14 Nov

notes on little things as not all that little

People like the color of ipe,
I’d remember David say.
But they forget that it weathers grey.

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Synecdoche
is a poetic device used
when a part is meant to represent a whole
or
when a whole is meant to represent a part

William Shakespeare once wrote,
Friends, Romans, countrymen:
lend me your ears

This is synecdoche.

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In architecture,
the building is the part
and the site is the whole

or

the detail is the part
and the building is the whole

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In Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum
lives this little wall:

(half protected
half exposed
and whole weathering)

and this part
tells of a whole

that pays a certain level
of aesthetic attention,
of performative attention.

This is also synecdoche.
(well, I think so, anyway.)