Introduction What does a map reveal about a place? About its creator? When you imagine a map, you think of the crumpled paper folded in the dashboard of a car. You think of yellow roads and blue highways. Maybe you picture the world map that teachers taught you in school, or the map you use to navigate your college campus. Maybe, nowadays, you consider GPS technology as your only map: you see the cartoon car traveling alongside you to your destination, a destination that may not be highlighted on the forefront of the screen but is buried somewhere among the gas stations and McDonalds symbols. The map is the tool that you use to obtain knowledge. However, maps are so much more than a catalogue of roads. As Denis Wood, author of Everything Sings, explains, “every map has its own tale to tell” (9). Each map features the choices of the creator as they reveal what is important or what is most memorable about a location. These choices reveal something about both the place that the map depicts and the person that creates it, especially their intentions in relaying the information. Even what the creator leaves out of the map becomes significant as their individual stories are told. The map is larger than a “[work] of reference, where you go to find facts, facts you need” (9). Instead, Wood sees maps as poetry, as “something imagistic…a map attentive to the experience of place” inescapable from subjectivity (15).
To illustrate how maps are more abstract and more personal than popular belief, I asked fifteen people to create a map of his or her imagination. The task was not easy; the participants, including myself, all struggled with how to portray something in a tangible form that doesn’t literally exist (at least in the way that each of us could see it with our eyes). I did not give any instructions about how to create the map outside of using a sheet of paper. Mo matter how confused the participant looked or how many questions they asked, I would not clarify the information any further. In this way, their responses would not be influenced by my own conception of an imagination. Responses were varied in the way that they encompassed their visions and similar in that each made unique assertions. These maps all have a distinctive personality. As Wood says, “linking maps into a narrative atlas should transmute the maps into something like The Canterbury Tales” (9); they will create a meaning in the way that they are presented. They can tell a story. By looking at them in a sequence, the reader of this atlas can see the progression of trying to visualize the vastness and the unknown of the imagination.
Many of the maps followed the expected format of a map. That is, they emphasized points of interest among geographical locations, all while guiding the viewer by showing him the paths (roads) between each point. Gabe’s map, for example, shows a car driving along a single road past a variety of buildings. The buildings each represent, assumedly, things on the forefront of his mind: his social life, for example, or his worst fears. The viewer can only follow his imagination along this road in the order that Gabe chose. Charles’ map similarly follows classic geographic arrangements: Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, Florida, Jamaica and Texas are all drawn in fairly accurate detail.
Gabe, 27
Dottie, 29 However, there is more to these maps than simply their relation to a “realistic” map. As Peter Turchi, author of Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, writes, “meaning is there, but not in the way Exit 55 is there, meaning is there, somewhere there to be found” (96). In other words, there is always more layers of meaning underneath of what the map appears to present. One way to read deeper into the maps is through analyzing signs. Sean Hall, author of This Means This. This Means That. explains that “signs are important because they can mean something other than themselves” (5). By including an image, the mapmaker is emphasizing all of the possible associations the reader can have with that image. An image of a dollar sign in Dottie’s map recalls wealth and fortune for the reader without Dottie directly stating so.
Michael, 57
Furthermore, “signs are shaped by the sources and resources that are used to make them, formed by the cultural structures into which they are woven, communicated through a series of diverse channels, and understood in terms of the nature of the societies that created them” (Hall 9). They are dependent on the thoughts of the creator and what that person believes the sign represents. A sign in Gabe’s map, for example, would be the storm clouds over a structure labeled “Worst Case Scenarios.” Storms signify bad luck or bad moods for many people; using this sign allows others to agree with his gloomy feelings about the worst things that could happen. We must take Gabe’s buildings as signifiers of well-known structures that he has explored and visits frequently, like an office building. His map suggests that his imagination returns frequently to the places he is familiar with. Charles’ map, too, signifies a deeper connection with the places he has drawn: the music notes in Massachusetts, the beach in New Jersey, the golf flag in South Carolina, Disney’s Spaceship Earth in Florida, the Jamaican flag and the Alamo in Texas hint at the relationship he has with these places. Though it is hard to uncover his true intentions just from the map without Charles revealing the truth, the more well-known signs suggest something of their own. Disney’s Spaceship Earth, a common sign for Disney World itself, for example, signifies vacationing and family or friends.
Charles, 19
Some drew their maps a single scene in detail. These picture-maps are at once simple and complex in their own way. On the surface, it is the representation of where the mapmaker’s mind turns in freedom. On the other, the single image builds on common signs. Abbi, for example, drew herself as the product of her imagination. The viewer can assume from her map that she loves the color purple. We can also assume that she, being ten years old, is adhering to the traditional gender stereotypes from the way that her map pays careful attention to shoes and accessories. In Julie’s map, the word “hippie” probably stands for freedom and adventure. But it also signifies a lifestyle of its own, relating to 70’s-era music festivals, freedom and drug use. Her connection to adventure, in seeing mountains, cannot be separated from these connotations because of her word choice.
