Mallard pair in Sydenham Hill Woods have had chicks, page 40

Glad to hear from Daniel Greenwood today that the regular Mallard duck pair in Sydenham Hill Woods have just had chicks, though the chances are they'll be rapidly recycled into the ecosystem. I'm certain they are the same ones I grew so fond of last summer. I'll get a photo soon and pattern match them with my old images. On another, in repsonse to my observing that there seem to be lots more robins this year,Daniel thinks maybe it's because the winter was generally very mild in London. I've really grown to admire robins this winter, they are the bravest birds, their singing is so loud and clear at the moment. I'm followed by robins wherever I go these early spring days....or maybe I'm following them? I saw only three other people in the woods today, including Daniel. The glade felt unusually sequestered, what a treat while everyone else was having a Monday morning...

I'm still thinking about Will Self's comments re the increasing ubiquity of images (writing on the BBC news website the other day) I feel provoked, especially as he had some scathing comments about graphic novels. But now I'm trying to work out what it is about them I'm so often drawn to ( yes the drawing! Haha, but what else?). considering I also love writing without images just as much, in fact a lot more. So, when Graphic novel forms work,.  what do the images add that the words on their own wouldn't have conveyed? 

  

And what's the difference between words, which are visual symbols and visual symbols that aren't words? None of them are logically perfect in the sense that Wittgenstein described - a language that has no double meanings and is therefore perfectly unambiguous. Graphic Books like Alison Bechdel's 'Are you my Mother?' Or 'Fun Home' or Art Spieglman's 'Maus' I and II, are perfectly formed, they couldn't be imagined in any other configuration, but I'm still trying to work out how and why they are so perfect, why they work so well. It does seem that popular culture is indeed, more abbreviated then ever, and that images are part of that semantic brevity. I know people who've told me it's almost impossible to get their students to read even a handful of short academic papers, or even one. I want to make 'Waking in Streatham' a very, very long graphic novel, or whatever the right term should be.....? The theme of trying to be understood by others (and oneself) and the limits therefore of language and other symbolic systems, is one justification, but not enough on its own, of course.

Will Self:Has the World become too visual?