Lines and Intersections . . .

Lines (from Music)


1.

"I had to dream awake" ("Dream Awake," The Frames, Burn the Maps).

I like the idea that dreaming (thinking outside the box, letting your mind wander, hoping) is a conduit to being awake (aware, alert, more alive).


2.

". . . I don't understand these people / Saying the hill's too steep / They talk and talk forever / But they just never climb" and the complementing lines " . . . I don't understand these people / Saying the world's asleep / Toss and turn forever / But no rest will they find" ("Star Star," The Frames, Dance the Devil).

Sometimes, I feel like I meditate, contemplate, think, and talk, but I forget to do the climbing, and therefore, I don't find the necessary rest. Isn't it interesting that you have to exert energy in order to have meaningful rest?

(I actually like the first part of this song the best. You should listen to it.)

Today, I climbed--literally--two hills. In the morning, I hope to climb another literal hill on my route towards a bagel and hot chocolate. I love hot chocolate, even in the summertime.


3.

"The simple things people over-complicate" and "Will you come with me and we'll be ourselves and walk into the light?" ("Giving Me Wings," The Frames, For the Birds).

How many of us over-complicate aspects of ourselves? (Olive does.) And isn't it so much more enjoyable (wonderful, glorious) when we feel safe enough to be authentically (and simply) ourselves? (Also, being simply ourselves doesn't mean that we're not complex. People will always be complex; they don't, however, need to be over-complicated. At least that's my opinion at the moment.)


4.

"Words fall through me / and always fool me"; "Moods that take me and erase me . . . " ("Falling Slowly," Glen Hansard (formerly, the Frames) & Marketa Irglova, The Swell Season).

Words are powerful--potentially beautiful, potentially destructive--with what they represent, misrepresent, convey, obfuscate, open, and occlude.


5.

"Cry alone and die alone" ("Drown Out," Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, The Swell Season). And this line must be combined with these lines: "All the lonely people / where do they all come from / all the lonely people / where do they all belong?" ("Eleanor Rigby," The Beatles, 1).

Aren't both songs pretty much saying the same thing? I wonder how many songs are about being alone?


Note: I focused on lines primarily from one artist for no other reason than that's who I'm listening to more than other artists these days.




Intersections (lines from music intersecting with art, which is comprised of, among other elements, lines)


1.

dreaming something awake

See Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory

Although Dali's watches seem to be sleeping, by painting the watches in this way, he's awakening our perspective (among other things).


2.

climbing so that we can have the best kind of peace

See Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night

True there are hills in this painting. True there are bodies that could be construed as stars (and the title of the song we're linking this to is "Star Star"). But what I like most is the swirling lines, the color, and the fact that the form of the steeple is echoed in the form of the shrub at the forefront of the painting.

And if you have no idea, still, while I'm connecting these two together, let me just say that I always hear the singer sing "steep" as "steeple." I like the idea that steep and steeple share so many letters; perhaps the hardest thing to climb towards is a metaphorical steeple.


3.

over-complicating ourselves and life

See Pablo Picasso's Guitar

You would think that Picasso overcomplicated things, right? But really, he just tried to break people and things down and show us all of their sides. He didn't add a single element or attribute that was unnecessary. Everything--people, life, flowers, guitars--is complex, certainly. Picasso understood that.


4.

the power of words and moods on all of us

See Alexander Calder's A Universe

What better way to represent mood than motion built out of line and color! Motion is a kind of music, the whisper of disturbing the air and changing space.

Sometimes, a mood feels like an entire universe and sometimes it feels like a planet in orbit in a much larger cosmos. Isn't it interesting, by the way, that cosmos is both big (the cosmos that contains worlds) and small (the cosmos flower that I so love)? (And isn't it interesting that in these images, the cosmos flower actually appears much larger than the little dots of the cosmos.) Well that's sort of like moods and words--they can be vast and they can be minute. But they always are.


5.

being alone

See Edward Hopper's Night Shadows

What is the central line (shadow) pointing to?

If the man keeps walking, he is going to intersect that line. And then, will he continue on along the sidewalk or will he turn and follow the shadow?

I want him to turn left and follow the shadow to where ever it will take him. If he turns, I am convinced, he's going to find someone to talk to, and then he will know that no one has to be alone.


Note: To find the artwork, I looked up some of the artists that I like in the Museum of Modern Art's database.


Everything in the Intersections section could be connected to literature, film, plays, stories from life, philosophies, and on and on. There's a whole world of connections that radiate out from here.

(And this post is way too long!)

--OeK