Letters
They make a lot of difference. These two words are sometimes polar opposites yet they are so closely related in spelling that one can't help but think of the two as inseparable in some slight way. What does it mean to be Iconic? What does it mean to be Ironic? Isn't one always at risk of becoming the other and vice versa?
Of course this thought is on loan from elsewhere, as all seem to be at some point or another. Nabokov famously pointed out, in several interviews and elsewhere, that there is only one letter separating the Comic from the Cosmic. I'd further like to stress the hinted at letter: S. Lots of words start with S, but I think Smile fits in nicely there. A smile is all that separates the cosmic from the comic. That lends itself a little better to the feeling (excuse the lack of explainability, feelings are tough to pin down -- fickle little things they are) and offers an image to enjoy. The comic and the cosmic can remain the same, in fact, and it is only the viewer who perceives it with a smile (of wonder or of laughter) that decides. This in some way leads back to perspective, and to ghosts.
So this gauze-thin curtain divides the meanings as it would a room, but isn't that room always just a room despite its subdivision? Iconic and Ironic, a room divided by a hazy curtain. It is hard to tell when the one becomes the other but no matter which direction the transformation takes place, a loss occurs.
Switching the C to the R implies a degradation of everything: an icon is the one shining symbol, the solid immovable object that represents for all intents and purposes the one single instance of perfection. Iconic paintings of Christ, dating back 500 years, have always been painted in the same way that they were mandated to be during those dark ages when artists were pushed to paint them. The gold, the halos, the tilt of Mary's head and eyes, these were all parts of an equation that was used and re-used by each and every one and dictated by the church. This is Iconic, and eventually it gives way to the ironic: The church telling the artist (creator) how to paint Christ, his mother, or some stray saint. The loss occurs, and that one shift of a single letter makes all the difference in the world.
Conversely, trading the R for the C means something a bit more invisible and thus more damaging. To accept the Ironic as the Iconic means that a joke is taken seriously, and once a joke is taken seriously it ceases to be a joke and ends up becoming this shrivelled shell of itself. A fat comedic cartoon character who loses the weight but not the skin, he becomes a sad sight and a ghost of a joke that won't ever promote laughter and will always recall its lost glory, having to drag around the old fat skin with its now skinny body. The joke's become bony and frail, and to laugh would be pathetic.
Letters mean a lot, letters mean a little, and stringing them together into words can sometimes make a fetching necklace that hides the fact that its created entirely out of razor blades.
They make a lot of difference. These two words are sometimes polar opposites yet they are so closely related in spelling that one can't help but think of the two as inseparable in some slight way. What does it mean to be Iconic? What does it mean to be Ironic? Isn't one always at risk of becoming the other and vice versa?
Of course this thought is on loan from elsewhere, as all seem to be at some point or another. Nabokov famously pointed out, in several interviews and elsewhere, that there is only one letter separating the Comic from the Cosmic. I'd further like to stress the hinted at letter: S. Lots of words start with S, but I think Smile fits in nicely there. A smile is all that separates the cosmic from the comic. That lends itself a little better to the feeling (excuse the lack of explainability, feelings are tough to pin down -- fickle little things they are) and offers an image to enjoy. The comic and the cosmic can remain the same, in fact, and it is only the viewer who perceives it with a smile (of wonder or of laughter) that decides. This in some way leads back to perspective, and to ghosts.
So this gauze-thin curtain divides the meanings as it would a room, but isn't that room always just a room despite its subdivision? Iconic and Ironic, a room divided by a hazy curtain. It is hard to tell when the one becomes the other but no matter which direction the transformation takes place, a loss occurs.
Switching the C to the R implies a degradation of everything: an icon is the one shining symbol, the solid immovable object that represents for all intents and purposes the one single instance of perfection. Iconic paintings of Christ, dating back 500 years, have always been painted in the same way that they were mandated to be during those dark ages when artists were pushed to paint them. The gold, the halos, the tilt of Mary's head and eyes, these were all parts of an equation that was used and re-used by each and every one and dictated by the church. This is Iconic, and eventually it gives way to the ironic: The church telling the artist (creator) how to paint Christ, his mother, or some stray saint. The loss occurs, and that one shift of a single letter makes all the difference in the world.
Conversely, trading the R for the C means something a bit more invisible and thus more damaging. To accept the Ironic as the Iconic means that a joke is taken seriously, and once a joke is taken seriously it ceases to be a joke and ends up becoming this shrivelled shell of itself. A fat comedic cartoon character who loses the weight but not the skin, he becomes a sad sight and a ghost of a joke that won't ever promote laughter and will always recall its lost glory, having to drag around the old fat skin with its now skinny body. The joke's become bony and frail, and to laugh would be pathetic.
Letters mean a lot, letters mean a little, and stringing them together into words can sometimes make a fetching necklace that hides the fact that its created entirely out of razor blades.
