I think the universe is pure geometry—basically, a beautiful shape twisting around and dancing over space-time.
—Antony Garrett Lisi
What if your story generated a shape or a kaleidoscope of shapes? What if a shape performed as a catalyst for your story? What if you shaped your story (real or imagined) to reflect the content and illuminate the truth?
Would it be circular—smooth and flat? Sleek and sinewy, crisscrossed and cracked? Amorphous or tangled—a massive spread of sargassum seaweed twice the width of the US heading from Africa to our eastern shores? Would it be organic, multi-faceted like an octopus, or fragmented and fractured with hidden crevasses? Might it be bejeweled, spiky or missing vital pieces? Veiled with intrigue—overlaid & undercut? A continuum accompanied by a soulful song or echo of delicious silence?
Fiction is an elemental force, which has the power to shape reality in its own image—or images, I should say—because reality, like light, exists not only as a single point or particle, but also as an array of possibilities.
—Ruth Ozeki
Would it resemble earthy chunks of turquoise, an elegant string of pearls, a dizzying mosaic or a treacherous climb to the summit? Or might it be fluid— indigo undulating & icy overlapping? Could it emulate an Instagram orgasm or clandestine text thread negotiation? Would it produce halting gaps or replicate like a virus? Would you really want to shape a calming meditation with angry obtuse angles? Or fashion a story of bloated excess to fit a fragile frame? Would you want a series of unhinged episodes to squeeze into an alley? Or take a tale of bones & veins & breath and shape it square?
Might an epiphany be tapered like a candle? And a confession be refracted like a stained-glass window or simply soar off to an illusive horizon line? Would a thrilling exposé be concave or convex or in a perpetual state of peeling like an onion? Would a tale of love and loss be pinned with disappearing strands? And could you twist them into silver bracelets laced with molten gold?
Could you sculpt or divine an auspicious shape with a selection of persuasive means? Or seduce the elusive ways of nature’s shapings to align yourself? Could you call on fortuitous numerology and create on the cusp of the equinox or solstice for a slice of geometric harmony? And what about configurations such as stars & constellations—infinite skies & the ineffable grace of tides? What cryptic codes do they hold? And what about the bold enigma of the moon?
To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.
—Robert Irwin
And—while we’re at it—what about the tangible contours of a life? Would there be jagged edges of uncertainty shaped with crystal clarity? What about your life? Could you shape it?
Now ya got me thinking! Nice post. Thanks Martha.
Dancing like a sparkler against a dark summer night. Lovely to read and think about. Thanks.
Well that little piece certainly has the mightiest collection of profound words
in one message to your students. I wish I could be that creative.
My mind is circling with swirling thoughts, shapes of ideas. And then it changes again as my thoughts turn.
Endless questions, eternal questions – there will be endless answers and none will put an end to the questioning. But as long as we have words we’ll always ask and search.