The boar is everywhere

As i Was walking down the street the other night in Del Mar, I passed a sign with a big boar's head on it, below it said...boar's head. I immediately thought about shakespeare and in particular our Henry iv part one skit with the boars head tavern. I was surprised, though I should not have been, when I saw the boar appear in Henry iv also because it is such a historical play. I will post a picture of it when i have my computer. So funny, love that everywhere i go, there the boar is too!

You don't have time?!?!?

I read blogs, sort through my thoughts, and listen to mindless people at bars saying they don't "have" time to read. It brings me back to every class I have had with Dr. Sexson..."What do you mean you don't have time? What better do you have to do?"

I found myself the last year acting as if i have no time, shutting people, family, and my passions out. I just couldn't seem to find the time. In actuality I had all the time in the world, but my prioritizing went to hell and I was being selfish. I have found that now I have broken out of that shell I MAKE time for the things that matter. I think to myself: "When the day comes that I can no longer enjoy these things, I will regret that I had not enjoyed them more, simply because I was stupid, selfish, and inconsiderate".

So to anyone that doesn't have time- Make time and you will realize that we are all in the same sinking boat called "life" and you have to do what you can with what you have before it is gone.

The fairy tale in shakespeare

I was assigned the task of looking at tragedy and the fairy tale happy ending as transcendence rather than contradiction. I began thinking about how twisted fairy tales really are (which enters my mind quite often) and then went through various Shakespeare plays to find parallels. I had a lot of fun with this task and will perhaps post the paper i wrote on it as well.

Looking at Prospero and his obsession with books immediately brought to mind the immense library in the beauty in the beast. Bell is so innocent, like Miranda and lives through the stories. The beast cherishes his library, it being the only thing he really has to love and that loves him back.

In pericles we have the pirates, evil stepmother, and jealousy of the step daughter's beauty. There is magic wrapped up in Pericles along with myth. The search for self is evident in this and ultimately reflects morals, soul searching, and magic- similar to fairy tales.

The winters tale also depicts the magic of snow white and sleeping beauty. Jealousy, beauty, and once again magic.

I could go on and on because i am a long time lover of fairytales. It is essential that kids grow up with these stories, tales, fabrications. It helps them to find a sense of stability and connection in a chaotic world. The fairy tale ultimately acknowledges their dreams and reality...i will say more late perhaps but it is time to enjoy the glorious sunshine and celebrate the completion of my second minor.


Le fin.

Joseph Campbell- myth

In Joseph campbell's "The power of myth", he talks about the hero and the hero adventure. One of my favorite passages posted below speaks of the hero and who he is, how he developed. It is not only about the hero himself, but the adventure that follows- i think many of us can make Various connections to shakespeare and the real which is why i am posting this.

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a going and a returning... There are both kinds of heroes, some that choose to undertake the journey and some that don’t... In one kind of adventure, the hero sets out responsibly and intentionally to perform the deed... Then there are adventures into which you are thrown... You didn’t intend it, but you’re in now.”

I enjoyed reading through Campbell's works because similar to keats, he talks about the different stages that the hero must venture through. I have always been a visual learner and find that staters, steps, chambers...whatever you choose makes it easier and extremely imaginative for learners.

I also found some fabulous quotes from Joseph Campbell that I could use when thinking about anything really all the way from myth to Shakespeare to our present lives.

"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." another process in soul making

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." stumbling...tragedies...therefore tragedy can become our treasure.

"myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths"

Keats and shakespeare

Vale: farewell (Latin); false (Estonian); lie/untruth/fabrication (Finnish)

I highly recommend that everyone looks at keats's "the vale of soul making" and his other letters such as "...the chambers of human life", "the authenticity of imagination". Keats captures beauty, darkness, and imagination beyond what I ever thought was possible in his most personal letters.

Keats said of Shakespeare in a letter to his brother:
"at once it struck me, what quality went to form a man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Newell on Shakespeare:
When reading Shakespeare "the experience is sometimes laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes shame. Always it is the experience of looking into a mystery that i am part of"

I think that we can all relate to a lot of what Newell says about Shakespeare in regards to deeper human connections. We are brought into Shakespeare's works through his language and ability to express the human condition.

Keats admired Shakespeare's works for this but also for his ability to contemplate a world without desire and reconciling certain aspects. Shakespeare echos human life- we do not constantly suffer, we overcome, but always we are left with the remembrance and this in itself is a lack of conciliation.

