# He Fa on Sontag

Vertical Stripes Can Make Us Miss Things Too

Canonical: https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/hefa-on/hefa-lun-mc-m026-susan-sontag
Language: en

The images and texts were developed collaboratively by He Fa and AI. The first-person voice belongs to an experiment in character; costume, posture and props are used to develop creative arguments, not as quotations from or summaries of the thought of the figures referenced.

![He Fa on Sontag: Susan Sontag, generated character image](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/hefa-on/media/651d57d8e1b35928bf1f.webp)

The finely striped shirt looks strongly directional within the dark V-neck waistcoat, while its large pointed collar and long cuffs carry those lines out to the edges. Sontag's outfit gives me a means of organizing the image quickly: see stripes, distinguish an outline, obtain a clear impression. But the faster the impression arrives, the more I want to know what I have just missed.

Naming helps memory, and can also stop the eyes from working. Once this is called an intellectual's dress, later folds, shades and degrees of bodily ease readily retreat into irrelevant detail. The borrowed name speeds the process further, as though a method of reading were waiting to be applied. He Fa's round face enters just in time to delay that familiar judgment a little.

After recognition, I want to pause a few more seconds and let lines exist as lines first. This does not refuse understanding; it gives understanding a greater chance to change. If I first thought the figure upright and later discover a loose patch of fabric, I should allow the overall impression to adjust. Details must not be required to keep testifying for the first concept. Sensation, too, needs the right to correct itself.

But continuing to feel is not always something we can wait for. Buying clothes requires choosing a size, discussing a problem requires judgment, and other people's time cannot be borrowed indefinitely. A more dependable approach is to state the scale at which the current conclusion holds: a visual impression now may say nothing about someone's life, and an image of a look cannot be used to judge all the work of the person referenced.

I leave the stripes intact, letting them continue to guide the eyes, and slow judgment only enough for it to return. The waistcoat's shaped waist remains clear, and the cuffs have their own length. Noticing these parts that have no grand meaning for now may come closer to this encounter than adding another beautiful label to the face.