Bits And Pieces

1. Yesterday's tutorial was fun. Mainly we sat around and looked at reproductions of landscape paintings and tried to classify them according to the 18th century categories of "the beautiful"," the sublime" and "the picturesque". 

2.  I see Peter O'Toole is likely to be nominated for an Oscar. I hope he wins. I spotted him on a train once about ten years ago.  He was sitting in a corner drinking Coca Cola and hiding behind the Times. He looked frail even then. I pretended I hadn't seen  him.

3. It's my birthday. They said it might snow, but it hasn't yet. I'm 56.



4. Here's a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. It isn't "beautiful" because the forms are too rugged. And it's too far removed from the norms of 18th century landscape painting to be called "picturesque". So I guess we'll have to settle for "sublime". 

Brokeback Mountain

Those poor boys, they never had a chance.

But of course they did. All they had to do was get into one of those trucks of theirs and drive east.

Only the East didn't exist for them. They didn't know it was there. 

They belonged to the land and the land they belonged to was grand

And empty and bleak and imprisoning.

Landscape as fate.

A landscape untouched by time. 

The sideburns lengthened, the tunes on the juke-box altered, nothing else changed.

The elders like grey ghosts, their word still law.  "I'll tell you one thing. We have a family plot; he's going into it."

Jack travelled in a wider circle than Ennis; he could even bring himself to cross into Mexico.  But  Ennis, poor Ennis, was shackled to the one place.

The tragedy of a terribly, terribly limited man.

A man who couldn't live for fear of dying.

I was weepy for hours afterwards.