When I read this I become nauseated with the fear and the knowledge that many things in life are left unfinished, unreconciled, and left to the tragic. It pains me to visualize this worked of human suffering that we all create for ourselves. We have to remember the suffering, the experience, and the chambers through which we travel to get to who we are so we can open up that experience to others through words. I write always whether i want to or not, remembering is one of my biggest fears. A shadow looming around me. I change and it follows. But it has led me to discover, recover and experience.

Become nothing so that you can become something.

Shakespeare's love, lust, and seduction

I was looking at the library yesterday procrastinating from my Professional Writing portfolio (thankfully it is now turned in) and found myself wandering around the stacks looking at all of the fascinating books that in a lifetime I could never finish. I found one about gender in Shakespeare. It was interesting, but not as fabulous as I was hoping. I flipped through though and found some interesting passages about masculinity and femininity (see blog: Conquering the Masculine). The way that Shakespeare intertwines these elements of love versus lust in his works was beautiful and tragic. Venus and Adonis still sticks out in my mind- the goddess of love, being denied! And the innocent, chaste female chasing the dumb ass, arrogant, self absorbed male just to be embarrassed or rejected. Love is a many splendoured thing, but it is also tragic. Hence why we are attracted to it. Do we love that high and then the fall? Do they love the high of winning and continue on that high through conquering in destructive ways? It is interesting to see how the female characters learn and try to meet expectations that society places on them just to have it end in tragedy. Love, lust, and tragedy- a vicious triangle.

Conquering the Masculine

I don't really remember exactly how it came about but something was mentioned in class about "conquering the feminine" and since we explore all sides of things, I thought it would be a fun challenge to (in such short time) explore briefly how in fact we could also say that in Shakespeare's works "the conquering of the masculine" was also apparent.

One interesting thing I found in my research was that while rivers are masculine in their personifications in latin, Shakespeare conforms to the customs of the English Poets and therefore feminizing them. For example, in Julius Caesar, "her concave shores".

The power of females is truly admirable, humorous, and at times bittersweet in Shakespeare's works. We see Venus, the Goddess of Love. In Venus and Adonis, seduction is a large factor in her power and in the end it is in fact Adonis that dies after rejecting her love.

Cleopatra so has Antony whipped. Ferdinand is possessed by Miranda's beauty. In A Winter's Tale, we see Hermione's power through death

In Shakespeare's plays we also have the bed trick arranged by women. Come. On. Cunning, huh?

In All's Well that Ends Well, Helena is granted the option to choose her husband (in which case she then takes on this masculine sort of role). Because Helena takes on both a masculinity and femininity, she reflects the pressure on women to conform to these standards imposed on the feminine. Helena also reflects the ability of women to remain chaste but still carry with them the power of sexuality. Wearing many faces. Bertram, the weak male, caught between boy and man finds himself in this world of powerful women and absent men (his father). By being surrounded by women, Bertram fears his masculinity is in danger, but does he dare not have these powerful women surround him?

Troilus is yet another male character that portrays less masculinity in the beginning of the play through his desires for Cressida. He blames Cressida for his femininity (a bit grotesque but we all know how the play goes). Cressida is more of a maternal image to Troilus (oedipal desires).

The feminine identity is so complex that Shakespeare's women must explore through many guises to make it.

This blog was just a creative challenge for me, I do not consider myself a feminist or mull over whether one sex reigns over another, but I do find it interesting how Shakespeare possesses the power to make both men and women powerful images in his woks.

"Me, I do not look like myself, I am lonesome"

So often we are clouded by others' judgements, expectations and desires that we forget ourselves. We forget WHO we are, where we came from. I have come to a very complex understanding or at least realization that we transform into many things and that those things may only be part of us, not our whole. I have been contemplating this idea that we can wear many "hats" or faces to become many people. I have practiced this for months and sometimes I realize I fall in love with it- but it has transformed into more of a phrase: "fake it to make it". I notice this in Shakespeare's characters (Prospero) and myself. Guilty Or successful? Those hats- these faces, can be poisonous to us, but if anything we have the experience of being what we want, think we need to be, or really are. I think about this everyday. Who do I want to be? Who SHOULD I be? I had a conversation with someone recently and ironically enough, it was the person who really taught me that we need to wear many faces just to get by (though they probably don't know that). Sometimes it is just plain necessary. We may be wearing a different face, like Hermione, but the face we really have continues to stay with us, age, we are old and new all at once. I pulled some quotes from Shakespeare that portrayed this idea of confusion within ourselves about who we are and how we get to the place of understanding and becoming. I truly think that for any of us though, it takes us meeting our end to get back to our beginning, to us. I am leaving it to you to define "end".



