A child looks up to the sky and makes out an elephant, a piece of cheese, or an animated character from a popular cartoon–all within the clouds. That same child, grown up, may now see new configurations, or they may very well search for those same images above their heads. When looking at clouds, the surrealist attempts to embody the youthful mind in search of nothing specific, but rather any and every thought that crosses their mind. Drawing from Bonnie Mak’s “How the Page Matters” and Phillip Megg’s “History of Graphic Design” section on Surrealism, our worldviews are encouraged to be ever-changing, rather than stagnantly adhering to tradition.
As cloud-sighting is yet to follow a traditional norm, the same cannot be said for writing. Mak weighs in on this, saying, “From a young age, we are trained to believe that the boundaries of the interface are always identical to the edges of the material platform of the page. (Mak)” In a modern example, it could be seen as the default margins for Google Docs I’m typing through now. I have this much space; therefore, I must use it, and so I do. Most people follow suit, though to the surrealist, the page is no longer a constraint, but a feeding ground. With this movement, “Intuition and feeling could be freed, (Megg)” and the question turns from “what do I want to fill this page?” into simply “what do I want?”
Though asking “what do I want?” is not always the question when considering stream-of-consciousness or automatism writing. Allowing subjectivity opens the mind to past associations, such as the elephant or the piece of cheese. To change your mind requires a dissolution of previous thoughts, traditions, or beliefs. Only then will the cloud acquire a completely new meaning–one you may have never known possible.
But why is this important? Why is a new cloud configuration important to us as humans? The answer lies in what the surrealists seek–an uninhibited truth. For example, books without blank space existed until someone stepped back from the tradition of pinching pennies and left a bunch of blank space. In turn, this opened the door to a multitude of benefits, whether room for marginalia or easier, faster reading, as noted by Mak.
It’s important to note that the example I’m labeling surrealism existed years before the term was coined. Intuition has existed since the dawn of time, and the times human draw their focus to it may all be called surrealist. So, sure, you may see an elephant in the clouds because you have before, but what does your gut see?