Letter to Friends

I want to say a few things to all of you (beyond extending my sincere gratitude for your extraordinary tolerance); what I have to say, however, is not an explanation. Although trite in the extreme, it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a picture of a book I have recently self-published:

The name or title of the book is Cruise of the Sundowner, and the photograph is of two young men rowing the boat named Sundowner. The name of the boat (and the title of the book) is significant . . . at least nominally, as a sign that relates to the text between the covers and binding. So also is the photograph. Writing, pictorial painting and drawing are entirely graphic, and may be called art forms. The words of the title (as well as those that appear within the sub-titles) also are as signs that seek to speak to the text of the book (that is hidden by the cover). Both the words and the pictures have to do with the integrity of the book (and what the book seeks to share in composition and comprehension: both ‘speak to’ the integrity that is the book). We may be tempted to depict the picture on the cover (and describe the text both upon the covers, and upon the pages between them). In attempting such, we immediately begin to lose the sense of what both the pictures and the words are saying: in seeking a sense of understanding, we immediately lose the composite integrity of the book (and a capacity to comprehend that which the artist is attempting to share).

In description and depiction, all art ceases to be what it is, to be ‘read’ as a shadowy mean of what it was prior to description, depiction, or both. We have come to read almost all that we encounter in life as signs and signals: what we see is purely informational . . . our existence -- our modern lives -- comes to be exclusively dependent upon how we read the data within our physical environment. We come to interpret our lives as one would experience a theatrical drama. Ironically, when we process all this information, we reduce all to ideational specifics and ideological particulars that, although sometimes unified, lose their integrity . . . while we dispense with all that is mythical and musical. The irony is that we can understand only that which is drawn from (or expressed as) an interpretative scheme of symbols . . . we cannot understand anything until we put that something into words (into a symbolic scheme that is familiar to us). Words, the graphic symbols of linguistic systems, have historically served to indicate a similarity to that which each sought to isolate: in the modern era words came to be seen as equivalent to, and interchangeable with, that which they sought to identify. As noted by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things, “language no longer bears the mark of a time before Babel or the first cries that rang through the jungle.” Words used to circulate much as monetary units do: both were minted, however in the nineteenth century words lost their quality of mythos (and in the twentieth century units of money lost their quality of logos). Language and thought became entirely logical . . . and money became entirely mythic. Comprehension has been my goal in my writing of the past twenty years, and in order to comprehend we must reference both mythos and logos.

We are all familiar with realistic and abstract pictorial art. Throughout my writing of the past decade or two I have emphasized the dynamic between mythos and logos (of words and of coins): realistic pictorial art is thought of as the more factual and logical, whilst abstract art is seen as the more fanciful and mythical. We tend to take the more realistic images of art more or less at ‘face value,’ whilst less recognizable images are clearly thought in need of some deeper examination relative to ‘meaning.’ With regard to written graphic art, however, we have less tolerance for text that is not composed of clearly recognizable word images (with respect to fiction, as well as non-fiction writing). To say that one cannot judge a book by its cover is as trite as to say that a picture speaks a thousand words. Pictures do 'speak' with a capacity that would seem to 'say' far more (and more economicly) than is possible in the mode of graphic exposition or text. Look again at the cover image (as images ‘speak’ to us in a mode that is very similar to the manner that myth seeks to embrace more than a specific meaning or significance). Pictures retain much of their mythic quality, whereas denominated language has lost almost all of that capacity. A word can be interpreted as logos as well as mythos, however we now admit only the logical meaning or words (and dismiss their mythic quality).

On the surface we see two young men rowing a small sailboat in a narrow canal. We assume that the photo was chosen or taken with ‘an eye to’ that which the author seeks to declare and clarify within the text composed within. One of the rowing young men is forward looking, and the other (on the starboard side) is looking back at what is past; their strokes are alternate, and both young men are in the same boat. The man that works the port oar is on the starboard side, and the man that works the starboard oar is on the larboard side. Further, we can see that the name of the boat is ralative to the setting as well as the text, and that she (the boat) is outward-bound. There is a clear interdependence between the members of the crew, as well as between the crew and the vessel that they both must depend upon. All of this is highly relevant to what is contained in the ‘hold’ of the volume so contained by the twin covers (and by the binding keel between the sides of the boat). Myth is to be read in the manner in which we look into such images (and beneath the surface of all that art). Were we to dispense with (or to ignore) all that is not on the right side of the keel . . . or of all that we think of as myth, we would find ourselves without in integral hull (in an uncontained, uninsulated, and a-historic condition). We may make a similar observation were we to dispense with all that we think of as fact.

When I address this lamentable condition wherein we acknowledge only one portion of each beat (or of the composite dynamic) – and emphasize the need to reclaim and remember what it is to be integral (and the huge significance of being . . . of being a person) – I stress this need for seeing in composite relationships (as distinct from particularized and partitioned relativities). It is this – and the ramifications of exclusive unitarian schemes – that is the ‘nut and shell’ that I would share with all who may care to comprehend (and to see something of what is hidden as a function of seeing all within our environs as informational, experimental, and symbolicly represented in literation and formality). If readers fail to ‘see’ the significance of what I have been writing, explanation will not serve to improve that capacity . . . nor will any description or depiction help us to comprehend what Vincent was trying to share with us in his ‘Starry, Starry Night.’ It has not been my intent to profit, or in any manner benefit from, these literal efforts of the past twenty years ___ I have sought only to share them. Thank you – all of you – for for your kind tolerance.