1.4 The ideocalligrapher at work

Ideocalligraphy is infused with the identity of the ideocalligrapher. It is a wordless 'reflection' of his inner speech, the trace of his own perceptions.

"... inner speech is speech almost without words..."  and "Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings." (Psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896 - 1934))

The ideocalligraphy is a written visual language, allied to inner speech, enabling access to meaning's floating infrastructure. It asks to be read and have its meaning assimilated. It is open to the inner speech of the reader.

As the brush or pen approaches the meaning and first stroke of the following ideocalligraph, it may be prompted to merge, glide under or rest apart. The ideocalligrapher's 'hand' leaves the sure and sometimes fractal marks of his own perception imbedded in his stroke sequences.

Ideocalligraphy welcomes juxtapositions, scale changes, perspective, the choice of determinatives to be attached to ideocalligraphs and the elision or assimilation of ideocalligraphs within a composite message structure.

Sometimes, paradoxically, the more meaning contained, the simpler it appears to be ideocalligraphically. But patient visual curiosity can be rewarded with deeper hidden levels of interpretation.

Colour creates yet other dimensions, enhancing meaning flow within groups of ideocalligraphs, highlighting affinities between individual elements while shading mood and emotional content. Colour can divide or integrate, prompt proximity or degrees of distance, create harmony or suggest ambivalence, even discord. All this, given the appropriate ideocalligraphs and distancing.

Water, taken up by an inked brush, can become the measure of distance. It may point out sharper focus elsewhere and reduce proximate content to subliminal levels. And when used sparingly, a watered brush leaves subtle lines of chromatic intimations.

Influence of colour on meaning will depend, of course, on the chromatic tastes of both ideocalligrapher and observer. And in the location where the ideocalligraphy is to be read, there may be 'meaning-signatures' already embedded in certain colours.

Ideocalligraphic messages will likely reflect modes of thought specific to the cultural and everyday world of the ideocalligrapher. In all probability  ideocalligraphic correspondence between Chinese and European ideocalligraphers, for example, would result in a sharing and exchange of culturally specific thought patterning. And a mutual curiosity and awareness may result in the emergence of specific forms of "Ideocalligraphy sans frontieres"!

To help someone unfamiliar with ideocalligraphs and yet curious to gather in their meaning, the ideocalligrapher should always be ready to offer a loose verbal translation - pointing out perhaps some of the inferences and allusions implied by their structure, time dimension and meaning flow. He could even offer a hand-written copy. It would give the inquirer the chance to look at it in his own time, 'walking into it' undisturbed.