anger is angular!!!

Had a great chat with emma the other night, some how we got to talking about drawing and mark making and also meaning and the ability to judge or interprete what somebody has created. Emma explained that everybody makes or shares the same experience of feelings and that these feelings can be represented by certain marks. For example a jagged line represents anger and swirrley ones joy etc... anyway for some reason I suggested that the interpretation of this language was based not on whhaat someone was feeling but based on what our preconceptions of what certain marks mean. I suggested that If she asked me to draw what I thought anger was I would not come up with jagged lines. Thats because you know what the marks are ment to represent and are doing something different in order to be difficult!! I agreed with her but said what does it mean when somebody does not make the marks that are given as the marks for that particular feeling. I suggested that the reason that the jagged marks was suggestive of anger was based on a collective agrement to what anger was and that the jagged lines of anger in themeselves where not indicative of anger any more than swirrly or curved lines expressed calm. I suggested that the interpretation was a collective agreement based on feelings, at this point Emma said she would prove that everyone in the bar would draw jagged lines for anger, I thought that an experiement was a great idea. Its strange how some chats generate work/collaboration and envolve the public so natuarally, dont you think? So anyway Emma goes off to collect the data from around the bar, in the form of drawings, and dave starts to record it on his digital camera. A short while later, Emma is back with her findings, and sure enough all the drawings lean towards the angular to describe anger. At this point Dave and i have entered into a conversation with two blokes on the next table. One of the two, an Irishman asks to see my rendition of Anger. Looking at my handiwork he proclaims loudly that that is not Anger, he asks "that is what you think of when you are Angry? I wouldnt want you around in a fight!!!.