The desire for life to be art: Oscar Wilde and myself

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“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Oscar Wilde


 I sat in my kitchen this morning, attempting to write a novel. Wearing my sick boyfriend’s overcoat and trying not to wake him, I was typing in the dark with cereal as my roommate and then his girlfriend came up from the basement wrapped in a blanket and a pashmina respectively. Allow me to state this is not the hip, drugged out bohemian love shack it may seem, although why my roommates slept in the living room with no clothes I’m happy not to know. I’m just relieved that the third roommate was not here. It left me wishing that life was different, was more like art.

To elevate the mundane and the ugly into something beautiful and irreducible is a creative act extraordinaire. To do so with one’s life, the prime material of all art, requires genius and unflagging commitment. I’m not sure that I have enough of either either. But I admire Oscar Wilde’s philosophy, and his statement that he has “put all my genius into life” rings true when one studies his life. Literature became his words, visual art his clothes and house, just as his plays were mirrors of his mind. In many ways, he, and Byron, have become patron saints of mine, for their lives as well as their works. Dandies and writers and lovers, they were controversial touchstones for the societies of their time.

My boyfriend has woken up and I can now crawl back in bed to type (if I can over the YouTube videos and complaining he produces). Wilde never had to deal with this. Actually Bosie was rather a no-good handful. But if only life could imitate art, or art I like more

A selection of Wildean-isms to inspire one on a Sunday morning:

  • There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
  • Life is too much important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
  • It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
  • To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
  • Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
  • It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
  • I can believe anything as long as it is incredible.
  • I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
  • An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Note: In his honor, I have made him a patron saint of this blog, in whose hallowed cyber halls his fellow worthies shall begin to join him.

Tidbit: how similar is a voodoo doll and a medieval portrait?

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I’ve been reading about the history of the portrait lately. The section before the Renaissance, medieval Europe, seemed like a blip to get through. Really, one, if one were less aesthetically inclined, might use the word, dare I say it, boring?

Not really the case. Portraits functioned as more than just commemorating an occasion, such as marriage, or representing a person visually. It was not important that portraits resembled their subject at the court where people were idealized or to entice one into marrying a woman or to honor the noblest qualities of a ruler.

As it happens, the portraits depicting their subjects naturally were destroyed. These people were criminals who had escaped justice. Portraits had fetishistic properties, and could be used as a substitute for a person. So a criminal who could not be caught was depicted, and then his punishment was given to the portrait, limb by limb as the case may be. Referred to as “excutio in effigie,” the portraits could even be burned publicly.

Hoardings of portraits have been found of persons with their eyes scratched out. Often when a regime changed, the new rulers would gather images of the former governors and scratch their eyes out. Images–often unflattering ones designed to provoke scorn–were placed in public view as well. All these have the ultimate aim of destroying the subject’s authority through defiling the image of them.

So one function of the portrait is punishment? It’s crazy to think that in the Middle Ages, when ruled by God in Christian lands, people gave such power to the graven image. Reliquaries were worshipped as holding real bits or traces of holy people. But did they believe the images of the saints and devils in the churches had the same power? What would happen if someone scratched the Virgin Mary’s eyes out? Maybe the world still gives the same talismanic properties to images they deem holy.

There you have it: why a voodoo doll is like a medieval portrait. Up next, why a raven is like a writing desk, and other important questions.

Darius Goes West, then to HBO if New York

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Being from Athens, GA, I’ve heard of Darius more than once. My parents and friends from home have talked to me about the film, and told me last year about Darius graduating. So when I got an email yesterday asking me if I wanted to meet someone for the screening of Darius Goes West at the HBO Screening room last night, I figured I had to take her up on it, despite my headache. This won’t be the most aesthetically-inclined post you’ll read from me, but I wanted to say: you should see this film.

(I have a copy–I’ll send it to you)

Why should you see some obscure documentary made in my hometown?

Many reasons, including that it is a well-done film on the personal adventure of a boy with Muscular Dystrophy going on a journey to get MTV to “pimp his ride” and that it has a great message spread by great people. DMD, the type of Muscular Dystrophy, that Darius has, can happen to any child, effectively shortening their lifespan to about 20 years of age as the muscles degenerate until the heart stops. So the 19 year old who rolled up on stage last night and splits his time between public advocacy and rapping isn’t working for himself–but for the next generation of children. Filmed in 2005, Darius and his crew of friends rent an RV for a 3 week trip to California all the while trying to get MTV to agree to pimp his ride. Darius has so many memorable firsts: seeing the ocean, being away from his mother, going to Las Vegas.

Darius Goes West. One Year. One Million DVDs.

Darius Goes West did the film festival circuit in 2007, winning 27 awards throughout the country. This year, they are trying to spread the film’s message about DMD. They have been visiting schools and meetings across the country. Darius and his crew of friends have formed a foundation, are living off the proceeds of selling t shirts, and are trying to raise money by selling 1 million DVDs this year. Find out more at http://www.dariusgoeswest.org/.