The Last Painting qoute

The Last Painting

Inspiring quote

            “I am the awkward sorceress of the invisible: my sorcery is powerless to evoke, without the help of your sorcery. Everything I evoke depends on you, depends on your trust, on your faith.

            I gather words to make a great straw-yellow fire, but if you don’t put in your own flame, my fire won’t take, my words won’t burst into pale yellow sparks. My words will remain dead words. Without your breath on my words, there will be no mimosas.”

(CIXOUS, HELLNE pg.107)

            In this quote, the ‘you’ could be the painter or God or the reader. If it is the reader, than in this passage would mean “us” using my or our imagination to create the world with what you read and see. See through new eyes; see through the world into a new word or new world. Without us who would ever put our 2 cents in. The text is nothing but 2d black and white pieces of paper. As reader we give life to the text, give it color, and envision it our mind. I do this every time I pick up a book.

            This quote is so powerful because the experience with a text can be different for each individual. What I might think up, may be different than what you think, or that guys over there. Our imagination is so vast, it is ever changing. Even when a reader reads the same book twice, they can find new meaning in it or something they didn’t get the first time. As a writer, yes I write for myself but I also write for others, to inspire them to read or write or both. This quote gives me the energy I need to do so.

            There is a deeper connection that can be felt and heard with The Last Painting, and AVA. They both show how the text should or could be read differently with different individuals. New meaning can erupt through the text. In the last sentence of the quote it says “Without your breath on my words, there will be no mimosas.” Without the reader there are no images, simply words with no meaning. This mention of breath gives another new meaning on AVA, as well as, just breathing onto the text, can transform it. Being that intimate with the text, getting that close, and having the text so near your face, that you in fact are breathing on it, can make the text in to something more than mere words. Even this text. Can you see the mimosas?