let my love open the door
05.17.03 @ 11:17 a.m.
"Duct tape in the wrong hands is a dangerous weapon," he said, "but so is a hand egg-beater."
-Philadelphia Daily News
Why that amuses me, I don't know. Probably because I'm currently reading one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt Novels, which are spy/adventure things. It's like... if James Bond worked for the National Underwater and Marine Agency... NUMA. Meh heh. I love these books, I read nearly all of them between sixth and eighth grades. I still haven't read the new one, Valhalla Rising, yet. Which makes me sad. Now that I'm older, I find it funny that not only does the author give his main character his classic car collection, but he puts himself in several novels. It makes me feel less guilty about blatantly giving characters things that are specific to me, like how George Rowland of Riverwood Park became a dog breeder. Except that was more a hobby than anything else, since he WAS the landed gentry.
I have to write a paper this weekend on the aesthetic emotion and how it's produced by the use of 'signifigant form' in visual art. I think one of the biggest stumbling blocks to people in my class is the aesthetic emotion itself. James-Dean Boy even whined, Luke Skywalker "But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!"-style, "I don't even know what aesthetic emotion is!" Alain the GTF just nodded sagely and said, "I don't even think [Clive Bell] knows." Clive Bell being one of the authors we've been reading in preparation for this paper. It was so odd to see James-Dean Boy whine. He was so distressed! (Speaking of my classmates, one guy, Pat, could be quite cute if he didn't have infuriating facial hair. It would be a perimeter beard if it met up in the middle, but it's got this horrible one inch gap beneath his chin which just makes it... extreme mutton chops or something similarly horrible. He's been looking cutely touseled without his hat lately, too. Ah well.)
Me, I have no problems classfying aesthetic emotion, or at least identifying it in my own life. Our writings talk about it as near-religious rapture upon seeing a truly magnificent piece of art. I think it's probably the blissful feeling I get from music. The feeling that makes my breath catch in my throat, makes me stop whatever I'm doing and push up the volume so that I'm feeling nothing else. (It's too bad this has to be a formalist essay on visual art...) And so as all these art majors bemoan the idea that they've never felt aesthetic emotion or wouldn't know it if they did, I'm feeling like it's something I experience fairly frequently. And I'm grateful for that. Of course, now I've got to go find a piece of art that I can dissect to it's formal attributes. Claire, whom I knew last year, too, made an excellent analogy in class about how form is like a Magic Eye (stereographic image) puzzle, although Alain kind of flipped that in his clarification of it. It's the reverse of Magic Eye because in those, you stare at it until the picture jumps out at you, but with art and formalism, you kind of have to look at it until the subject matter goes away and all you see are the lines and colors, movement, depth, texture, etc. etc. etc.
I also have to work out how I'm going to get to Portland to do one of my interviews. It's very stressful and I'm going to avoid thinking about it right now. Bad.
PS- I also drew a fairly cool (or so I think) picture of Mirax Terrik, a character from the early X-Wing series and one of my former online pseudonyms. I am very proud.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
