As regards the main academic subjects at school, I was a pretty
poor student. I celebrated getting a A with winning the World Cup – and what I mean
is, I only ever did it once - just like England. Math’s just didn’t add up, English spelt disaster
for me and as for Science; well I could take a running Volt over a dissected
frog and they’d still be no chemistry.
One day, the light came on! No, I don’t mean some miraculous
epiphany (a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization)…the light literally came on, in the school’s photographic darkroom,
during an art lesson and re-exposed the printed image paper I was developing – I
had discovered ‘solarization’ (which
had already been discovered by the way, but this was a personal thing…OK, it
was an epiphany of sorts).
In layman’s
terms ‘solarization’ is a ‘partly reversed tone’, not a negative
image as such, just a different visual perspective – a little like looking at a
phone screen or TV from a different angle – it just looks….different….blues are
a bit green, yellows a bit orange…., blacks are grey…whites are black…etc.
This got me thinking …what if I were to approach learning from a different perspective; would things make more sense? Alas, for the
remainder of my school years, it was a little too late.
However, as I entered in to adult
life, I, without realizing, began to ‘solarize’ my
own personality; I began to look at things a little differently, and a whole heap
this world began to make sense – from the previously mundane academic stuff to understanding
my own views and aspirations. More importantly, I learnt that it wasn’t wrong
to see things from a different preservative. My tones might not be your tones,
but I can still see the bigger picture….
As my old art teacher, Mr Wools put
it;
