Posted on: May 8, 2012
The Sleeping Gypsy, by Henri Rousseau. 1897
Gypsy
The sadness of the dance
Between two opposites
The sadness of the work
Involved
No metaphors needed
Male and Female
Strong and weak
Yin and Yang
No metaphors needed
Because this is all
Delusion
And comfort food
Combined
Though the combination
Is a hopeful thing
A blessed thing
A dove sent
A plant thrusting upward
To the sun
From within desert sand
From within
Once barren minds
The act of combination
An act of liberation
Or may be
If we cross over
…
[More...]
Posted on: April 18, 2012
Ophelia, by John William Waterhouse. 1894
And so I thought …
That Art which appears as a foreign nation over the sea, with a language all its own, with signs that point to something just hidden, just out of reach. For now.
It has an edge to it. It calls to us, but is never pretty. It must be followed. We must take the leap, take the voyage, depart for the other side. Its foreignness draws us like a sublime magnet, a masked pied piper who tugs at us like a thief of love. We go anyway.
Never pretty, never sweet, never soothing, it strikes at us, slaps us in the face, stuns us with a kind of delayed violence, both intellectual and physical, cerebral and primitive.…
[More...]
Posted on: April 17, 2012
My Valentine, by Paul McCartney.
The video is simple, basic, but yields a melancholy paradox. Those of us who can see and hear lose and gain something mysterious, wondrous and poetic. The translation of signs into words, into emotions and meaning escapes us, if we can’t sign. We just watch Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp move effortlessly, brilliantly, to the song, to Eric Clapton’s guitar, to the ever youthful former Beatles’ sad refrain. We also may wonder how the video affects those who can see but not hear. What goes through their mind/body when they “read” the hands and limbs of the two actors?
Waiting for signs. The song is about that. The video is about that. We all wait for signs, parse them, decode them, depend upon them and hope for them.…
[More...]
