In which Our Hero explains how to tiptoe text ‘top the tulips.
I spoke today with a close friend who reads my blog religiously. He told me he was this close to calling and saying:
“Dude, maybe you should take clown school less seriously.”
But then, he said, he was relieved to see I’d arrived there myself this week.
I taught him something I learned: put the text on top of the game. (Don’t let the text strangle the game.)
He’s a musician, so here’s the analogy I used:
When you play a song on piano, you can think:
C major, F, G, C-flat.
Technical, correct, literal.
Or—you can visualize a volcano erupting. Or summon some vivid, private memory.
The game is that image/memory/emotional source.
The text is the notes—or the words.
If you play the game and let the text sit lightly on top of it, the audience receives two tracks at once. We receive both the notes and something of the image.
A common mistake is to use the game to “underline” the text.
If you’re imagining Jesus while playing a hymn about Jesus, the audience gets the same information twice. It’s flat.But if you’re imagining a volcano erupting while playing a hymn about Jesus, the audience receives two different tracks. It becomes richer, stranger, more alive. They can’t necessarily name the image, but they can feel its charge. It evokes something personal in them.
Julian Wise 