The Adventures of Line

“The Importance of the line cannot be underlined enough.

That it is engraved within our collective psyche shouldn’t come as a surprise.

It delineates, it shapes and gives contour to contours – such is its power, such is its purpose.

Those who have crossed it have started wars, tempted trust, or ended friendships; it is the veritable guillotine of love.

Linear, straight, true, continuous, curved, segmented - whatever form it chooses to be - it defines and sculpts with a whimsy that belies an ordained nature.

It has always been - it has no origin and no end, but can arguably be the beginning and end of everything.  It is undeviating, uninterrupted and yet it can be clearly broken and misleading; It is plainly visible and yet can be painfully invisible - tangible yet intangible.

It is the infinite regress; It IS the Infinite antithesis.
Osvaldo Cavandoli’s La Linea, and Escher’s Regelmatige Vlakverdeling, and all their tessellations and glorious musings - were they not servile, subservient to it too?
It is the master of symmetry and asymmetry.
It is free. It is boundless, yet it binds freewill as it binds the prisoner.
It implements rules, it is Rule, indeed a Ruler in all senses of the word.
It governs and dictates. It creates borders and contains, regulates and coordinates, restricts, guides, shows us the way.

And what of colour?

 Can’t the Line wear them all? Is it not the criteria of the spectrum itself? Does it not indeed measure the light we ourselves perceive? Indeed, can we not now work out the stuff of stars long dead (and living) and what they are made up of thanks to, Newton’s unweaving of the rainbow and, subsequently, Fraunhofer barcodes in the sky? Disciples of the Line, one and all.

It can be the darkest or brightest, as it can be the boldest or even the faintest, most subtle of all, of which a finger can delicately trace.

And what of the beautiful, pulchritudinous slaves to its magical grace and dance that we call script, and that are arranged to give meaning, giving us culture: 26 in this language, what of those? Do words dictate unto the line or is the contrary so much more feasible?

It is not just a weapon of the artists, this simple division device, the crease of the sculpture, no. This father of form, this secret of the silhouette, the cleft in the gorge, the Bauhaus brushstroke is much more. It resides within all of us, and, undoubtedly, we would not be here to appreciate, to admire, if it wasn’t for the humble Line.

It manages our inner reality, it defines our being, and with splendid paradox it must break the delineation to create anew.
Just as there is something of the synesthete in all of us, there is no line without ambiguities, defects, cross-overs, or wonders.

It is at the edge and yet it is central too. It is the diameter, perimeter, the circumference.

It is wavy, curved, a suggestion of delicacy. It is horizontal, of stability, calm, soothing.

It is vertical, strength, power. It is diagonal, unresolved tension, surely the most dynamic of all.

It is perpendicular, it is parallel, it is as bent as a nine bob note.

It is everywhere.  It is shape. Indeed, which known or imagined shape does not pay homage to it? Such is its part. Don’t all these lines inspire you?

Have you never been amazed by the subtleness?

The boldness? The hidden omnipresence of them all?

Stuff of the Gods, I'd bet.”