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Cliché of Today: Composition
Created 01.08.2003 - 15:20

Walking from the law school to the engineering precinct, my mind made a similar transition from right to left. During the reshuffle, I happened upon the following:

Every moment of my existence is a well-framed photograph.

Gold! This had me in stiches for several 'well-framed' moments. And everywhere I looked, I saw the well observed, consistent metering and exposure, excellent colour balance, and an all-pervading sense of good composition. Perhaps all this is doing me some good, after all.

But this could be phrased with a great deal less whistful romanticism. Let's start by dropping the tone. We hardly need ruin a rather quaint observation by giving it pretence to be an epiphany. Losing the hyperbolic rhetoric, then, and we're left with:

My existence is a well-framed photograph.

But what's with this obsession about the subject? For fear of sounding like my jurisprudence lecturer I won't pursue this further; suffice to say, my my is superfluous. But 'Well-framed' now lacks its original punch; it should be phrased in terms of aesthetics, since that is ultimately what I'm noticing. The artfulness of the moment, I suppose, has nothing to do with 'existence', either:

The aesthetic perfection of the moment is irreducible.

There. Fewer religious overtones, less egotistical, not too ambitious, and rather pertinent - if I may so so myself. Join me next week for yet another cliché created and reborn!

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Cite as: Jaani Riordan, ‘Cliché of Today: Composition’ (2003) Jaani.net Internet Law and Technology <http://www.jaani.net/view/2003/08/01/cliche-composition>.
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