Wordplay and perception

a human mind is a funny place

I was reminded of my grandmothers tablecloth collection when recently Jason McBride at

Weirdo Poetry

and I have been talking about wordplay. Here's a playful newsletter from Jason. Also recently

Create Me Free

asked me to answer her questions with images, which I did.

So the playful uses of both words and images has been on my mind… including some creative abilities unique to all human brains: a natural human ability with word games and image games like pareidolia.

For example if someone says “what's that big loud noise?” me, with my deafness, I would be lipreading “what's that pig outdoors?”. Since I live in a city where pigs aren't normally seen I play word games quickly and deduce that other than “pig" the spoken word could have been rig, gig, jig, fig, wig, twig… big… of those which is the most likely? Most humans, even those with good hearing, have a facility for such fill-it-in wordplay and word games of all kinds.

Similarly we've all seen clouds in the sky that look like ducks or some other familiar shape. A lot of art is inspired by “that looks like a…” visual games.

Perception is so multifaceted that it fascinates me.

When I was a kid the grandmother I lived with ran, with her best friend, an illicit catering company. Some people in the Oklahoma town percieved 2 women in business for themselves as “wrong” - but my grandmother and her friend percieved it as a “way to make ends meet". So they would supply whole meals, including the linen tablecloths, for quiet under-the-table hire. The tablecloths sometimes came back to Grandma with stains on them which often, to my eye, looked like animals. Sometimes Grandma could get the stains out but when she couldn't that stained tablecloth became one of our everyday ones. She would let me pick out the days tablecloth which I would request by the animal I'd “seen" on it. (The one with the rabbit please.)

All of this was on my mind this week as I worked in my larger sketchbook over several mornings. Here's Dex appearing in a coffee ring stain…

Here's a closer look at Dex…

… and I thought it would be pun-fun to put Dex on a coffee mug so I did. (Details and additional photos of this 15oz mug here.)

Aren't brains and our perceptions funny things?

Also related to how our brains work is the fact that often we perceive as “correct" someone else's framing of things especially if the speaker is emotionally angry or authoritative sounding. This is a normal first reaction, responding to an emotion laden command often helped us survive as children.

As we get older we learn that someone else's emotional emphasis - or their need for us to be upset - is not the same thing as concrete evidence about things. We learn that feelings are guides not gods to be obeyed. (If you've ever gone to school or work when you didn't feel like it you know what I mean.)

While thinking about all of that I did this sketchbook page during breakfast another day.

Below is another breakfast sketchbook page I did that is also about self-growth and other people's perceptions of us but in a different way. We learn over time that not every forceful statement about us is accurate. Just because someone loudly calls you a chair it doesn't mean you have to let them put their bags in your lap.

Similarly our perceptions of our own selves and what we have can be a bit odd… oftentimes we're so busy checking off a checklist, doing stuff constantly, that we forget to take moments to enjoy where we are now and how far we've come. To remind myself to stop and enjoy things, to say to myself occasionally “this is so nice”, I drew this sketchbook page.

Welcome to all new subscribers!! Most Friday's I share my sketchbook pages like the ones above. Sometimes I share a drawing of a tree in my neighborhood like this:

The point of all of my breakfast artwork is to start a day gently. Good mental hygiene you know? Here's a poem I wrote for a local bookstores poetry month bookmark gift giving in 2022 that explains what I mean.

If you're a paid subscriber your subscription recently got me some more sketchbooks!! Thank you!! In the photo below my filled sketchbooks are on the left and the brand new sketchbooks in the right.

Here's the front cover of the $8 sketchbooks I like still in its wrapping.

Besides seeing my sketchbooks as they get filled with words and images paid subscribers can download any of my ebooks they desire from my index page of ebooks. I add new ebooks to the index page regularly.

Here's a newsletter about my project to create a print book reproduction of 120 pages from my recently filled sketchbooks.

Eventually there will be an ebook version of my published sketchbook available here too … but it's 120 pages so it'll take me a while to set it up. The printed book is available now - see the link above for details - I've shared it early for my newsletter subscribers before copies are in the commercial art galleries I work with.

I hope your weekend is as full of kindness as possible and that you have many moments when you can remember to say to yourself “this is really nice!”.

And it is really is nice that you're here! Thank you!