The Advantage of Synonyms

English is an entertaining language. Take, for instance, how synonyms work: the context defines the meaning. The word spleen can mean the lymphoid organ of the body that filters blood, produces lymphocytes, and distintegrates old blood cells, or it can mean chagrin, disgruntlement, and frustration. The expression venting one's spleen achieves an entirely new level of innuendo after finding that out, doesn't it? So I've been contemplating paying for next year's tuition, buying next semester's books, and therefore possibly selling my spleen on the black market so I don't have to dissolve my savings account. After comparing cost of living with income, I'm positive I've got enough chagrin to spare. Saving for a car was a nice idea while it lasted...

Today's Quote:

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons." --Woody Allen

Life In The Bubble

This past Friday marked the halfway point of my second summer class--Art History. Despite the intensity of having to grasp 5000 years of artistic expression and philosophy within a one-month period of time, it's been a pleasure discovering and rediscovering what has always been a great passion of mine. I'm not an artist, by any means, but I derive a great deal of satisfaction from other people's talent. Take the pleasure of studying the great masters of painting, sculpture, and architecture and inject it with the entertainment value of historical contexts, and the result is me being one very happy camper for a month! (Actually, I'm a pretty happy camper on general principles...just FYI. Maybe a better phrase would be "entranced student.") The instructor is 'listenable' too, which is nice.

Have you ever thought about how art has been used in the past, and how it is used today? I was fascinated by the art found in French Rococo Period, because I could relate to it in a way that I couldn't with art in other time periods. First of all, the language that's used to describe the French Rococo style is incredibly revealing: decadent, confectionary, intimate (as opposed to the grand manner of Baroque styles). 'Decadent' in this sense is used to mean "not in cadence," or in other words, "out of step." Art during this time was patronized almost exclusively by the aristocracy, and the primary subject matter was predictably, the rich at play. The pieces that were produced during this time period reflect a condition that affected the upper classes of society and which ultimately led the French Revolution: a pervading lack of awareness of how the other half lived. Jean-Honore Fragonard, a popular painter of the time, was commissioned by Madame du Barry (Louis XV's mistress) to paint a series of fourteen canvasses entitled The Progress of Love (one of which is featured above). The results are truly some of the most sickeningly sweet pieces of art in the history of the world--you get cavities after two or three. The reason that they are so fascinating, however, is not because of what Fragonard included but because of what he left out of the picture: millions of starving peasants who could've cared less whether the love-struck boy featured in the series ever got his girl or not. Thus, the use of the term 'decadent' to describe the art of the time was absolutely correct: it was out of step with reality.

The same label could be tacked onto many of our art forms today. As a society, we're guilty of living in a bubble, oblivious to the neediness around us. Selfish and self-absorbed, we hoard our wealth instead of looking for ways to make the world better. We're insulated away from wars, famines, and disease, and are unable to empathize with the want in the world--there's no discomfort, but also no awareness.

To balance out my diatribe against society, I've also included one of my favorite works of art from roughly the same period (although not from the same country): Jan Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance. It illustrates a technique called tenebrism, which is basically spotlighting an image that the artist desires to emphasize. Vermeer painted mostly Dutch genre works, and many of his paintings contain symbolic elements (such as the balance the woman is holding and the painting of the Last Judgment on the wall behind her, which you probably can't see here because I didn't have the space to put a big enough image in my post). The element of balance is obviously very important to the painting, but the inclusion of the Last Judgment gives the scales a religious allusion as well. (Reminds me a little of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, for those of you who saw the movie.)

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are." --Eric Hoffer

Life, Love, and Other Mysteries

It isn't possible, I tell myself. It is just not possible that I can be so over-the-moon about homework. Of all the crazy things . . . But I am. What I'm doing now feels so right. Being here--at this place in my life, where I do what I love and what I'm good at--is like realizing where home is for the first time. When I think about all the people who go to work because they have to, I just feel so grateful to be preparing for a career that I'll be happy with. Life is too short to make concessions about things that are this important, which is why I'm so happy to be where I am, doing what I'm doing, which is finishing up my degree in English. After countless misses, it feels incredible to finally have hit something worth sticking with. So far the summer has given me a great chance to sit back and take a breather after a very busy year--while taking some classes and working a little, just so I don't turn into a complete bum.

Time of year: late spring/early summer, also known as 'wedding season'. Love is in the air (Or is it stress?--I keep mixing those two up. Yes, I do know how cynical I sound; but the whole business has failed to make me a convert, I'm afraid.), and in a couple weeks I'm going up to Wisconsin for my cousin's wedding. Joe and I are doing some of the music--Joe mostly. In general, I tend to be a bit skeptical of relationships; but despite being incredibly over-advertised and misconstrued, they do ensure the future of the human race (along with keeping us all in perpetual therapy, but what would North America be without its psychiatric institutions). Actually, when it happens for people I care about, I am a big fan of love, so congratulations to the happy couple. May they live long and prosper.

