A word creates a thousand pictures

Mimi, the nine-year-old that I babysit, says that Wednesdays are her yellow days. As she explained to me, this is because of the book “Wacky Wednesday,” which has a distinctly yellow cover. But, after sending out a small questionnaire to a few friends, I discovered that Wednesday comes in several colors: of the 10 people who responded, six associated it with orange or red. I suppose Mimi has the perfect mix.

Words, I have found, often have some sort of visual association, whether it be with a particular image, color, or shape. Many times, I have constructed my writing out of an imagined series of pictures. Writing can thereby sometimes function as a lens, through which one can peep and actually see how the writer feels.

These visual associations tend to be oddly particular and personal. And so, out of curiosity, in the questionnaire that I compiled, I asked my friends to write down the first abstract noun that came to mind. I then requested that they think, without exerting too much effort, of an image that they would associate with that word. Here are some of the interesting and entertaining answers that I received:

Gravity—blue, a cylinder
Sorrow—draped fabric
Laughter—fireworks
Love—a man’s chest
The number eight—purple
Beauty—lavender fields
Guilt—a square

Though several of these associations seemed rather unexpected, they nonetheless made sense, especially when I considered the particular people who wrote them. And these people, in sharing a part of themselves, in turn expanded and enriched my perceptions of certain words and images.

Over the past few weeks, I have been consciously trying to pay more attention to how words are organized in relation to images in New York City, whether it be in shops, on billboards, or on buses. Most of what I examined was, not surprisingly, a bombardment of advertising. I also noted that, after a while, the image-word relationship became rather predictable. Of course a set of muscular, gleaming abs translates into Armani Exchange. And not only do the images get tiresome, but so do the words themselves. I lost count of how many times I read “succeed,” “go healthy,” “the best deal,” or “the new look.” (Of course, I am forgetting the occasional clever or captivating headers such as the frequent “Hot Go-go Boys” on chalkboards out on the sidewalk). My personal favorite is the sign outside of the hot dog joint, Gray’s Papaya: “When you’re hungry, or broke, or just in a hurry!” I do not think it is an overstatement to say that this sums up many New Yorkers’ lives. What I am trying to get at is that our surroundings repetitively drill dull and impersonal associations into our heads—and this is why new and odd associations that come from people and not cardboard are so refreshing to read.

Last week, in my Contemporary British Art course, we looked at the work of Banksy, a British graffiti artist. His art explores the relationship between words and images, and his associations are not as much personal as they are politically and socially aware. He knows that we are accustomed to seeing certain words paired with particular images, and he disapproves of many of these associations. To show his disapproval, Banksy mocks how much trust we put into various security signs by making ones that are visually similar but verbally disturbing. He has also used Burger King signs in off-putting ways, such as by accompanying them with the image of a starving child. Banksy is clearly aware of the power that the street sign and billboard language can have upon viewers. He once put up on a wall: “Post no bills/authorized graffiti area/city of SF/no loitering.” Soon after, city workers amusingly only erased the “authorized graffiti area.”

What I appreciate the most about Banksy is that he breaks through the imaginary barrier that we appear to have in public expression. Perhaps it is a mild barrier, but it is nonetheless disheartening that we are more openly surrounded by conventional images and words than by the illuminating ones that we all quietly fabricate on our own.