2. Why Metaphor Matters
Big 3 Ideas:
Matisse’s Red Studio - how it developed, and how it changed the way we think about space and art.
What do we make? Meaning, with metaphor as our tool.
How Art Thinks
Why Metaphor Matters
If you were not a native speaker of English, and you heard this phrase - what would you think?
“I have a lot on my plate today, but I'll send up a flare if I see a window!”
One of my dearest friends, Garland, sent me this note as we were trying to connect during his birthday week.
I laughed. He laughed. But it made me think how language is a vehicle for metaphor and how metaphor is what is REALLY driving the bus.
See - we can barely communicate a thought without metaphorical language. And as I will show you later in this episode, we also work with VISUAL metaphor every day - in our art, in our lives.
It’s more than just colloquial phrases like riding the river of life, or throwing somebody under the bus. It’s more than I’m a hot mess, or she’s skating on thin ice.
Metaphor infuses our lives and our art with meaning.
Today, as I start this podcast - the Metaphor Mindset - I’d like to offer a few ways that metaphor matters in our lives - that we often don’t even realize, even though, as artists - metaphor is the foundation of what we do, and I believe that the more we can be aware of this, the more we can tap our creative potential.
So here we go:
We THINK in metaphor.
Metaphor is the building block AND the mortar that holds our mind together. See, I can’t even get through one sentence withouth using metaphor.
Even the idea of our mind as a “space” is a metaphor. In reality, our mind is a lot of things - a collection of neurons ignited by chemicals, the gray matter of our brain, connected to our bodies and the world through our senses, a collection of memories and thoughts recorded in patterns. But none of these things is a “space.” We think of our mind as a room or a house, an open area we can walk around in in our imagination.
Mind-space. This mind-space is a metaphor. Philosophers Julian Jaynes and Brian McVeigh write that the idea of mind as space INSIDE us is a metaphor for the OUTSIDE world. We see the world around us, as a space, and we create the space inside us to mirror it, so we can freely move around inside our minds, withour bashing into tangles of neurons, or bunches of gray matter. Eeewww!
This is called an “Introcosm” - as opposed to the microcosm of our bodies, and the macrocosm of the world out there.
Inside this Introcosm, we have what McVeigh calls Introception - or the ability to walk around and perceive in our minds. As opposed to PERception - how we understand, or perceive the outside world, we Introcept our INNER world.
We take ALL of this for granted! We think that it is just a FACT that we have an inner space, a mindspace, that we can walk around in.
But it’s just a metaphor. A made-up place our minds have created because our bodies are used to the open spaces of the outside world.
2. Metaphor carries meaning.
2. Metaphor simplifies complexity.
3. Metaphor comes BEFORE language.
4. Metaphor gives birth to NEW meaning.
5. Metaphor connects us through story.
6. Metaphor allows us to create and destroy our own mental prisons.
7. Metaphor IS creativity.
Here is the full transcript.
TRANSCRIPT:
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[00:00:00]
Welcome to the Metaphor Mindset Podcast.
I'm your host, Shannon Borg.
if you weren't a native speaker of English and you heard this phrase. What would you think?
I have a lot on my plate today,
but I'll send up a flare
if I see a window.
One of my dearest friends, Garland sent me this note when we were trying to connect during his birthday week.
I laughed. He laughed. But it made me think about how language is a vehicle for metaphor and how metaphor is what really is driving the bus. See, I can barely communicate a thought without metaphorical language. And as I will show you later in this episode, we also [00:01:00] work with visual metaphor every day in our art and in our lives.
It's more than just the colloquial phrases that we know and use probably too often, like riding the river of life
or throwing somebody under the bus.
It's more than just I'm a hot mess
or she's skating on thin ice. Metaphor infuses our lives and our art with meaning.
as I start this podcast, the metaphor mindset I'd like to offer a few ways that metaphor matters in our lives that we don't often even realize or think about even as artists.
