A Clichéd Life

Big Frank does not want to create the impression that he is not as trapped by clichés as others. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? He does avoid them like the plague, but it is easier said than done. So let's start the conversation. This narrative may be clichéd; but hey - Big Frank is a work in progress.

His life is nothing to boast about. You know what I mean. Like, you could say that the facts speak for themselves. Big Frank now lives with his daughter – a joy and a delight. When all is said and done she could be said to be the apple of his eye, but let's not confuse apples with oranges. Is that a red herring? Be that as it may we are happy as two peas in a pod. It should come as no surprise that she’s heading off to college. If the truth be told, the time is ripe. However, there is another side to the coin, but who wants to dwell in the past. In any case, tomorrow is another day. What will be, will be: life is a journey. But Big Frank might just be in denial. Maybe he just doesn't get it. In any case, it is what it is, . . . or else not.

Big Frank could hardly believe his eyes when he took the plunge and got a house with a yard last year. There is no place like home. Don’t get Big Frank wrong, living there is probably the right thing to do. So far so good; but if truth be told it is easier said than done. Keeping up a yard is not all it is cracked up to be. There is no question in his mind that the time was ripe, but God only knows what will come of it. Sure there are second thoughts, but who wants to make a mountain out of a molehill. To hammer home the point: the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, literally and figuratively (don't go there). Nonetheless, by fits and starts the lawn is coming in, but what will come of it: that’s the $64,000 question? Big Frank sometimes wonders if he bit off more than he can chew. I mean he doesn't want to be OC about this (who died and left him in charge?); still he’s keeping his fingers crossed and has a back-up plan - as if!. Where there’s a will there’s a way: just hunker down and do it, do it do it. By the same token Rome wasn’t built in a day. Still getting down to brass tacks, Big Frank is looking to get closure on this soon so he can move on.

All work and no play makes Big Frank a dull boy, and so he does go cycling from time to time. It’s one way to keep body and soul together. Granted sometimes the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Just do it - is the name of the game; that's a no-brainer for sure. Big Frank is of the opinion that, day in and day out, exercising is medicine for the soul (or is it self-medicating?). Still talk is cheap and the proof is in the pudding, which is why you often find Big Frank is the saddle, as it were.

What part of cliche do you not understand? Hel–LO: it’s not rocket science. Whatever . . .

Cliché Busting

Clichés are empty-thought fillers whose contents have nothing to do with the user’s content (head or heart). They are used mostly out of habit but grow to the point where they can dehumanize the user and the person receiving the clichéd messages. Occasionally someone comes along and prods our consciousness into becoming aware of our reliance on these clichés. In the visual arts we have seen how Magritte shook the viewer out of his/her complacency through shocking images like The Lovers II. In that case the image of lovers embracing blind to each other took the cliché (love is blind), and brought it back to life in a fresh way. The typical reading of “love is blind” is of the delusional view of the other that being in love engenders. Magritte turns the cliché back on the viewer showing the horror of embracing someone while deliberately blinding yourself. He breathes life back into the cliché – declichéing the cliché.

Another approach comes through an admirer of René Magritte: Jasper Johns. What Johns does is to show you something that your cliché ridden mind is used to looking at in its clipthought-like way and show how it is not what you thought it was. Look at John’ Target with Four Faces (1955). The word “target” in typical cliché manner conceals the other possible readings of the image. Once you have heard (read) the word “target” then the image corresponds to the preconceived thought – you see a target. However – could this not be four concentric circles or four Os, or four zeros. Or could you be looking up to a red ceiling with a hole in it looking out into the blue sky and in that sky are floating yellow circles? Or could it be a yellow sky with blue floating circles? Or could it be a series of globes one in front of another? Or . . . perhaps it’s an eye staring at you. There are lots more possibilities – the point is that it is YOUR view, one you have thought about and have come to on your own that determines what you see. So here we have meanings sliding into meanings confounding thought. As Johns himself said about his paintings: “And in looking at such an object you may have a sense that there’s something at work that you don’t see. Many things are like that, aren’t they? That’s one of the ways that science and art develop. One feels that there is something that isn’t evident and one tries to find what it is.” This is cliché busting business. His creations come from reflection and encourage thought: “one tries to find what it is.” This is the exact opposite of the cliché which is born of laziness and bad habits and encourages in its response the same. In response to a clichéd thought or image one turns away and does not try to find what is there – because there is no there there.

The Thought-terminating Cliché

Clichés are the simplistic, thought-negating, tired, and generally vague notions, ideas, images, and expressions that people use in place of true thought. Dictionaries typically define clichés as trite phrases or expressions, for example:

“You only get out of life what you put into it.”
“There you go!”
"Time takes time."

What do these clichés really mean? When they are put in equivolent words their inanity emerges. For example:

• "I'm a work in progress." = "I'm still not dead."
• "Life is a journey." = "In my life I will go places and do things."
• "It is what it is." = "It exists."
• "It will be what it will be." = In time something will change, or else it won't."

