Metaphor, Synecdoche, and Symbolism
· Sometimes when you go into a pure forum style website, where everything is discourse and everything must be dissected you manage to wander into the realm of conspiracy theories and the people who live there. Some conspiracies are a huge amount of fun, personally I continue to perpetuate the myth that Bigfoot and Smokey the Bear are actually one and the same in addition to the fact that the Disney corporation decided to name the smash hit Frozen what they did for the exact purpose of redirecting any internet searches in regards to Walt Disney’s frozen head away from that very conspiracy theory. The thing is, I really have to admire people who get so invested in theories and diving into what may or may not be reality because it speaks to the nature of who they are: inquisitive, skeptical people who may or may not be putting that curiosity to use in an ineffective way.
It’s an easy example of using one facet of reality to substitute for lack in another. When people who fill their hours doing deep dives into random subjects are depicted as conventionally unattractive or conventionally unpleasant or just flat out crazy. But, if you’re the type of person to fill that niche in your daily life it totally tracks that you would buy into what you’ve been told you are and live in two different layers for the majority of your life. Taking synecdoche and making it reality is such a pervasive part of life that studies (that I will not cite since I can’t remember where they’re from) have shown people are able to match names with faces of people they’ve never met because people grow up with the expectations of what an “Emma” looks like and unconsciously incorporate it into who they are.
For example, my name is pretty rare for girls and so in retrospect I actively held myself apart from other kids my age, especially girls, to the point where I refused to learn how to play guitar when I was a kid because “everyone knows how to play that” and I wanted to be unique. Expectations and reality so rarely match up with one another when it comes to things like love, art, or tourist attractions. So why do we work so hard to make ourselves match the expectations of the rest of the world? For acceptance? Even if that acceptance is just that of a bunch of other people you’ll never meet?
How is that going to translate for kids growing up today? In a way, it makes me glad that an all-natural makeup look has become vogue for young women, but that will become a problem as we glorify youth and forget to revere the aging process. There are so many problems with perception and existence as a person with the symbols of what is and is not right so ingrained in our minds that the colors in and of themselves are lent different qualities of “good” and “bad” (though I maintain my position that slightly green yellow bright enough to hurt the eyes is one of the worst colors ever).
I write this while staring into a dreary, rainy day and debating what it is about that kind of environment that makes me want to write. Where do our own opinions start and where do those of the world press in? Is the blurring of those lines good or bad? Is it like seeing the colors of a sunset bleed into night, beautiful and intangible, or more harsh, more like stepping out of a steaming shower onto cold bathroom tile while still being surrounded by the lingering steam?
Relativity is so overrated.