Elan Mudrow
Smidgens
Visual Rhetoric
Certain visuals are sketches
Finger-painted perspectives
Two-dimensional representations
Of a dot-to-dot planet
Color-coded into subdivisions.
Northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere
States, countries, and continents
Poor, rich, dark and light…a
Pseudo-scientific hopscotch
Drawn upon the streets, which…
We all can view on Google
Zooming in on frozen houses
Cars blurred while in movement
The past re-done, crime and punishment.
There is no sound in these places
Listening is obsolete.
We watch in focus mode,
For seeing is believing
And believing is sketchy.
These true images tumble in an
IP address bingo game.
Our humanity is a muffled noise
Behind the source…where
We are an array of likenesses
Are we
Mystery trolls hiding from
The bright crayon drawing of the sun?
Thinking in binary, or even worse,
Singularities of the infinite
Yelling at the top of our
Copy and pastes, proving
Yet another dead-end dual
Of conception and misconception.
Reasons to hate, reasons to love,
Do we construct art galleries of catharsis
Using only two hands?
Relieving the little voice, gurgling
Deep within empathy’s consciousness.
A temporary suture, a pause
From unending and constant bleeding,
The blaming of whoever and whomever,
While we run from sounds telling us
We are the ones placing images, messages
Inside the ubiquitous search engine
To gaze upon the shape of definition
Hunting for an undeniable truth,
The one math equation that explains it all
The impetus behind
Constructing inescapable jails
So beautiful, they become
Mirrors of our arguing love talk
The image of the red heart is something we recognize. But, that image does not make the sound of beating. In order to have the best chance at creating understanding, we must listen as well as gaze upon the image.–Elan
A Picture’s worth a thousand words, but a word ain’t worth a dime. –Sturgill Simpson
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Elan Mudrow 
But, you do not know the essence of it as of yet. Correct? Say hello to Roland Barthes.
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I am taking a Visual Rhetoric class this spring, so this caught my eye. Well done. You have caught the essence of it.
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Reblogged this on Kitten's Soiled Mittens.
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Thank you Paully
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I have nominated you https://paully1965.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/dragon-love-fire/
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I love, “Do we construct art galleries of catharsis/using only two hands.”
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Oooooo! 🙂 I love it! Bravo!!
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Reblogged this on wwwpalfitness.
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Pingback: Visual Rhetoric | The Adventures of the Average American
I love profound messages such as these.
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It’s true. Everything is so visual now and attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Yet reality involves all the senses. We need to take the time to focus our listening if we want to fully experience life.
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For some reason, this post reminded me if the Matrix, the movie with Keanu Reeves in. Behind the scenes of our world, the dots and connections, conscious and unconscious, altered realities etc. I enjoyed this. Jx
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neat grace. more than actual. evidently possible, sweet dreams become your heart,,,,great shit, love it,G
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True. I think you are speaking of what is called green screen. The poem asks if images contain intention and if so, those intentions are informative or misleading. I argue that they exist together. It is us who bring the deciding conclusion to that image. Let me give you an example. Many worship the image of Jesus. He is usually pictured as a 30-40-year-old white male with a beard. This is a positive message to those who come from a similar cultural background as the image. However, it may be construed as a negative image to those who are from different cultures. Then, would the right thing to do is have no image at all or does one side argue that their portrayal is “authentic”? You see how easy it is for one image to create a never-ending loop. Like you said, direct experience is always better than being a voyeur. But, since we live in an age that is becoming increasingly voyeuristic, it maybe a good thing to slow down and give some critical thought to what we are seeing unfold in front of us. If I may go on a rant for a bit, I think this is why the American political system is having problems with polarity and the inability to compromise, opening the door for clowns to enter into serious contention for the white house. Just a thought.
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Thanks for liking my post, I`m glad you enjoyed it. Your poem reminds me of those futuristic music videos where people put on hats and gloves and a computer is able to create for them a beach in their own sitting room. Isn`t it worrying that we aren`t too far from that? We google this and google that, but isn`t it better to experience things with your own eyes and ears. I think so!
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Thanks. This poem has quite a bit packed into it about good and bad and how that binary is represented in modern culture. You are spot on.
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“art galleries of catharsis”. Yes, I think so. The freedom of the mask, showing what we keep hidden, good and bad. Nicely done.
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Yes.
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Individuals in an ever-expanding base, mere numbers in an ever-expanding spreadsheet of facts and fallacies fed to us in ever-expanding pixels that threaten to escape the panels before us and become our true reality.
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Very interesting and thought provoking.
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