Why Pareidolia? Because it would be such an awesome name for either A: a prog rock band, B: a painting, or C: a book of poems, especially poems written as a series of short fragments whose meaning is generated in the tense, vibrating spaces between the white page and the black marks scattered across it. Pareidolia is a phenomenon that requires a pre-existing narrative, cast like a net over a random series of visual markers. In a sense the pareidolia is read by the viewer and in a sense is read by him. The pattern of burn marks, sap stains, sunlight on a window pane, clouds, stars, water spots pulls the narrative from the mind of the viewer and shows it to him. I can think of no other name which encapsulates so well the practice of literary criticism, which is interprets in the black scatter patterns of a text the large-scale metanarratives of human society.
This blog is a relatively new idea, drawn from my personal need of a place to empty out and sort all of the stuff that I spend the rest of the day filling my brain with. What has generally helped me when dealing with the kind of ideas which come out of literary studies is to process them in writing, in a creative mind-flow, sometimes using humor or poetry, or mystic-like revelations which nonetheless do not pay the bills. Hopefully though this process I will be able to wind the thread around my fingers little by little and guide myself through the labyrinth, and hopefully be able to guide others as well.
Peace
Barbara
