(revised, May 8, 2023)
That Spot is a vispo short video about the curiosity to look inside and ask, “Am I what I feel in that spot?”
First, what is vispo? Vispo means visual poetry. Okay, so what is that? Good question. Willard Bohn categorized it as “Visual poetry can be defined as poetry that is meant to be seen – poetry that presupposes a viewer as well as a reader."[1]
For a more contemporary description, Geof Huth writes, “The child of both poetry and the visual arts, visual poetry has a double set of interests and its forms are myriad. We are living through what might be the greatest age of visual poetry.”[2]
My take on poetry has been influenced by ModPo.org where we tend to feel there is no single "right" interpretation of poetry. More that is it a collaboration between poet and reader/listener/viewer/community. So, with My Spot maybe the donuts and upbeat music might be noticed, or maybe the kaleidoscoping mazes and words, maybe the textures, the narrative, etc., or maybe something this poet didn’t realize while creating the short video. I am grateful that we can meet there within the visual poem. I do like to create collages of health, color, texture, and sound.
So, it began this way. During a somatic exercise, I noticed where a stress-induced pain flared, radiating from my low back down and up, down to the knee, and up the spine into the neck and right cheek; the words “I am lost” urgently repeated in my head. I challenged myself to have the curiosity to look inside and ask, “Am I what I feel in that spot?”
The main concept of the poem sprang from the definition of interoceptive, which has been broken into syllables viewable inside the donut holes, followed by more donut holes conveying the definition in casual parlance, “visceral feeling / in the gut.”
Interoceptive awareness: Much of these perceptions remain unconscious; what becomes conscious, i.e., interoceptive awareness, involves the processing of inner sensations so that they become available to conscious awareness.—Cameron, 2001[3]
Then I cut apart the letters of “I AM LOST” and made new word/sound groupings. The poem evolved through these letter combinations and developed into the metaphorical fascia holding together this vispo short film project.
Shiruky’s music “Underview" matches the upbeat cover we put on ourselves while conveying the “I” in the first half of the video. In the second half, the line “yr in-sides to be let out that spot” activates, with an exhaled “You shu,” as in telling oneself what they should do. This permits questioning of the self.
Imagery began with the eye looking inside. Then I thought about what hits the spot as food and could act as an appealing façade over pain since internal pain isn’t visible to most. My visual-tactile synesthesia influenced the use of sprinkle donuts to visibly convey one way I “feel” the inside: through texture. Overlaid mazes conceal tracks of kaleidoscoping language. Then, in the final moments, clarity evolves as a softer experience after looking inside.
The beige textured background reflects my skin tone starting as a darker shade like having a tan which disguises the largest organ. Then midway through, lightens to the paler, more vulnerable truer self; and at this point in the film, the hard work of looking inside begins. By the end, the traumatic feeling in the gut dissipates and becomes a fading watermark of the past.
This post and short film are shared as entertainment and should not be considered medical advice.
1 Wikipedia contributors, "Visual poetry," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Visual_poetry&oldid=1144553672 (accessed May 8, 2023).
2 Geof Huth, “Visual Poetry today,” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69141/visual-poetry-today (accessed May 8, 2023).
3 Price, C. J., & Hooven, C. (2017). Interoceptive Awareness Skills for Emotion Regulation: Theory and Approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT). Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00798
