René and Georgette Magritte and their dog after the war
Last night I had this oddest of dreams.
I was back at my parents’ old apartment, at the kitchen, there were chocolate shavings all over the table and I was picking them up, one at a time, and eating. My father was there too and he was laughing because he’d just pulled this prank on me, something to do with two rolls of bread, a bum asking for food, and a halberd shaped like a fleur-de-lis. But anyway.
I went to the living room where there is, to this day, even in their new place, this picture in heavy lead pencil of a boy riding a tricycle- and it’s the creepiest thing, the boy has a big head like a bubble and eyes so bright, the whole ensemble screams “Damien” at you, I think, something like that. I have no idea who’s the author, probably some unknown local 1970s wannabe pushing for an art nouveau thing; but in the dream somebody had etched an arrow in thick black pencil, maybe charcoal, coming from the kid and pointing to a name, also in pencil besides the boy’s head, somebody had written Magritte beneath the glass frame.
(Which is kind of odd because you’re not supposed to be able to read stuff in your dreams, you know that? That’s a sure-fire way to know you’re dreaming, if you can’t read something before you.)
“I had no idea this was a Magritte drawing,” I told my father.
“It is,” he said. “I’ve just found out. Isn’t that strange?”
“You know, I really don’t like this kid.”
“What’s not to like?,” he asked. “It’s Magritte.”
“I don’t know. It’s a little too creepy for me.”
“Well, that junk you got hanging over your bed is creepy too.”
“C’mon, it’s not creepy,” I said with a smile. “It’s the Flash!”
“Oh it’s creepy enough, trust me.”
I thought for an instant then went on in mocking, “Oh look at me, I’m this big highbrow art-lover, I’m such a straight-shooter for the classics, I can’t stand the kitsch and the new and I absolutely loathe pop-art.”
“Funny. But it’s not pop-art, it’s a comic book character.”
“Roy Lichtenstein based his stuff on war-themed comic books from DC Comics, which publishes The Flash too.”
“Now you’re making this up,” said my father, ever the skeptic.
“Oh but I’m not,” I replied with this devilish grin. “Are you calling my bluff? I am smarter than you are, you know that.”
“You think you are smarter than everybody else.”
“So it goes…”
Then I woke up with the alarm clock going off, it was 5:30am and I left my bed and headed for my corn flakes.
And here’s the creepiest bit- during the whole dream sequence there was this Pal Simon song in the background… what is it with all the recent Paul Simon references by the way?... it was playing ”René and Georgette Magritte and their dog after the war”.
You know, thinking about it I think the Boston Legal re-run mentioned René Magritte this weekend- Guy must’ve stuck to the back of my head or something- They had this plot which had to do this little girl’s admiration of a painting by Magritte, I think it is called the The Pipe or something like that, you know, that one which has “This is not a pipe” written underneath the figure, then the girl painted her own version of it, which said, "This is not a smile", because she couldn't smile herself.
Me, I’m not really into paintings and art, not really, to the point that whenever you hear me going with the “Impressionism was devised solely to fill empty spots at the wall at the painter’s dentist” routine, it’s probably because I’m coasting my way out of an art conversation because, well, I probably cannot hold my own on a decent art conversation.
Maybe it’s a good thing girls are pretty much clueless when it comes to art and all brainy girls have long since become extinct. Makes my job way easier.
…But there’s this Magritte painting that I saw somewhere when I was kid, I think it was somewhere here and they had brought in all these Magritte paintings and they were showing them in the same room as Andy Warhol’s, and goddamn it, any kid with half a sense will steer the hell away from stuff like, Torso.
-So half-scared of the counterculture bogeyman I wandered far and astray and ended up before Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumières- the Empire of Light, and there was this inherent melancholy either in me or all over the painting and I kept thinking of… and seems to me now that every story ends in the same punchline… girl I’d known during the past summer, I was at the beach at a friend’s place, etc. You know how it goes, we’ve all been there, meeting girls at the beach, being idyllic-ly 14 years old, etc.
So you have this painting which in my head was like a house at the beach (no beach in the painting per se, by the way) and there’s this lamp-post on breaking through the darkness, and the light’s on as well inside a room on the second floor, it was very 14-year-old-ish, like the girl leaving the light on for me, you know?
I cannot for the life of me recall her name, but she did have her hair dyed red (it was such a lousy job but who was I to say?), and she had a silver ankh hanging from her neck on a rather thick black cord.
Oh well.
Kids do dig the surreal and the oneiric.
And girls.