Who are you?

"art ignorant of what thou art" (The Tempest I:2:18)

"Sometimes we are devils to ourselves" (Troilus and Cressida IV:4:94)

"I am not what I am" (Hamlet I:1:66)

"He who flatters you makes war upon your life" (Pericles I:2:45)

"More than I seem, and less than I was born to" (Henry IV pt.3 III:1:56)

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (King Lear)

"...no life
...no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more;
Never, never, never, never, never." (King Lear V:3:303-306)

"I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead" (King Lear IV:7:46-48)


Who am I? what deceives me into becoming something else? "If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me..." (King Lear IV:7:71-72).

These adjectives cluttering my mind just won't do...

The final day of presentations. I have to start with saying, I thought I knew what I was in for. I had lunch with Jenny and knew she would be singing, and of course it was going to be an amazing presentation (that goes without saying) but I didn't realize what chord it would strike. Again, I will do a brief overview of the presentations and what I took from it, but it will not reflect the actual experience well enough.

Brian: Worte a song, but have to check his blog for the video he was going to upload.

Rachel: Primary and secondary imagination (Coleridge); Prospero as Shakespeare himself; The play within the play; Shakespeare as myth maker

Lauren Scull: Has images on her blog; Andromeda and Perseus; The Tempest; Parents and originals

Shelby: Aesthetic Dignity; Eternal; Negative Capability; Beauty and the Sublime (greater, more complex, limitless compared to beauty); KEATS!; Reunion and recognition; Bloom on Cymbeline; Caliban's speech (III:II); Shakespeare's plays extend into the sublime

Spencer: Final scene and final act of Cymbeline; "Hats"; Not only mything the point, but missing the point; End of the play, the characters realize who they are.

Joe- "Nothing" in Shakespeare; pronunciation of nothing; power of imagination; "To be or not to be"

Lauren: Othello; Iago- the ultimate Tarquin (evil villain); Self- destruction; Richard White- Iago as a character we love to hate

Jenny: "If I die Young"; image of the pearl; Absolutely amazing, I really had to pull myself together to make it through this presentation.

Riley: Iago- burns down the town with his words; Bloom on Othello; Muse of fire (Henry V); Zeus: Pandora (women plague the men)


Shakespeare: remembrance, tragedy, loss, redemption, bitterness, and love.

Heartbreaking and Memorable

There are no words to describe how extraordinary the individual presentations were. As Dr. Sexson said in class, I described them as "heartbreaking and memorable" during a conversation with him. I missed day 1 of the presentations since I was in Minnesota for a much needed break from here, but heard they were spectacular, I missed out. Day 2 of presentations was the day that I would say was especially memorable for many reasons. James, the most courageous and raw of the presentations was inspiring and saddening. I am at a loss as to how to describe his presentation, it was a moment you had to be there for, it can't be captured through my blog. I realize I don't even have notes on his presentation because I was too wrapped up in his presenting. As for the other presenters who also did a wonderful job, here is a brief overview from my notes:

Alex: Manipulating events: alls wells that ends well; fortune/ nature/ gods

Jon: Hamlet & Remembrance; prodigal son. Hamlet: Who am I? Immortality through art

Melissa: Nature; levels of the christian world; "Hell"- Lear's madness; love made of purer substance; Shakespeare captures the emotional tragedy AND the physical

Craig: How do we escape our roles? It is so easy to be somebody else. Human Identity.

Karinne: Higher truth/ transformation/ disguises: What you learn about yourself through deception

Nathan: We should be conscious of what role we play in history and analyzing/ questioning history; Redemption? Kott's faith of humanity is shaken; New historicism; Prospero is tinged with bitterness. Leonardo DaVinci- history repeating itself and a struggle for power. Everything can change and nothing can change; Bitterness; Soliloquy- act V- prospero has to give up existence. What part of the past are you anchored in?


I thoroughly enjoyed all of these presentations! I am in awe of how unique each person is in their topics that they choose. It reflects who they are as people, what interests them and as a class we are so lucky to have the chance to listen to such intelligent and passionate speakers!

