I love Ambiguity

I was a bit drunk last night. It was around 2am, my ears were ringing (and still are) from standing too close to the amps at a friends gig, and I could feel the alcohol taking its toll. One thing it doesn't touch though is my head, it's always clear. I wasn't really tired, so I just lay there in that quiet stillness at night, that time when thoughts come to you...

I've always liked the word 'ambiguity', it's meaning. Like a faint familiar smell, half remembered from childhood, yet you can't really put yout finger on what it is. Maybe recently watching Mad Men had something to do with it (love that series) and Stephen Poliakoffs Capturing Mary. That word always comes to me when I watch these programs. Yet, I was thinking, can something be truly ambiguous?

Main Entry:	ambiguity
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	uncertainty of meaning
Synonyms:	anagram, double meaning, double-entendre, doubt, doubtfulness, dubiety, dubiousness, enigma, equivocacy, equivocality, equivocation, incertitude, inconclusiveness, indefiniteness, indeterminateness, obscurity, polysemousness, polysemy, puzzle, tergiversation, uncertainty, unclearness, vagueness
Antonyms:	certainty, clarity, clearness, definiteness, explicitness, lucidity

Hmm, I always thought the word meant something undefined, or indefinable, something almost neutral, unbiased. Isn't something that you thought was indefinable, just that because you don't know how to see it, to decipher it, to define it within what you know of the world.

Certainly Mad Men has an agenda, however subtle or nuanced. Yet it's done with such care and attention things are left for you to decide. Maybe that what it is, it's not preaching or coming from certain dogma, it's not patronising or treating you like some mindless sheep. Non-judgemental? Obviously we live in 2010, not 1962, politics, society etc. was different back then and the writers of Mad Men have certainly pointed those out. But, it's up to me to make up my mind and it asks questions about what we think of is 'right' or 'wrong' today...very clever stuff.

Capturing Mary on the other hand is an open ended book. I was talking about this with a friend while we were in her car, 'what does it mean?', 'why did she give that man so much power over her?', 'what was Poliakoff trying to say?'...so the conversation went on, 'we can talk till the cows come home, we won't be any the wiser' I said, to cut to the point. It stopped there. I love ambiguity. Nothing is set in stone.