Sunday, February 25, 2007
Art break
I was just mulling through that repository of personal reminiscence, thinking about Chris Montez and Richie Valens and other reasons those records might have been important to me all those years ago.
I found myself tumbling through my intensely personal past and recalling that a school friend had invited me to her birthday party all those many decades past.
Because of many familial discouragements based on current societal pressures that had popped up in the town, where dances at school might have been agreeable but other gatherings would not (and recently a few such benign celebrations, such as an anniversary or a birthday party for kids, had been disrupted for no apparent reason and attendees dispersed with an undue amount of pushing and shoving on the part of the guys in the blue uniforms summoned to the premises by who, no one could even suspect, as the get-togethers were so far removed from the beating heart of precious village so as not to register a pulse or any movement on any kind of decibel meter, no matter how sensitively set).
So I had missed every rehearsal for a few weeks and had to bluff my way through the big trumpety procession and then the grand waltz which was the big, big dance at the quinceanaera (and guess what, I am ninety-nine per cent positive my young friend used the waltz from Sleeping Beauty):
All in the same same small village that still has this mural on the walls, which I had seen:
"Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco painted his 'Prometheus,' a mural that Jackson Pollock later praised as "the greatest painting in North America," in Frary Hall at Pomona College in 1930."
Right about that time, but slightly after the birthday party, the policeman who lived next to us finally quit his job on the local police force. After waiting for several years for appointment during which time commuting 35-miles to work in another county, he dumped this once-coveted job. Don't know why, really, but it seemed he didn't like how things were, and came to that conclusion after only a short time (maybe as long as a year) on the job. He was at odds with what seemed to be majority interpretation of policy. "Just because I'm from the South, the other guys expect me to go along with some things I don't approve of."
(And for some reason, that made another mural make more sense to me. So here's another mural, which I have not seen, except in historic photographs, so I guess that counts:
"And in 1932, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted 'Tropical America,' a mural for Olvera Street that was so controversial that it was ordered whitewashed by city officials and by Christine Sterling, who turned Olvera Street into a tourist attraction.")
When Mexico was a star on the screen ¶ 2/25/2007 12:19:00 PM
I was just mulling through that repository of personal reminiscence, thinking about Chris Montez and Richie Valens and other reasons those records might have been important to me all those years ago.
I found myself tumbling through my intensely personal past and recalling that a school friend had invited me to her birthday party all those many decades past.
Because of many familial discouragements based on current societal pressures that had popped up in the town, where dances at school might have been agreeable but other gatherings would not (and recently a few such benign celebrations, such as an anniversary or a birthday party for kids, had been disrupted for no apparent reason and attendees dispersed with an undue amount of pushing and shoving on the part of the guys in the blue uniforms summoned to the premises by who, no one could even suspect, as the get-togethers were so far removed from the beating heart of precious village so as not to register a pulse or any movement on any kind of decibel meter, no matter how sensitively set).
So I had missed every rehearsal for a few weeks and had to bluff my way through the big trumpety procession and then the grand waltz which was the big, big dance at the quinceanaera (and guess what, I am ninety-nine per cent positive my young friend used the waltz from Sleeping Beauty):
All in the same same small village that still has this mural on the walls, which I had seen:
"Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco painted his 'Prometheus,' a mural that Jackson Pollock later praised as "the greatest painting in North America," in Frary Hall at Pomona College in 1930."
Right about that time, but slightly after the birthday party, the policeman who lived next to us finally quit his job on the local police force. After waiting for several years for appointment during which time commuting 35-miles to work in another county, he dumped this once-coveted job. Don't know why, really, but it seemed he didn't like how things were, and came to that conclusion after only a short time (maybe as long as a year) on the job. He was at odds with what seemed to be majority interpretation of policy. "Just because I'm from the South, the other guys expect me to go along with some things I don't approve of."
(And for some reason, that made another mural make more sense to me. So here's another mural, which I have not seen, except in historic photographs, so I guess that counts:
"And in 1932, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted 'Tropical America,' a mural for Olvera Street that was so controversial that it was ordered whitewashed by city officials and by Christine Sterling, who turned Olvera Street into a tourist attraction.")
When Mexico was a star on the screen ¶ 2/25/2007 12:19:00 PM
