Turning Life into Words

As philosophical debates go, this one was right up my alley. Words or art, which matters more?

With a fellow art and word lover in tow, we sat down at the Criterion for "Words and Pictures," both a battle of that issue as well as a middle-aged romance.

Unfortunately for us, everyone else in the very small crowd was long past middle age, meaning they talked throughout the movie stating the obvious ("He's going to get drunk!") and generally moving around more than anyone needs to in 115 minutes.

But I digress.

At the heart of the film was a "war" between an arts honors class taught by the luminescent Juliette Binoche and an English honors class led by the handsome to a fault Clive Owen to prove which - words or pictures- was more capable of conveying something.

As a card-carrying art lover and one who makes her living with words (and often writing about art), I fell somewhere squarely in the middle of that debate.

But it got me thinking about something that has been mentioned to me time and time again. Why don't I ever put pictures on my blog? Wouldn't photos help my readers see the things I devote so many words to? Give us pictures, Karen!

My response is always the same. This blog is about words and my goal always to paint a picture with words and bring my reader along with me so he or she can feel like they experienced what I did.

Posting pictures holds no appeal, but of course I'm in the minority on that. Hell, that's why they came up with Tumblr so people could use pictures instead of words to blog.

But that's not what I want to do.

I want to share things I overhear people say. I want to tell you what I think of something and not just show you what it looks like. I want to paint a picture without ever picking up a paintbrush.

And as long as I'm at it, I'd like to be as beautiful as Juliette and have a wordy man like Clive say things to me such as, "I've been studying your ass for months."

And when he does, I will tell you, dear reader, in far too many words (because I can go on and on) what a thrill it gave me to hear him say that.

But there will be no picture of my ass.