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What Are Things About?

Or, What Things Are About, Or, The Identity Of Things, Or…or…or….

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The Met: Musical Instruments

Sea Dragon

The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/501492

This image by the Met Museum Art Collection quite attracted me. I’ve seen many marvelous and antic instruments, but this one really struck me as something more unique in its definition of form. Clearly a dragon. In fact, if you look closely at the inside of the dragon’s mouth, isn’t that a fish hook? Is that meant for us, should we dare poke a finger inside?

Is it also that clearly a musical instrument? I don’t think so. It’s there, the tube and the mouth piece, and the thumb place (the gold pad under his neck) so we know it belongs to the horn and flute family. Or does it? There are no holes from which the notes can flow, the air pulsing out from the Dragon’s spine. But maybe they are on the other side, just not visible from this angle of the photo.

In the interest of scientific research, I asked the neighbor’s visiting child—who is eight years old—what the thing was. (Age might matter in this experiment, as does music knowledge, which he has, playing in a school orchestra.)  He studied it quite seriously in a zoomed large photo of a photo. “Well,” he said, “It is a dragon for sure.” “Anything else,” I asked. “Well,” he said again, “You can see he’s still alive, even though he’s been stabbed.” “Stabbed?” I asked astounded. “Yes. See this?” He pointed to the tube extending curved, from the Dragon’s neck. “They tried to kill him with this but his hide was so thick and tough they couldn’t make it all the way through. That’s how they bent it.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. He seemed satisfied with his assessment. He didn’t even ask me if that was correct. (Kids rarely do.)

“And how do you know he is still alive?” “Well, he doesn’t have his head on the ground and he looks like he’s growling. He’s going to start shooting flames any minute.”

“How do you know he’s going to shoot flames?” “Well, see this?” He points to my fish hook. “That’s what his flames come from. When that goes all down, boy watch out! There’ll be flames for sure!”

Well, there you have it.

 

 

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What I Meant To Say

Sometimes I think I am a Don DeLillo novel, not just inside of one.

For the past two days I have redone two closets in order to make better use of space and better accommodation for clothes and storage. This is also an attempt at the stripping of fat in my apartment. For some reason this triggers something in me—something nameless and untraceable. I ask myself what this means and myself does not answer.

The Writer does
“It’s about dress, silly. Clothing talks about the masks we wear, the persona we put on for the day. If you want to change who you are you’ll have to dress differently. And sometimes you get ahead of yourself, as in buying the future of you before you’re ready to put it on. Hence the new clothes that sit in there, waiting to be worn. Waiting for you.”

Last night I was up until four o’clock in the morning working on the new (as yet untitled) novel. It may be that those things I wrote in some fit of passion won’t be usable at all. Well, the words might be usable in some smoothed out form, but not in the novel. This particular novel anyway. I also started a sketch of the face on the cover of The Beautiful and damned. (I posted the cover of the book with some words a few days back.) How I envy those who can sit down and just sketch whatever they see. And I love notebooks filled with lovely words and comments and observations with sketches interspersed along with a variety of colors. Vintage Books & Anchor Books
In moving things between closets to sort or move or toss, of course I made some discoveries. For one, I found the Yoga mat and underquilt (for padding). It’s sitting here right now, just in front of me. Waiting. But first I have to look up Will Power. I’m not done with that quite yet.

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Truth & Happiness

Vintage Books & Anchor Books

Vintage Books and Anchor Books

“I don’t care about truth. I want some happiness.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED

This is not always about the beautiful and rich. Here is the same thought problem today, is it not? From the people who don’t care if their leader and savior lies or not. It doesn’t bother them. It does not bother them as long as they get their happiness. If they don’t have it yet they’re willing to wait because they see enough of the ugliness and anger being acted out to give them hope. It’s what they want. And they don’t care about the truth.

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The Human Form

To start out the week with Monday moans. Here’s the inspiration to diet with fresh resolve. Right?

Dance portraits by Alexander Yakovlev.

shuffleSketch2

shuffleSketch1

Photos & Story posted by Shuffle Sketch

There aren’t enough photos of the human form itself, male and female, but I thought these could do for now. The ballet form is the most expressive and what is presented here. I had published the photo of Rudolph Nureyev and some comments a while back. (That’s Rudy below). That was in December, 2017. Here’s what Rudy had to say about dance: “Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.” True that, about many things.

fmrudyNureyev

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Lessons of History

HistoryBooks5

From History Books

Mrs. Lintott: “Now. How do you define history, Mr. Rudge?”
Rudge: “Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit?”
Mrs. Lintott: “I will protect you.”
Rudge: “How do I define history? It’s just one fucking thing after another.”

~Alan Bennett, The History Boys (2006)

What a wonderful room to get lost in. Right now though, I’m lost in the writing of words for the novel I’m working on.  BTW, I don’t think we learn anything from history. It seems to me that the human race just keeps making the same mistakes and the same wars over and over again. We never learn our lessons.

And that’s the waaaaaay things are.