The picture is a bit of whimsy, Sam seeming to float with the flower.
If you don’t have your glasses on (hello! That was how I took the photo), the alignment of dog + flower is much easier to do, because everything is a bit blurry, vague. I suppose, too, I’m thinking of intoxication after writing about the TV show Mom, which features alcoholics & their attempts to recover. Intoxication can be a nice thing, if it helps one to perceive beauty.
I was not intoxicated, please note. I was just a bit high on the flowers and my beautiful dog.
It struck me, after I shared the picture. I was thinking of coining an aphorism, something like “ambiguity is the root of poetry.” Or perhaps “precision is not problematic and too bad”.
When something is in the language of safety, unambiguous, it is designed to defeat allusiveness. We don’t want someone to hint that they want help. You don’t call 911, and then ask the operator to guess what you want. Signification that is denotative, aiming to be clear & precise is the opposite of something connotative, suggestive.
I was thinking of how Maurice Denis, the artist who did the cover art for the program at the premiere of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande May 17, 1893 (the single performance attended by Claude Debussy), used his girlfriend in all his art: that is until she became his wife. I think it was later that same year that they were married.
The face is vague, indistinct. It is, dare I say it, ambiguous for its cartoony lack of precision.
With the absence of precision we move in the direction of something symbolic, universal. Perhaps we might say “symbolist”. All women become like the angelic figures in Denis’ paintings. It’s a lovely thought.
I don’t mistake my photo of Sam for art, but it was a fun picture all the same. Ambiguity made it possible to see the dog as though she were on top of the flower, as though the flower were a big spheroid, rather than a small flower seeming large because i was shooting from up close.
I wondered how my photo of Sam might be received. So far the “reviews” (comments on social media) have been very kind & friendly.
I’m glad I didn’t have my glasses on.