The Vale of Soul Making in Keats and Shakespeare

The Vale of Soul-making in Keats and Shakespeare

“I am not what I am”
(Othello I:I:66)

I wake from my dreams in a sweat, tears streaming down my cheeks. It all seems so real, built off remembrances of yesterdays. Dreams of people I loved, they reach deeper, to a world that I have not yet been to. I want to believe that Keats’ negative capability can exist, but I doubt myself so often and wait. It has taken me years to realize that while I adore and perhaps obsess over Keats’s words; I will never fully understand them.

Keats and Shakespeare, two of literary history’s greatest figures, use words and images throughout their works that allow us to connect to remembrance and kenosis on a deeper level. Words thread the soul together creating a bond between the reader and the work that is unique to each individual. Shakespeare does this through his sonnets, plays, and most memorable to me, his poetry. Keats’s remembrance is most evident in his poems and letters, specifically to Fanny Brawne. These connections that are formed create a bridge from the real to the mythological. Venturing through these worlds, the real (the social world) to the mythological (a world of insight and ecstasy), helps us to better understand Keats’s idea of negative capability and how important the act of remembrance is. Shakespeare’s characters specifically, reflect an understanding of human nature and the psyche that somehow impacts each and every one of us.

From the moment that Keats receives a collection of Shakespeare’s works, he is struck by Shakespeare’s ability to portray human suffering, love, deceit, and history within his writings yet is able to leave things as they are. Keats once wrote that Shakespeare was “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. Keats looked to Shakespeare and was inspired by his writings enough to conform to the idea of negative capability himself as well. Negative capability means that we are able to examine the world without desire or reconciliation of certain things.

Being given the power to explore within our imagination, we are allowed to set ourselves aside in order to understand others and the worlds we are a part of. I emphasize “worlds” because we move so often from the mythological to the real, sometimes so much that we are unable to distinguish them. I strongly believe that this is why Shakespeare is such a powerful writer because his characters help us to make this connection. Connecting on a deeper level, through what is most original in us, the soul reflects who we truly are while also making us aware of who we have become or think we have become. If anything is true it is that in fact “sometimes we are all devils to ourselves” when we fail to remember who we are.

I used to look at the “vales” in Keats’ “The Vale of Soul Making” as a representation of an unveiling of sorts. It was as if they were the next stone in the pond as we leap across. But now, as I have been studying Shakespeare and his characters within his plays and poems, I realize that those vales could actually serve as distortions. They cloud the soul, and it seems that they represent the deceptions, lies, and untrue things in life. We are able to hide behind or within these vales, deep in the soul where we are kept from who we really are. Shakespeare mentions the idea of “powerful graces” and shows how they are so easily able to be twisted (Richard III). When we allow power, love and hate, or desires to enter into our soul they can distort the real. Phillip Newell in Shakespeare and the Human Mystery emphasizes, “the journey towards wholeness involves a confronting of the shadow and a turning from the false self” (Newell 3). It also involves clearing out cobwebs and finally finding the strength and courage to accept what is really there.

What we so often fail to realize is that we are all very much the same. We all share a beginning that originated from something much deeper than we can understand. Perhaps our beginning is incomprehensible until we have reached our end. Looking at Shakespeare’s characters, we can move closer to this understanding by finding something in them that is also within ourselves. I believe that while we connect with Shakespeare’s characters, we have to be careful to not allow them to create us, but rather awaken within us what we have forgotten. Reading Shakespeare’s works, it is impossible not to notice how they rise and fall simply to rise again, or sometimes they just fall. They always reflect the process of going through tragedy and being reduced to nothing though with such beauty. The process of unveiling becomes a process of recovery and discovery for both Shakespeare’s characters and us.

What do we remember most as we enter this process? It seems we always remember what we wish we could forget. The pain of betrayal, and that, which inspires, hurts and makes us. The act of remembrance is sometimes clouded though by what we think we remember, which in fact is not at all what we remember. In regards to Shakespeare, King Lear and Miranda present themselves most clearly in my mind. King Lear looks to Cordelia to remember who he was and realizes that he does not even know himself. Lear becomes almost desperate in his attempt to remember asking, “who is it that can tell me who I am?” (I:IV). I think we can all think of a time when we have asked ourselves this. We forget so easily who we are because we are caught up in the social world where chaos and vocation take over us. King Lear does not realize that he has no idea who he really is though until he loses everything, which is then when he is able to see everything.

Miranda traces back through the mythological in order to reach her beginning. She is so childlike and innocent in the way that her beginning is told to her, recounted through storytelling. For many of us, this is how we come to understand where we came from. In the social world, the idea of beginnings seems to be irrelevant to us, but as we venture through the mythological we begin to understand more. Mythology brings us to the core of remembrance and origin into that "dark and backward abysm of time" (The Tempest I:II).

