Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.
Among the many disappointments at the end of the Game of Thrones TV series, one of the quirkier ones is how much ground was laid for a three-eyed raven that never quite paid off. Time and time again we were given dark, ominous shots of this raven, urged to believe it was something of great importance, something that would actually shift the narrative ground beneath us. Perhaps they eventually realized three-eyed ravens were not as cool as fire-breathing dragons.
Stepping into the waters of A Wiki of Fire and Ice only confused me further, so I will stick to what I initially took the raven to be: something that could see the past, the present, and the future. Visually, it made sense. But two and a half years after the wet fart of a series conclusion, I think of the three-eyed raven less as a metaphor for the story and far more as a reminder of how dangerous it is to get hung up on dancing in time. Being able to see the past, the present, and the future could lead to some pretty cool stories, maybe even some groundbreaking realizations. But it’s one thing to see something. It’s another to do something about it. It’s another thing entirely to get other people to do something about it, especially when you’ve told them that particular thing came to you from a three-eyed raven. We’ve seen these last two years that many people in our country will stick to their own facts to fit their own narrative, of which serves the community they believe themselves to be part of. There are many three-eyed ravens fluttering about these days. No wonder the horizon can sometimes look so perilous.
What I prefer, instead, is the four-eyed raven. Just a regular old raven with some glasses, admitting to their myopia and recognizing the need for some corrective vision lens to help them see the situation more clearly. And then when someone comes to them with their own observations, they’re willing to look at another vision and interpret it through their own lens again. That’s all meaning-making is. You remain flexible so that different truths may help you better understand the world. It’s a constant, ever-shifting process. And when you get lost in the weeds, you can do that thing birds love to do: zoom out and fly over it all.
