CHAPTER 15: Looking, Learning, Longing: Queer E/Affects of Images

My passion for the arts, particularly all things visual, has typically provided inspiration and clarity of direction for my dealings with the world. As cognition is linked to sensations, in that emotional responses serve as conduits for the eventual cognitive deciphering of perceptions, I have discovered that the vivid capacity of images to incite meaning through analogy and metaphor can be an ever-present, significant mediator of experience. The aphorism “more than meets the eye” denotes the depths one plumbs when formulating most interpretations; however, mine are more singular in that they derive their authenticity from the imposition of personal context, an external frame that alludes to me. Reading images becomes a sort of psychological exercise—or Rorschach test—in seeing things that aren’t necessarily there. Images are invested with meaning beyond their artistic, historical, or cultural intentions, and are understood as either signposts—markers of consequence along the route of my personal journey—or as mirrors that reflect back to me those subjective aspects of myself that resonate in the visual.