Fashion Statement....Chapter 4
Jason and MedeaWords fail me.
Jason by Gustave Moreau, canvas, 1865.
posted by jm at 1:17 AM
Friday, October 06, 2006
Jason and MedeaWords fail me.
Jason by Gustave Moreau, canvas, 1865.
About Me
- Name: jm
I am a brilliant creation of the universe formed from the cosmic protoplasm sailing into eternity. I have two hands, two feet, a couple of great ears, and I'm clipping through life at a moderate pace; minding my p*s and q*s, crossing my t*s, dotting every i.
Links
Previous Posts
- On Key
- Fashion Statement....Chapter 3
- Neptune in the 7th House
- Warning!!
- The Traveler Returns....The Journey Goes On.
- My First CD?
- Berries For Breakfast
- Portals.....Chapter 2
- Exotic Imports
- A Moment Of Peace.
44 Comments:
"Words fail me."
Yeah....For example, when I was a little kid I couldn't figure out how the people depicted by the illustrations in the children's book of ancient Greek myths kept their skimpy clothes from falling down around their ankles -- especially while they were being chased by Pan, Apollo, Zeus or what have you -- or from blowing off in that strange breeze that, suspiciously more often than you'd think chance should predict, played demurely with their wrappings. I tried to pretend that it was just another magic trick those gods and goddesses had up their draperies. 'Cause, you know, buttons and safety pins probably hadn't invented yet. But somehow, I was not convinced.
Ha, ha, ha, ja Kadimiros, it is currous how those gaments stayed put...maybe magical control of wind, maybe they had magical contol of gravity too?
safety pins. they secretly invented safety pins. somehow that advanced technology was lost in the Middle Ages.
you could be right Casey.
I have a shawl pin. A long taperd piece of bone which is carved on the large end. It secures loosely woven or knitted fabric pretty well.
Of course ribbons and ties work too.
wouldn't you know it my connection dropped in transfer...jm you'll dump one of these and this one too?...i hope. Dail-up on crusty lines...they say i'm going to get FIOS next year, i can't even imagine what it must be lke. Imagine a phone conversation that doesn't end with me talking to empty space and someone trying to redial me...
FIOS?
I have cable.
FIOS = Fiber Optic Service
"maybe magical control of wind, maybe they had magical contol of gravity too?"
Could be why there was never a hair out of place!
I wonder who does their hair, anyway.
"safety pins. they secretly invented safety pins. somehow that advanced technology was lost in the Middle Ages."
LOL! Aha....That must be it.
Hmmm. "The origin of the safety pin dates back to the Mycenaeans during the 14th century B.C." (Wikipedia)
Yeah, those dratted dark ages. They forgot about baths then, too. And who knows what else.
jm you'll dump one of these and this one too?...i hope.
Done maaadham!
safety pins. they secretly invented safety pins.
Of course!
The origin of the safety pin dates back to the Mycenaeans during the 14th century B.C."
Our talking gold mine speaks again!
Yeah, those dratted dark ages. They forgot about baths then, too. And who knows what else.
HA HA! Those dratted things. At least in today's dark, fascist, torturous, 1984esque, totalitarian country the dictators shower their ample girths.
or from blowing off in that strange breeze that, suspiciously more often than you'd think chance should predict, played demurely with their wrappings.
All theatrical tricks, man. You wouldn't believe the inventiveness of the costume people and the suspicious wind is the doing of the stage directors. All very simple.
I suppose the diaphanous or almost nonexistent garments were necessary to reveal their perfect Greek physiques.
Probably glue.
I suppose the diaphanous or almost nonexistent garments were necessary to reveal their perfect Greek physiques.
uhmhum or at least Gustave Moreau's impression of the Greek physiques circa 1865, a Parisian. Wondering about that blonde hair. The argonauts were not Titans, all very curious.
Interesting story a bit much on the killing of brothers and children, Medea and Eris seem to have much in common.
Okay, this probably belongs on our previous topic, but I'm listening to Dr. Phil. (I know, he's INCREDIBLY annoying most of the time but today is interesting.) It's interesting because he's talking about helping children learn better and practical solutions for our failing schoolchildren -- which is a subject near and dear to my heart.
