The Decipherment

PART 8

  Isabelle had grown up knowing nothing but numbers and codes. During all her life, her parents had been very supportive to her about the type of career she wanted to choose. Both her father and mother were archeologists. They had met one another in Egypt, during one of their archeological research. They both came separately with their research teams, but they were to work together. The shared many interests, the major one being archeology itself. Over time, they had formed a strong friendship. Then one day, out of the blue, her father had proposed her mother near the very edge of the Giza pyramid, the sight of their research. She had agreed the very moment.

  After one year of marriage, they had a beautiful daughter who was named Isabelle, which means ‘God’s promise’. She had grown up to be a smart, obedient and kind person. The first thing she had learned was numbers. She could do math better than anything. She drew numbers and formulae on walls in her room. She solved puzzles and word problems instead of reading bedtime stories before going to bed.

  When her parents had discovered her love for math, they did all their best to bring the most out of her. They never told her to diverge her interests into something else. They brought her all sorts of books and puzzle games that would help enhance her skills. When it was time for her to decide her career, she had chosen cryptology without giving it a second thought. It involved both mathematical techniques as well as the art of codes and symbols. Her parents had agreed with her decision with no hesitation. They wanted the best future for their daughter – and if that meant her breaking codes, then so be it.

  Isabelle’s parents were always very co-operative and understanding, but if there was anything they made her put her interests in, it was art. Though her mother was not so much fond of it, her father surely was. Just like the world of numbers and codes meant everything to Isabelle, the world of art meant everything to her father. He adored art. He had given their home a nice and smooth artistic touch. He found art in everything. From the ancient fossils he studied to the starts in the night sky – he found traces of art everywhere. He always told Isabelle to look and observe deeply the patterns of nature that rule the universe and even the anatomy of the human body; it is arranged in the most artistic and creative yet efficient way imaginable.

  He used to show her paintings from some of the famous artists that ever walked this earth. The whole idea of a mind’s ability to form creative images just from imagination thrilled him. Once, when he had been showing Isabelle his collection of paintings and sketches, she had asked him who his famous artist was. He had replied, ‘God’.

  Growing up surrounded by fossils and old artifacts discovered from years old ruins, Isabelle had not really liked archeology. But growing up with a father who was a lover of art was surely exciting and fun. Isabelle used to go with her father to the Louvre Museum every Friday. He liked to look at all the marvelous art pieces and statues erected so magnificently. The whole structure of the building, its painted roofs, ornately made walls – he just couldn’t get enough of it. Isabelle also liked such things – well, how couldn’t she? Her father always kept her engaged in some art-related work. He was an excellent painter himself. He had made her take art classes, and she had done so willingly.

  Now, standing in her subconscious mind, with her body nearly frozen from cold, Isabelle realized that all the effort her father had put into introducing her to the world of art had not been in vain. Even now, after all these years, it was due to his love and enthusiasm for art that she might be able to escape from her entrapment – which was her own mind.

  Among the many paintings his father had shown her, he had specifically pointed out one painting that was one of his favorite . . . and it was none other than The Persistence of Memory (1931) by the great artist of the 20th century, Salvador Dali.

  Isabelle’s father had tried to explain to her the meaning of the painting, but she had been too young to understand. He had promised her that he would explain later, when she was old enough. But sadly, he couldn’t live long enough to fulfill his promise. Later in life, Isabelle had never given up her love for art. She had did some research herself about the painting and like her father, it had become one of her favorites as well.

  Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, short for Salvador Dali, was a renowned Spanish surrealist. Creator of the Cubism, Dada and Surrealist movements, Dali was best known for his exceptionally striking and bizarre surrealist artwork. He claimed his ancestors descended from the Moors; hence he attributed his artistic passion to a self-styled Arab lineage.

  Dali was highly imaginative and creative. What makes him exceptional from other reserved artists of his time was his unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manners drew more public attention than his artwork did. This often led to the dismay of those who held his art in high esteem.

  He had a personality that was peculiar yet fascinating at the same time. The art he created simply reflected his genius. Bringing the imagery of the dream world and the subconscious mind into amazing art was Dali’s greatest specialty. Whenever he signed autographs for fans, he always kept their pens. In an art exhibition, he arrived for his lecture wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet; he had nearly suffocated. When questioned, he simply commented, "I just wanted to show that I was 'plunging deeply' into the human mind."

