Jonathan Edwards on the fullness of images in the world

"I expect by very ridicule and contempt to be called a man of a fruitful brain and copious fancy, but they are welcome to it. I am not ashamed to own that I believe that the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of images of divine things, as full as language is of words; and that the multitudes of those things that I have mentioned are but a very small part of what is really intended to be signified and typified by those things."

-Jonathan Edwards (as quoted in The Supreme Harmony of All )

text, image, and sound relationships

When thinking of illustrated stories, or music videos based on songs, or animated poems, what is the relationship between the various media?

Should or do illustrations merely or only serve the text of a book? I guess it depends on the book, is it a comic book, novel, or picture book.

Should the visual seek to be unintrusive, humbly self-sacrificial in serving the text?

Should one medium self-consciously contrast or harmonize with it's opposite medium producing some sort of synesthetic polyphony?

Should the visuals of a music video merely be an advertisement for the song or publicity/notoriety of the singer? (here is a good counter-example, on the right side of the page)

This is similar to the form/content discussion, but the textual,visual, and audible all have their respective contents. "Form is the shape of content"
If this is so, perhaps the images, words, and sounds are simply mediated shapes of the same 'content', though this seems too platonic. Visuals aren't simple containers for the message or meaning of a piece of artwork.

This is also similar to the form/function discussion. I like Tim Smith's “Form REJOICES in function” rather then "Form follows function."

How does this relate to film?

In film, I think we have more unity of text/image/sound then say a music video. Where do comic books, graphic novels, and children's story books lie on the spectrum?

It would also be interesting to think about the relationship of text and sound in various musical genres. For example, Country being on the content/text side of things and say, Electronica being on the sound/form side.

Flannery O'Conner's cinematic prose

Look at this excerpt from Flannery O'Conner's short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own:

Mr. Shiftlet's eye in the darkness was focused on a part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance. "Lady," he said, jerking his short arm up as if he could point with it to her house and yard and pump, "there ain't a broken thing on this plantation that I couldn't fix for you, one‑arm jackleg or not. I'm a man," he said with a sullen dignity, "even if I ain't a whole one. I got," he said, tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the immensity of what he was going to say, "a moral intelligence!" and his face pierced out of the darkness into a shaft of doorlight and he stared at her as if he were astonished himself at this impossible truth.

Isn't that very filmic? It may just be by obsession with film, but it seems like that's a heck of a lot of acting, directing and cinematography for a paragraph, not to mention amazing writing.

Perhaps the Brothers Coen could take on one of her stories? Their new film (an adaptation of a novel by another writer of 'southern gothic'), No Country for Old Men, looks amazing.

P.S. I listened to the O'Conner story today on Miette's excellent Bedtime Stories podcast. Kind of strange listening to rednecks read with an English accent, but she's an excellent reader.

Synesthesia and the Glory of God

Synesthesia is basically the mixing of the senses. My brother said when he was very young, he didn't want a certain blanket because "it smells like red noises!"

While listening this excellent sermon by Baylor RUF campus minister Pete Hatton, I was reminded of synesthesia when Pete said that we can see God's glory thorough a sermon. Sometimes we see God through hearing his word. Sometimes we hear of His Glory by seeing a sunset that tells of that glory.

But this makes sense, because the perfect Word of God that with God and is God, became incarnated and was the perfect man, the perfect Image of God.

The Word is the Image, and we, including our eyes and ears, are made in his likeness. So perhaps synesthesia isn't so unnatural.

Neil Gaiman on Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton

Due to excessive recommendation, I've started reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Checkout his speech at the Mythopoeic Society on the influence of Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton.

"Tolkien's words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight"

Perhaps "a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" because apples, gold, settings and silver were all created by a Word most fitly spoken.