If you read my blog, you would see regular little paeans to Mozart. I've said it here before. I adore Mozart. When I was studying piano, I was all about Chopin. And I still love him dearly. But when Amadeus came out, I went nuts on Wolfie and hardly listenend to anything else for about ten years. A little Bach. Chopin. Rachmoninoff. Tschaikovsky. Yeah. But '80s popular music just bored me to tears.
And I've internalized Wolfie to a point that when I hear him, I tend to fall asleep instantly. What? you say. How is that good? Well, if you knew me IRL, you would see that I am a highly-strung, uptight, bouncing-off-the-ceiling hyperactive kind of mental thinker. So to relax me enough to put me in the sleep zone is a huge accomplishment. It's HARD for me to find those alpha waves -- or beta waves -- or theta waves. lol. Wolfie produces them in me instantaneously these days. It can get kind of annoying because I actually want to hear the music and zap! I'll be snoring logs.
So! back to Dr. Phil. And it turns out that music helps children learn. Children should do two things when getting ready to do their homework: 1) some kind of rhythmical body movement and 2) listen to music, preferably classical music. The first is probably for those kinetic learners. The second for the audio learners. Now, for the visual learners, perhaps we should make them look at beautiful pictures or photographs? What do you guys think?
The Mozart Effect -- it just goes on and on.
Okay, back to the fashion statement analysis.
Medea was something. One myth says that she used magic potions to help Jason get the Golden Fleece and they settled down together for 10 years when they got back.
He then deserted her for another and brought down the fury of her magical powers, as she killed his lover and her sons by him.
Alone and depressed. he lingered at Corinth until one day, as he sat in the shade of the Argo, a piece of rotten timber fell and crushed his skull.
Which goes to prove that looks aren't everything.
Gustav nust have had fun painting Jason's garment.:-)
I don't know about Eris. Too much too fast on her. Everybody trying to figure it out too soon.
I wonder if there are basic similarities among all the evil goddesses.
Music is part of fashion as it ends up. It seems the classical music of our time is discordant, arhythmical, and hard to take which might be an indication of the whole society's inability to learn right now. A possibility.
I never could figure out why graceful, melodic, harmonic, beautiful music is so denigrated now. Not taken seriously.
I'm an Erik Satie fan who took melody and reshaped it into unusal combinations but still kept it's beauty.
It's really interesting about Jason. He didn't seem to start out as a bad guy. A lot of brave heroic qualities. He was lovingly and wisely raised by Chiron, who might have given him the name, Jason, which means, "healer".
Don't know how he came to such a bad end. This is interesting to me in Greek mythology. How mixed they were in character.
Most come to an unfortunate end, but maybe that's man's way of trying to make them like us after all. Victims of fate.
"All theatrical tricks, man."
Oh, rats. The talking statues, too, I suppose. No wonder drama was big in ancient Greece.
Of course! The perfect genius connection. What we probably are failing to realize is that we are still caught up in the ancient drama. Or are we still in rehearsal. That damned director is getting on my nerves!
Bring in the greasepaint!
Oh yes jm, Erik Satie, swoon.
Truth is i am content with no music.
But there are times and only few will do. Erik Satie is one, Gymnopédies, sigh...1888 we are talking same era as Moreau the painter of the image on your blog.
I lived for nearly 30 years with a classical pianist, he once played with the symphony in SF. Still have a Chickering Salon Grand in the living room. What a shame i cannot play. Tried. Hopeless.
Truth is i am content with no music.
Me too tseka. I prefer being without. Big event in my life.
I put in some CDs a couple of days ago......nothing. Turned it off and went back to the new cherished silence. I think this is leading me to new frontiers.
Amazing what we learn daily. A pianist for a partner?
I'll tell ya, tseka. No need to play the grand. They are beautiful enough just to look at. And imagine the possibility.
I know just what you mean.
There are so few who will admit to this lack of desire for music. This is so refreshing. Sometimes I think the whole thing is elevated beyond the reality as if music will save us. It won't. It's pretty much temporary distraction. Nothing wrong but limited in scope.
