The Forest is a metaphor.
Living things in relation to other living things. The moment a human mind steps into the forest, two things happen. First, the human mind, in apprehending and experiencing the forest, is lost in its complexity. A web of interdependence. Second, the human mind is confronted with the fact that the forest has no intentionality. The objectiveness that the human self is so used to creating about the human mind falls away. Now left with a space, a metaphor, an emptiness suspended.
The poetic device of the metaphor is itself a metaphor for the way that aesthetic experiences happen.
That in a metaphor, you have two things coming together that don’t make sense together, creating this kind of nonsense. And in that deliberate clashing of nonsense, you get this complete dismissal of the literal meaning, creating a negative space for imagination to step in and build a new meaning that wasn’t there before.
In aesthetic experience, when you’re engaging with art, it’s the same kind of thing where the literal becomes suspended, and the imagination steps in to create, not just a representation of something that exists, but something that didn’t exist before this new meaning.
(hit tip to Paul Ricœur)
Living things in relation to other living things. The moment a human mind steps into the forest, two things happen. First, the human mind, in apprehending and experiencing the forest, is lost in its complexity. A web of interdependence. Second, the human mind is confronted with the fact that the forest has no intentionality. The objectiveness that the human self is so used to creating about the human mind falls away. Now left with a space, a metaphor, an emptiness suspended.
The poetic device of the metaphor is itself a metaphor for the way that aesthetic experiences happen.
That in a metaphor, you have two things coming together that don’t make sense together, creating this kind of nonsense. And in that deliberate clashing of nonsense, you get this complete dismissal of the literal meaning, creating a negative space for imagination to step in and build a new meaning that wasn’t there before.
In aesthetic experience, when you’re engaging with art, it’s the same kind of thing where the literal becomes suspended, and the imagination steps in to create, not just a representation of something that exists, but something that didn’t exist before this new meaning.
(hit tip to Paul Ricœur)