Bubbles

[poliphilo]

Sad thoughts are such fun. No really they are. Especially thoughts of death. 

Why else would one be a goth? Or watch autopsies on TV? Or fetishize Heath Ledger's Joker?

Death absolves us of responsibility.  Death stops the pain.  Death is the comforter.

I have four little pots of bubble mixture lined up on my work station. Bubbles are symbols of mortality. 

Poussin's Dance To The Music of Time is a 17th century Vanitas painting. It's all about the brevity of human life and the vanity of human wishes. The dancers represent the seasons- whirling round so fast. And check out the miserable little kid in the bottom left hand corner with the bubble pipe.

. 

My pots of bubble mixture were handed out at weddings. They're in the shape of  a three-tiered wedding cake with a heart on  top. Ha!

If I'm feeling discouraged I take time out to blow bubbles. It never fails to cheer me up.

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

Blowing bubbles is a great comfort in my life.
I have a cupboard full of equipment and have found that the Tesco tiny pots, that you buy as children's party favours, are the best!
x

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love the icon!

I haven't been to Tesco's in a while. Maybe this warrants a visit!

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Interesting points about death, especially the point about goths. I've met many, and whilst they may talk of looking forward to death, I've not actually come across one who has slashed their wrists yet. Its a way of making yourself appear cool and interesting without having to actually do anything. Or a way of trying to put yourself beyond the normal attention-seeking boundaries of "nobody understand me."

As for the fetishising of Heath Ledger's joker - this is part of the reason I'm a bit leery of going to see the Dark Knight. I can't help but wonder how many of the audience will be ambulance-chasers.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The goths I've known have all been quite lively people.

Heath Ledger's Joker is a 21st century version of the capering skeleton of the medieval danse macabre. The fact that he was dead before the film came out takes things to a whole other level of weird.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

one other thing - Death is a great equalizer. Everyone dies, and no matter what is said, everyone dies alone.

I've always liked blowing bubbles, I have what we call 'bubble soap' in places all over my home. Maybe I should get them out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. As poets have always delighted in pointing out, Julius Caesar is just as dead as every other dead person.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's one of my very favourite Poussins.

For some reason he's well represented in British collections. I guess he appealed to the classical taste of 17th and 18th century British aristos. The National Gallery has several masterpieces. This one happens to be in London's very wonderful Wallace Collection.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

1. Just what, exactly, is that old man angel leaning his lyre against?
2. How come the only man is winter?
3. Don't you love how drapery and clothing acts independently of bodies in these paintings?
4. How are those garlands staying on the sloping shoulders of Janus?
5. Summer is doing the Hokey Pokey.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Very good questions.....

I'm particularly curious about #2. With an artist like Poussin you feel there ought to be some very good, esoteric reason for the gender imbalance, but I'm afraid it may simply be that these dancers were stock figures from his sketchbook and he pasted them in here- without too much thought- simply because they (sort of) fitted.

Enough, already!

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Both you and Clytemnestra have said what I have been thinking ever since the hype began about Ledger and "The Dark Knight". There certainly does seem to be a cult of the bizarre and the eerie arising these days. This really goes beyond our age old fascination with "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" B-movies. I, for one, have no plans and no desire to see the latest "Batman". I am just enough old fashioned that I expect my superheroes to fight for "truth, justice and the (name your country)way" without encountering anything too bloody or horrifying. I opt for the kinder, gentler approach of yesteryear.

Re: Enough, already!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I decided a while back that I'm not the target audience for any Hollywood blockbuster. The Dark Knight interests me as a cultural phenomenon, but I have very little wish to see it.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

This conversation awakens the Jungian in me.

Bubbles (like spheres and circles) are symbols of completeness -- both of wholeness and of coming back full circle. Like the four seasons. Like the horizon. God and Jesus are often portrayed in circles or spheres to illustrate their wholeness (in Poussin's painting we see Jesus, or maybe an angel, in a circle above). Jesus really did do the wholeness and coming back full circle thing - he rose from the dead! Talk about full circle!

James Hillman (a famous American Jungian) in _Suicide and the Soul_ interprets suicide as a drive for the next step in our soul's development -- we would like to finish this existence and go on to the next. Thus, to Hillman, suicide (and being fascinated with death and the morbid) is not a negative and destructive urge, but an urge for our soul's growth. The problem with suicide, to Hillman, is that we interpret these urges literally and not transcendentally: we want to actually kill our bodies when we should be thinking about killing our egos.

If you follow this reasoning, goth (in whatever incarnation - 1960s Hammer films e.g.) is not a fascination with death but a fascination with the next step.

Which leads me to an important insight about Jung and the 21st century...





What would Jung be doing if he was alive right now?




Clawing at the inside of his coffin!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It won't be Jesus. This is a thoroughly pagan painting. It'll be Apollo or Hyperion- either way, a sun god. Poussin did Christian paintings and he did pagan paintings, but he never mixed up his mythologies.

That's an intriguing point about suicide. I don't think its the whole truth, but I can relate to what he's saying about wanting to move on.

As for Jung- I'm going to have to pass that one on.

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

I was a bit distracted by the baby on the right who looks at first glance to be eyeing up a half of Guinness!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah yes!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Here's my grandson at two years old, chasing a giant rainbow-colored bubble. That's my son behind him, the bubble-maker.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a marvellous bubble.

There was a guy with a bubble maker at the Oldham carnival the other week. I tried to get photos but the bubbles just fleeted away too fast.