When he painted the Red Studio in 1911 on re, Matisse first painted the inside of his blue gray studio. The walls covered with miniature versions of some of his own painting. As an afterthought, he went back in and painted every other surface, the walls, the floor, the clock and tablecloth.
A deep red, and the only [00:02:00] thing that showed where the walls stopped in other objects say the clock started. Were little white outlines, almost like stitching. It's like we're watching Matisse think with this last step, he transformed this work from just a picture of his studio into a painting that changes the way we see and think about space and art.
Metaphor is the foundation of what we do. And I believe that the more that we can be aware of this, the more that we can tap our creative potential.
So here we go. Number one, we think in metaphor. Metaphor is the building block and the mortar that holds our mind together.
Even the idea of our mind as a space. Is a metaphor. In reality. Our mind is a lot of things. It's a collection of neurons ignited by chemicals. It's the gray matter of our brain, connected to the rest of our body and the [00:03:00] world through our senses. It's a collection of memories and thoughts recorded in patterns.
But none of these things is an actual space.
We think of our mind as a room or a house, an open area. We can actually walk around in, in our imagination. And when I say actually, I mean, figuratively. Mindspace. This mind space is a metaphor.
Philosophers Julian Jaynes and Brian McVeigh, both write that the idea of mind as space inside us.
Is just a metaphor for the outside world. We see the world around us as a space. We walked through it. We move through it. And we create the space inside us to mirror it. So we can freely move around inside our minds. Without bashing into a tangle of neurons or bunches of gray [00:04:00] matter.
McVeigh calls this the introcosm.
As opposed to the microcosm of our bodies and the macrocosm of the world out there. Inside this introcosm. We have what McVeigh calls interoception. Or the ability to walk around and perceive in our minds as opposed to perception how we understand or perceive the outside world. We intercept our inner world.
We take all of this for granted. We think that it's just a fact or a circumstance that we have an inner space, a mind space. That we can walk around in, but it's just a metaphor. It's a made up place. Our minds have created because our bodies are used to the open spaces of the outside world.
Number two.
Metaphor carries meaning. Across our confusion beyond our unknowing. Matisse loved the opulence of Islamic art [00:05:00] and the play between positive and negative space. He came from a long line of weavers and cloth merchants, and so pattern and textile were a language that he knew the interweaving of color, shape, and space. To me, the red studio is a cross between the patterning of a mosaic with the red velvet and stitched together feel of a wall hanging and a representation of the deep interior of his mind from which his paintings spring to life.
In its simplicity, this painting connects many ideas, shows the similarity in the dissimilar. This is a metaphor for the creative process. The metaphor mindset. The word metaphor comes from the Greek meta means beyond, behind, among, after, or a cross Far. P H e r e i n means to carry to bear as in [00:06:00] giving birth. So metaphor carries meaning across from one concept to another, gives new ideas birth.
Number three.
Metaphor simplifies complexity. This is how metaphor works. Our minds create little ideas, little stories, little phrases that help us understand the world better. The Buddha Jesus and every other religious and philosophical leader spoken metaphor. In order to get their ideas across.
Sometimes complex ideas become much more digestible when they're simple. In Buddhism, meditation teachers start with this concept of a river.
We can choose to sit on the bank of the river and watch our thoughts pass by. In Christianity. The metaphor of the light of heaven and the dark fires of hell. Create a stark choice.
When followers were presented with a choice between good [00:07:00] actions and bad.
This allowed the church to. exert incredible power over people's everyday lives.
This metaphor of light and dark.
Number four. Metaphor comes before language. Colors shapes ideas.
In the Red Studio, he shows us the similarities and the dissimilar the floor, the walls, the tablecloth to him are all surfaces.