Abbi, 10
Julie, 17
Other maps show a collage of ideas, whether in the form of pictures or words. Each of the pictures is a symbol representing something else, an activity or thing that the creator enjoys. The decisions to include each item is conscious, as “a ‘good’ map provides the information we need for a particular purpose – or the information the mapmaker wants us to have” (Turchi 79). Jon’s map, for example, is a collage of his favorite things within the framing device of an Irish Trash Can drink. That is, his imagination consists of a variety of things (the “ice” of the drink) that mix together and create a whole unit for the viewer to take in all at once. His choices represent the type of person he is, from “video games” to “football” and “nerds.” Jon’s purpose in the creation of this map was to show what his imagination would look like; therefore, viewers can assume that these words represent the things that he imagines the most, and the pieces of information that most closely resemble his personality.
Jon, 22
Bryan, 26 Yet there is a greater significance than just the choice of what to include and what not to include. As Turchi says, “no individual word, phrase, sentence, detail, exchange of dialogue, or event is right or wrong, better or worse, on its own; context, or the entire piece of writing, defined by its intentions is everything” (85). This means that the map’s words in relation to each other provide more meaning than the words alone. On Bryan’s map, for example, we can assume that “making music” and “making a difference” are closely related to each other based on their juxtaposition. Perhaps he imagines songwriting making an impact on the lives of others.
On the same note, the things that are further apart do not have a relationship to each other, but contribute to the whole. “Owning a restaurant” is separated from “mythical creatures” by being on opposite sides of his imagination waffle. Bryan’s map would not be complete without either of these parts, but their relationship is not directly dependent. The collage maps that are solely consisting of images can be read in the same way as Jon’s map or Bryan’s map, except they also must be paired with Hall’s semiotic reading of images. Each image is a sign that signifies something important to the creator within their imagination. Jeff, for example, constructed a man on a football field. Viewers can read this sign as “Jeff likes to play/watch sports,” or maybe as “Jeff is competitive.” Other signs on Jeff’s map are a question mark in quotations, perhaps signifying that he asks many questions or that he is trying to discover meaning in his life. Just like word maps, Jeff’s map reveals more layers of meaning by considering the ways that the images are placed within the map. Their juxtaposition of the light bulb and the list, for example, suggests that his ideas are fueled by organizing his tasks into lists. These maps, image based, are more open to interpretation and come closer to grasping the impossibility of mapping an imagination – the creators stayed in abstract images and allowed the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. These maps are more easily read when the reader knows the creator personally, but many times familiar signs are enough to point the reader in the right direction.
Jeff, 30
Margie, 62 Susie, 53
Ron, 46
Ally’s map is particularly interesting because she did not choose to draw well-known symbols to represent herself. In order to understand her picture, the reader must make certain intuitive leaps: she obviously loves the Steelers, but what do the designs on the other hands mean? It could be that Ally respects diversity, or it could mean that she loves to draw designs. This is one case that it helps to know the mapmaker’s personality. Ally is autistic, and doodling helps to relax her. This knowledge still doesn’t give a clear impression of her imagination, however. Her map, a highly interpretive drawing, requires more than just an understanding of signs; it verges on the abstract.
Ally, 12
A final type of imagination map that I received attempted to incorporate the unknowable – that is, they moved into the abstract, beyond the juxtaposition of pictures and words. The problem most maps have is that “none of our maps pretend to catch more than a note or two of a world in which everything’s singing” (Wood 26). The imagination is much larger than what the creators of these maps can put into words, so they decide the most important things and highlight them by drawing them at the forefront of the map. A few maps recognized Scott, 34
this and moved into the abstract. Sara’s map, for example, is a sketch of an eye with “I don’t see an imagination” written in the center.
Though her map argues against itself, she also points out the realism in her imagination that it is full of things that she cannot understand and cannot visualize. Scott’s map is a blur of pen strokes, formed into the shape of a face, a devil, and a rocket shooting into outer space. This suggests a fuzziness to what he pictures in an imagination somewhat out of his reach: even what he produces has a vague quality to it. Scott, notably, is also the only one who used larger, orange paper. He was one of the few to use color, recognizing a place as more than “black and white.�
Sara, 17
Katlyn, 22
When I began drawing my own map, I started drawing a collage of images that I imagined all the time: a book, a castle, a door that dark things creep out of in the middle of the night. Halfway through, I realized that this concept wasn’t large enough. My imagination was an unknown area waiting to be explored, something that could still surprise me no matter how often I use it, that I can’t possibly hope to know no matter how hard I tried. I drew another layer to my map, one that reached into the abstract, represented by a collage of color. The color is not discernable, but represents a space waiting to be explored. Within it is one gold stripe: the one good idea that I am searching for, almost lost among the rest of the colors. These colors were as close as I could come in trying to depict everything I imagine, to capture the spirit of the whole place. Despite the differences in these maps, all represent the abstract space we call our imagination. Wood tries to put this power of maps into words when he says “the map and the text are at once very personal and yet essentially abstract…They are maps with all of the science and technology that it implies, yet they have fingerprints all over them. I don’t know where it comes from, but they have heart” (18). Each of the maps have been touched by something intensely personal that the maker wants others to know about him or her. In the case of imagination, the fingerprints come from the creators as they try to make sense of world that is so abstract and so unknowable, all they can do is insert themselves.
Works Cited Hall, Sean. “Introduction.” This Means This. This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics. London: Laurence King, 2007. 5-19. Print. Turchi, Peter. “Projections and Conventions.” Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2004. 73-98. Web. Wood, Denis. “Everything Sings.” Everything Sings. Los Angeles, CA: Siglio, 2010. 8-26. Print.