Most of it actually annoys me now. Takes me places I don't want to go. I think I want to stay right here. Or something.
Maybe this time is leading me to the source of contentment. More and more I am leaning toward less sensory input.
Very interesting phase.
It's like music is an insect in my ear now.
Last night I had a moment of happiness and started singing You gotta have Heart
Entirely different. So I thought I would add the tune to my repertoire. I turned on the system and stared to work, but lo...immediately realized my error. So I went back to the spontaneous approach. Music as happenstance.
A pianist for a partner?
I'm not sure the answer to that. When i met him he was playing 6-8 hours a day. And one day shortly after i met him he just quit. The End. Years and years of practice and playing,(more than 20) done. I never really understood, but something about he had finally realized he would never be as good as he wanted. That piano stayed though.
Another amazing story.
Classical music is a bastardization in many ways. It's a torment to have to follow the composers' tortured attempts to cover it all and really not express much of anything after too many notes and too much effort. Lots of authority pleasing. Years of scales and every trick in the book lead many to disappointment. He might have been too good for that. It bleeds the imagination. Classical music is a prison. Trying too hard just like bebop jazz. The hacking violins racing to the end are particularly annoying. I feel like I've been set free when it stops. Some is OK, but not much in all honesty.
It's interesting that he stopped when you arrived. What do you think? What did he do after quitting?
Any astro specs of interest?
This story does intrigue me under the circumstances.
The whole question of what structures really bring us to self actualization is fascinating.
Most artists I know have limited schooling knowing its pitfalls. They get the technique they need then move right along to capturing the personal vision. Away from the experts.
So much of what people do is empty filling in of space. Whatever it is doesn't get done, anyway. It just moves to the next thing to do. Same anxiety.
I so disagree with that. Life without music, you might as well stop breathing.
I could not bear it.
You could take away every friend I have and the family too. But take away music and I would not want to live.
Music will always be around. Not to worry. Some desire it, some don't. I do but I'm taking a rest.:-)
Erik Satie is one, Gymnopédies, sigh...1888 we are talking same era as Moreau the painter of the image on your blog.
Thank you so much tseka. That's pretty amusing, the connection.
"Some desire it, some don't. I do but I'm taking a rest.:-)"
What if the need for outer quiet (when we experience that) is a crystalized manifestation of the need for periods of inner quiet? To use the inner senses, inner hearing, inner sight, inner sensing, and receive what they have to say?
Not that it's always the case when that happens. Just a thought that occured to me earlier this morning, after waking up from a restful night's sleep. :-)
"Discovered I had a reasonable talent for drawing, for one thing, but mainly fell in love with the meditative aspect of being in flow."
I've thought that it's like a spiritual practice. The exquisite coordination of the mind and body, heightening both inner and outer awareness at once.
"...I very clearly saw women gathering around a well, which is/was an ongoing dream image. I attempted to write what I saw. Bottom line, the poem that resulted blew everyone, including myself, out of the water, because it was so far and away different than anything I'd ever put down on paper before. And I had no idea where the words had come from."
Way excellent. :-) You investigated an less familiar territory and opened the doors of perception. You began to operate in a more integrated way.
Is the poem something you can share with us some time?
"I don't anymore, but this discussion has led me to ask myself why I don't do now what has worked before in the past?"
Sometimes we go on a journey and then return to what worked for us, you know? Maybe you had reasons for traveling.
Reminds me of that T.S. Eliot quote, you know the one. "And the end of all our exploring,/will be to arrive where we started,/and know the place for the first time."
Ah, the thrill of recognition.
Partly in connection with jm's question from the other thread, about obtaining information from different levels, I have been thinking that the tortoise and hare allegory is instructive. The hare in the story is a stop-and-go creature, representing among other things, the intellect. The tortoise also accepts the challenge of the goal. Unlike the hare, the tortoise for all its slowness is never still, but moves without wavering at a steady clip. It represents the steady application of will, the holding of focus and intention, the orderly prioritizing of desires. At an extreme, single-pointedness and laserlike attention that cuts through mental obstacles.
