So I stumbled upon one of those things on a friend’s blog where you are supposed to reveal yourself through various means, this one through art. I thought it was silly until I stopped to consider that I could not readily answer the questions. So I decided to take is seriously and attempt to do so. This is what I came up with for each of the categories requested, plus a last one of my own.
Music: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata
This is just the first movement of a three-part sonata, all three parts of which I adore. As a piano teacher once told me, you have to play it like you are talking to you love on the phone long distance, trying to eak out every minute of the conversation together, but not letting it fall into silence.
Picture: Mr. Ferguson in the Dunes One of me in a black and white with my back to the camera in a top coat and fedora, standing in a sand dune with my beloved akita/shep mix dog sitting by my side and looking back at the camera. There’s no jpeg of that image, however, so this one will have to do.
It captures that moment of stillness and possibility, literally standing on the shores of (X), but self-contained.
Poem: Bright Star by John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.
(I think that poetry is best left uncommented on, so I will only say that I find it romantic and taoist in its desire for stedfast, unchangeable love.)
Phrase: “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
From the Little Prince. It reminds me that it is those things you do when you have “better things to do” that are the ones that are important to you. Pay attention to that. You may be surprised.
Clothing: The Black T-shirt
It nearly makes up my entire casual catalogue.
Place: Birch Tree Forest Helvetnjarvi National Park, Finland
Cool, breezy, solitude embodied.
The final item is one I added to the list. Piece of Art: To Kill A Mockingbird (both the book and the film)
Which is about doing the right thing for the right reasons in front of everybody, even if you are alone in your convictions. Which is not to say that embodies me so much as it is an inspiration to me. I fear the film that embodies me might not be all that attractive or entertaining, and will have to give that some more thought.
So, put me in a birch tree forest on the edge of a body of water, with a Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing (so let’s say on a full-moon night), with a copy of Mockingbird in my hand and “Bright Star” on my lips, and you’ve got me. I guess I’d have to print the Little Prince phrase on the black t-shirt I was wearing, or all this would have to take place while I had “something better to do”.
Yeah, that seems about right.