I was back at my parents’ old apartment, at the kitchen, there were chocolate shavings all over the table and I was picking them up, one at a time, and eating. My father was there too and he was laughing because he’d just pulled this prank on me, something to do with two rolls of bread, a bum asking for food, and a halberd shaped like a fleur-de-lis. But anyway.
I went to the living room where there is, to this day, even in their new place, this picture in heavy lead pencil of a boy riding a tricycle- and it’s the creepiest thing, the boy has a big head like a bubble and eyes so bright, the whole ensemble screams “Damien” at you, I think, something like that. I have no idea who’s the author, probably some unknown local 1970s wannabe pushing for an art nouveau thing; but in the dream somebody had etched an arrow in thick black pencil, maybe charcoal, coming from the kid and pointing to a name, also in pencil besides the boy’s head, somebody had written Magritte beneath the glass frame.
(Which is kind of odd because you’re not supposed to be able to read stuff in your dreams, you know that? That’s a sure-fire way to know you’re dreaming, if you can’t read something before you.)
“I had no idea this was a Magritte drawing,” I told my father.
“It is,” he said. “I’ve just found out. Isn’t that strange?”
“You know, I really don’t like this kid.”
“What’s not to like?,” he asked. “It’s Magritte.”
“I don’t know. It’s a little too creepy for me.”
“Well, that junk you got hanging over your bed is creepy too.”
“C’mon, it’s not creepy,” I said with a smile. “It’s the Flash!”
“Oh it’s creepy enough, trust me.”
I thought for an instant then went on in mocking, “Oh look at me, I’m this big highbrow art-lover, I’m such a straight-shooter for the classics, I can’t stand the kitsch and the new and I absolutely loathe pop-art.”
“Funny. But it’s not pop-art, it’s a comic book character.”
“Roy Lichtenstein based his stuff on war-themed comic books from DC Comics, which publishes The Flash too.”
“Now you’re making this up,” said my father, ever the skeptic.
“Oh but I’m not,” I replied with this devilish grin. “Are you calling my bluff? I am smarter than you are, you know that.”
“You think you are smarter than everybody else.”
“So it goes…”
Then I woke up with the alarm clock going off, it was 5:30am and I left my bed and headed for my corn flakes.
And here’s the creepiest bit- during the whole dream sequence there was this Pal Simon song in the background… what is it with all the recent Paul Simon references by the way?... it was playing ”René and Georgette Magritte and their dog after the war”.
You know, thinking about it I think the Boston Legal re-run mentioned René Magritte this weekend- Guy must’ve stuck to the back of my head or something- They had this plot which had to do this little girl’s admiration of a painting by Magritte, I think it is called the The Pipe or something like that, you know, that one which has “This is not a pipe” written underneath the figure, then the girl painted her own version of it, which said, "This is not a smile", because she couldn't smile herself.
Me, I’m not really into paintings and art, not really, to the point that whenever you hear me going with the “Impressionism was devised solely to fill empty spots at the wall at the painter’s dentist” routine, it’s probably because I’m coasting my way out of an art conversation because, well, I probably cannot hold my own on a decent art conversation.
Maybe it’s a good thing girls are pretty much clueless when it comes to art and all brainy girls have long since become extinct. Makes my job way easier.
…But there’s this Magritte painting that I saw somewhere when I was kid, I think it was somewhere here and they had brought in all these Magritte paintings and they were showing them in the same room as Andy Warhol’s, and goddamn it, any kid with half a sense will steer the hell away from stuff like, Torso.
-So half-scared of the counterculture bogeyman I wandered far and astray and ended up before Magritte’s L’Empire des Lumières- the Empire of Light, and there was this inherent melancholy either in me or all over the painting and I kept thinking of… and seems to me now that every story ends in the same punchline… girl I’d known during the past summer, I was at the beach at a friend’s place, etc. You know how it goes, we’ve all been there, meeting girls at the beach, being idyllic-ly 14 years old, etc.
So you have this painting which in my head was like a house at the beach (no beach in the painting per se, by the way) and there’s this lamp-post on breaking through the darkness, and the light’s on as well inside a room on the second floor, it was very 14-year-old-ish, like the girl leaving the light on for me, you know?
I cannot for the life of me recall her name, but she did have her hair dyed red (it was such a lousy job but who was I to say?), and she had a silver ankh hanging from her neck on a rather thick black cord.
Oh well.
Kids do dig the surreal and the oneiric.
And girls.
posted by 186282mps at 8:36 AM
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