Synchronography And Diachronography Poem by Denis Mair

(inspired by Abdelhaq Djellab's painted work, posted Jan.13,2024) [*]
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The whole history of a writing system is referenced in this kind of picture, along with its future.

The long middle period becomes a bridge through darkness, highlighting affinities between the primitive and the ultra-modern.

There is proto-writing carved in rock, the incunabula of a graphic prophet foretelling writing's possibility.

There are simplified animal forms, doodled by an alphabetic dreamer: perhaps he tried to capture the sound of a creature's name;

Or he tried to capture a creature by breaking its name apart, then catching the first sound of its name.

There is writing incised on wet clay, symbols scratched on pottery, ideographs and pictographs, formulae and marks of authority;

Fragments from clerical records and daybooks; manuscripts and drafts; the collective artifacts of a tribe of scribes.

Many generations of scribal practice are submerged in darkness, accumulating a reef of inscription and the things inscribed

Until a tradition turns back to look at itself, through a person's urge to survey the system's history.

Starting from the settlement patterns of ancient neighborhoods, he assembles glyphs into the dense radial churn of a modern con-urbation

To make a collection of graphic elements goes hand in hand with an urge to coordinate them into a style;

The collector's urge captures figments in its net; his expansive mood expresses itself in graphic inventions;

Enthusiasm shows in improvisation of stroke patterns, or in anticipating the fate of writing.

Writing once ran on rails of mechanical duplication; writing will take wing by digital-electronic multiplication.

Writing will infiltrate corners of post-writing media; marks will appear on technical inventions still undreamt of.

As always writing will keep expanding, whimsy will chase chimerae by revisiting the oldest epigraphs.

Para-graphemes and parodic letter strings are forming a parade;

Writing boils itself down and performs its most elemental role, which is to leave traces;

Each trace is clamoring for reception in the net of a viewer's perception,

But they readily surrender to the overall teeming effect, and now they offer themselves

to temporary concatenations which stir the vibrations that ripple through the whole.
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