Weblog 182

August 2, 2009~ 1:30am
A human being is a complex bundle of neurons, some of which respond quite viscerally to visual prompts. In many ways, we are our icons. And just what is an 'icon'? According to Webster, an icon is-- 'a picture of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, venerated in the Orthodox Church, or a person or thing regarded as a symbol of a belief or cultural movement.'

Byzantine icons are beautifully gilded and daunting-looking staring saints-- their black eyes hypnotic. They are things of reverence, but they are also magnificent art. The colors seem culled from a place other than this earth, vividly surreal in their purity.



Churches have long employed the use of icons in stained glass, on holy cards, in statues, and are thought to inspire us. Cultural icons inspire too. Most often they portray us as we'd like to be... as mysterious sex symbols, whether male or female, they represent the way we'd like to feel about ourselves, or the way we'd like to be seen by others. (It doesn't matter if you're 300 pounds and never got out of Podunk Hollow, anyone can dream.) Sometimes our cultural icons are just as vividly displayed as our religious ones.....bright colors, magnetism....



allure. And the one word for all iconic depictions....POWER.



There is a mesmerism that is the same whether it's Byzantium or Hollywood. We stare because we're drawn to some perfection there we see lacking in ourselves. Just think for a minute of the general mass borderline hysteria that happens when an icon finally falls. Think of John Lennon. Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Princess Diana......and most recently, Michael Jackson.

It matters not that Lennon was thought of by much of the press as a kook who lived on a macrobiotic diet and smoked dope...or that Kennedy philandered, or that Dr. King did....or that Princess Diana was possibly anorexic and self-involved for much of her life, or even that Jackson may or may not have molested young boys.

That's because the thing transcendent in them is that they represented much more than the people they actually were. They housed our dreams, and dreams have nothing to do with reality. They made us feel bigger, more talented, more able to achieve....more loving or more self-sacrificing. We believed their myths, and myths need the faces that represent them. When cultural icons die their myths and their inspiration do not, but a certain glow goes out of it, diminished by their passing.

I guess that's why religious icons (for instance, the Angel of Good Counsel copied above) continue to hold the same power centuries after being painted. There's no individual human life attached to it. It's an idea only, not one made manifest in an actual living breathing person that with time, may lose its hold. We don't remember these saints..the churches create them for us.

They are beautiful, awe-inspiring--- but unfleshed. They are like music heard, but never played.

We tend to want to follow contemporary icons as they live their lives, and we love the gossip and the news reports. We like to think we might run into them someday even as we nearly venerate the privileged lives they live, so when they die, something crucial is lost.

For those of you who share my interest in the Church icons, there is a lovely site to look at those magnificent colors and formidable stares. Go to Not Of This World and have a look. (See? That title says it all. Beyond culture, beyond our ever knowing them....they are like the pictures in a storybook that haunt us, draw us back with those dark, dark eyes) --but we never knew them. We're free to imagine what we like.




August 2, 2009~ 2:30am
This was a movie weekend. Not all weekends are. It just depends on the schedule.

Unfortunately, the film this weekend was "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans".

Having enjoyed the first two installments of this trilogy, I was more than disappointed with their 'prequel' version. I have nothing against dark films. (By that, I mean movies with dark themes) but this film was LITERALLY, 'dark'...as though it had been filmed in a dungeon with the director not caring whether you could actually see the thing or not. LOL!!!

Before seeing this third installment I had no idea that Michael Sheen (yes, the 'David Frost' Michael Sheen from 'Frost/Nixon') was the Lucian character- in all 3 films. I guess he had a contract to do all three, released every three years beginning in 2003, 2006 and now in 2009. (One can only hope there is not a 2012 in the offing.)

How embarrassing that the same actor who played both David Frost and Prime Minister Tony Blair in 'Queen', would be asked to do nothing more than stretch his mouth as far open as it could possibly go, and scream......repeatedly. So here....I will save you the annoyance of a bad rental.

See this?



And this?



....there. What you've just seen is Underworld Part Three, without even straining your eyes. Asinine. That would be my final word here. A film for the nearly blind.




August 3, 2009~ 8:00am
Today is grandaughter Kay's FOURTH BIRTHDAY! My daughter told her she could have anything she wanted to eat today. This is the menu:

Breakfast: Cake
Lunch: Pancakes and Cake
Dinner: McDonalds and Cake



Kay is a Libertine! (Marie Antoinette would be pleased. LOL!!)
Happy birthday, sweetie. xoxoxo









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