The line “this point in space” in John Timmon’s short film titled Perspective #2 reminds me of another by Robert Frost.
It goes: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (1).
I don’t know why, but let’s trace the logic anyway.
This is the first line of Frost’s famous poem, Mending Wall. What’s interesting about this line is the “placement” or “arrangement” of the second and third words, which forms an inversion of syntactical expectation. Grammatically, the line wants to read (and therefore become prose): “There is something that doesn’t love a wall.” But Frost “the poet” places “Something” before the pronoun and the to be verb, breaking what we call natural word order, introducing with this play on syntax the theme of ________. But also disorder–as we don’t know from the first line what “Something” means. In reading poetry we can make a poem mean something by considering not just how a poet uses language, the dictive element in a poem, but the arrangement of those elements. Hence, we can conclude that “placement,” the thinking or action that goes into an object’s positioning, carries with it the potential for meaning.
We could trace this thinking to a logical conclusion and claim that poetry is an earthquake.
But that’s not difficult to understand. What is somewhat more interesting is that points in space are strange creatures. A point in mathematics, for example, while indicated with a dot or a series of numbers, is not a dot at all but a “place” in time. We know that time is intimately related to “space.” A line, likewise, is neither a line nor the outer most surface of the tip of a pencil. A line, like a point, is a metaphor.
We could follow this logic all the way to another claim and claim that nouns are always other nouns hidden.
Timmon’s camera follows a certain track of lines (which is another noun hidden). Each of these lines or vectors stops at a point and then follows another line to another point or moment, completing its movement at a place called 35 seconds. This stop of time is defined by trees, a rail, a coffee cup, or by a composition of colors distant and nearby: green, gray, and deep blue. But we would never tell an acquaintance when he asks “Where were you when the world stopped moving?” that we were “Watching green, watching gray, watching deep blue” as these phenomena are “out of expectation.”
He might inquire further: “What was green, what was gray, what was deep blue?”
And we would play with him, following a certain logic. We would say “earthquake” and walk away.
He might think to himself, as he watches the line of my travel into the phenomenon of perspective: “That speaker, though standing not two feet from me moments ago, was miles away. He was both near and far; he’s like a coffee cup, whose surface is infinite. He is both eye and Yes.”
P.S.
In my knowledge, the first use of perspective as a literary device is spoken by Edgar to Gloucester in King Lear. Edgar is trying to convince Gloucester that they are at edge of a cliff in this case. Edgar says:
Come on, sir; here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
A complex image, indeed. But I wonder if there are other or earlier examples of perspective used to indicate distance relationships in literary works? Tweet using #100Days2010 if you have examples.