In other words these clichés are empty of thought beyond the transparently obvious truth they express. So why are they used so often. Perhaps it is becuase when real thought is desired to truly express the distinct meaning appropriate to a unique situation (a predicament that calls upon some reflection and search for appropriate expression – appropriate to thinker and his/her context) these clichés spring to mind. They come to relieve you of the difficulty of thinking for yourself: they'll think for you. The more you use them the harder they are to get rid of. Keep in mind that clichés also include the ideas that they express! This is the true danger of using them. By doing so you relinquish your own awareness, feeling, and ideas and surrender yourself to the vagueness of the cliché. Thinking then becomes thought via "clipthoughts".

Robert Jay Lifton calls this surrender to the cliché “thought-terminating cliché”. When such a cliché is used it does not permit analysis, or discussion. The conversation is over. It is characteristic of totalitarian regimes and totalitarian approaches to relationships. When someone trots out one of the following during the analysis of a complex human problem you know the conversation has ended. These clichés are by nature highly reductive, definitive-sounding, easily memorized, and easily expressed. They are also totally empty in that there is no relationship between the words, their meanings, and the topic or person at hand. Here are some we all have bumped into:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.”
“We will have to agree to disagree.”
“Such is life.”
“We are just different.”

Here Big Frank is making reference to the verbal clues (clichés) to the vacuousness of the thought. There are also visual clues, clipart, for example. Perhaps the key notion here is one of awareness of self and the world coupled with an ability to express one's individual way of seeing things. It requires effort. Here’s William Stafford’s view on discovering his own way of looking at things, which he characterizes in almost romantic terms as finding his MUSE.

When I Met My Muse
By William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses
Off—they were still singing. They buzzed
Like a locust on the coffee table and then
Ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
Sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
Knew that nails up there took a new grip
On whatever they touched. "I am your own
Way of looking at things," she said. "When
You allow me to live with you, every
Glance at the world around you will be
A sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Magritte's "The Lovers II"

Cliches as illustrated by paintings. Here is Magritte’s famous painting “The Lovers II”. It is an visual cliché. How shall we interpret it? Let Big Frank count the ways.

-

Given that it is a cliché, perhaps a list of clichés would be a good place to start.
1. Love is blind.
2. Misery loves company.
3. Love at first sight
4. Love knows no color.

-

But then again song lyrics capture these clichés very well also.
1. “It’s love’s illusion I recall. I really don’t know love at all.”: Joni Mitchell – “Both Sides Now”
2. “You’re my love cliché. I like it that way.” : Bran Van 3000 – “Love Cliché”

3. "Maybe I'm amazed at the way I love you." Paul McCartney - "Maybe I'm Amazed"

-
And the actual song titles give the most complete list of clichés available.
1. “Be My Escape” Reliant K.
2. “Crazy” Patsy Cline
3. “Dangerous To Know” Hillary Duff
4. “Do You Want To Know a Secret” The Beatles
5. “Dreaming of You” Selena
6. “Hips Don’t Lie” Shakira
7. “Hope Has a Place” Enya
8. “I Want a Love I Can See” Jennifer Love Hewitt
9. “I Only Have Eyes For You” Frank Sinatra
10. “Imagine” John Lennon
11. “Still Crazy After All These Years” Paul Simon
12. “Underneath Your Clothes” Shakira
13. “What is Love” Haddaway
14. “We Belong Together” Mariah Carey
15. “World of Our Own” Westlife

Holding Your Ground

Big Frank presents a poem based on an actual conversation. Afterwards the exchange took on layers upon layers and the dilemma of the real replaced by the fake in order to change reality that is laughed off at the time, but effective nonetheless. The neatness of the outcome is a puzzle that leaves you scratching your head.

Holding Your Ground
By Big Frank Dickinson

Side by side, yard by yard – neighbors but in name;
A year or more the fence between – not one thing more.
And on the ground weeds grew among the rocks,
Til over the fence unwanted weeds were tossed.

“Are those rocks real?”, she asks
abruptly in answer to his question:
“You aren’t throwing those weeds in my yard, are you?”
He tells her that they are; (who has fake rocks?)

Then points to the piles of boulders that lie
Strewn all about, and talks about the quantity
And the function they serve upon the slopes.
“They keep things in place – such as they are.”

Just their heads reach over the fence
Between them – neighbor to neighbor
Talking as never before and all around them lie
Rocks holding the ground down.

He turns trampling the weeds to go inside
and puzzles how a rock could be doubted?
And in her mind the satisfaction of having
Replaced his question with her own.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

(for carolyn)

By Big Frank Dickinson

Looking back - going back;
Being back with a different view.
Clearer after all this time;
See then what you feel now.

Early morning coffee calm;
Calm coffee - pictured now.
Now pictured, that still heart.

Heart still, still that heart.