Things I Learned This Week
Frost, photographs, the Bard, books, and Billie Holiday
Welcome to almost April, friends. We’ve had a splendid few days of rain to usher in our spring, which will quickly queso fundido into full summer heat. Before to gets too hot and everything goes limp, check out some of the cool shit I learned this week.
I have always known about the first photograph ever taken, View from the Window at Le Gras, by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, around 1827 in France. The image was taken from his window and created by heliography with a camera obscura on pewter. What I didn’t know is that the actual picture (LIKE THE ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH!) lives here in Texas at the Harry Ransom Center at UT. I saw it when I was there, but it didn’t register what it was. My photography professor, Adam Schreiber, has a fabulous picture of the picture here. It’s not the highest quality, but in full res, it’s perfection. Now I have to plan a trip back up. Note to self: always pay more attention.
I am fascinated by the similarities between these two paintings. One is a vision of the sublime, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, a painting by German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich. The other is Young Man at His Window, a painting of 1876 by the French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. In the first, a man surveys the majestic vision of untamed nature, marveling at the vast unknown. In the second, a man sets his eyes on the Haussmann renovation of Paris, the exchange for natural beauty for the view of modernity—peak art peeping peeps.
I have about five books going currently—a few for school and a few for myself. The Last Language by Jennifer DuBois is about a failed grad student who takes a job working with an experimental therapy aimed at helping nonspeaking patients with motor impairments. Jennifer is a fabulous writer. It’s kinda a love story, but I haven’t gotten to the end yet, so I’ll hold off speculating. I also started The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper, a Shakespeare scholar who writes about taking the playwright down from his pedestal to unveil a new Bard for the twenty-first century. Both are great reads! BTW, Macbeth is my current favorite in Shakespeare class. : ) And my next watch in the queue is Scotland, PA, a Macbeth adapt set in a fast food restaurant. Praise to the early aughts!
Strange Fruit has come up again and again recently. Whether reading the novel Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith, dealing with interracial romance, or listening to the song "Strange Fruit’” by Abel Meeropol—based on a poem of the same name and inspired by Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. First recorded by Billie Holiday and then a slew of others, including Nina Simone, everyone needs to touch this song every now and again. Listen to Billie’s version and read along—a good reminder of why art and music are vital.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees / Pastoral scene of the gallant South / The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth / Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh / Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh / Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck / For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck / For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop / Here is a strange and bitter crop
If you weren’t feeling somber enough now, in American lit we are stopping by the snowy and depressed wood of Robert Frost. I’ve been sitting in my husband’s garden, taking in the words, and trying not to let their melancholy sweep me away. Alternate reading his stuff with the main page of the NYTimes and you might have a hard time climbing out of the hole. That said, making plans for 4/5 and reading the blues away.
Quote of the week?
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
‘Til Tuesday!
Burgin
(I’m finishing college at 50+, follow along and read my story here.)