What got me thinking about this was the use of personal symbols (usually dream symbols) in Surrealist art. To fully appreciate that art, it helps to have a "code book" telling us what any particular symbol meant to the artist.

In writing, I'm perplexed as to how a story could attract readers if it was full of intensely personal symbols that are generally left unexplained. So, here's the question for us writers:

Can we create symbols (basically a short word picture) that is imbued with intensely personal meaning but is essentially either a mundane object or phrase for the average reader? And, if we can, what are the obstacles to overcome in making that writing INTERESTING (to anyone but our analyst)?

In that sense, I think that 'decoding' Surrealist art into explicit meanings is like taking an Impressionist work and using it as a sketch for a realist work, or even turning it into a list of objects and positions. What most Surrealist literatuve should express is not understandable meaning, but incoherent meaninglessness, or things that seem meaningful but cannot be rationally organized.

The recent film "Gladiator" contained a number of "action" scenes, but the scenes were shot differently from how such scenes are usually shot in action films. Instead of ever using slow motion to give a better chance for understanding the physical nature (I mean the rationally explicable motion of bodies according to the laws of nature) of the action, the scenes were often sped up, cut incoherently, shot from angles that made it difficult to get an observer's viewpoint of much of the action.

Because the point of the action sequences was not to make the viewer an observer, but rather to make them a participant. The vertigo, disorientation, confusion about what exactly are happening, are the message of the action scenes. If we make it our goal to understand what is "really" happening, then we are missing the experience that the art is portraying. The spectators see one thing, the participant sees something entirely different.

Of course, many "artists" use surrealism as a sort of puzzle box in which to hide the "real" meaning of their work, but don't you do that. If you're writing about what it's like to lose your mind, make the reader go through it. If you're portraying the experience of life and death struggle, don't write about tactics, or about anything. Write the desperation and confusion and pain itself.

How about parallel lines of text relating different parts of the scene? Too gimmicky. No wonder most of it is poetry.

Well, the non-surreal thing I wrote that got me thinking about this is 1st person singular as that seemed intuitively to be the only way to tell the story and give the reader any sense of going through it with the character.

To capitalize on the delusion of my tragic character, I've been thinking about playing cards only, but maybe he could become more pathological by generalizing to all sorts of flat rectangular objects too. That's even more like the Surreal where shapes are imbued with meaning beyond what the eye can see.

As for Tarot, a good reader can make any reading a positive affirmation of your most cherished personal beliefs. Death card! Oh, you're quite the lady's man, aren't you!!!

Actually, Tarot readings always have a component about family and relationships. So, it gives you something to talk about with a potential life partner. Like "it says you'll have three kids. My reading says only two. I guess you'll be having one more with your second husband."