Hi A:
I’m glad to have you in this group! In terms of elemental we could think of gasoline as being important to our lives. I suppose a hydro carbon like gas I made of components that we call elements, Hydrogen , carbon and in certain proportions that make one hydro carbon ethanol and another methane and each is quite different. So while the word hydrocarbon is quite a broad word like the word family, carbon is elemental. I have slowly been trying provoke thought about the irreducible in life to make the defining of life’s complex things tied first to the simplest words we can think of.
All complex words are hugely valuable but I think they are to easy to say.
While you all can make individually important metaphors and symbols referring to things that may be idiosyncratic, unique and personal but I wonder if it is valuable to try to express in words aspects of the complex in simplest words?
For example: I may value family in life more than anything, but rather than launch a poetic string of words from there getting more complex and each getting more open to interpretation, I am trying to encourage people to back up one level of difficulty first to mentally try for more irreducible words.
I recall you being exceptionally strong as a student and even in this mini assignment, but many students we send on can’t describe using words what they are looking at , nor can they easily break a complex visual experience into simple words for their friends and family.
In trying to reduce the word family down to it elemental building blocks some would wildly jump to the associated word love. But, love is even more complex than family meaning so very many things to many different people. So, I might say that on a spectrum where one is most elemental and ten is most complex; family is a four and love is an eight.
To try to identify English words that are elemental building blocks I have to focus and think about words. Arguably English is not the best language at all! Maybe a person who knows more languages could describe elemental human existence in other better ways using Japanese or French.
Ultimately, I hope that this exercise does two things: one, I hope it sharpens how agile people are in describing significant complex and valuable things in life., and two, I hope it leads them to feeling that many of life’s most valuable experiences are possibly better described by other arts than just literature.
Being better with English is great! Being better with another literary language like Japanese is even better but These are both variations in abstraction . Words don’t describe many of the best things in life as well as other art forms do. Colour for example!
To describe the red that I want your mind to imagine using words is basically impossible. A more accurate way would be to paint the colour in a room lit in a certain temperature and show you that red exactly! No language can beat that. No? What can music describe that words can’t? And for that matter what can a violin describe about life that a drum can’t? Sculpture?
I need artists in my world who are masters in defending art and using words is only part of it. I can help get them better with words but words don’t replace experience. They just don’t!! I love sculpture! I love physicality. I love texture, I have read that smell is even more important to memory than visuals but few languages have any words to describe smells. Inuit people have many words for variations in snow!! But to communicate that even more precisely…we could be better served by showing each other, no?
So back to the question of elemental:
Family: a four in elementality, I can’t just use trust because while it is maybe a “two” it is still pretty abstract….what about “hug”? What about “touch” what about instead of “mum” I say “hands”, still a two…and then” caress”?
What if it is hard to define the elemental in life but in that we open up a treasure chest of power to draw, paint, sculpt, dance, sing and yes….even write poetry that is accessible to others using?
I can recall a wonderful student getting at something she valued about being alive by using a series of sculptures of crows. We’re crows the elemental things that she valued?
Maybe, but maybe it was “resourceful”, steady, prevalent, fearless,“survivor”, “resourceful”, “adaptable”, smart, creative…. honourable ….and in this list of words I have used here to describe a crow only one or two are elementally irreducible!
Most are complex .
This student I admired started making crows out of different material substances and she began to invest more or less commitment to each one.
What does commitment express in art anyway.
I hope this helps to cause the assignment of coming up with 50 elemental words listing what you personally value about being alive a pleasure.
Viscosity? Friction? To glide, to hold? Squeeze? Warmth? A slight breeze? Corduroy? Skin? Wrap? Uncover? Ridged? Flexible? to stretch to unite?….
I don’t know….these are just English words other languages have even better words but what words do…why has my life lead me to being a sculptor?
On Sat, Jan 8, 2022 at 9:29 PM Alyssa Lao-An <alaoan@ualberta.ca> wrote:
Hi Roy, I remember creating a list of 50 elemental things I value about being alive in fundamentals, but maybe I didn't understand it correctly. Can you please explain to me what it means for the words to be elemental?
Thank you, A