A picture is worth a thousand words.
Well, I’m a word girl. Give me a picture, and I’ll rock your world. The depth of story and detail and even plot that I can invent in the space of a few minutes’ observation is unbelievable. I’ve been training myself to do this since I was a little girl. My best friend and I told each other stories constantly. Everywhere we went, every thing we saw, we concocted some amazingly detailed explanation for it. We named characters (human and otherwise); we formulated plot twists; we described scenery and atmosphere and clothing and weather; we verbalized emotions.
My favorite story of hers came out one night outside the Memorial Auditorium. She spotted a crushed VHS tape in the parking lot. Ribbons of tape snagged along the paving cracks, their tails leaping at every breeze. And she invented the most elaborate explanation for that tape’s existence and present state – I listened, breathless, waiting for the next twist.
Flash forward ten years. I now work at a marketing agency where my job (if you cast a certain light on it) is to make stuff up. And I work side by side with a designer, telling them my stories, weaving into words the pictures in my head, and hoping they can fit all that detail into one image. Essentially, we build a single picture from a thousand words.
Isn’t life ironic?
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