Tag Archives: art

Rambling on: Tlaloc

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Here’s to the bloody gods, the demanding gods, the gods that were forgotten only to be resurrected.

One of these: Tlaloc.

Reading Juan Villoro’s book Horizontal Vertigo, his ode to his hometown of Mexico City, he recounts the tale of the statue of the Aztec deity called Tlaloc. The statue, which sits in the city’s Chapultepec Park, was not commissioned but was unearthed in the late 1800s in a nearby state by engineers digging an irrigation canal. Experts of some sort deemed this half completed statue to be a representation of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain and fertility.

I will take their word for it (although Villoro disputes that this is indeed Tlaloc).

In 1963 the hulking statue (23 feet high) was brought to Mexico City and planted in the middle of a man-made lake in the park. Arriving during the dry season, Tlaloc brought with him rain, the heaviest rain the city had seen in some time. but Tlaloc didn’t demand his usual price for rain: blood. The ancient Aztecs didn’t just offer their prayers to Tlaloc, they offered the blood of their children–human sacrifice in exchange for the waters of life.

Knowing this grisly history adds to what I see when I look at Tlaloc. And what do I see with my untrained eye? I see a god stunted. He is broken. No eyes to see. No arms to embrace with. No legs to run with. His mouth, two rows of holes, are passive and useless.

On one hand I see a monster, a brutal thing that could crush the earth and any who would dare defy him. I picture the blood of children pouring down his face and dripping down the holes into his hungry mouth.

But I also see a thing lost to time. A broken god. A useless deity. Maybe his subjects tired of feeding him their children. They slaughtered his priests. They scaled his heights and hacked his eyes out to blind him and smashed his limbs to hobble him. Then they toppled him from his altar and buried him deep within the earth.

This recovered god is just a fraction of what he once was. He won’t get the blood he craves. Instead he sits in a park for tourists to gawk at.

He’s a once mighty god, humbled.

(image credit: JAONTIVERIS/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Rambling on: Malgre Tout

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I’ve never been to Mexico City. A night in Juarez over the border from El Paso (I remember a scorpion climbing the wall of the bedroom) was the closest I got. I want to go. Someday. Soon, maybe. A friend of mine who’s been to Mexico City loaned me a book, Horizontal Vertigo, a translation of the writer Juan Villoro’s life in that city. I’m inching through it. I think I’ll get a short story out of one of his memories. Stories are loaned from one person to the other.

But that story is not what this is about. This post is an experiment. I don’t consider myself a visual person when it comes to art. I got kicked out of an art history lecture in college; that killed any chance at formal training. So I’ll play the innocent (or imbecile): what do I see when I look at a piece of art?

First up, a sculpture mentioned in Villoro’s book: Malgre Tout by the Mexican artist Jesus F. Contreras.

I don’t care about the history of the sculpture. I don’t care about technique. Contreras seems like he’d be interesting to learn more about (he only had one arm when he sculpted it??) but I don’t care about that right now.

What do I care about?

Only what I see with my untrained eyes.

I see this: She crash landed onto the ground from somewhere. Not heaven or a spaceship but something made her fall down to earth. She hit the ground hard. Naked (exposed) and bound (constrained) but she struggles to move ahead. How many times have you felt exposed? Do you let yourself be exposed? Maybe you’ve learned from a lifetime of hits and slams to cover yourself. Don’t let a single inch of your self be exposed to the world, ever. So you don’t, you can’t, you won’t. But she is.

What about constrained? Her hands are shackled behind her back. Are yours? No, not literally, of course not, but maybe you’re shackled in other ways, only you can’t admit that to yourself, because if you acknowledged your own shackles, if you looked at them, then you would see your own nakedness. Even worse, the world might see. Who wants that?

This naked, shackled woman is crawling forward. She’s propelling herself forward, despite her shackles, despite her nakedness, her face is fixed on something ahead. Fear? No. Desperation? Maybe. Desire? Yeah. She wants something real bad, so bad she’ll chase after it. She doesn’t care that she’s exposed. She doesn’t care that she’s bound. All she knows is she wants that thing, and she’ll chase after it.

Or maybe I’m reading it all wrong. She didn’t crash down to the ground. She’s a prisoner, crawling along the dirt, about to give up. She knows she’s naked and bound and there’s no escape and this is a stubborn woman’s last moment of stupid hope that she really can break free but she can’t.

According to Wikipedia, Malgre Tout is French for In Spite of Everything. I like the hope in the name. I really do. But what I’m left with is her futility. Trapped. Alone. Stuck like that, forever.

((Image credit: By AlejandroLinaresGarcia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7762678))

To life

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A famous actor died last month. He committed suicide after reportedly suffering from bipolar disorder. Like a lot of people, it hit me hard. Unlike a lot of other people, it was difficult not just because he was a much-loved actor, but also for more personal reasons.

First, there’s a myth that creative people are more prone to mental conditions such as depression. But research doesn’t support that. If anything, those who are creative (and productive) show higher levels than the general population of psychosis and hypomania. Keep in mind, everyone has these traits, it’s just a matter of the degree expressed.

But in our popular culture, depression, melancholy, etc, are more commonly associated with writers, artists, actors, and other creatives. As someone who’s gone through a deep depression, I can attest that it does NOT enhance creativity. When you’re going through it, the last thing you want to do (or can do) is use your imagination to create something positive. Depression is the enemy of creation. If there is an upside, I’d say that having gone through depression makes you more empathetic to the human experience. It’s a tough trade-off.

