Pop

"I think the artists who aren't very good should become like everybody else so that people would like things that aren't very good. It's already happening."
— Andy Warhol

This week I got back into the MOOC swing, after a couple months' hiatus, with a course on Andy Warhol. The course is structured around the major themes that framed his life and art. After providing a brief introduction to pop art, the focus of week one is celebrity, and touched on topics such as the star system and the appropriation of images in the media. (I'll have more to say about this course in the weeks to come; as well, I'm set to see a Warhol exhibit at the museum this weekend.)

So it's an interesting coincidence that every morning on my way to work I pass through what is currently a portrait gallery of artists as children, and one of those children is Andy Warhol. The exhibit is Voix d'ailleurs, by Quebec artist Louis Boudreault. Already the course material has given me a new perspective on this collection.

Taken individually, the paintings are fairly nondescript, in a neutral palette, and subjects that are almost expressionless. As a collection, however, they fare somewhat better — to stand amid child-Picasso, child-Pollock, child-Kandinsky, child-Disney does in fact give pause for thought about the seeds of greatness.

These portraits recently replaced another set of Quebec icons as children, among them such greats as Maurice Richard and Emile Nelligan. Frankly, the Quebec set was more interesting, with a hairstyle or the turn of a collar readily evoking a different time and place. The collection of artists, on the other hand, has a bland uniformity, as if all art springs from the same place. To me this indicates that Boudreault is closer to his Quebec roots than to the artist community, perhaps a better Quebecker than he is an artist.

I think a lot my current self was present in my childhood self. What do you think: can you look at a child and see what they will become?

Egg, bacon, thing

I'm at my mom's. Here's an old school assignment we dug up.

*************

Egg Man
- from aged, yellowed lava — when world created & volcanoes erupted
- yellow slime slithered, hardened with white foam covering on outside
- form of egg — were coloured white, yellow, beige, brown
- rolled about, wobbled
- few were cracked on rock — died
- most had 8-10 distinctly brow cuts used as mouths
- became very sacred — worshipped
- held ceremonies each night around fire
- first people ever created

Bacon Man
- third people to survive
- were created later than Egg Man
- live volcanic lava came together
- lava stuck and became Bacon Man
- sizzled, slithered around ground
- worshiped sun greatly — not fire, idol of Egg Man
- had not but 1 mouth
- communicate with bubbles
- were killed once all bubbles were scraped

Thing Man
- were created shortly after Egg Man far, far away — on a different planet out of our universe
- nobody knows of its background before they came to planet of Egg & Bacon
- head resembled bird, body of human, limbs & tail of pig
- worshiped dark — were blinded by any type of light except their own light
- light was of gloomy-oomy glow
- Thing Man was noisy — squawked & squealed at all times
- hated the quiet

LEGEND
Once a long time ago, Egg Man wandered the earth. He came upon Bacon Man and they travelled together. Their ways disagreed with each other — so they fought. The fighting was rough. Many peoples were killed. Strangely enough, no sound came of the fighting. Thing Man (which had come to "Planet of Bacon & Egg" by strange means) had roamed half way across the earth & dirt to the sight of the battle. The quiet of the fighting killed half of the tribe of Thing Men. The others decided to do something about this lack of noise. The Thing Men squawked & screamed and made the Egg & Bacon Men suffer, for they hated noise. But Egg & Bacon Men fought on. Thing Men decided that the only way to get rid of the quiet was to get rid of the other peoples. So the Thing Men pounced upon the others, ate them, and then there was noise. So the Thing Men travelled back to their own planet in their own universe.

This planet came to be known as "Earth." Thing Man evolved into 3 different things: the heads into chickens, the limbs & tail into pigs, and the body into a human (strange, isn't it). The humans still eat dead Bacon & Eggs. The Eggs come from the chickens. The Bacon comes from dead pigs. Few people know of Egg, Bacon & Thing Man and if you don't believe they ever lived, go ahead and think so. If you think they didn't 'live' in the sense that would most properly be understood today, you're right. Egg, Bacon & Thing Man live in imagination and mind.

Day of Egg Man
Once a year on every March 21st Egg Men would celebrate the beginning of life. That is why to this day the "egg" is thought of as the symbol of life. Well anyway, the Day of Egg Man was to them the most important day of the year. On this day they would paint each other with bright colours to show their happiness and thanks to their gods.

