No Genius . . .

Artwork by Terrance Lindall

Some time back, when Terrance Lindall was working on the illustrations to my story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, I remarked that the devilish number "666" resembles "BBB" written lower case: "bbb." In the above image, one can see this better.

Well, a graduate student in English literature who attended my literary reading last week was looking through my blog entries on Lindall's illustrations and noticed my remark:

It was delight to find, while reading the comments on your blog, that BBB in lower case bbb, resembles 666! Did you intend it? Gosh, you are a genius!

While I'd like to be thought a genius -- but only if I were one (otherwise, the label is an unendurable burden) -- I replied:

I'm no genius. I didn't plan the similarity, but I did first notice it.

At least, I don't recall intending the visual connection, though connections are sometimes made unawares, and perhaps this is one of those. From the looks of it, that image above suggests that Lindall himself may have also made an unconscious connection.

Anyway, if anyone's a genius here (other than Lindall himself, of course), that student is the one. She's done some brilliant work with text and image. She and I sat together in Starbucks for two hours one early morning last summer looking through her portfolio illustrating Milton's Paradise Lost using very abstract, distinctly colored images. It was wonderful!