Three metaphors
1 Structure: A washing line
Over the next few months I shall be completing my major project for the course. To date I’ve been making notes as I go in a notebook. Everything in sequence, chronologically. It works as a chronology, but gradually the complexity of the task means that relationships between references, thoughts, feedback and reading become muddled. Scoping things out on paper diagrammatically doesn’t seem to work very well either. This is rather surprising because I usually find a drawing or a diagram aids my thinking and clarifies structures. Perhaps one of things I’m discovering about writing is the extent to which it is more linear than design. Obvious, really. The narrative must unfold sequentially. Despite modernist and post-modernist experiments to the contrary, we still read mostly in a line by line way, typographically structured in sentences and paragraphs. It therefore seems best simply to start writing, just at the point when my head seems about to explode (in the sense it can contain no more information). Sometimes the very act of putting something down can free a train of thought locked in the brain. As in ‘I don’t know what I mean until I’ve written it’.
So it struck me that an apposite metaphor is a washing line: it’s linear, it has separate elements, they’re all held together by a common thread, they’re held in suspension, each part should be in harmony with the others.
2 Process: A muddy puddle
Overall the process of researching, reading, developing ideas and writing them up is quite opaque. The metaphor of a puddle seems about right, but a muddy one. Nothing is that clear. At best you can see the edges, but not the depth. The only way is to wade in and test the depth. In this case it would appear that as I can wade in I get deeper and deeper. You are unsighted when it comes to the next move. Balancing a consciousness of breadth and depth is crucial, but not so easy to achieve.
3 Subject matter: A Russian doll
My core subject matter revolves around place. Of course a definition of place is important at the outset. In some contexts place can be global, in others a state or city, perhaps an area or building. A room even, or a place within that. A desk maybe, a laptop, a file, my head (an ‘interior’ place). What is clear is that each ‘place’ sits within another place. It is about ‘situatedness’ and how we, both mentally and physically, relate to those situations. Our references of place move with us, so some of our notions about place are fixed while others move with us.