I.A.K.

*************

Things I love about this essay:

• It goes from the first people to the third people. But who were the second? Why not present them chronologically? Suspense!
• "had not but 1 mouth" — Who writes like that? (Yeah, I know, I do.)
• So Bacon Man dies once he loses the ability to communicate...
• "gloomy-oomy"
• The noise. Oh, the noise, noise, noise, noise. I feel somewhat Grinch-like in my aversion to noise. I'm surprised to see it manifested so early. Or maybe the legend's message is anti-quiet, I dunno.
• How the narrator is suddenly inserted into the text (strange, isn't it).
• The Twilight Zone-y ending. I can just hear Rod Serling narrating the last few sentences of the Legend over the fade-out.

There's no date. It's printed, which makes me think it might be earlier, but I sign off using my middle initial, which puts me at grade 6 (a new school, so trying out a new identity), and 11 years old. In grade 7 we read Asimov's I, Robot, which should've influenced me to write something a little more mature. I can't imagine what the assignment actually was.

Childhood is a privilege

Ian McEwan is hit or miss with me. I've loved a couple of his books and hated a couple others, despite their reputations or promising descriptions. The Child in Time is a hit.

I deliberately stayed away from this book for years, because of its premise: a three-year-old child is snatched out from under her father at the supermarket.

I'm finally past, or at least at terms with, a lot of the anxieties of parenthood. Somehow my child has survived my parenting skills — she is healthy and happy and 9. I guess I feel she's too big, too much her own person, too fully present, to be stolen away when I'm not looking. Not that I'm not vigilant with regard to her safety, but after years of experience and practice I've relinquished some of the paralyzingly all-consuming worry — we've made it this far, we have some perspective, and some measure of control.

Stephen Lewis, on the other hand, has undergone a traumatic event, is not in control, and has trouble getting a grip.

Then he returned to the window. Traffic, steady drizzle, shoppers waiting patiently at the crossing — it was a wonder that there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none at all.

As you can well imagine, the event inevitably had a negative impact on his marriage too.

Fittingly, Stephen is a writer of children's books (rather accidently — he'd intended his first novel as serious literature for grown-ups) and also sits on a committee, the Official Commission on Child Care, which gives rise to some serious reflection on the nature of childhood — what it is he'd missed in his upbringing, what he's missing out on as a parent in the absence of a child, and the state that a disturbed friend of his is regressing to.

"It was not always the case that a large minority comprising the weakest memebers of society wore special clothes, were freed from the routines of work and of many constraints on their behavior, and were able to devote much of their time to play. It should be remembered that childhood is not a natural occurrence. There was a time when children were treated like small adults. Childhood is an invention, a social construct, made possible by society as it increased in sophistication and resource. Above all, childhood is a privilege. No child as it grows older should be allowed to forget that its parents, as embodiments of society, are the ones who grant this privilege, and do so at their own expense."

— from The Authorized Child-Care Handbook, HMSO

The other thing this book reflects on (quite obviously — note the title) is time — the memory of it, the physics of it, and the weird experience of it. For example, there's a car accident, and the seconds play out in slow motion — we've all had experiences like this.

There are in fact some other wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey moments in this novel that make the whole thing something other a depressing exercise in stark and emotional realism.

Lucky for us, Stephen is friends with a theoretical physicist who imposes some sanity and order on his experiences but also, as scientists are wont to do, remains curiously detached. Like, to understand a thing fully, you have to stand outside of it. And if you're in it, you've no hope of grasping it.

[Helena's asking me right now what I'm writing about, so we're talking about time and how summer lasts forever when you're a kid and she's so bored.]

Beyond its gut-wrenching premise, The Child in Time feels emotionally true, and as it progresses it reveals rich and subtle layers of meaning. I recommend it, but not for new parents.

The furious animation of children

The differences among the children were startling, and yet, in the end, their faces mingled. Above all, the tapes revealed the furious animation of children, the fact that when conscious they rarely stop moving. A simple walk down the block included waving, hopping, skipping, twirling, and multiple pauses to examine a piece of litter, pet a dog, or jump up and walk along a cement barrier or low fence. In a schoolyard or playground, they jostled, punched, elbowed, kicked, poked, patted, hugged, pinched, tugged, yelled, laughed, chanted, and sang, and while I watched them, I said to myself that growing up really means slowing down.

— from What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt.