a city life renewable and antiquated by turns.
I’m a writer, friend. I make things happen. Even when it hurts like hell, things happen for the want of the world.
All the very best of us string ourselves up for love.
celenagaia 