I have become lost in Shakespeare’s works in a way that only I could understand and even I do not fully understand. I am attracted to his tragedies, as are all of us as humans. Connecting through the loss of love that lives solely through my remembrances. I am constantly held down by who I want to be and who I am. Remembrances sometimes carry a weight with them, but it is impossible to rid ourselves of them. I am realizing as I am writing this paper that we should remember and be honored that we do. If we can remember, then we can know that we have lived, loved, and maybe lost but most importantly we experienced. We live. Immortality is achieved through our words and remembrances. They thread not only our soul, but our world.

The worst has not yet come. I am not laughing. I am not crying. So the worst is not upon me. I know this because I still remember, love and breathe new life each day. Even death will not make me forget, but I fear that forgetting may be my death. My final vale.

I'm "happy". "Really happy"...

Putting together my paper, I was looking at an interview with James Hillman- an interesting man to say the least. At the end of the interview, I took a second to stop thinking so deeply and just smile. I hate how much this poem related to my day- perhaps I ran into it for a reason. A poem by a Japanese Monk, Ikkyu-

"You do this, you do that
You argue left, you argue right
you come down, you go up
This person says no, you say yes
Back and forth
you are happy
you are really happy"

Hillman:
"What he is saying: stop all that nonsense. You're really happy. Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here."

Thanks a lot Will Smith for perceiving happiness as a pursuit.

Cheers to...Nothing.

my mind- my own tempest

The only magic there? A cape of snow covering the road and hiding the mountains. I tried to slow but it wasn't fast enough...my mind wandered too far from me. my thoughts were lost in an earlier conversation which, like the snow, never should have occurred. Tears blurred that curve ahead and curses shot through me. Sliding into a darker abyss, that guard rail stopped more than just my thoughts, calming the tempest in my head and making me aware of the storm that truly existed. The only thing between us, cracked glass.

What more could you ask for in a moment of regret, fear, and desire for redemption than the words of Shakespeare.

Red Wine, Mistakes, Mythology

The muses are simply one way in which Mythology ties in with The Tempest, easily overlooked, but very important. Through storytelling, dreams, history, belief, and magic- mythology circles around becoming so real and creating imagination within the characters and the readers. The Tempest reminds me of so many fairytales, all intertwined. Elements of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and The Wizard of Oz, are all apparent. The potions, dreamlike states, and remembrances that take place in these fairytales and The Tempest create illusions that confuse what really happened or why. Miranda becomes exhausted by the telling of Prospero’s story that she falls asleep. This reminded me of a dream I once had a few months back (still seems like yesterday). I dreamt, woke up and was shaken by this horrible event that occurred in my mind, only to find out a few hours later that in fact it was my own reality. I had simply dreamt of the future. I always laugh at palm readers, magic 8 balls, and horoscopes. But this time, there was no laughing, instead there were tears and I cried like never before. I was in disbelief, overcome by something so powerful, something I hope to never feel again. Just as Prospero’s story exhausted Miranda, my dreams exhaust me. I am awake, but I long to sleep again because the dreams I am caught in are more exhausting than reality itself.

All we ever want is to be “free”. I put that in quotations because what is freedom really, and what is it that any of us want to be free from? Everything and nothing. Freedom is liberating, but frightening. Prospero tells Ariel that soon he will be free as a bird, if he obeys his orders. The exchange of these words brought to mind a quote I read saying that even birds are not free, for they are chained to the sky. So what is freedom? When we are living our realities, we are not free. We dare to dream, but even there, we are not free.

The red wine aids in my poor decision making, and I wish it was in fact it was mythology that I was recalling rather than my reality.

But how is it that this lives in thy mind

Two themes that stick in my mind when reading the tempest are unveiling and remembrance. The unveiling centers around Prospero and his cape….but this is not just any cape, t’is a magical cape! Remembrance encompasses each and every one of the characters (Miranda sticks out for me though).

In these next lines, Prospero is recalling the past, Miranda’s history, to help her remember but also to see how much of it she still remembers.
MIRANDA
“You have often
Begun to tell me what I am, but stopped
And left me to a bootless inquisition,
Concluding, ‘Stay. Not yet.’”
PROSPERO
“The hour’s now come.
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not
Out three years old.”
MIRANDA
“Certainly, sir, I can.”
PROSPERO
“By what? By any other house or person?
Of anything the image tell me that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.”

