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Finding the correct exposure
Today at the supermarket: Apple Jacks now have green pieces in addition to the usual orange one, the Lucky Charms leprechaun is wearing a space helmet, and I bought individually wrapped hot dogs.
I bought them because I only use half of them at a time anyway, and because they were cheap, but something about that idea rubs me the wrong way.
If I were writing Stay Tuned, I'd summon up about a thousand words of venom. I'm not, though, thank heavens.
Iain and I have been doing a little research work. He was sure he had read either a German or Scandinavian tale which had the same plot as "The Devil's Breeches." Well, he found the story, and it turns out that his copy is a retelling of Grimm.
Now, I have three or four versions of Grimm, but even as well as I know Grimm, I don't know all the names of the stories. So I looked and, foolish me, it was there all along. It's called "Bearskin" in English, so if you want to see what the Grimm brothers make of it, go get an English version of Grimm - may I prevail upon you to choose the Jack Zipes version, which is clearly superior? - and have a look. It's got some interesting differences.
And, speaking of not bothering to look things up when I should ....
An Ardent Reader in Finland comments on the Achebe reference I made a few days ago:
One reason you didn't get mail on the Achebe may be because people were wondering why you didn't take the reference all the way back to Yeats.
Now, you see, I knew "Things fall apart. The center cannot hold." came from somewhere else; I was just waiting for someone to write me and refresh my memory.
Of course it is a quotation from "The Second Coming," and I'm really annoyed that I didn't catch that myself, since it's my favorite Yeats poem ... and I only like three-and-a-half poems (so far) out of his entire oeuvre, so it's not like the field is so broad I could have forgotten.
The odd thing is that I haven't copied it in my book where I copy poems and quotations I like. I think it's because "The Second Coming" is, how shall I say this, overexposed. It's one of those justifiably great things that gets overplayed and therefore becomes, not less great, but certainly less interesting. Like the Mona Lisa.
Sometimes that seems a shame. Maybe we should lock up our great things and only take them out every now and then to look at, like the widow refreshing her dreams with the pearls she was given as a young bride.
But that doesn't seem right either.
And that reminds me ....
We went to the John Singer Sargent exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts today. Now, I adore Sargent. I love his portraiture, his way of depicting light (he did a painting of little girls lighting paper lanterns, and no photo in the world does this painting justice - I swear, you'll be looking for hidden light bulbs behind the canvas), his sense of humor, and so forth.
When I have a chance to see paintings from someone I already love, especially oil paintings, I want to get really close to the paintings. This may be my only chance to actually see "Madame X," and I want to see what's going on with the brushstrokes and all that.
Well, I had forgotten what a featured show at the MFA is like. I had this problem with the Monet show, but I had forgotten.
The room was full of these sheep, all standing a respectful distance and looking at the paintings like, "Yup. That's Art. Sure enough. What else we got, Martha?" Most of them had the little audio tour headphones on, spoonfeeding them art appreciation in little premeasured doses.
I couldn't stand it after a few minutes. I'd just walk in front of them. For all the attention they were paying the paintings, they could have been staring at a blank wall anyway.
(And the audio tour says, "You can't see anything, but if you could, it would be ..." and goes on without missing a beat.)
I don't like for people to not appreciate art at all, but I also don't like this trend where certain "popular" artists become commercialized - generally long after their death! It's like turning on the radio and always hearing the same twenty songs - which, come to think of it, is why I haven't listened to radio regularly since before high school.
I mean, I like Monet - I made sure I paid homage to my favorite Monet painting, which is in the MFA's permanent collection - but for a while there I thought the MFA had switched to an All Monet, All the Time format.
Isn't there some happy medium between under- and overexposure? Is there a good method of finding it?
© Columbine
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And what rough beast,
its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
-W.B. Yeats
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