Towards Disappearance

What a wonderful title. In this painting it does seem as if a person is disappearing.

My view starts in the center and makes out the shape of a man’s leg, his torso removed and the side features of his head. He was sitting maybe, and then his body sublimely began breaking apart and defaulting back to primary colors; until it reached the ultimate primary color, the blank space known as white.

His shapes simply floats up, as if they have lost their weight and gravity can no longer hold him. The simple white reminds me of a nirvana-like state of final oblivion where total disappearance is so unfathomable yet true. I want there to be more than white but cannot put anything on the space. Everything in the painting fades and divides apart.

The cell-like structures give it an organic feel, a reminder of cell-division and the inevitable end that process comes to. Fatalistically, this painting is about the abstract becoming concrete, the concrete becoming abstract. It is like an idea.

Ultimately, it’s about everything towards disappearance.

[This painting is Titled Toward Disappearance (1957), by Sam Francis. This painting can be viewed at LACMA in Los Angeles.]

Bohemian Rhapsody

What is Queen saying in this song? I try to imagine what they mean by a poor boy and his struggle to save himself from some “horrible monstrosity”. Follow me as I read through and make my attempt at seeing what this epic story is about.

Is this the real life-

Is this just fantasy-

What is meant by these opening lines? Perhaps our real lives are blurred by the perceptions we have towards them. The world is very much real, but it is us that give it meaning. If we live by some “fantasy” then we distort it’s reality to fit how we see it. It’s as if the poor boy singing sees his life as some opera involving epic stakes. He adds fantasy into his own life.

Caught in a landslide-

No escape from reality-

Open your eyes

Look up to the skies and see-

I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy-

Because I’m easy come, easy go,

A little high, little low,

Anyway the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me,

To me

Who is this poor boy? The poor boy is the one imagining himself as poor in his fantasy. I think he knows he’s exaggerating some issue in his life, and because he is aware that he’s exaggerating he also knows that it’s a fantasy that he can as easily involve himself as detach himself from as well; this idea goes back to his questioning of reality in the opening lines.

Mama, just killed a man,

Put a gun against his head,

Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead,

Mama, life had just begun,

But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away-

What I see in this song is a boy who has done something so criminal in his own mind that his guilt confuses his reality, a reality which might not see whatever he did capitally wrong. He is wrestling with his thoughts over something he did that causes him so much guilt — so much guilt that it causes him to question his reality — and yet he can see that it’s only himself that is making his life more of a fantasy than it really is.

Mama ooo,

Didn’t mean to make you cry-

If I’m not back again this time tomorrow-

Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters-

Too late, my time has come,

Sends shivers down my spine-

Body’s aching all the time,

Goodbye everybody— I’ve got to go—

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth—

Mama ooo- (any way the wind blows)

I don’t want to die,

I sometimes wish Id never been born at all—

He is frightened and calls upon his mother, the one who gave him life, in order that she may give him a new life again. He is afraid of death, and knows that he has caused his mother a great pain with the life that was given him, that also makes him wish he was never born at all. There is also some truth that he has to face; a truth about himself that reveals his own corruption to everyone, it’s a trail of his entire self.

I see a little silhouetto of a man,

Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango—

Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me—

Galileo, galileo,

Galileo, galileo

Galileo, figaro-magnifico—

But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me—

He’s just a poor boy from a poor family—

Spare him his life from this monstrosity—

Easy come easy go — will you let me go—

Bismillah! no- we will not let you go- let him go—

Bismillah! we will not let you go — let him go

Bismillah! we will not let you go — let me go

Will not let you go — let me go

Will not let you go — let me go

No,no,no,no,no,no,no —

Mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go —

Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me —

He summons images of heaven and hell. Thunderbolts and lightning explain the wrath of a just God, while later on he fears “Beelzebub has a devil put aside” for him. He is afraid of both. He is just a poor boy, a mortal, in some epic battle for the soul between the greatest good and evil. For this reason, what is more important whether he has really killed anyone, is that he has committed a sin that shakes his conscience, his perception of reality, his very soul to trembling?

Whatever he has done haunts him and causes him guilt. But his excuse, his plea, is that he is only a “poor boy and nobody loves me” and that he’s “easy come easy go- will you let me go.” He is calling upon us to sympathize with him by saying he is not really an evil but someone agreeable. This is confusing because earlier he explains he needs no sympathy. Why is this? because he knows he’s guilty. That is the epic tragedy of this song. A young boy begs for his life, a life he has murdered himself by his own sin. He calls upon his mother, letting us know that if he is taken away, his mother is the one that will be punished by his death.

He is trying to find supporters, and succeeds as the song progresses and we hear a chorus singing “let him go” while another chorus sings “Bismillah! we will not let you go.” Now the battle has divided society on the trial of this one poor boy.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye—

So you think you can love me and leave me to die—

Oh baby—can’t do this to me baby—

Just gotta get out—just gotta get right outta here—

And though the boy is wrestling within himself with his own guilt, knowing that he has committed a sin but that it was a mistake of youth, he knows he is a good person inside. He knows he did something he didn’t mean to do— one bad choice. So he rebels. With all the madness around him, the judgments on him, and accusers ready to send him to an unsympathetic death he questions their authority over him, a poor boy questioning gods and society, and he realizes he has “just gotta get out- just gotta get right outta here.”

Nothing really matters,

Anyone can see,

Nothing really matters- nothing really matters to me,

That’s when he realizes the truth of reality; it’s a fantasy where deities of good and evil, and the uncaring powers of society only judge and jail him, stone him and spit in his eye, love him and leave him to die. It’s a fantasy where nothing really matters. But he realizes that the fantasy does not really matter. Once he gets out of it he sees the fantasy he involved himself in. And when he realizes it’s a fantasy it doesn’t really matter to him, not his crime, nor his fear. He sees real life for what it is:

Any way the wind blows…

Bohemian Rhapsody Music Video

Noire et Blanche

Even though I’ve come to realize that using the term “beautiful” is such a weak expression, I find this picture to be just so beautiful to me.

It’s all her features; her diminutive and conspicuous lips that look like the beginning of an ink-blotched cursive word on some piece of declaration; her almost translucent yet ambiguous nose recognizable only by the shadows it sets; her faded eyes so mesmerizing they look like mountains spinning sideways in a dream; and her thin yet dimensioned brows adding more texture to her otherwise phantasmal face; finally, her raven silk hair as if it were tightened like dark-steel wires behind her bare neck.

To add to this, she seems as if she is almost swallowed by the shadow she makes. In comparison she is as mysterious as that mask she holds like two sides of a reverse imagine. The opposite and similar side of each other.

I can’t tell you why I like this picture so much, it’s just so beautiful to me.

I want to thank the good friends who sent me this picture in the form of a postcard. Ever since, I have been using it as a bookmark and getting the chance to admire it on a daily basis.