I posted a short prose piece yesterday titled This should have been painted [link].

I have some more thoughts …

Here’s my conclusion. Certain art forms are best to capture certain experiences. Certain experiences are differentiated by the senses to which they appeal.

Or, because the senses of the experience weren’t matched with the senses of the art. This is something I’ve been asking myself lately: are certain experiences captured more aptly by certain art forms? I think so. I think certain experiences appeal to our senses more than others.

But it was more particular than that. Too much? But too much of what? There is always too much. In this case, there was too much to see.

The backyard was primarily an experience of sight.

[None of my other senses were receiving much input.] It was quiet in the early morning on a weekday. All I could taste was the remnant of minty toothpaste in my mouth and all I could smell was the crisp air. The only physical feelings were my knees on the hardwood and my forearms on the sill.

[[[My eyes were the windows where the beauty shined through and it seemed that there was too much of it for words.]]]

Why though? Why could I not capture something seen with my words. It’s not that I couldn’t, but writing just wouldn’t be the best.

>>>

It didn’t seem that a reader would enjoy a catalog—separated by commas and periods, organized in block-of-text prose—of what I was seeing.

I am not a painter or a photographer, but I think these visual art forms would have been more capable of capturing the beauty of the backyard scene, at least more capable than poetry or prose.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” proves true in this instance. Our eyes are eyes. They are not lips and brains. What part of us processes the written word? What experiences are most appropriately communicated in the written form?

But how many words, exactly, was this backyard scene worth? At 40 words per minute, I could surpass the painter in less than a half hour. But if the picture were worth 10,000 words, then I would be writing for over four hours.