A story told by Plato in Book VII of The Republic* to illustrate the superiority of information derived from reason to that derived from the senses. The allegory takes the form of a dialogue between the philosopher Socrates and Plato’s older brother Glaucon. Socrates likens people who rely on their senses to a group of prisoners who have spent their entire lives chained inside a cave facing the blank back wall and unable to turn around. All they see before them are the shadows projected onto the wall by things passing in front of the cave entrance. These shadows of things are their only reality. In contrast, experiencing reason is likened to a prisoner escaping the cave into the full sensory richness of the world outside. The shadows on the wall are often used as a metaphor for the cinema (Baudry); the film The Matrix (1999) and its sequels can be seen as a cinematic variation.

Oxford Reference

*Plato/republic.8.vii.html Book VII of Plato’s Republic

and now something for completely different……or not

Williem de Kooning

Each new glimpse is determined by many,
 Many glimpses before.
 It’s this glimpse which inspires you-like an occurrence, and I notice those are always my moments of having an idea
that maybe I could start a painting

Everything is already in art – like a big bowl of soup, everything is in there already:
 And you just stick your hand in, and fine something for you. 
But it was already there – like a stew.

There’s no way of looking at a work of art by itself
 It’s not self-evident,
 It needs a history; it needs a lot of talking about:
 it’s part of a whole man’s life.

Y’know the real world, this so-called real world,
 Is just something you put up with, like everybody else.
 I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:
 then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam.
 Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right;
 when I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!
 It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me:
I’m not doing so good; I’m stiff.
 As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping, most of the time,
 into that glimpse. I’m like a slipping glimpser.

I get excited just to see
that sky is blue; that earth is earth. And that’s the hardest thing; to see a rock somewhere,
 And there it is: earth-colored rock,
 I’m getting closer to that.

Then there is a time in life when you just take a walk:
 And you walk in your own landscape.

From Sketchbook 1: Three Americans, 
film script, New York, Time,
 Inc., 1060, pp.6, 7, 8, 9. 10