the metaphors we live next to

There's this book about metaphors called Metaphors We Live By. It talks about how we use stuff like the concepts of up/down or in front of/behind to describe stuff where those concepts don't literally apply. It says we use them so systematically that it seems like our brains just work that way. Like time, say-- we're pretty consistent when we describe some scheduled event as "coming up," or that golden oldie we heard on the radio taking us "way back." You see how it works. Nothing too philosphical or complicated there.


I heard some radio program about data compression. I was thinking about the kind called run-length encoding, in which strings of data that are repeated are replaced by some stand-in to save space. Like say you took the book of Genesis and said *="and it was good." That would save you a lot of room, because after all that stuff He makes, all He would say was *. You see how it works.


Well, then I was thinking how similar that kind of idea is to the way some people say we use metaphors. By thinking of different kinds of things using the same schemas, like using the in front of/behind schema for a road and for a calendar, maybe we are saving space in our brains. Not just saving space, but keeping things more organized and less redundant. So there it was, my first crackpot revelation of 2008: Data Compression is the new Metaphor.


I looked it up to make sure nobody had beaten me to the punch. Turns out people way smarter than me have been thinking about it since the late seventies. God damn, It's hard these days to come up with a brand new crackpot revelation.


So Saturday night I was talking to a stranger about how her cell phone won't break when she drops it. I said she had to drop it harder. I thought it would be funny to understand her as wanting to break her phone. I said "gravity is not enough." That sounded like a cool catchphrase. I was overheard, but incorrectly, by a short man who plays the pedal steel guitar. He thought I said "gravity is not a metaphor." That sounded like a cool catchphrase.



The discussion turned to the pinball machine against the wall. It was called "Night Moves." We wondered whether "Night Moves" the pinball machine might be named after "Night Moves" the Bob Seger song. I suggested that in "Night Moves" the Bob Seger song, Bob Seger is actually using sex as a metaphor for pinball. I thought it would be funny to say that.



Later I realized that although so many things are used as metaphors for sex, it's all but impossible to use sex as a metaphor for anything.


Go ahead, try it.