The Literal Artist

How can I be an artist or one that appreciates all kinds of art and be a literal person, and I mean really literal. As I age I remember thoughts I had from my childhood that today are laughable. I consider myself a conceptual thinker to my husbands linear thinking but I have moments where I think I must be a dichotomy ~ and the mere fact that I can spell it should say something.

When I was a little girl we watched Western Movies on our little black and white television. It seemed there was always a "rift" between the cowboys and the Indians. Fighting and wars were primarily the subject matter and they, the Indians were always on the war-path. Scenes would be shot of thousands of Cavalry on one side of a panoramic plain and thousands of irate and ready to fight Indians on the other side. They would charge one another and the war began. It seemed that this scene was in every western movie! That said, my literal mind kicked in and I truly thought ~~ for a very long time that "the war path" was a place not an adverb! I was much older when I discovered this not to be true.

I was in high school when during a conversation with a class mate I was oh so cool and used the term, "better than sliced bread."  Literally the term just popped into my head.  To my knowledge I had never heard it ~ heck I was only in the 9th grade. While I am not in any book of famous quotations, to this day I firmly believe that it was I who coined this phrase. I recently mentioned this to my husband of 26 years and he had to pull the car to the side of the road he was laughing so hard! He asked if I was credited ANYWHERE as having coined the phrase to which I responded, "I'm sure someone is credited but being in the 9th grade I had no idea there was such a thing." I am convinced someone is credited, but I firmly believe it was I who said it first!

So it is with these two examples that I must ask myself, how can I be an artist and have so much literal thinking in my background?

More to come...