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poliphiloSad 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 07:32 pm (UTC)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!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 09:06 am (UTC)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.