God… or vampire?
What’s the first thing you think of when you see a cross on a hill, bathed in early morning rays of sun?
What else comes to mind when you read my haiku from yesterday?
How about if you had first laid eyes on a scarred wooden box containing an old-fashioned revolver, a clutch of rough-hewn stakes, and a bag of silver bullets?
I actually wrote the haiku with a vampire in mind… but once I was done, all I could picture was the Garden of Gethsemane. If I had posted it with the above picture — instead of a lovely sunrise shot of a lone cross — would folks have been as shocked?
It wasn’t until I was sitting in church, studying the stained glass window over the altar during the sermon, that I realized how someone might be shocked at how sacrilegious it could appear without knowing my original intent. Matching it with a clearly Christian image gave it a completely different message.
Why does it take something like this bowling me over, for the importance of setting to a scene to finally CLICK?