Unfortunately, Miller continues to exercise his considerable talent for ludicrous simplification of ideas. For example, his sentence below, the one about "vast difference" contrasts his unexplained "experience" with my earlier definition of experience as metaphorical perception. It seems obvious that our perception -- the process of making sense of sensory impressions -- is a process of creating metaphors (as-if imaginings) as stand-ins for the real world. We don't of course, take a real tree into our heads when we see one, but form an "idea" of the tree -- what some have called "image-text" -- that is, a metaphor. I go from that obvious notion to saying that when we are capable of imagining many metaphors of the real world (of which paintings are one class, like trees are another) and some of these strike us as most apt, that is, as inevitable and resolved. We then project or mirror that feeling/conviction onto reality as if to blend it with a real object enabling us to pretend that the real object itself projects the metaphorical attributes. Miller just likes to say his unexamined perception is enough --whatever it is. Yet with his usual audacity, he complains that my examined and reasonably explained perception is wrong or empty but offers nothing in reply except his well-worn reduction to absurdity followed by a rhetorical question that asks, "Doesn't everybody think as I do?"
And then Miller, in a wild assertion of my mysticism (which I think is merely a my sober effort to unscramble perception) tries to separate me from those interested in the arts, as if I have no affiliation or authority to speak of them. This is like an armchair draft-dodger telling the bloodied veteran what war feels like. Yes, war. A war metaphor is most apt right now, inevitable and resolved! Miller's medieval mode of attack is to toss a wobbly, floating spear that falls back end first far short of the brightly spangled lord/knight Templar, who towering atop his snorting warrior horse, calmly awaits the stumbling advance of the unwashed and starved conscripts who, blinded by fear, will soon lie together in mushed and trampled gore. In other words, Miller's attack is unequal to the force he opposes, and unworthy as well. WC ________________________________ From: Chris Miller <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 8:09:40 AM Subject: Re: inevitable and resolved > I think we always have the capacity -- if not the ready ability -- to experience the world as inevitable and resolved, as beautiful as a mirror of our metaphorical perceptions. Which metaphorical perceptions? For me, there is a vast difference between my experience of looking at a painting, and any other moment I might be contemplating any of the metaphorical perceptions involved. Like day and night. And regarding those metaphorical perceptions, I might be able to begin such a list, but I could never finish it. Can anyone else? Even for something like a popular 2-minute song, or an episode of a television sitcom. With his recent assertions, William is summoning us to a world of esoteric mysticism, which I believe can be quite real for some people, but not for those of us who remain attached to the arts. Whenever I re-visit a favorite painting at the museum, like, say, the Lawrence portrait of Mrs. Wolff, it always surprises me. There is some kind of mystery provoking attraction that is inconceivable without the painting hanging there in front of me. ____________________________________________________________ You're never too old to date. Senior Dating. Click Here. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxcB1m3kJccivh0GhHhbUn3eQ wRonAnIBzbdfH7jtGVqetJuDe2JMk/
