Pictures are more ambiguous than words
and that is their attraction.
If I say, ‘girls, horses, cracks in your window on the world,’
it is just a phrase.
Too trite.
Too didactic.
Too empty.
I can pad it out a bit,
but there is still too much me
and too little you.
But the picture invites you to enter.
It has a smoky room with a warm glow of companionship,
the mounting excitement of expectations,
the exhilaration of the win,
the emptiness of loss,
unarticulated similarities between sex and betting,
an articulated sense of defeat.
It has voids to be filled and cracks to be expanded or patched up.
Fill the void and there is no room for excitement.
Patch up the cracks and your view through the window is obscured further.
But the alternative is to remain cracked and unfulfilled…
So much more in the picture:
more feelings,
more ideas,
even more words.
But also more work.
Ambiguity gives you all that you are willing to put into it.
