Sandro Botticelli

Now, I may perhaps be an uncultured savage, and you can call me one until you turn blue in the face, but there’s one thing about art…I can’t get into it unless I can see what it’s meant to be.
Perhaps I’m spoilt, but I grew up in an age of photo-perfect CG art – it’s what I’m used to. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like the other stuff – nobody can call Monet photo-perfect – but I love the crystalline ones, the ones where every detail is in place.

Which is why I like Sandro Botticelli.

The Birth of Venus. Exquisite, isn’t it? There’s a reason it’s a classic, you know.

Detail from the Birth of Venus. Notice the expression in her eyes. Also, the detail of her hair.

I think this one took some damage somewhere. See the detail on the skirts and on their feet?
Also, the orange is a simply lovely shade – it seems to glow from within.

I wonder if I can make my hair like that?

Do you see why I love Botticelli?

Monet

The reason I like Monet is this: He shows the world the way I see it when I take my glasses off.

Bad boyfriends

Writing is like a psychotic boyfriend, now that I think about it. You know the type – your parents love him, your sisters adore him, your friends think he might be ‘The One’ for you. And none of them notice the way you walk hunched over all of a sudden to keep your heart from breaking, and the bruises that are the reason why you suddenly wear a lot of make-up.

Writing is a lot like that. Sometimes, when it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s worse than anything you can imagine.

I haven’t been writing for a year and a half now. It’s like being in heroin withdrawal, with the added bonus that your drug of choice doesn’t work anymore. I still love writing. I still love the feel of a character or a story inside of me, waiting to come to life. I imagine that that’s what being pregnant must feel like.
I just can’t do it anymore. I am filled with ideas, pregnant with them…but when the time comes to put them on a page, I just can’t do it. I write perhaps two pages and think to myself ‘what utter shit. Nobody will ever read this!’ and it’s true. Because somehow, somewhere, I seem to have lost the confidence in myself that made it possible, even when I despised myself and wanted to die, to write and get myself out of there. Writing was my lifeline back then, lifting me out of myself and taking me to places where I could be whoever I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. And it doesn’t work anymore.

Because since this thing happened to me – this thing that turned my art against me – writing has been my pain. Not my drug against the agony of life, but the cause of it. And that’s never happened to me before.

And I still want it. That’s the worst part. Maybe I’m just too stubborn for my own good, unwilling to give up on the idea that I will be a writer, or maybe I’m meant to get through this and go on writing, someday even something worth reading.

And that’s why writing is like a psychotic boyfriend. You know he’s only going to hurt you. You know he’s bad.
You know that ever time he says ‘it’ll never happen again,’ never is really only ‘until next time’ because it will happen again.
And you still go back.
Because despite what the world wants you to believe, there are more important things than being happy. And art is one of those things.

People do strange things for religion, don’t they?

We kill each other, and castrate each other, and strap bombs to our bodies to low up our enemies…and then we create this:

And this

The presence of God, real or imaginary, no matter what you call him, has the capacity to bring out the very best and the very worst in human beings.

The most beautiful poem I ever read was in the name of God. And so was the worst atrocity.

Is it just me, or is the Dragon not all that big?

St. George and the Dragon by Raphael.
Finished in 1506.
Image Source: Wikipedia

Seriously, it’s about half the size of St.George’s horse.

Plus, it looks a little bit like a dog. It’s like an angry Rottweiler with scales and wings.