  No matter what his actions were, they never hindered the genius within him to express itself.

  The Persistence of Memory is one of Salvador Dali’s most famous works. He produced over 1,500 paintings in his career. However, The Persistence of Memory holds a specific beautiful peculiarity in its own way.

  Salvador Dali often called his paintings ‘hand-painted dream photographs’; and The Persistence of Memory can surely be thought of as such. The painting’s original title is ‘La Persistencia de la Memoria’. It depicts a landscape of a sandy beach, as Dali often used in many of his paintings; most of the imageries he used is his art were the ones he had been exposed to as a child. There is a fetus-like head lying in the centre, like a fish washed ashore and now in the process of decaying after gasping for air. There are four watches in the painting, three of which appear to be molten, as if they were made out of cheese. The fourth watch, which is orange in colour – the only one which is still intact in its structure, is placed on a desk-like object on the left. A great many ants are seen on this watch, spreading on top of it.

  This painting earned Dali world-wide recognition at the age of 27. Its meaning, which is both complex and diverse in its form, has been under debate since the time of its creation. When Isabelle had been doing her research on it, she had found a number of interpretations for it made over the years. Even to this day, new theories are being made to clear its meaning.

  Perhaps the most widely accepted interpretation about this painting, through the use of its complex symbolism, suggests Einstein’s theory of relativity that time is relative and not fixed. The drooping watches in the painting possibly point out the irrelevance of time during sleep. In other words, when we are asleep, or not conscious, the time does not persist, memories do. Often times, this distortion of time can be easily observed by just about anyone who ever attempted to think about their own dreams. Thinking of our dreams is the enigma of the dream state in the first place.

  Where am I? How did I get here? Am I really dreaming? These are the most common possibilities a mind can trigger on itself during its dream state. Dali's artistic genius lies in his ability to create ideas that lie on the edge between being disturbing and arousing curiosity. Instead of analyzing the painting as a whole to interpret the logic behind its detail, if each of its separate detail is analysed first, it would be lot easier to understand the concept Dali tried to explain.

  Often times, the best ideas come from the most bizarre inspirations. Dali’s idea of creating such a master piece, that would leave the world at a loss to understand it for years to come, was inspired by the melting Camembert cheese left for too long of a period of time on th
e table on a warm sunny day. It was the time when the genius within wondered the deeper psychoanalytical values of the reality of the mind as we understand them. The melting clocks in the paintings are nothing more than ideas influenced by the melting Camembert cheese.

  Any how, whatever the meaning a mind can formulate behind the artistic genius expressed in the form of the world’s most recognizable surrealist artwork, the one true fact about it is that the painting is nothing more than a collection of ideas that are to do with the interpretation of dreams, perception of reality, time, birth and death.

  When Isabelle had seen the painting herself, she had magnified every inch of it to take in all its intricate details. One peculiarity that she had noticed was the way the artist had used light to express ideas of his painting. There are two tiny rocks sitting in the sand on the beach in the background. The rock to the left is in the shadow, and the one to the right is lit. The remaining components of the painting which include the three melted clocks, the ants on the orange watch and the fetus-like head lying in the centre of the ground – all lie in the shade.

  Isabelle’s father had explained her once that in art, there are multiple ways of differentiating the types of ideas and thoughts, depending on the artist’s creativity. Some artists use variant sizes of certain objects in their paintings to represent their positive or negative ideas; some use bright or dull colours to represent the respective types of ideas, signifying bright for positive feelings/ideas and dull for negative ones. This is probably the most widely used method in art of expressing different forms of ideas and feelings. But Salvador Dali had introduced a new method in this field of art as well. Dali had used the aspects of light to differentiate between his ideas.

  At that time, Isabelle had not realized what was so great in that. To her, it was simply a method of making specific portions of a painting shaded and leaving the rest as they were; just another of the many art techniques. But later, when she had given it more thought, the idea of creating such a method did seem intriguing to her.

  As she stood there now, in the realm of her subconscious mind, she started to comprehend this one bit of peculiarity in the painting. She knew it had something to do with dreams and ideas – the basic logical stuff the mind is made of.

  Yet is it as simple as we think it is? Just logic? To this day, with such advanced technology and vast scientific knowledge, the process of how memory works has still not been understood – except that it consists of four main types.