The Immeasurable: The Mind

Marilena Nardi, The Stab, June 14, 2017.

"The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine", Plato wrote.

Marilena Nardi, September 18, 2017:
Madness too deserves its applause.

THEY, who have understood and dared go beyond themselves will feel the itching of wings growing on their backs.

Wings are grown of the lover, the philosopher, the artist. The soul which has seen most of truth. The place home to the gods and otherwise so dangerous to come to near for their jealousy of competition. Theirs is the power to stab that scraggly human left in the dark.

It is of never ending amazement to the Anatomia Cartooniensa that we have an actual corporeal element on the human ability to think, to reflect and know passion into one. A piece of anatomy, which sweeps the hitherto earth-destined off the ground, yet remains physical of nature. The wings expand to the being, first announcing their presence by the itching of their growing pains. At no time do they take on an ethereal state.

This is a fact, which accentuates the very real capability of the brain as a place for immeasurable expansion. Aching to transgress and to explore, it develops beyond the personal point of view. It is playful, and it may be painful. It is one of possibility and change. Such is the mind at its best, urging on itself.

Angél Boligán, Information, December 10, 2010.

Plato made clear, though, that wings are a corporeal element that has to be earned. It is not for everyone.

Marilena Nardi, World Press Freedom Day,
 May 3, 2016.

Which make wings all the more undesirable for those, who refuse to see beyond themselves and the very reason, why wings are so prominent in cartooning: Their precious nature are less about those who lose their wings themselves through the loss of passion, than other mortals locking them up.

Wings are freedom of thought if not freedom of speech too, in that they share their visual features with speech bubbles growing from a certain point on the body and expanding from there, while reflecting on something, even just or most importantly throwing out a question mark.

"When words are pinned down they fold their wings and die", Virginia Woolf said. Words too live in freedom, constantly changing their meaning. Even the specific elements to thinking and talking insist on their freedom having wings of their own.

And so, when the demagogues choose to lock up words, thoughts and the winged, the cartoonist acknowledges their nature by drawing them in a birdcage. Even in captivity they are recognized for their position among humans.

Marilena Nardi, Restless Chimera, October 1, 2017.

Gods are dangerous specimens to play with. We may never know when they turn against us, but that is part of the enchantment of growing wings. They may end up being torn off, but oh, so worth it in the unruly life that is ours. The birdcage on the other hand is the orderliness of vertical bars that life is not. And most barbaric of all, the scissors.

Angel Boligán, Mutilated Freedom, December 28, 2011.

The cartoons shown are courtesy of Marilena Nardi and Angel Boligán and must not be reproduced without their permission.