It irks me when people dis modern art. There’s nothing to “get”. Art isn’t about a necessary display of rendering something lifelike anymore, it’s about conveying an idea, an attitude, or a meaning, or something. The words you speak are art. The outfits you don. Bystanders. The sky. Puddles in the pavement. Handshakes. Muffins. Mandolin solos. Doorknobs. Anything can tell a story, anything can hold meaning, and everything can inadvertantly reference something else. Anything you choose to perceive as art, is art. Art is seeing beauty in being alive. Beauty is a glimpse of truth. So when you see a giant blue canvas on the wall and say, “This is crap. What should this be?” it doesn’t matter what it should be because you will perceive it as you will and all the artist can do is provide you with an object to bring your own experiences, perceptions, and tastes to and take away from it what you will. If you choose to take nothing away from it, it isn’t the artist that’s being dense. There is so much beauty to be seen in our measly day to day lives, but most people are too preoccupied to care (let alone look for it). In short, I took more away from Cuthill’s Art History class freshman year than I ever imagined I would.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: future, oakies, poetry, subtle steinbeck reference
Comrades. Why do sixteenth century English poets spell like contemporary slick middle schoolers? If you don’t believe me, behold Amoretti: Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser. This is text message talk.
In the wise words of Allie McTaggart, “You know, I’ve not pictured life in 2013….I always figured Jesus would have come back by then.” In other words, I need to figure out what school I’m going to next year and what degree I’m after and other thrilling pastimes. If all goes as planned (ha), I shall graduate in 2010 and land some hip graphic design veined employment and all will be well. Regardless, by 2013 I’ll probably have been graduated and in the real world for years! Somehow, it still looks like a science fiction number.
What are you doing, economy! I need a career soon. “Oakie” is not a career of choice. Et six peches.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dickens, hemmingway, kerouac, life savers
You know, I would probably be able to sleep decent hours if I had fewer ingenious ideas. That must be my problem.
Is it socially acceptable to sketch people without their knowledge? That’s pretty much all I did for the duration of tonight’s dreary night class. And created sophisticated (yet esoteric) witticisms. And outlined my sweet research paper on narcissism. And ate Life Savers. In short, even though I can seldom pay attention to anything by nightfall on Tuesdays, I’m extremely excited for the next class. According to the syllabus, we will be reading and discussing Hemmingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, and I love that story like the Dickens*. Realistically, we probably won’t get around to discussing it, but I’ll read it again and things will be momentarily super. Hemmingway and I use the same brand notebook, you know.
Apparently I’m the only one in said class who will willfully admit to loving poetry. Shameful, people, shameful.
I love free fonts.
Oh, and I went to the library today and attained “On The Road”, so all you beatniks can stop mocking me for not having read it. And by “all you beatniks” I mean Bryan and Alison.
Well. That has been enough literary and art fueled banter for one evening, I feel.
* I actually hate Dickens, but in this case I was using the figure of speech. Shut yo mouf.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: edgar allen poe, texting fiends ruining my life
The Edgar Allen Poe museum on E. Main is highly overrated. It’s tiny and the sorts of things they display are the man’s childhood bed, a model of the city of Richmond at the time of his youth (complete with his friends’ and dentist’s houses labelled) and works of art inspired by his writings. The largest part of the museum itself the “Enchanted Garden”, which is in essence a “garden to recreate the one designed to recreate the one described in Poe’s love poem, ‘To One In Paradise’, though the next few lines of the handout provided explain that “after having been altered significantly pver the course of the past eighty-seven years, the garden is now undergoing restorations to return it to its original appearance.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but something constructed to resemble something else that no longer resembles it, in actuality, is pretty dang irrelevant. I left feeling that my five dollar admission was in vain. In short, the Edgar Allen Poe museum is chock full of irrelevant and uninteresting items, but mostly completely gratuitous pieces constructed exclusively for the museum and having little to do with the life or work of Poe himself.
The most offensive of all these adulturations were the plush Raven puppets for sale in the gift shop. I don’t think that Edgar would have approved.
In other news, I appear to exceeded my allotted 400 text messages this month. How is that even possible? From this point forward, if your text is not mind-blowingly witty, I shan’t pursue a conversation with you. Actually, that isn’t even it. No more high-schoolers may borrow my phone, ever.
(Obligatory “Quoth the Ashley, ‘nevermore!’”)
A year ago tomorrow, I wrote the following words, yet they are still relevant today:
“Every day this week has felt like Friday should come next and it hasn’t yet.”
So, that.
There are some lies so blatant that no one bothers really righting them, and for this I am glad. Consider gummy candies that claim to taste like fruits of their respective colors. Similarly, I made a left turn off Broad Street (like five lanes of seething, roaring traffic!) out of the left turn lane with my right blinker on all along, directly in front of a cop. He didn’t bat an eye. Thanks, chum!
I was also listening to Widespread Panic whilst driving, this afternoon. I grew distraught because I thought that there was an ambulance behind me and there was nowhere to pull over to and there were a ton of cars on the road that would inadvertently be in its way, but it turned out that the sound I had heard was simply that of Widespread Panic rockin’, or something. Obligatory “panic” pun. And that’s all I’ve got for dumb driving stories of the day.
Oh, and I was told the other day by a genuine baby boomer that I had successfully mastered the art of putting on eyeliner like a B-52. Yeah!
John Tyler’s making me take a freaking writing assessment in order to “graduate” (read: earn an associates’ degree). I’M LITERATE, OKAY. This is exceptionally distressing because it’s located in Chester, and I live in fear of Chester because it has a general ambiance of, “Oh no, some thug is going to shoot me” and it’s obscenely far away. And such writing prompts are always so crass!
Golly, I’m going to be in Ontario quite a lot this summer.
You know, sardonic coworkers can really make one’s day.
Since I am not Faulkner, I shall now end this stream-of-consciousness banter.
I just foresaw a world in which we all paint ceramics under a black light. It would be sweet because we would use white bisques and the more we would paint, the less we would see.
8AM-1PM: Job
3PM-9PM: Other Job
This day made tolerable by Matt Pond PA.
