"How does a simile work? Place something next to something and say, here. (The here is where the somethings touch.) The rainy night, like Debussy. There on the shelf, a piece of grapevine in a blue vase. The world is so much like itself it can be hard to see. Tomorrow I will try again to understand: what is a simile? All night, all day: the rain comes in vertical lines, then horizontal lines, like a drawing made on the world I can perceive."
"How does the simile do whatever it is it does to us? The world is touching the world itself and touching me. My hand, this pencil making all these marks. A drawing of the world that is the world, that I can make. That's making me. Simile is founded on sensory experience; it's not an abstract lesson on what a simile is."
A simile operates by placing one thing next to another and marking the point where they touch, making resemblance perceptible. Concrete instruction — place something next to something and say 'here' — models the tactile mechanics of comparison. Sensory images such as a rainy night like Debussy or a grapevine in a blue vase anchor comparisons in perception. Similes render the world self-reflective, allowing the world to touch itself and to touch the perceiver. Repetition of marks, rain lines, and personal making turn comparisons into acts of creation that shape perception and the maker through patterned images and embodied attention.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]