The background against which he lives his artistic life, where his paintings jump forward. Out of that blood red flow of creativity, he flattens the room out into one continuous lush velvet surface sparkling with the little gems he has fashion. He painted this piece after he had encountered the intricate colorful patterns and flattened space of Islamic art on a trip to Spain
The swirls and arabesques in the designs [00:08:00] represent in part the flow and fragility of life, contrasting with the solidity of invisible divine structure that holds our world. Matisse loved the opulence of this art form and the play between positive and negative space. number five.
Metaphor gives birth to new meaning. New innovations and new ways of thinking. When Sigmund Freud was thinking about his concept of the unconscious. and how the ego was the outward will element of our minds.
And then the ID was the dark under belly. Mysterious element of our minds.
He saw a train passing. And every so often. As that train passed on a hill. It would let off a little steam.[00:09:00]
when he saw that. He. Came up with this new idea. Of the superego.
So we have the ego, the outer, that is the inner, but what regulates them? He saw the superego is kind of a steam valve that helps let a little bit of the id out from time to time. While controlling it for social purposes. So this metaphor, the steam engine. Compared to the mind for Freud was very helpful, and it was a new innovation and a new way of thinking.
Number six metaphor connects us through story.
Odin was the blind prophet. Of mid guard.
In the Norse Tails.
He had given up his site in order to gain inner wisdom.
And because he couldn't see. Every day, he sent out his two crows. Hogan. Which represented thought and Moonen which represented memory. He [00:10:00] sent the crows out into the world. And the crows would fly over and see what was happening in mid guard. Then they would return to Odin at the end of the day and tell him. Internal ideas, seek external stories to carry them beyond.
Our internal thoughts and memories fly out In search of evidence. To show us what the world means to us.
Seven. Metaphor allows us to create and destroy our own mental prisons.
As humans, we think in metaphors, it's how we actually create meaning in our lives and tap into our emotions. As artists, you have a special connection to metaphor as a tool for magic and to wield it well, changes lives. . If Matisse had left that wall and floor the blue gray of his real [00:11:00] studio, if he had not gone further to cross over into a new idea to incorporate this experience within Islamic art, the red studio wouldn't exist and modern art would be the lesser for it.
Art thinks in metaphors, that is images and language that can stand in for something else, like actors on a stage in a different costume playing a different. This one. We all know all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.
This is one of our favorites from Mr. Shakespeare, and it's really just as alive as an idea now as it was when it was first. published in 1623, almost exactly 400 years ago. The carrying over of meaning from the world to the stage and connecting the two, bringing them together in a new concept of the world as stage gives birth to a host [00:12:00] of other ideas.
That we are controlled by unseen forces, that there may be someone behind the stage pulling the strings, writing the script that we put on artifice and costume, and assume inauthentic roles in our everyday lives. This extended metaphor opens a whole new space in our brains where we think about life in new ways,
Number eight. Creativity is metaphor and metaphor is creativity. We need metaphor, like we need water or air. We need to be imbued. We need meaning making art gives our lives, meaning Matisse said that when he worked, he felt assisted from what he called a conjure, whose tricks he cannot see.
His muse helped him create magic and like many, he created the magic of color and line rather than the language of words. He saw the artist's role as a sort of p o or [00:13:00] Juster figure, creating a performance that brings joy to others with a backstage process full of hard work, deep thinking and focus in order to make art look simple and spontaneous like color or line or shape,
the word is a symbol or contraption that makes an idea come to life. The poet, William Carlos Williams said, A poem is a small machine made of words like a poem. A painting is a contraption that helps us power our vehicle of insight to cross over, as a metaphor does to see in a new way, color, light form concepts
when we look at it or read it, sing it, or hear it. The ways we communicate to others and ourselves are full of metaphor and meaning, always crisscrossing and transforming. I'll end with a favorite quote from Aristotle. The greatest thing by far is to be [00:14:00] a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from.
and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity. In dissimilar, I disagree with Aristotle on one point in that I believe we do learn metaphor from others, both how to understand and how to use. From the art we see and make the stories we hear and tell, and I look forward to seeing the metaphors you make, the birth of new ideas, the carrying cross, and carrying over the transformations of meaning.
