Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Sur-realism
Surrealism & the creative imagination is turning out to be the slackest, and most eccentric, subject I have ever taken. Do not know what it means to be in arts and given the license to behave and dress ridiculously? You will get ample opportunity to try it out here.Case 1: come in with cobalt-blue ecobag, green shirt, green diamond-pattered vest, puffy brown jacket and scruffy brown loafers with fluorescent yellow laces.
Case 2: wear bright red trenchcoat with small round badges lining the collar, add white-black striped stockings under long brown skirt.
Many more cases all too individual to recall in detail. Bottomline:
- stock up on black, or as my art hist tutor said: black is the new black. Indeed.
- black hair. if caucasoid do black, if asian do black. highlight with peacock green, magenta, blond. avoid doing the whole mop, target the fringe.
- Fringe benefits!
- go op! do it scruffy, vintage, antique but fashionable. threads come undone, you've got lint on your shoulders, your leather needs polishing. but please, heck.
- words - the asian hiphop music fest '99, beauty and the beast musical '00, save the orang utans, and japlish-engrish or any queeer incomprehensible squiggle. your own language.
Today we watched Monty Python in class. The Ministry of Silly Walks, marathon for incontinents, football tussle between German & Greek philosophers and a dig at aussies. I heard the class go hush at the last one and there was a tension in the room. Relax! There's more to laugh at the yankees than you southern mateys.
My lecturer is an authority in this area. He said by the end of the semester we will truly understand what Surrealism and Dada are. But he did not mention how we are running the risk of being sucked into their worlds and coming out as weird and self-absorbed as they were. There can be a certain delight sometimes in trying to affirm one's supposed eccentricity and intellectual ability. But this is definitely not the best mentality to be nursing.
Un chien Andalou, finally got to watch it! Decomposing donkeys, roped-up priests, pumpkins, slit cow's eye, cane poking a severed hand, death eye moth and Vermeer. Unearthing the hidden soul's creative imaginative genius by damning rational, materialistic civilisation.
lux at 7:51 pm
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Were You Speaking To Me?
On the steps of Flinders Street Station we huddled together for warmth against the Melbourne city winter and in blessed harmony. We stood a group of nearly 20 and sang.Song book in hand, fingers exposed to the chill.
This is my desire to honour You.
I give You my heart I give You my soul I live for You alone.
But we were alone in so many ways. They did a jig in front of us, threw coins beneath the steps, took photos on their mobile phones, pulled out the guitar string, sang in mock harmony with us.
We were spectacular. There were girls in minis, girls in barebacked halters. Boys in T-shirts waved bottles around. But 'spectacle' was saved for us for in the midst of dissonance - trams gurgling on the tracks, people muttering our idiocy
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
You sing, I sing, I laugh.
But above all that I felt a certain calmness within me. A peaceful desire to touch someone with smile and song. You were there with me all along. You knew that someone heard and thought.
Mai-ke-feng proclaims Love!
Thank you for putting me there that night.
lux at 2:33 pm