What's a metaphor? I made a joke: If you say, "What's a metaphor?" it sounds like, "What's a meta for?" Like you don't know? Ha ha. I wrote a story one time about a mysterious tribe of natives who lived in Emeralda Region. No one ever saw them as they actually were, as they actually looked. These people had a gift of always looking like something or someone else. This way they kept their freedom to be who they are.
Emeralda Region is the home of the Metaphors, these elusive people. I learned from this story you can take an existing "thing" and turn it into something like an original idea. For example, if I read an article and it is so much like something I'm thinking about writing, I might use it as a metaphor--actually copy it out, change the original words to be my words and by the time I'm finished, you can hardly find a trace of the original. Sounds like plagiarism, but it's more like learning from a master by copying the master's work.
Today I made a picture, as another example, taking a screen shot from a new game I bought (the term is "licensed" since you can never buy a video game). Then over the screen shot I began repainting the image, changing the words to fit our own back story of Emeralda. I replaced the protagonist's image with our grandaughter's, re-wrote her text and changed the list of objects to be those you get when you buy a Mini Halfwood Press.
This exercise is all for the objective of inventing the game that teaches you printmaking.
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