Sprinkles

There’s a feeling that writing gives me - when everything turns into a misty white, leaving me at the centre to project my own film reel of images onto the blank canvas.  A collage of sensical memories and visions from things I’ve seen, heard, smelt, tasted, experienced… 

“An image speaks a thousand words,” which as a creative and hobbyist painter myself, I’ve always felt to be true.  In describing the backstory of one single picture, the setting it depicts, the characters and their histories, what kind of action is being shown and what that means for the plot… To answer all those would probably require a ten page script at best.  

But what does it say for the opposite?  “An image speaks a thousand words.”  How do you choose just one image that can describe a story crafted by thousands of phrases, expressions, conversations, layered with every single person’s unique imagination that would make each interpretation of a text their own?

I never thought of myself as a dreamer but maybe I am.  Sentimental for certain.  Perhaps that is the reason why words draw me in.  They become a gateway to an empty space – where anything is possible.  It is precisely the ephemeral quality of inspiration in one’s own imagination that makes it one of the most exciting places to be.  

If you asked ten people to create a picture of two coffees on a table - you’d get ten completely different ideas.  Is it a marble table, iron, wood?  Are you outdoors or indoors?  Is it a home, a coffee shop, some dingy bar in the middle of the day? Are they both lattes, one iced and one hot?  What else is on the table?  A book, a newspaper, any food?  How do you even choose when hundreds of combinations manifest themselves every time you read those five words again? 

And that to me is the magic of writing.  A world of possibilities and choices to explore, and no one to say what is or isn’t true. 

An image speaks a thousand words…but a thousand words speak a thousand images.

Sprinkles • Hong Kong