Malinda Words: The parameters of 'entirety'

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 211th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

The word ‘entirety’ means ‘the whole of something.’ The keyword here is ‘something.’ Any ‘thing’ well defined would yield some contours. There are lines of one kind or another within which that thing resides and which help give its name meaning.

Things are named. We see ‘a chair’ and we know its dimensions. There are lines that define it. Within these there is ‘chair’. Outside it is ‘not-a-chair.’ And that’s an ‘entirety,’ the ‘whole’ of the chair.

What is the ‘entirety’ of a mirror, though? Let’s consider a plain, rectangular mirror. The rectangle gives us the size of the mirror. The glass that reflects is the mirror. What lies beyond those lines is ‘not-mirror.’ The properties of this particular object as opposed to a chair or table for example make it harder to pinpoint ‘entirety.’ That which the mirror reflects is part of what the mirror is. One might even argue that mirror-properties compel us to take both object and reflection as being part of mirror-entirety.

It was Kasun De Silva’s wide-angled photograph titled ‘The entirety’ that made me reflect on this interesting word and indeed concept. What is this ‘entirety,’ I wondered. There’s an entirety that is defined by the frame and it could be described as ‘the whole of whatever is inside the rectangle.’ Every photograph and painting or indeed anything that comes in a frame of any kind is an entirety as per the above definition. We could have an ant-entirety, a moon-entirety, a face, an eye, two eyes, part-face, petal or flower, a crowd of people or a section of the gathering or a single individual. All ‘entireties.’ A grain of sand is as much an entirety as a universe of any dimensions you wish to imagine.

Entirety, then, is a play of choice. Kasun’s entirety is legit. It’s a capture that is a capture-all. Someone else may not even notice this ‘entirety’ perhaps because the focus is on something else or it could so happy that for someone else ‘entirety’ would be a small part of what Kasun captured. Accordingly, Kasun’s entirety could be a small part of what someone else might consider to be all-encompassing.

Kasun has captured a large expanse. There’s ‘big’ written all over it. It is certainly not a grain of sand. It is not a chair or table. It is a mirror in a sense because it reflects Kasun’s preferences. And yet, it is a black and white photograph and therefore is a creation from which other colours have been removed.

Someone might argue that Kasun has compromised or subverted entirety by privileging two colours. On the other hand, if entirety is a construct then it is as imperfect, as art-directed as a color capture that dissolves lines, banishes silhouette, drowns the play of light and shade with a full palette and so on.

This is ‘entirety’ as far as Kasun is concerned. Entirety of what, we don’t know. That’s what I find poetic and liberating in the caption. Kasun says ‘entirety’ and anyone who looks at it can define it in terms of particular preferences.

A vast landscape, as mentioned, has 'big' written over it. Big is a close cousin of Entirety. But then again, this photograph features three figures, a man, a woman and a child. Family, perhaps. That’s a unit. It comes framed. It is an 'entirety' or at least persuades us to think of the universe which to some is ‘family,' all encompassing, complete in and of itself.

A family, yes, but one which is in size minuscule when set against water bodies and a seamless sky or rather a limitlessness ‘contained’ by the inevitable frame and framing that is ‘the entirety’ of the photographing exercise. A family that is a grain of sand in an entirety whose parameters are as yet unknown or unknowable. A family that is a grain of sand and yet is an entirety — that’s another way to put it.

There’s an entire-figure. There’s an entire-family. There are entire-clouds. There’s a hint of an entire-sky and an entire-universe. There’s a Kasun-entirety, there’s an entirety of Kasun’s photography and there’s this, the Kasun-entirety titled ‘The Entirety.’ The entirety, also, of gratitude to someone who offered an entirety that was made for reflection. And the ‘entirety’ that is everything that I’ve written about the word.

01 September 2023

The parameters of 'entirety'

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