joi, 8 iulie 2010

The Metaphor of The Original



“She saw their travels in terms of adverts and

a long talcum-white beach with the tropical

breeze tossing the palms and her hair;

he saw it in terms of forbidden foods,

frittered away time, and

ghastly expenses.”

Vladimir Nabokov, “The Original of Laura”



The wish for the ‘original’ in things is a wish many of us secretly have, because the ‘today’ is the every new day in which we find out how non-original we are. Through our lenses we see the ‘world’ unfolding in billion of complex things, general and specialized, exotic and familiar, fragmented and fractalic … and we try to ‘fit’ somewhere inside this growing plethora of ideas and words. We try to fit, by ‘un-fitting’, because what homo inter-net-icus is desperately seeking for is the ‘original’.

What is original, and what is its metaphor?

Original is defined by the dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com) as:

–adjective

1. belonging or pertaining to the origin or beginning of something, or to a thing at its beginning: The book still has its original binding.

2. new; fresh; inventive; novel: an original way of advertising.

3. arising or proceeding independently of anything else: an original view of history.

4. capable of or given to thinking or acting in an independent, creative, or individual manner: an original thinker.

5. created, undertaken, or presented for the first time: to give the original performance of a string quartet.

6. being something from which a copy, a translation, or the like is made: The original document is in Washington.

–noun

7. a primary form or type from which varieties are derived.

8. an original work, writing, or the like, as opposed to any copy or imitation: The original of this is in the British Museum.

9. the person or thing represented by a picture, description, etc.: The original is said to have been the painter's own house.

10. a person whose ways of thinking or acting are original: In a field of brilliant technicians he is a true original.

11. Archaic . an eccentric person.

12. Archaic . a source of being; an author or originator.

As an adjective we frequently think of ‘original’ in its 2nd or 4th Definition, yet time and ever changing paradigms in language and linguistics made us forget the origin of original. An etymological enquiry would lead us to the result of early 14c., from L. originalis, from originem (nom. origo) "beginning, source, birth," from oriri "to rise". To be ‘original’ had been a metaphor for being a source, a creator and an inspiration. It was and still is a metaphor for the dormant thought in us, that lets us aspire to being gods of our own universe.

‘Original’ is the metaphor we need to continue hoping in progress, and a lot of depression today has its origins in the fact that there is too much of everything all around us, in 6Dof (Six Degrees of Freedom, see Wiki). There is no ‘source’ anymore, and not even the psychologically perceived possibility of becoming a source, an originator – of becoming more yourself … because any word you invent, might return at least a few hundred pages on Google.

And the metaphor of ‘original’ is fading once again into other meanings … original art … original advertizing. The world of add and of shocking colors, while people try less to ‘create’ and more to ‘compete’.

What is your ‘original’, forgotten in the dead valley of meanings and copy-paste visions?

While trying to understand the metaphor of ‘original’, we actually, as always, will subconsciously (but what is subconsciously anyway?) look first for a metaphor of our Selfs. Caught in a world of Projective Tests, one is experiencing individuality and creativity in an ‘inside’ that seldom becomes an outside.

So, once we strip our shadows, we can start looking for the metaphor of the ‘original’ … it’s somewhere there, at the origins.


DJM73CVT44RC

Un comentariu:

  1. I love this topic.

    What if there is no "Original"? If such a thing were actually impossible?

    I believe this might be the case. Consider, no energy is lost or created, just transformed. All energy was created in the Big Bang. Thus, ever since that first moment of inception, the story of everything has simply been "Energy transforming" - into different forms of energy, into matter, into us. We're literally compacted energy that once existed in stars, clouds of gases, etc. Thus, can any single thing on this Earth be considered "Original"?

    Perhaps only thought.

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