Tube Worms

Tube Worms

(Illustration: Dante and Virgil entering Hell, by William Blake)

Home from work I flip through the channels,
War movies about Vietnam and World War Two (John Wayne),
And Tsunamis and Tornados on National Geographic…
I settle on the Tsunamis and Tornados.

I could probably now never again see a shootemup movie and I wouldn’t miss them,
I’m just at that age I guess, unlike when young and a kid when shootemups seem the things to see. Now they just seem kindof off. Maybe it’s something like hunting, some people like to hunt, others never pursue it. I don’t hunt, and hunting for sport seems kindof off.

I like sports though, I don’t think there’s a game with a ball that I haven’t played. And I have a little bit above average knack for them, anymore and I probably been able to play professional sports.

Kill Bill was on this morning, and Tarantinos movies are disturbing. In a way they are art movies about the stock scenes in movies…an Ekphrasis too.

There’s this movie, Young Guns, which I never had any compulsion to see, but I watched it one night, yet another story of Billy the Kid , and thought, it’s a bit exaggerated! But I wikipediaied Billy the Kid and found that nearly every shootemup scene was based substantially on what really happened. Now, it’s Hollywood hyped with the sountrack, goodlooking actors, and pistols that never run out of bullets, but it was historical.

I have that sense with Kill Bill, again I watched it with grim curiosity, having heard so much about it, and not long ago seen Pulp Fiction, which has the same sense to it, and the sense is that it is based on actual sense—things really do happen like the scenes in the movie, however hyped they are by the soundtrack, goodlooking actors, and pistols that never run out of bullets!! “Like a Nicaraguan massacre…”

But I’m not going do a Tarantino like Ekphrasis with this blog. It is an art blog on the scenes in the media, but I’m going to have some limits, follow the guidelines set forth by Horace in his Ars Poetica. LetmeseeifIcanget the pertinent bits….

Quote

The business of the drama must appearIn action or description.

What we hear,

With weaker passion will affect the heart,

Than when the faithful eye beholds the part.

But yet let nothing on the stage be brought

Which better should behind the scenes be wrought;

Nor force th' unwilling audience to behold

What may with grace and eloquence be told.

Let not Medea, with unnatural rage,

Slaughter her mangled infants on the stage;

Nor Atreus his nefarious feast prepare,

Nor Cadmus roll a snake, nor Progne wing the air;

For while upon such monstrous scenes we gaze,

They shock our faith, our indignation raise.

Horace

End quote

No one seems to get indignant 'bought much anymore!!

So, the day to day frightful things in the news, will be in this blog “off stage”.

Credit Tarantino with his exaggeration at getting at a depiction of things as they are. Picasso's “ekphrasis”, Guernica, of the 1937 bombings in Spain, did the same, and a replica hangs in the UN foyer.

(This goes here: from wiki

quote

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. Commissioned and donated by Nelson Rockefeller, it is not quite as monochromatic as the original, using several shades of brown. On February 5, 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq. [9]

end quote)

The painting has lore...

It’s a strange time, but they all seem to have had their own strangeness.

A poem…

The Televised Tale
…Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" These words in sombre colour I beheld Written upon the summit of a gate; Whence I: "Their sense is, Master, hard to me!"
Dante translated by Longfellow

Well, if I too had Virgil to listen to on my hikes, that would be fine,
But Dante, while the scenery hereabouts has been called hellish,
It is for the most part divine.

Oh, I could tell you and Virgil another long narration,
The comedic televised tale of my time,
An innovation to make pale Old Hell’s population.

DolphinWords
DavidDavid
Yosemite
Feb. 17, 2007


Now, the strange creatures under the sea growing near a fumarole is on the tube…
Tube Worms….”the longest living animals on the earth”.

I’m not sure if they meant agewise, or just length! Age it is…200 years and more.

DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 27, 2007