It’s been a while and I know what you’re thinking: no, I did not walk mouth first into the giant spider hanging at face level from a tree the other night. Thank goodness. Had I been looking at my phone for Drake v Meek beef updates, or paying more attention to the teens smoking on the bleachers at the park… You know that myth about how many spiders a person accidentally swallows while sleeping? Yeah, I would have been on the short list of people to accidentally do that while awake. A breeze kicked up and made a branch sway a bit lower than normal and when I ducked to dodge the branch, I saw the spider in time to not elevate my palate to include arachnid tar tar.
But what I didn’t know about spiders until Stephen Tobolowsky mentioned it–you may know him as Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day–is that they’re artists. When they construct a web, the intricate patterns reflect ultraviolet light that appears, to insects, as a flower. Spiders themselves also give off UV rays so they include themselves in the imagery, as well. Furthermore, the way spiders see is completely different than the way, say, a fly sees. Imagine one of those street painters you’ve seen in viral videos; they paint upon the canvas, completely covering it with color except for a person-shaped silhouette left bare. Then, the artist puts the brush(es) down and steps into place, their body completing the painting, and it is a portrait of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. or a still life of a bowl of Oreos or a spider in a web. But, because the artist perceives things differently than the viewer, imagine that artist has vision in only one eye, is color-blind, and is painting upside down. Not a perfect comparison, but you get my drift.
Now, I can’t take credit for the idea of spiders as artists. Ned Ry…er…Stephen Tobolowsky presented that comparison. And I believe him. As much as spiders don’t stand a chance in my house, especially with my wife around (they gotsta die), their notion of “art as purpose” and “art as survival” is concrete. I crave that with words. Art as purpose. Art as survival.
Words are my world wide web.
In other words…
(in my Batman voice)
Be good.
Chatham Chatter 