Koprízo̱

I was thinking about the similarities between writing and sculpting.

If there was ever a first sentence that made the reader suddenly wish to be reading the ingredients on a box of breakfast cereal instead, that surely has to be it. (If there was ever a second sentence that made…)

Hear me out.

For the longest time I considered the blank page in front of me the same way a sculptor must look at a giant block of stone. All the potential it holds.

I wonder if the sculptor knows exactly what he or she wants the finished piece to look like or if they just go with the flow and hope their mastery of the tools in front of them allow it to take shape. Language being the primary tool of the writer, I have gone back and forth over the years whether the dictionary is the chisel or the block of stone.

If you can answer that question you’re probably better suited to writing than I am and I advise you to abandon this at once and instead jot something down for prosperity.

When a sculptor starts, the finished piece already exists within the stone. He or she just have to set it free. Help it shed the unnecessary. Be all that it can be (the it being both sculptor and piece).

That blank page?

What the writer wants to say already exists in the dictionary, they just have to put the words in the right order. With the exception of a few made up words, every great sentence that will ever be written is already contained in the latest Merriam-Webster. Fiction. Non-fiction. Poem or manifesto. It makes me want to sleep with one under my pillow in the hopes one of those stories will seep out into my head.

For example; “Rage against the dying of the light” is contained therein.

Rage   /rāj/   feel or express violent uncontrollable anger

Against   /əˈɡenst/   in opposition to

The   /T͟Hə/   denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge

Dying   /ˈdīiNG/   on the point of death

Of   /əv/   expressing the relationship between a part and a whole

The   /T͟Hə/   denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge

Light   /līt/   the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible

So simple and yet so profound.

Fume in opposition to the diminishing of the luminosity? Not so much.

In a way, the sculptor has it much easier. Removing as opposed to building.

Let’s say they want to sculpt a winged horse. They grab their hammer and start chipping away. “Winged horse” they mutter to themselves and a few hours later their project either looks a lot like a winged horse or they hit it at the wrong angle or with the incorrect amount of force, knock off one of the wings and end up carving a horse.

A writer sets off with the same intention and a few hours later they are well on their way to creating Pegasus, the immortal winged horse that sprang from the blood of the slain Medusa. An epic tale told by the ancient Greeks and revered to this day.

Or…a lesser known story about a winged horse. One that was told from the wrong angle and with the incorrect amount of force by the obscure Greco-Roman poet Lancius Manionus; Koprízo̱. In this account, Koprízo̱ flies around in the same manner but the focus is instead on the ten times a day the flying horse poops and what happens when those four pound turds hit the citizenry below.

You get the sense that Merriam-Webster would want nothing to do wit such a tale (who can blame them/it), but it rests in its pages nonetheless. Every synonym for foul smells plucked from within, every description of brown missiles hurling towards the ground lurking in the same vernacular that Hesiod used.

Why was I was thinking about the similarities between writing and sculpting?

Because I recently spent a day walking around the Grounds For Sculpture in Princeton, NJ, Seward Johnson’s (of J&J fame) ode to himself and his wealthy family. While some his sculptures were good, having billions of dollars to promote your ‘art’ certainly doesn’t help.

I spent the hours wandering around and asking myself what I could create if I was among the idle rich.

Enormous sculptures of robe-clad Athenians looking skyward in horror as manure rained down upon them?

Probably. Violating the stone as badly as most of my stories desecrate the blank page.

I swear, for awhile I wrestled with the deep questions that started this particular story off, I did, but then after seeing so many terrible sculptures my mind started to wander. Probably in the same way your mind is wandering now…