thinking about perspectives

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Dead Poets Society, first person, narrator, perspective, point of view, third person, writing

I’ve been reading a lot about perspectives for my masters and it is fascinating to learn that in reality, when it comes to writing, there are really only two point-of-views: first person or third person.

So, while the world around us is viewed through millions of eyes, when a writer sits down to pen a story the first decision s/he have to make is: who is telling the story? Is it the main character or do I decide that I want to go a bit ‘Victorian’ on the story and be omniscient* (admittedly not a very modern approach). Or foregoing that, novelists have the option of something called “free indirect style”.

But what does that mean? Well, very simply put, if you don’t want to wander around your story writing from the ‘I’ point of view, you take a step back and create the possibility of allowing the reader to see things through the narrators and the characters eyes at the same time.

This can be a bit tricky, as you need to use your characters language and then sprinkle in your own observations in a veiled way – allowing the reader to decide who had the thoughts, the narrator or the character?

And to be clear, surprising for some maybe, the narrator is NOT the author, but instead a fictional voice who guides the reader through the story. Some would even say that the person who sits down to write, is not the same as the author, but that the author is actually only a mask a person wears while writing.

Perspective seems to be much trickier than I thought. Maybe unsurprising if you think about how hard we often find it to understand each other, how difficult side-by-side living can sometimes be.

But, no matter how much I contemplate and discover things about point of view I somehow can’t help myself and always think about that iconic scene from that 1989 movie Dead Poets Society. Changing your own point-of-view may change more than you know.

Maybe 26 years old but Dead Poets Society is still a wonderful film

*omniscient: all knowing, all seeing. A God-like approach to a story, where the narrator can see into all the characters heads and even know more then they do themselves as the omniscient narrator even knows their dreams and unconscious thoughts.

on top of floating surfaces

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Anthony Gormley, art, Deichtor Hallen, floating platform, Hamburg, Horizon Field Hamburg, perspective, point of view, suspended platform

While I was in Hamburg I went to an exhibition in the Deichtor Hallen called “Horizon Fields Hamburg”. Well exhibition may be the wrong word as all it really is, is a massive (2,500sq feet) suspended platform seven and a half meters off the ground that you walk on.  The platform is coated in a black shiny and reflective layer of plastic (or something like it) and everything on and around it is mirrored in it.

The sensation you get when you start walking on this floating ground is very odd and a little bit disorienting. As the ceiling is mirrored below your feet you get the oddest feeling as if you are walking on air or are  somewhere in between the sky and the ground. The idea behind the installation is that the people on it make the art and what happens to you and what you experience is what it is all about, so the artist Anthony Gormley.

As the platform moves below your feet and everything anyone does while on it makes it vibrate, shift, sway, swing and shudder you can’t help but be connected to each other, which for some may not be all that pleasant. And while you navigate around the surface your senses are heightened yet you walk with careful teetering steps, feeling a little drunk or aboard a ship on high seas.

As I sat on the platform and watched people jump, skip, dance, meditate and prance around the area I couldn’t help but smile at how silly they all looked, yet how happy they all were. By forcing people to remove their shoes, walk across a large empty area below the platform climb stairs and then step onto a surface so unlike any they have ever experienced before their whole attitude and perspective changed. Being taken out of any comfort zone will do that and encourage people to see the world through other eyes, in this case eyes that have a 7.5 meters above the ground point of view.

I know that some people struggle with installation and interactive art but in this case I do believe that the challenge it gives you is not one about the art or the artist but one that is all about yourself. And I for one will take the experience of the  Horizon Fields with me and hope that the experience I had will change something within me, even if it only means shifting my perspective by a few centimeters. And an added bonus this is didn’t cost a penny.

Deichtor Hallen and Anthony Gormley

The Blog: Horizon Fields Hamburg

point of views

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butterfly, children, Dublin, fun, ghost, point of view, psychology, random, Van Gogh

Last night as I was rambling around Dublin in a Gothic ghost bus I saw things I have never seen before. No, not the fake tacky skeletons nor the supposed ghostly orbs in digital photographs, but a side of the city I live in that has always been hidden from me.

I loved the stories our nightly bard told, I enjoyed the quirky puns my companion made and even the slightly drunken visitors from England with their fake hair, tans and nails added an element of the bizarre. But while I wandered around an old ruin of a church in the dying light of the day, climbed a thousand year old steps in dusk and sat in complete darkness on a bus, I enjoyed the challenge of changing my point of view.

We all get so use to seeing things in a certain way, feeling a particular emotion and doing things in the same order that we forget  to use our creative side and mix up our perceptions. We have all built our own reality in which things are safe and comfortable, the problem is that we lose sight of how others could see things. Vincent Van Gogh saw 27 shades of grey and I’m always arguing with my mother about a particular shade of yellow, to me it is more orange! So who knows what the person next to you is seeing while looking at the exact same thing? After all even a butterfly has a different view of a flower than you do.

I sometimes envy how everything children see and experience is an adventure. It may take forever to walk a short distances but the fun they get out of picking up every stick, pointing out the different bugs and jump in all the puddles is undeniably more rewarding than the hectic walk most of us take to get from A to B. So maybe, like in that film The Dead Poets Society, getting up on a desk or chair to change the point of view of how we see things is the solution to more fun in life. At the very least it would give us a little bit of extra exercise and we might just spot the dust on the top of the cupboards from that angle, too.

So with lovely new memories of an old familiar city lingering in my mind today, I think I may just take advantage of the sun and find a few puddles to jump in, flowers to pick and a butterfly to chase. Just open up my eyes and see the world in a different light and point of view.

PS: For a certain someone who may be interested – The four steps to Sainthood: servant of god, venerable, blessed and finally Saint …

Changing the way you think

10 rules to change