Well-Dressed

Episode One Hundred Ninety Nine: Well-Dressed.
In which we toot the cricket's horn.

1 comment:

  1. Planned strip thrown out, again, due to random circumstance. In this case, on a Sunday morning I came across Wallace Stevens' 'The Well Dressed Man With A Beard,' from his collection 'Harmonium', 1923. Read out of context - is not everything out of context from here on out? - I take what I can, and I keep what sticks.

    Here, it's an echo of the mind's habitual denial, and a repetitive habitual practice in the face of that denial, a seeking for a way through the denial: one thing, one tiny thing, no larger than a cricket's horn, a thing that itself somehow sticks, and eventually dissolves the mind's denial.

    'Cricket's Horn' meant, I think, as a cricket's antennae, but I had read it to be a tiny, insignificant sound; a cricket raising a tiny trumpet in a battle cry. The image of such a tiny sound, resonating in the just the right way, falling on ears that have finally come around to being able to hear, and subsequently effecting a life-changing process... Even if this is a misinterpretation of Steven's intent, it is still a poignant image.

    Stevens' poem is mystical and - I think - momentous. My take on it here, of course, a reiteration of futility.

    My take is a turning back onto itself: it starts with my son's (years old, now) drawing with a slightly age-inappropriate sentiment, and moves onto the daily reiteration - a yoga practice - that is the search for the liberating thought. Then into an appealing close-up of a frame from Steve Roper and Mike Nomad illustrator William Overgard (from the 70's, echoing a growing sentiment of faith). Only to drop back down into madness: a partial image from Sandy Skoglund's (1980?) installation Radioactive Cats.

    The cycle, an attempt to release the mind from the repetition of 'I am corrupted' through the strength of a thought, the promise of growth, only to find the mind overrun with a feral herd. The mind an old man, face to the wall, in a dark room, surrounded by swarming cats.

    The qualities of texture satisfying in this strip - Stevens' poem coming across as pasted in and each frame holding its own style. I am happy with it. And the final frame - something about the drawing style really worked.

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