Art as inspiration #2 and anthropo-what? continued...

OOH, look, I am getting carried away with my themes here.  I am using two themes in one post!  Is that even legal?  Well, this is my blog so we play by my rules here!

Here's a picture by Auguste Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1875.  He is really my favorite artist which annoys me since he was an anti-semite.  Luckily, I can admire his work without him knowing and I am not supporting his career since a) I can't afford his artwork and b) well, he's dead. So I have overlooked the fact that he was a jerk and just focus on his art.  One of the best parts of going to France was seeing so much of his art at the Musee D'Orsay (also, the food).  I did not see this painting there though since it's in Washington DC.  Go figure.  I do have this print in my home though.  I reframed it the other day and it reminded me of the last post about anthropomorphizing.  I like the painting because it looks like a story.  The more closely you look at it, the more you can imagine this scene happening.  Actually, when I looked for it on wikipedia, it gave an explanation of who each of the people are.  I thought it was more fun to look at it without knowing who they all are though so I will post the list at the end.
Here's what caught my eye:

This is the upper right side corner.  What is happening here?  She is being manhandled and spoken to inapproporiately?  I can't imagine what he is saying because I can't think of the last time I didn't want to listen to someone so much that I literally held my ears closed. I mean, I can think of wanting to but this classy looking lady is actually doing it!  That is so cool!  

Look at all the people in this picture and here's a lady ignoring all of them and talking to her dog.  I've totally been to parties like that.  I can almost hear her saying "Who's a good boy?"  Sidenote, according to the notes on this painting, that woman is Renoir's future wife.  Don't know if that was his future dog.

As he often did in his paintings, Renoir included several of his friends in Luncheon of the Boating Party. Among them are the following:^[2]

• The seamstress Aline Charigot, holding a dog, sits near the bottom left of the composition. Renoir later married her.
• Charles Ephrussi—wealthy amateur art historian, collector, and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts—appears wearing a top hat in the background. The younger man to whom Ephrussi appears to be speaking, more casually attired in a brown coat and cap, may be Jules Laforgue, his personal secretary and also a poet and critic.
• Actress Ellen Andrée drinks from a glass in the center of the composition. Seated across from her is Baron Raoul Barbier.
• Placed within but peripheral to the party are the proprietor's daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr., both sporting traditional straw boaters and appearing to the left side of the image. Alphonsine is the smiling woman leaning on the railing; Alphonse, who was responsible for the boat rental, is the leftmost figure.
• Also wearing boaters are figures appearing to be Renoir's close friends Eugène Pierre Lestringez and Paul Lhote, himself an artist. Renoir depicts them flirting with the actress Jeanne Samary in the upper righthand corner of the painting.
• In the right foreground, Gustave Caillebotte wears a white boater's shirt and flat-topped straw boater's hat as he sits backwards in his chair next to actress Angèle Legault and journalist Adrien Maggiolo. An art patron, painter, and important figure in the impressionist circle, Caillebotte was also an avid boatman and drew on that subject for several works.

Anthropo-what?

I used to have a roommate who was a psychologist.  She told me that I anthropomorphize a lot.

an·thro·po·mor·phize

/ˌænθrəpəˈmɔrfaɪz/ Show Spelled [an-thruh-puh-mawr-fahyz]  

verb (used with object), verb (used without object), an·thro·po·mor·phized, an·thro·po·mor·phiz·ing.

to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.).

I forgot to ask if this is a bad thing.  Also, who cares? She never did it and I found that quite boring.  So I can translate what the rabbits are thinking by just looking at their facial expressions.  They aren't moving stuffed animals.  I never put batteries in them. Something must be going on in there.  I didn't say I thought they were human.  I just choose to believe they are thinking about something when they look at me.  They have feelings after all.  I know when they are scared, angry or hungry.  So I just put a voice to it.  Why I have decided that Squirtford's nose ends every sentence with "pellets pellets pellets" (always three times), well I don't know.  He likes pellets! So sometimes he looks at me and says "What are you doing? Let me out. pellets pellets pellets."  When I check my purse repeatedly for my keys and phone in the morning, he stares at me, clearly thinking "You have them!  You already checked!  Get out already!!!! pellets pellets pellets!"  Well, there's no need to yell but he does make a good point.

"Did somebody say pellets pellets pellets?"

McFlurry appears to just be thinking about escaping at all times, oh and snacks.  We have basically figured out all her escape routes so now she just stares at us. When she looks at my husband, I translate "Let me out.  I'll be good this time...I promise" but she is clearly lying.  Plus she stands up everytime he walks by and says something like "bananas?" "snack?" "escape?"  She just always wants stuff.  I don't know how I know.  I can't explain it.  Its just obvious!

"I'm dressed up so you might as well let me out.  I'll be back by ten."

Actually, I don't understand people who don't anthropomorphize.  They're missing out. 

Music as inspiration #3

Did somebody say Howard Jones?

