What could be more different than the right and left brains.For this week's Illustration Friday, theme "opposites," I was going to make an illustration of two idiots, each on two ends of a string – a straight line…yelling at each other…probably about which end is the beginning…it started here! no, it started here! I was maybe going to include a short essay taking off on the fact that root of 'opposite' is oppose.
Oppose: A verb…to oppose; to attempt to stop the progression of; to object to…
But that got me to thinking about our western culture. We depend more and more on binary, simplistic thinking. Everything’s about taking the shortest route. And of course, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Linear thinking. It’s going to be the death of us.
Either / Or
Off / On
Black / White
Good / Bad
True / False
Night / Day
Consider our planet – a sphere, made from an infinite number of circles. Our planet’s very existence implies an infinite number of paths, journeys…ideas. Our spherical world doesn’t work in a linear fashion. We are not traveling in a straight line. We rotate and we revolve, visiting and revisiting the same points over, and over again. One could even say recycling the same moments each year. A red leaf, a blanket of frost, a crocus...
We are presented a limitless number of chances to learn, understand, and appreciate…to apologize…to get it right.
10 comments:
Polka dots and plaid? I've been guilty of that before. Loved your review of the word, "opposite". On the subject of how our culture is too linear, I'm reading a great book right now called "The Alphabet And The Goddess" that talks about exactly that. A timely concept!
I agree with a lot of what you wrote about. Have you read, "Skinny Legs and All?" It's a book by Tom Robbins and one of the lessons is about how time is a field and not a straight road.
One of the problems that I had with a lot of the interpretations of this week's topic was the usage of "the opposite sex." I think the terminology is totally obsolete. Males and females should not oppose one another. To believe so gives power to the stereotypes.
As a confirmed right-bainer, I couldn't agree more! :) Excellent idea here. Glad to see you back.
This one is great, leaves prenty of room for interpretation and your color choices are good as well.
The two characters live in Plaid-space and are trying to connect through the polka dot fabric. fresh and cute!
Cool concept! Of course, many people just put them all together and call it a look:> I thoroughly enjoyed your commentary about the right and left brains, and especially about our need to have things one way or the other. Certainly thought provoking...
great colors effects
Really inspirational. Many things come to my mind. The whirling dervishes of Turkey whose spinning is said to send them into ecstasy and beyond the limitations of time and space. What I find funny about your thought-provoking illustration and text is that I come from Slovenia, the land of polkas. I grew up with rock music and almost detested our traditional folk music at that time. Even now I don’t exactly love it. But, after seeing your polka dots…, and reading your text, I see the matter in a totally different way. Polka, as a dance, is circular, as many dances are. It could be a popularization of an ecstatic dance which might have been at the origin of it. It even works very much in the same manner as the dance of the whirling dervishes supposedly does, though on a lower level of understanding and effect. Whenever people here meet, to celebrate some thing or another, they dance polka, which takes them out of their ordinary linear lives for brief moments. Their heads start to spin…I’ve never thought about polka or polka dots in this way before?!:)
I'm afraid I'm mired in the binary and the base on this one.
I am so distracted by the thought of this little hand trying to grasp the big purple "pee-pee."
Oh, forgive me if I've denigrated your art and your poetics.
LOL. I'll never be able to see anything else!
I love this post. YOu are so wise.
love
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