"When students are tackling a task like that, you can feel the whirr and hum of thought: it feels woven of reciprocity, willing, ambition, the impulse to translate fugitive thoughts into communication with others."
— Warner, Marina (b. 1946)
Author
Date
March 19, 2015
Metaphor
"When students are tackling a task like that, you can feel the whirr and hum of thought: it feels woven of reciprocity, willing, ambition, the impulse to translate fugitive thoughts into communication with others."
Metaphor in Context
The first time I suggested an exercise to a roomful of creative writing students, something on the lines of 'We've been reading Elizabeth Bowen, now think of a house where you were happy, but you no longer live there. Write it!', they all bent their heads down over their paper and began writing. I couldn't believe it. When students are tackling a task like that, you can feel the whirr and hum of thought: it feels woven of reciprocity, willing, ambition, the impulse to translate fugitive thoughts into communication with others. The same can happen with an audience at a concert, with readers in a library, or with visitors looking at pictures in a gallery. In Fred Wiseman's recent documentary about the National Gallery, the camera watched as people looked at the paintings on the walls: a mysterious communion. One especially eloquent sequence showed a session for the visually impaired, 'seeing feelingly'. You can't tell what these spectators are feeling or thinking. Only that they are attending, lost to themselves in the act of looking, with their eyes or with their fingers, and that this is something that doesn't cause pain or anxiety, something that is the contrary of discontent.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Marina Warner, "Learning My Lesson," London Review of Books 37:6 (March 19, 2015). <Link to LRB>
Date of Entry
03/11/2015
