The very origin of this writing can be traced back to an artwork by Doug Webb. Liberty Renewed is a surrealist piece that features the miniature Statue of Liberty in a sink, with the skyline of New York painted on the tiled background. I wrote an analysis of how the elements of surrealism cleverly concealed the implication of anti-immigrants. For this piece, I shifted my focus to the process of creating—where do artists get the idea for such symbolism?
I first set the Statue of Liberty as a primary inspiration, since she played the role of an “eye-catcher” in Liberty Renewed and established the surrealist tone of the piece. Then I brought in the image most people would associate with her: immigrants. By combining the two major ideas of “artistic inspiration” and “icon of immigrant,” I defined the protagonist of this story to be an artist who has a special attachment to the colossus, being a young immigrant who was greeted by her. After research and calculations, I roughly sketched him to be no more than 6 around the early 1930s, right before the Great Depression (which affected the immigration pattern,) so that he would be in his mid 50s during the renovation of the statue (1984~1986.) Meanwhile the Statue of Liberty would serve as not only the indicator of two main themes, but also the “turning point” where the story dramatically converts from one theme to another, narrated in a different tone as well, almost like the world is turning upside down.
The feeling of the world turning upside down recurs throughout life with various forms. It is a sensation of being lost in the flow of time and place while struggling to catch up with the pace of current events. This writing features two cases: loss of self during the process of creation and moving into a different culture. As mentioned before, the Statue of Liberty denotes the transition of two different themes. Those themes do not collide for a surprise of contrast—rather, they blend together into one puddle of ideas, the cloud of story that can flow in any direction, blown by the wind of stream of thoughts and sometimes flashes the lightning of imagery.
My fictional writing style in general, not just for this work, can be described as surrealism: radical imagery; unusual, almost incomprehensible, simile and metaphor; recurrence of intense symbolism; contrast and juxtaposition, fortified by the aforementioned symbolism (all of which traverse multiple fields of studies;) and free-flowing, almost stream of consciousness, narrative. While it holds the danger of struggling to retrieve the focus if you are distracted by one trivial detail and deviate from the plot, it aligns with the ambiguous nature this writing will present. This is a story of tracking an artist’s mind as he was drawn to a significant icon of his life and captivated by a desire to create. Yet he gets stuck in not only the notorious frenemy named artist’s block, but also his lifelong stalker named identity crisis, particularly the identity of a child of immigrant parents who consider himself as an American, both of which takes the form of Statue of Liberty. He burns his internal agony to forge a metal of his mind and physicalize his vision, like every artist would. I figured the “lost in thought” mood would be narrated well through the surrealism, as well as paying homage to the surrealism from Liberty Renewed, the source of inspiration.
During the journey of creativity, I came to a significant realization: no two pictures can be exactly the same. The pigment, material, technique, style, and aesthetic cannot be perfectly copied. Even the digitally copied piece would have a different image address and be stored in different memory. So the original image I had in my mind cannot be the same as the one reader depicts after reading my writing. After all, the input would not always be equal to the output unless the function is the most basic one (𝑦 = 𝑥,) but we all know that if writing is a function, it would be more complex than a linear function. Therefore the goal of my fictional writing (not just for this piece) should not be trying to relocate the image in my mind to your mind. Rather, it would be encouraging the readers to recreate the image I drew in their mind. They can play with words however they want, add and remove the details, or even weave in their original ideas.
I had two particular groups of target audiences in my mind: artists and immigrants, who learn to live with their own doubts and fear of not belonging to the world they (used to) know. If depression is a worry of the past and anxiety a worry of the future, since it is the nature of worrying to return to itself and strengthen its influence, an individual gets trapped in the cycle of depression of anxiety. Eventually the realization of the present being their gift lights the light that would guide them out from darkness, or in the case of art, out from artist’s block and complete a work to be presented to the audience, just like the piece you will soon read.