If you watch people draw, it is apparent that most of them aren’t drawing as much as writing in some 2-dimensional hieroglyphic language.

I suspect something similar is going on with visual perception. When non-visual people look out on the world they don’t see the world, they read their environment. They recognize and label what’s around them, and the labels alone are retained.

Perhaps the same can be can be said for all experience — including the experience of thought. What defies language gets filtered out, or trapped within, denied full existence.

I suspect many of the smartest people are imprisoned in a wordworld, locked in or walled in, without a window to let in wordless light, sound or touch.

(This is the consequence — and possibly the very purpose — of making the personal political.)

Jasper Johns said it best: