Inspire #5: between front and back covers
This movement corresponded to other efforts — before, during, and after the Crusades — to establish “geo-theological” connections between Jerusalem and Mecca, whose preeminent sanctity was inviolable up until the end of days. Examples linking Mecca to Jerusalem include the Prophet Muhammad’s nocturnal journey from Mecca to Jerusalem (isra) and his ascension from Jerusalem to the throne of God (miraj); the underground joining of the waters of Zamzam to Silwan (var. Siloam) during the “feast of the sacrifice” (id al-adha); and the transfer of the Kaba and its black stone from Mecca to Jerusalem during the last days. these various traditions linked Jerusalem to Mecca, sometimes by sets of doubled features, in a near symmetry and in a calendar that will culminate during the end of days.
So there’s an eschatological dimension to all these parallelisms, too…
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And if for no other reason, then because I happen to love doubled features, symmetries and analogies of all sorts (and we were already speaking of graphics and Inspire #5), let me add this:
A tweet from @webradius via @azelin that I saw today noted that “the cover of Inspire 5 is remarkably similar to a wikileaks logo”.
I liked it. And I’ve translated it here into my own DoubleQuotes format:
For those who are unfamiliar with the phrase, graphic match is another term for match cut — the gambit whereby one shot in a movie is directly juxtaposed to another with which it bears a close resemblance – essentially, a film director’s equivalent of rhyme.
Wikipedia gives two classic examples which are of particular interest to me because there is a “rhyme” between them, too, albeit a far more indirect one – the second being an hommage to the first.
Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey contains a famous example of a match cut. After an ape discovers the use of bones as a tool and a weapon, there is a match cut to a spacecraft or satellite in orbit. The match cut helps draw a connection between the two objects as exemplars of primitive and advanced tools respectively.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger‘s A Canterbury Tale contains the influence for the 2001: A Space Odyssey match cut in which a fourteenth century falcon cuts to a World War II aeroplane. The sense of time passing but nothing changing is emphasised by having the same actor, in different costumes, looking at both the falcon and the aeroplane.
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Conclusion:
Parallelisms really are worth watching — always bearing in mind that one thing is never quite the same as another…
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J. Scott:
March 31st, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Hi Charles, From my Rodale’s Synonym Finder: Parallelism: 3. comparison, contrast, opposition, distinction, juxtaposition; connection, correlation, relation, likeness, affinity, kinship; likening, analogy, simile, metaphor, similitude, similarity, resemblance. Went back to a source I read in 07 (How Mathematicians Think, Byers) (at the time I was focused on "process"), and pleasantly surprised at his take on the ubiquity of "patterns" in mathematics—and life (Margolis wasn’t mentioned in his biblio, but he damn near quoted him twice). From these posts, I continue to surprised at the similarities between the sacred and the profane across mythologies/religions, and how a smattering of one or the other can lend a familiar pattern—in fact, so familiar perhaps as to be unremarkable to some and alarm others. Thanks for posting!