Thank you for listening.
[00:15:00]
The Crux
I want to end this episode with story. I call it The Crux.
Once upon a time, a young woman lived with her family on the windy moors of Scotland. She struggled with her chores, she struggled with her parents, her siblings, her mind. As she grew up, she always had the deep feeling that she should be somewhere else. Anywhere but here.
One day, she’d had enough. She needed to get away.
So she packed a small bag with a few things, some bread, apples and cheese. She wrapped herself in a warm shawl, put on a hat, and gloves, and set out, early one morning before anyone could stop her.
She walked down the familiar path towards town, then through town, with its market square and bustling vendors, then out to the edge of town where the crows and ravens fought their border wars, past the wise woman’s house and across the river bridge, and she walked and walked until she rose up the hills to the wild moors where no paths guided her.
“Ah!,” she thought. “The feeling of freedom after constraint is a powerful one.”
“After being told what to do and how to feel. Being told what to think and how to work. Being told who to befriend and who to love.”
“It’s the feeling of a crisp autumn breeze at your back,” she thought.
“It’s the feeling of sun on your face. Of forging a new path.”
But where to go? She started to see the ruts along the hills and down the gulleys, up along the ridges where the deer had worn their way. She thought of the rutted, hardened roads she used to travel closer to town.
She started to see the holes in the hillsides where small creatures hide themselves away, digging their underground escape routes and dens.
She wanted to follow them, she thought. But I only have 2 legs.
Four legs come in handy for scaling a steep cliff or gamboling down a bluff.
Four legs come in handy for digging and pushing dirt behind.
Six legs come in handy for carrying grains while tramping miles behind the other ants.
And eight legs come in handy while repairing a web and holding on upside down while spinning out new silk.
Humans are simpler, she thought. We just tread a big dumb path, lumber along it to our caves. Stay there as long as possible, and change only when we are in pain or when we are bored.
And yet, he longed for the crossroads. Already, this early in her journey. She walked and walked acorss the moors, smelling the heather and peering over cliffs to the rivers. Standing on bluffs overlooking the sea. She had many adventures, foraging for food, sleeping under the stars. She followed deer paths, and sat outside rabbit holes. She listened to larks in the morning, and owls in the night. She wandered for years, returning to places she thought she remembered, but couldn’t quite grasp, like a feather just at the edge of her sight. After a while, she found herself yearning for home, for a warm bed, for the routine of daily chores.
She longed for the pathway, something to guide her, something to fight against.
One day, she saw a crow circling and diving, pecking at something on the ground. As she approached, the crow looked up. and brought her the nut, dropping it at her feet.
“This is the Crux,” the crow cawed as it circled. The hard shell of order, the mysterious tidbits inside. The nut needs the shell to live. The shell needs the nut to grow.
After that, the crow was her companion, circling away to spy the best path, returning with herbs and messages.
And each time she returned, she hissed and cawed, “This is the Crux.”
Soon, the young woman knew what she needed, what the crow was trying to say.
She yearned for the Crux.
So finally, she headed down the hills toward where she new the roads would be. One evening, she found a small path and followed it down to a lamppost that glowed in the crepescule.
She saw in the distance the lights of town twinkling on the horizon, calling her back to conviviality, community. Safety.
She heard over her shoulder the hoot of the owl, calling her back to the wild, the danger, the darkness.
She stood at the crossroads of the known and unknown. Of order and chaos.
I will walk my own path, but now I know: I will take the Crux with me wherever I go,” she said outloud, to the owl, to the lamppost.
The Crux is a crossroads. The intersection of confusion and certainty. Where deer paths curve up over bluffs of insight.
Where black rabbit holds beckon down into mystery. The heart of me. The heart of what it is to be human.
Where all things are possible.
