An interesting thing about a word used as visual art is how it can prompt new ideas about that word. Even changing the font or highlighting a word on a page or a computer screen in some way can emphasize or even change what it means.
And then there’s China Mieville’s novel Kraken about London’s supernatural criminal underworld, populated with a whole array of weird characters, including an animated talking tattoo, and a plot that revolves around a giant squid. Except it isn’t the squid itself that’s as important as what it contains. Whoever controls the ink controls the world—the ink can rewrite the world.
This isn’t a new idea. The notion that words have power is older than abracadabra, and that the way a word is written can make it even more powerful dates from the Kabbalah, if not earlier. It’s an interesting thing to consider that sometimes the medium is the message.
Your words have power, Chris. Thank you.
Your words have power too, and I appreciate that you always choose them wisely.