Saturday, June 20, 2009

TALKING CORNEL WEST BLUES






















Many thanks to the anonymous commenter who left a link to a Norval Morrisseau site yesterday on my December 7, 2007 post. It takes a moment to download and then you'll either hear Neil Young singing "Heart of Gold" or a song from "Sesame Street" accompanying the slideshow.

And thanks to Alive On All Channels for the link to a lengthy article by Jeff Sharlet about Cornel West from which this quote from Ralph Ellison came:

"The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by consolutaiton of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism."











Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues. You can tell by the way she smiles.
(Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Visions of Johanna," Blonde on Blonde, 1966)

Thanks to mum for her sense of humor.

(This all began with late afternoon light, looking south)

6 comments:

mum said...

I started laughing when I clicked on to the great Ojibwe, Norval. The Cookie Monster was singing: "One of these things is not like the other things."

Mona Lisa: Sweet of you, am. But please note mum's profile: yes, her resemblance to ML is uncanny to the point of Mona seeming to be her doppelganger.But never ever, did mum have anything to do with Leonardo. Ever. Believe me: if anyone would know, I would.

Here's to every grain of sand that ever got stuck between my toes or yours, am.

Have a good one. xx

mum said...

btw you are now on mum's blogroll. (don't mention it).

am said...

mum and Mona Lisa: Thanks for the clarification. Given what Ralph Ellison wrote about the blues, I was wondering, not about any trouble with Leonardo, but if Mona Lisa may have had some experiences with violence, domestic or otherwise, and that Bob Dylan saw that in Leonardo's painting.

If I remember correctly, there's also a theory that Leonardo used himself as a model for Mona Lisa. Anima. And that makes me think of of Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There."

And thank you for putting Talking 37th Dream on your blog roll. I've been meaning to update mine.

Zhoen said...

"Not often you see a guy that green get the blues that bad."

-Rowlf the dog.

am said...

zhoen: (-:

mum said...

the Mona Lisa smile is so self-contained it lends itself to every possible interpretation, doesn't it? And, in a way, she certainly is Leonardo just as Madame Bovary was Flaubert.