This song was a big hit in 1985, so it's easy to not pay attention to the lyrics and just get caught up in the woah woahs.  However,  I am still a big fan of Things Can Only Get Better, all these years later and listen to it often.  Here's the video, (just the hair is fascinating, in itself):

Things Can Only Get Better video


You know how when a bunch of things go wrong and you think, nothing else could happen, things can only get better?  Well, that is a) totally not true (does anyone really think that, things can always be worse) and b) not what this song is talking about.  Oh and c) a really irritating thing for someone to say to you when things are going wrong and they are trying to "comfort" you.
So the song is interesting because it is really all about letting go of what holds you back and just going for it.  The best things in life are often hard to attain, full of risk, a scary path to walk down and not a sure thing.  Sometimes it is difficult to get to your goal but if you know your course, you can get there, as long as you keep your goal in mind.  Sometimes, however, you want something and you don't know if you can achieve it, even if you try your best.  It becomes tempting to not try because of the risk and your lack of control of outcomes.  Wouldn't it be easier to change your goals than to remain focused on something that is a "maybe"?  In the short term, not going for it may feel right but what about in the long run?  Regret is a hard pill to swallow and likely harder to swallow than trying and failing.  So regardless of outcome, sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and go for it.  If it works, great and if it doesn't, there is comfort in knowing that you will never look back and say "I should have..."  "I was too afraid to...."  "I wish I had...." This is why I love the final paragraph of this song.  Sometimes when I don't know what to do, or am afraid to make a risky choice, I listen to this song and go for it.  Success or failure is out of my control but being afraid to take the chance, well, that is up to me.


Things Can Only Get Better

We're not scared to lose it all
Security throw through the wall
Future dreams we have to realize
A thousand skeptic hands
Won't keep us from the things we plan
Unless we're clinging to the things we prize

And do you feel scared - I do
But I won't stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better
Whoa, whoa whoa whoa oh oh

Treating today as though it was
The last, the final show
Get to sixty and feel no regret
It may take a little time
A lonely path, an uphill climb
Success or failure will not alter it

And do you feel.....
Whoa whoa whoa whoah...

And do you feel...

PS This song has a recent remake (but without most of the great lyrics) but I guess this means there is a whole new generation dancing to this song!
Things Can Only Get Better Cedric Gervais and Howard Jones

are you listening?

Today I had some time to wander around midtown Manhattan with a few million friends.  I do not like crowds and usually would just push my way through and try to get away from people but today, I had a mission for the blog.  Forget people watching, everyone was so close by, I could just go right in for people listening.  (Your welcome)  Wow, it is really easy to eavesdrop on 5th Avenue.  I heard so many gems that I had to stop and text myself so I could remember them all.
"There's the plaza hotel (true).  You know it looks like the capital building?" (????)
Looking at Cardier building "I bet this looks cool at night."  (correct)
Pregnant woman sitting on the ground next to her standing family.  "Do I look like a homeless person because someone just offered me a dollar?"  (Well, then the answer is yes, you do-PS please wash those pants).
While a thousand people crossed when we weren't supposed to (you can't prove I was one of them) "It's ok to cross because that bus is blocking the interesection." Car:  HONK!!!!  OK, I agree but thanks for rationalizing it. By the way, the whole way people cross the street here took me years to unlearn.  When I j-walked in Washington DC I got yelled at by a cop and when I do it in Florida, people tell me stories about people being killed j-walking.  I haven't completely unlearned it because I got told this last month.
Some random person "Are you STILL complaining?" haha, having a nice vacation?
"Next time I come here, we come at 6:30 in the morning!"  I hope others will follow her lead so that there will be less people there at midday.
"Aint nobody got time for that....oooh bling!!!!"  Human equivalent of the Up dog and "squirrel!"  I have no idea why she was saying that first part though but I would really like to know.
On the crowded 6 train:  Two guys talking about how many people there are here and in China.  "You know it is like this all the time in China.  They got millions of people there.  They all gotta walk like this (picture waddling like a penguin, while standing in place on a subway). Shit!"  hahaha, I just had to laugh out loud for that one, even if it is against the rules to look like you are looking or listening to anybody, once you bring in penguin waddling, it's fair game.
By the way, even though I wrote about people watching and people listening, please do not expect any of the rest of the 5 senses.  I try very hard not to smell, touch or taste strangers, even for the blog!

Read this while looking like you are not reading this.

While in NY, my husband told me to people watch.  I think I am not only people watching, I am also watching other people, people watching.  I haven't lived in NY for a long time now so I have forgotten the fundamental rules of public transportation: don't make eye contact, don't talk to anyone and don't react to anything.  I guess I didn't forget the rules since I just wrote them but I am not really all that good at following them anymore.  I had to train myself when I moved to Florida to look directly at people and say "good morning".  Now I have returned to my roots of watching people but looking like I am not watching them... Or possibly I think I look inconspicuous but really look like a stalker.  Whatever, I don't live here so who cares.
Here's what has been observed.  Today while being alone on a subway car with one teenager, he glanced my way (rule breaker), I guess deciding I was harmless (am I? yes).  He then put his backpack down and started doing pull-ups from the middle bars on top of the train.  I wondered, would I do that if there were only one random person there to see?  Then I remembered I wouldn't do a pull-up if I was alone so of course I wouldn't.  I had been singing along with music before he got closer so la la la, I'd do that.
Yesterday I took the bus.  A man came on with a cat carrier and as soon as the bus started the cat started meowing.  This must have been a professional cat because it was clearly annunciating the word "MEOW."  Everytime the owner looked in the case the meows stopped and as soon as he lowered it again, "MEOW!!!"  I looked around.  No one said a word.  No one cracked even the smallest smile. No eye contact.  Do NOT acknowledge that someone just loudly meowed.  Meowing counts as communicating and is therefore breaking the rules of public transportation.  Shame on that cat!  Take his metrocard!  Eventually the guy sat down and put that cat on his lap and then no more meowing.  So I was amused by the cat but the people....now that is fascinating.  Those are big time New Yorkers and law abiding citizens!