Down the Yellow Brick Road...

Who is not in a network?!? Facebook is worth roughly three billion dollars. I have so many monthly statements, user names, and subscriptions that I can no longer keep track. It seems like someone in my family is always having a birthday, or going on vacation, someone is always getting married, or having a child, events are always popping up, just like the family reunion in August down in Orange County. It seems to me that gauging Bessie Head’s sense of reality in relation to my own does not allow for an objective position. The idea that the author of A Question of Power, Bessie Head, had lived in a “frameless world” seems simply impossible in the world we live in today. The societies of today have conquered communication and commerce; everything seems to have its global relation and is juxtaposed accordingly, today’s reality is a framed reality.

I have not a single known relative on earth, no long and ancient family tree to refer to, no links with heredity or a sense of having inherited a temperament, a certain emotional instability or the shape of a fingernail from a grandmother or great-grandmother.

I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself.

(Burton 64)

Maybe Bessie Head was not born with frames set for her as most of us do with our parents and family and where we were brought up, but that does not disqualify Bessie to overcome these adversities and create meaning through frames. This same carries true for our character Elizabeth, whose mental image of the world is entirely discombobulated due to her out of the ordinary childhood and the recognition of a world torn apart. Bessie Head’s perception of reality can be understood in her veiled autobiography, where she secretes her artistic expression as a stepping stone for future generations.

For me it seems like I tend to create my own frames, something that appeared to be quite difficult for Bessie Head. Granted I was brought up in an environment that would condition me to participate in multiple networks concurrently, from the baseball teams to summer camps to taking the bus to school or even my first job where more and more frames would build over the years. Of course with Head’s damaged mental state it sometimes comforting to see her develop into the writer she had become. An artist to me however carries no benefit to society if he/she is unable to take in the vicissitudes of life and its people, whoever the audience may be. An artist in a way is like a sponge, and should be able manifest an abstraction or an idea through collectivity and the analysis of those associated events. To not have the ability to develop frames throws me back as it is part of the backbone to being an individual and a human. Without frames we are merely wandering packs of disassociated Neanderthals and not a cohesive unit which appears to be the case in any single or group of people. It is important in this synergized world that relationships are kept strong and bridges not burnt as we have experienced in recent years....