More broadly, what researchers call "effortful practice" is a major key to progressing in any area where we desire mastery. This has to do with the quality of one's efforts more than with the amount of time invested.
And then, another key is balancing and synchronizing energies, left/right brain hemispheres, masculine/feminine qualities, solar/lunar energy currents in yoga, etc.
If we are operating in a divided way, perhaps habitually identifying with one mode and completely rejecting the complementary mode, then it is much more difficult to get a glimpse from other parts of ourselves with which we've become unfamiliar. Personalities that hold very restrictive ideas about gender roles have more difficulties with creative problem solving than more flexible personalities.
I've been reading some things that a teacher of the Enneagram, Maheed Ali, said about personality growth. They seem to relate well to the above observations.
We're unlikely to lose our basic personalities, the uniqueness of ourselves. But, the habitual defensive postures of personality, typically acquired according to type, aren't essence. The personality's character can change. We can learn to extend ourselves, and become comfortable with things that we avoided before.
Let me share two quotes from Ali.
"I used to be shy and passive, and now I can be quite aggressive. I used to be more afraid of people, and now I enjoy them. I used to be very lazy, and now I'm very active. Even so, it's not like you work on the personality and then go on to something else. Personality obstacles are infinite, and you keep coming back to them."
"Love is just one of the aspects of essence. We don't want you just to be loving. If you have love but you have no will, your love will not be real. If you have will but no love, you will be powerful and strong but without any idea of real humanity. If you have love and will but no objective consciousness, then your love and will may be directed toward the wrong things. Only the development of all the qualities will enable us to become full, true human beings."
Lot to respond to as usual.
First. What if the need for outer quiet (when we experience that) is a crystalized manifestation of the need for periods of inner quiet?
That is it. I think I'm in that transition where the inner is catching up with the outer and then a new incorporated relationship with sound will emerge.
I used to be shy and passive, and now I can be quite aggressive. I used to be more afraid of people, and now I enjoy them. I used to be very lazy, and now I'm very active. Even so, it's not like you work on the personality and then go on to something else. Personality obstacles are infinite, and you keep coming back to them."
This is one of the main uses of the hard aspects of the astro chart. The obstacles reroute and cause the person to create new solutions. Application of conscious will. So by the end of the life, a person can have sculpted himself to a degree to his liking. His own creation. Especially the Ascendant.
"The whole question of what structures really bring us to self actualization is fascinating."
I remember we had to read the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled in a graphic design and advertising art course. In one chapter, he described two patients, one of who decided to leave childhood religion behind, and the other who embraced the family's forgotten religious tradition. Both became healthier persons as a result of their seemingly opposite directions.
That is fascinating Kad. It's some inner commitment and confidence that must make the difference.
There is a unique inner matrix, I think, that we try to bring to the surface as life progresses. The chart is one guideline, but limited.
It's almost as if we are meant to ultimately imitate ourselves. I wonder if anyone gets there.
"It's almost as if we are meant to ultimately imitate ourselves. I wonder if anyone gets there."
Hmm, it occurs to me that the word "imitate" could be replaced by a word of similar appearance but different meaning: "initiate", and the sentence would still make sense.
Yes. Create would work too.
Ooh, and "recreate."
Thought of that too. Actually we can do this an infinite number of times through our lives.
We are so plastic.
Ooh, thanks, that's a vivid portrait of life! You can just feel the energetic interactions of sky and earth, men and women, collaboration and struggle, and then it's all brought together in the fertile land.
Can you also see in the poem representations of your own creative processes and the flexible movement of consciousness?
The interplay of different levels of existence, with their creative give-and-take? The intuitive realm that lives alongside the physical world, the two of them sparking together with lightning inspiration or welling up with deep feelings from the ground of being?
Maybe the poem was describing what was happening to you.
"The mountain is a mountain. :-) "
Ha...no substitute for the freshness of direct experience.
"It's great to hear what you are seeing/hearing/feeling in the poem."
There's a nice symmetry going on in the poem. Sky and earth, men and women. Attractive forces building up a charge. Vitality. On one level, I think it does represent the burst of inspiration, deep wellsprings of creativity, and seeds for future growth. All of which you still have.
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