The Power of Simplistic Imagery

Hmmm, dunno if it should really go here but it's my crack at a philosophical article.

Check out http://www.milliondollarcompany.com.au/best/ for the best of Million Dollar Company articles (none of them are actually like this one, they are more humour satire articles)

Anyhoo, here we go:

The Power of Simplistic Imagery


It only takes a few sentences to describe a scene but with the simplicity of a small collection of carefully chosen words an author can create imagery more powerful than entire novels.

When people read literature they place themselves within the world created by the collaboration of their own imaginations and the descriptive words of an author.

Since we place our own point of consciousness into a scene as we read in many ways we are allowing ourselves to partially exist in that fictional reality similar to how we partially exist in the reality of our dreams, memories, or projected thoughts.

However, unlike dreams or memories, literature has been crafted by an author and the reality is dependent upon the words used to describe it.
Word count and simplicity come into play when a sentence bound to simplicity by its word count allows the reader to envision, and therefore experience, a scene untainted by the negative side of complexity.

Because we are given so little information about a scene we are limited from putting our own assumptions or judgements upon it and are left with only a scene of simplistic peace and serenity.

Picture a scene wherein a boy is rafting a billowed sail amidst a vast blue ocean under the sun. In but one sentence the reader’s focus is drawn towards an ocean, a boat, and the character experiencing it. There is no room for the reader to picture or consider the existence of any real world elements like famine, war, disease, poverty or even death.

The sentence imagery is too simple for negative judgment and comparable to the complex real world the scene is completely free of problems. It is as if the prose acts like a limited key hole with which we are able to view a scene only of beauty and peace.

If you read a delicate paragraph describing a man perched against a tree by a slowly running stream with a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun you experience that slight pocket of an imagined reality without having to endure problems that might exist if that scene took place in the real world.

Questions or judgements like why isn’t the man at work, the fact of whether he is married or not, if he is poor or rich or happy or unhappy do not arise within the painted picture. None of these real world elements matter; we are fulfilled by the image alone.

It is art’s greatest paradox that we can read literature about a character waiting at the bus stop or watch a scene in a film of someone waiting in a doctor’s office and not only enjoy it but praise it as a beautiful portrayal of reality, but when we are faced with these situations in our real lives we’re filled with nothing but anxious resistance and denial of the present moment.
This is why we need to bring the same perspective into our everyday life. If we simplify our own settings we can escape the grip of the world’s negativity and rest within every passing moment in simplistic peace.

We need simplicity in order to navigate through an infinitely complex universe. This is what Henry David Thoreau meant when he said:

‘Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.’

When you stand at a bus stop you are standing within a scene written into the story of your own life. You can either look and see a complex life situation filled with judgements and assumptions or, you can simplify it all and see an eternal scene, locked in time, held calmly in place by its own simplicity.

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interesting.. i think this is why literature is so universal. it lets us escape into a more desired and straight-forward world for awhile.