every semester i try to include one class that's not required "for fun." i pick something about which i'll be thrilled to learn and buy the inevitably extremely expensive text book. about three weeks in i find myself wondering about the decision.
this semester i could cry.
i'm worried that i'm essentially buying credits in art history. i've taken art history classes before and i LOVE them. i love looking at slides and discussing the impact society had on the things in which we find beauty. i love hearing what other people think. i get upset about responses, i argue. i'm a pain in the neck. i get defensive. i end up keeping the professor late because i want to keep the conversation going.
instead, and i knew going into it, i'm taking this class online.
i just opened this week's "slide show" and see before me 1:36:37 of part i of the class material. the first six minutes were a black screen with a voice telling the viewer that we'll be looking at the high renaissance, venetian and mannerist work.
my heart, once again sank.
i can't fault anyone but myself.
i want the dialogue though. i've got these headphones on and i'm isolated entirely. the last three minutes have been a blank screen with no talk. the meter is running.
more important: people are sitting next to me. the girl to my left had never heard about spring break and just arrived from europe. she's telling fantastic tales of nudity, debauchery and drinks. i am in the wrong conversation. she was, as one might imagine, horrified.
she went all the way to daytona beach and just wanted coffee. all she could find was: people driving on the beach. boobs.
HILARIOUS.
more time has passed. nothing is new on the slide-show front.
(i recently posted my thoughts on thomas kincade. that's something i used for the class discussion forum for the art history class.)
i need to get more interesting.
it's february. i spent 3 days sick and sleeping and eating pizza. as rotten as it was, it was also awesome.
sometimes people want to tell you that "ring around the rosie" is about the black plague.
plague doctors sure are scary.
but today i heard an alternate version on the song. instead of the standard "ashes, ashes we all fall down!" the lady said "hasha, hasha, we all fall down!"
and i realized something. at first everyone laughed at her, but it made sense:
what if you sing it with "atchoo, atchoo! we all fall down!"
--maybe someone is sneezing because they've just filled their pockets with posies?
if done right, i can nearly knock myself over with a sneeze.
yes, ladies and gentleman, i've done it.
i've turned a blog about dates and being single into a dullish rambling on art history lectures and my interpretation of baby-poems.
let's also add this:
one of da vinci's illustrations from this weeks lecture is included below, it was his death machine.
i put some notes of my own on it.
oh, let me clarify: i don't think anyone wanted to scare me or threaten me or anything like that. rather, i think they just left them out and i found them and they read a lot of "fantastical tales" or something.
somehow i think i managed to tie this all together.
art history>isolation>being an outsider at spring break>viewing the grotesque>my interpretation of kincade>being sick>the black plague>ring around the rosie> being sick>disturbing/grotesque inventions>isolation>da vinci.
(taking a bow, exits, stage left.)
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