The general concept for my poem visualization for "Treason at Sea" (the words are posted in a previous entry) began to form around my 7th reading of Kevin Max's piece. The more I read his words, the more I heard his voice. The more I heard his voice, the more I began to see each of the stanzas as a journal that documents a journey he finds himself on (or in this case, a voyage).
And so I thought to myself, what is a book, what is a journal? If a collection of our thoughts that is woven together, does it necessarily have to be traditionally presented, with cover and binding? Instead of seeing the words of the poem as recorded in some leather bound book, I began see these "entries" as written on scraps of a map torn up by a man on a voyage. Why are they torn? Well, it was out of a desire for freedom and independence that this man began his trip. Finding it to be nothing short of a restriction and hindrance, he tore it to pieces, following instead his own course. He sees nothing but himself... his own comfort, desires, and his own "direction". It is on the scraps of his torn map that he records his thoughts now, and it is from these thoughts that this poem is born.
Now it's our turn. We, the readers, are invited to retrace his journey by following the ship's direction on the map, leading us in the chronological order of the entries. By his writing we see that though this man begins content and hopeful, he begins to face solitude, then doubt, then fear. He realizes that there has been a treason at sea... a rebellion that he has been a part of. As he goes further without direction, slipping deeper and darker into uncharted waters, he begins to be aware of a realm beyond his own. He realizes that there is something beyond himself, his own perception, and that it is someone that he has rebelled against. Out of a fear of love and a fear of that which is beyond himself, he sees that his rebellion had been against no one else but God. Upon understanding this, the man decides to give himself over to the very guidance he ran from.
The way the path weaves in the map also is indicative of this storyline. The ship seems to go this way and that, very aimless and without a definite course. Right before finding his direction in God, he finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere... lost and alone. It is then that he is brought to a little group of islands, illustrative of the truth that he finds. From this point he sets off on a straight course, one leading him not aimlessly out in the ocean, but off to a definite place (the great land mass on the top of the map). In the end he finds not only refuge, but a home in the God he ran away from. By the end, his understanding of the freedom he craved from the start has changed: it is something he finds not in his independence, but in His trust in a loving God
This is why the pieces of the map that had been torn are now woven together. Not only to illustrate my concept of a book, but to further the concept of the poem.
Process:
I used an image of a map I found online...
Which I then reworked in both photoshop and illustrator. I erased everything I wanted to erase in photoshop, then utilized the clone stamp tool to move and rework things. Finally, I went into illustrator, livetraced it, moved points and drew in new parts. The poem is typed in "Pelican", with each line of type written on its own path. After converting it to outlines, I went in and stretched each section of text slightly differently (to look like it was handwritten at different times), worked with stroke, and drew in parts of the letters to add to the handwritten feel. I also added ink splatters and underlines throughout. Basically, each section is written in a certain way to reflect each stanza.
Then came the complicated process, which I'll keep short in description! I pinted each of the 7 sections on its own 8 1/2 x 11 parchment paper, aligned them, tore them, and pieced them back together. I stitched everything back together again using hemp, then set the folded map into a small box I bought and painted. The interior cover of the box also contains an image of a wind-tossed ship, serving as a visual title of the poem.
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