Now back to the famous actor. While none of us can know what was going on in his head, I have great sympathy for what he went through. It’s not a cliche to say his death was tragic.

What really offended me, though, was the reaction. Many commented that he was finally at peace. One tweet specifically used the words “you’re free.” And anyone who dared to question this line of thought or point out the negative repercussions of suicide was attacked as heartless until they retracted their position.

I am not here to attack the actor for his suicide. What I am here to do is attack the idea that suicide is a viable “freeing” option for those who are in deep depression. Depression and bipolar are not a choice as much as a brain chemistry problem, but the act of suicide is a choice. And a final one. My heart breaks when I hear of someone committing suicide because I know the pain that led them to that point, and I know that the finality of their decision cuts off any hope of recovery. I’ve had friends who committed suicide. The tragedy rested in their pain and in their choice.

And it was a choice.

Suicide is seductive. When I heard of the actor’s death it awakened long dormant feelings that I thought I’d left behind forever. I hadn’t. What counters that voice—then and now—is the realization that life is pretty damn unique. Whether you believe it’s God-given or whether you believe it’s a random act of the universe, the fact that we exist, the fact of our awareness, is nothing short of a miracle.

Suicide should not be romanticized or glorified as a freeing act. It should be portrayed for what it is: a choice, a final action that is a rebuke to existence.

 

Pictures worth a thousand words

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I’ve never been drawn to the visual arts. My life’s vocation is crafting words into stories that relay emotions, moods and experiences. But thanks to the vastness of the world wide web, I’ve discovered visual artists whose works are as vivid as anything the best wordsmith could create.

One of these visual artists is a photographer, M. Funk, based in Germany and France. I came across his website by accident. I’m glad I did. His photographs capture a moody eeriness that I could only hope replicate with words.

Take a look at a sample of his work below, and be sure to check out his website for more.


TEMPÊTE-4

 

AIR-DE-LA-NUIT-11

IT-WAS-A-SUNNY-DAY

 

UNREAL1

(Images courtesy of M. Funk)

Fun with skulls

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I’m not a macabre person by nature, but I like skulls. I’m not talking about actual human skulls, but representations: drawings, T-shirts, liquor bottles, candles, etc. Sure, it’s a cliche by now, but it’s still fun.

skull-art-prints-by-Gerrard-King

(Image courtesy of Gerrard King)

Where did my affinity for skulls start? Who knows? Maybe from the image of Hamlet holding up poor Yorick’s skull and talking to it. I always got a kick out of that when I was a kid. (Here’s a picture of Doctor Who‘s David Tennant as the moody Dane.)

Tennant Hamlet Yorick

Obviously I’m not alone. Skulls are everywhere in pop culture, and not just American culture. For instance, the Mexican Day of the Dead (Dia de Muertos) holiday is a festival that recognizes the dead, and similar traditions can be found throughout the world. Though the Mexicans seem to have perfected the imagery.

400px-Catrinas_2

My own theory: these representations of skulls are a safe way for us to reference our own mortality. We can observe it at arms’ length, poke fun at it, while still acknowledging it. Sure, some people choose to avoid anything that will remind them of death, while others seem to revel in it. For most of us, we can acknowledge it, have a laugh, and then move on.

And now I’m happy to be adding a skull to the pop-culture pantheon. My soon-to-be-released novella, House of Flies, will feature a skull on the cover. House of Flies follows Alec as he battles a fly infestation that drives him to the brink of insanity. It’s a psychological horror story about suppressed grief and the avoidance of death, hence the skull. I can’t describe how cool I thought this imagery was when my designer first showed it to me.

House of Flies

It turns out that there have been more than a few skull-themed covers. The website Science Fiction Ruminations has compiled a collection of skull covers from the recent era. Here are a few funky examples — check out the site for more.

Philip K. dick

Robert Heinlein

Harlan Ellison

 

 

Nightmares reimagined

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From sleep disturbances to disturbing art.

When I was younger I suffered through night terrors. I would be in the grip of a nightmare, screaming with my eyes open. It took a lot for my parents to bring me out of each episode. To this day I can still remember the theme and feeling of those nightmares.

I grew out of them. But I still have random incidents of what’s called hypnopompic hallucinations. Occasionally as I’m waking up I’ll see fantastical, otherworldly insects crawling on my bedside or dangling from the ceiling. The first couple of times it happened I scoured my bedroom looking for the centipede with a thousand legs and razor-sharp spines. I soon realized that they were leftover fragments of dreams. Now when I see these creatures I just close my eyes again.

I’m not alone in my sleep issues. Nicolas Bruno is a photographer who has dealt with sleep paralysis since he was 15. Sleep paralysis is pretty much what it sounds like: the body is weak and immobilized either when drifting off to sleep or waking up, and the person experiences strange and terrifying dreams or visions. As Bruno told 1o9.com:

“I have experienced bone chilling hallucinations and extreme terror during these dreams. Faceless silhouetted figures, embraces from shadow-like hands, warping of reality around me – all while [feeling] completely paralyzed.”

What did Bruno do with these terrifying experiences? He turned them into art. He’s created scores of photographs that reconstruct the content and mood of these dreams. Below are two of my favorites. Check out his website here for more.

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(Both images: Nicolas Bruno)