Love this painting by Edwin Dickinson

Edwin Dickinson, Frances Folley, 1927

March 6th, in conversation with painting

I knew what I was thinking the entire time that I did this, you knew what I wanted you to become.

The story changed over and over but didn't I say that before - language is so malleable? - just as the colour-form (if any) are traces of the conversation.

You will never know what I wanted it to look like

It got so heavy, I just deemed it done - now you hang.

so heavy and low - stained and carrying it all, that's a lot of weight (get it?)

insert whatever you want there, again...

I knew what I meant to say and you will always hear and see something else.

of course I didn't know what you would look like

but I kept the vision of what I wanted in my head

though soft/ spongy malleable-shiftable

all it takes is "somebody"

and some silence.

Displacement (German Verschiebung, 'shift' or 'move') is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects effects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable. The term originated with Sigmund Freud.

Displacement operates in the mind unconsciously and involves emotions, ideas, or wishes being transferred from their original object to a more acceptable substitute. It is most often used to allay anxiety; and can to the displacement of aggressive impulses or to the displacement of sexual impulses...

In 1957, Jacques Lacan - building on the way in Freud's work, condensation (from German Verdichtung) and displacement are closely linked concepts, and inspired by an article by linguist Roman Jakobson - argued that the unconscious has the structure of a language, and that condensation and displacement are close equivalents to the poetic functions o fmetaphor and metonymy. As he cautiously put it, 'in the case of Verschiebung, "displacement", the German term is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in metonymy, and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship'.