Complete and utter distraction

It's sad that I can't get completely excited about reading Hughes anymore. Everything that I read I think, hey wait, didn't I read that earlier? The only time that I get really excited while reading is whenever he mentions an author, artist, poet, or pop icon that I like.

I understand how much everyone loves van Gogh's art... I guess because he's one of the most well-known in the world. Of course, we've all heard the stories about his life and how it reflected his art... so of course it has been "extensively investigated." I'm kinda at the point now where I think, so what if he had some mental retardation, or slept with his sister, or ate only locusts and roaches (I made these up)? His art is just beautiful. And that's all I find myself thinking about now. I want to leave the theory alone and just admire his paintings. How he takes that horse-hair brush and forms the perfet blend of linseed oil and midnight blue paint... sweeping it across a canvas, putting dots of it here and there, in between dashes of other colors. More than that, it is how the paint makes me feel when I look at it that it astonishing.

Hughes mentions John Keats and quotes him with "Negative capability... when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Keats has a poem called "Eve of St. Agnes." If you've never read it... you should read it before you graduate... or before the end of the year... or now!

And let's not even start on William Blake. He is the everyman. This dude is political and sentimental, a painter and a poet, empowered by the Bible but ultimately a mystic. His paintings are of scenes from the Bible, or aggressive illustrations of the Bible's characters. He is the kind of person I want to look up to, try to understand better, or even become like him. Why? Because he's damn sure of who he is, which is more than I can say for myself.

I think the point of this blog was to demonstrate how off topic my mind flies when Hughes babbles about the same things, or writes in circles and loses his reader. It's hard to listen to all the brain research when a chapter that we read is titled Structures of the Mind, and it clearly explains the brain and its functions dealing with altered states.

PS - Those interested in mandalas (the history is fascinating), watch "The Last Mimzy." There is so much more to our world than what we can see with just our eyes.