Blood and Guts: Helena Lazaro: Ruins and Chamber Music

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Ruins and Chamber Music

October 2, 2005 11:03 PM

They loved them some corn This afternoon I went over to LACMA to check out the new exhibit of Mayan artifacts and attend the Sunday Live performance.

I like going to the museum alone. It gives me time to think, and sort through things. It's relaxing and rejuvenating. And I usually get a visit from the muse at some point.

Today it came in the form of optimism.

Standing in the Japanese exhibit, looking at a tiny and rotund bronze elephant about the size of a chihuaua, I was delighted. I gawked at the intricate Netsuke in disbelief. My favorite was a perfect ivory cherry blossom, open, with a tiny bud nestled next to it. As I wound my way up the ramp that climbed to the top of the gallery, I felt elated. Seeing the beautiful things that human beings can produce gives me a renewed sense of optimism about our potential. The beauty we can create, if we want to, and just knowing that these objects exist made me feel so much better.

At the very top of the ramp there was a dragon holding a crystal ball, a big one. I'd never seen one before. Looking into it, you see the out the other side but everything is round and upside down. The distortion made me dizzy, and then I had an overpowering thought--Everything is about to change.

More l.a.

Comments

Yea for overpowering thoughts.

And optimism rocks. I usually don't recognize it as such since it seems so out of place with my brooding nature, but maybe that's what makes it perfect counterpoint.

Here's to inspiration in all the forms it takes.

Posted by: claire on October 3, 2005 01:58 PM

if everything is round and inverted and you've just made the declaration that everything is about to change,

does that mean you're going to become a man?

Posted by: ceity on October 3, 2005 05:18 PM

Wow, you really get a lot out of visits to museums. I'd like to go with you when you visit the La Brea Tar Pits.

Posted by: Neil on October 3, 2005 08:22 PM

Claire, you're right. It's kind of a strange, unfamiliar sensation sometimes :)

Ceity, I have wished on many occasions that I could have been born a boy. I really think dudes are better off in a lot of ways. Alas, I am stuck with what I got...and there's no sense changing it now that I've gotten so used to it.

Neil, I really do. But I get a lot out of everything, simply because I overanalyze it TO DEATH. For example, The Tarpits?

A bubbling pit of doom and despair, the murky tomb of slow death that swallowed all the poor slobs unfortunate enough to wander into its path--filling their eyes and lungs with darkness. There is sits, in the middle of Los Angeles, in view of the Hollywood sign. I don't think I need to draw the correlation any further.

You still wanna go with me when I see it?

Posted by: Helena on October 3, 2005 10:25 PM