So far, I've covered life, and I've covered love. Now for the mystery: Where will the Valentes be living at the close of the summer? Joe's moving down with his baby grand (YAY!), so we must move from our cozy little apartment right across the street from the mall. On a scale of 1 to 10 of the top ten things I don't want to do (10 being working on a maggot farm), moving away from this place is probably an 11. Mom and I have been looking at places that will give us more space and will allow Joe to practice without making enemies of our neighbors (It's not Joe's playing that's the problem--he's a genius--but even if Rachmaninoff played scales for 5 hours at a stretch, he'd probably irritate the people living above and below him.). Stay tuned for the rest of the story . . .

Quote for the day:

O life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.

--Dorothy Parker

In The Interest of Poetic License . . . (Part 3)

This is going to be the last post in the poetry series. (Apparently there's a limit to how much poetry even I can take because I'm ready to move on.) The following is my all-time favorite poem from the past semester:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost

In The Interest of Poetic License . . . (Part 2)

Not too many weeks ago, my mental picture of poetry was extremely dark and depressing. My view of poets was, if possible, a step down from that--colored by images of John Keats, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who were all either invalids, recluses, or victims of consumption who died before 30. How upbeat. (This is not meant to be a cocky diatribe against classic poetry. Keats, Dickinson, and Browning all wrote compelling material and were masters of language.) There is, however, a lighter side to poetry, and that is the theme running through the selected verses below:

The following is a parody of William Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? For some reason I find it funny:

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day?

Who says you're like one of the dog-days?
You're nicer. And better.
Even in May, the weather can be gray,
And a summer sub-let doesn't last forever.
Sometimes the sun's too hot;
Sometimes it is not.
Who can stay young forever?
People break their necks or just drop dead!
But you? Never!
If there's just one condensed reader left
Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,
After you're dead and gone,
In this poem you'll live on!

--Howard Moss

Picture waking up one morning, hungry. Wandering out to the kitchen, you find the following on a post-it note, that your roommate, sibling or spouse has taken the trouble to put in poetic form. Kudos for effort, at least.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

And finally, here is a poem that plays with metaphors. To me, this is comical because of the amount of time it took for the meaning to dawn on us English majors in class. Obviously we were not a class rich in parenting experience.

Metaphors

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with it's yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train, there's no getting off.

--Sylvia Plath

Ah, welcome to the lighter side of the poetic soul! (And I'm fully aware that I've just doomed myself to geekhood forever.)

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." --G.K.Chesterton

In the Interest of Poetic License . . . (Part 1)

I'm captivated by life, particularly what is written down. In spite of their inadequacy, words are a remarkably efficient way to collar all the elements of experience and distill them into a medium that can be deciphered, analyzed, learned from, appreciated, and perhaps every once in a while, enjoyed as an art form. Unfortunately, most of the time for most of the people, the art form comes without the enjoyment, as in the case of poetry.

As an English major, I've read my share of poetry, and to me there is nothing more disconcerting than being called on to explicate a poem in class that totally missed the mark when it was agonized over in the privacy of my own room. I mean, for goodness sake, people don't use phrasing like 'Bacchus and his pards' anymore, and in the twenty-first century, most of us don't recognize one-tenth of the references that Dante uses in The Inferno, which is why the other half of the book is endnotes.

This semester, however, I've learned how to throw out the bathwater while still keeping a firm hold of the baby, thanks to a truly talented professor of literary analysis. I may not be completely sold on John Keats or Dante Aligheri, but I've actually read some poetry I've enjoyed, and I've learned to think about what I read. (She must be good, because--have mercy--after one semester, I can actually stomach poetry readings, at least in small doses.) Every time I wander past the poetry section in Barnes' and Noble, I hear the battle cry of the last few months: Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. It's an aquired taste. It takes talent to create it, time to understand it, and true love to stick with it until it becomes enjoyable. Like a photograph of Ansel Adams', or an etude by Chopin (since my brother tells me he's a genius), true art is never easy. It comes from some place deep within the artist, where life is filtered through their particular medium and given a voice.

So, because I've got poetry on the brain, and becaue this blog happens to be a reflection of what I read about, watch, listen to, and think about, this series on poetry was conceived. For the sake of those who dislike poetry, I hope this phase doesn't last long. But stick with me . . . who knows, you might just learn to dance a little.

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." --Oscar Wilde