As Miranda recalls her takers, the muses, and a few other things, Prospero replies:
“But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
If thou rememberest aught ere thou camest here,
How thou camest here thou mayst.”

The power of remembrance is so strong but it is interesting how we think that things happened though they really may not have. Remembrance and imagination can be tied together so tightly, also becoming dangerous for a person. The passage that I quoted above from The Tempest sent shivers through me. My memory is so great and so horrible. I can never remember what I should, but always remember what I wish I could rid from my mind. “In the dark backward and abysm of time”, I find myself constantly looking at the past, recalling memories stored in the darkness. It is as if they lurk behind this veil that one could label with many words: sorrow, love, pain, and misery. I long to unveil them and hopefully be free of them, but there is always another “vale” for them to hide behind. They transform rapidly. Remembrance. The past. I carry it with me, allowing it to weigh me down.

What Dreams May Come

This next blog is written with a compilation of notes that sit in front of me. My note cards are like a jigsaw puzzle, I can’t quite get them to all fit together though so I might just have to post many blogs in order to “organize” my thoughts.


I will start with the line:
“Good wombs have borne bad sons”
Initially I laughed when I read this line, but it was only because I didn’t want to cry.
I then came upon lines from Miranda:
“But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in ’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with.”

And that is when I allowed myself to shed a few tears. I know, but can’t verbalize why these lines spoke to me, probably because I could associate them with people that I love so dearly. Miranda was so good to Caliban, teaching him, but he let his evil ways get in the way of it. No matter how hard she tried to overlook or help him, he continued to treat her poorly. How could anyone read over this passage without some sort of feeling whether it be remorse, sadness, or disbelief at the least.

When Caliban is first introduced to the play, I felt a sort of sympathy for him. I have a soft spot in my heart for horrible people I think because so much of me feels hope that people change or are they way they are because of some horrible experience. I want to help the “bad” so that they can feel love and see the “good” in the world. Caliban was one of those men for me, but that died quickly. He in fact reminded me of a movie that I have called “What Dreams May Come”. The scenes that take place in hell are absolutely terrifying in this film! Even in the beginning of the play, when the ship is ablaze, I picture “hell” as this movie portrayed it. I can’t read the tempest without these horrifying images drifting in and out of my mind, the actors replaced by Shakespeare’s characters. The images in this movie take your breath away, there is so much imagination and many illusions in this play that take place through both dreams and reality. The trouble comes in deciphering which is which. I posted 2 clips from the film, one representing hell- a place of fury, fire, darkness and chills, while the other is representing heaven- a place of beauty, imagination...PAINT! I had a hard time tracking down great clips though, and most had songs accompany them, so try to just take in the imagery!

Music as therapy and Re-birth

I posted a video in one of my last blogs that featured Sigur Ros. Listening to that song got me thinking about music and therapy. I know that Jon Orsi also touched on music and the effects that it has on a person and it reminded me of a conversation that I had last week with my therapist. Whether it is the music itself or the lyrics, music can have such a profound effect on people.

Ferdinand reflects this most beautifully when he hears Ariel’s song:
ARIEL
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands.
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist.
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, bear
The burden. Hark, hark!”

FERDINAND: “I heard the music creep over the wild waves, calming their fury and soothing my own grief with its sweet melodies. I followed it here, or I should say it dragged me here. But now it’s stopped. No, there it is again.”

Music can be therapeutic but it can also be thought of as a remembrance. Music can bring a person to an entirely different place in their mind, creating images that were once behind those dusty, wrinkled veils. A name, a word, a tune- a remembrance.
I know that Jon was talking about a “re-birth” in his blog, which I thought was an interesting point, especially in music. I have always been a lover of music, but now I am constantly listening to sad songs that don’t allow me to grow, but to be stuck in the past. Music is a strong remembrance, memories I want so badly to let go of, but so badly want to hang onto. “Re-birth” is so cyclical. We are constantly being re-born by the things we hear, say, do, or see. Maybe I am the only one, but I have reached a point where I really thought that I had come full circle, a point where my own “re-birth” had taken place, but I find as time passes that the re-birth passed much too quickly and here I was again searching, waiting to be re-born. It also reminds me of the introduction to a CD by Alicia Keys, the element of freedom:

“And the day came when the strength it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the strength it took to bloom”.

This for me depicts “re-birth” through beautiful imagery. Even those flowers have to die, to make way for new life…and so the process continues. Cheers to continuous re-birth.

Love or Magic?

I can’t help but wonder if the love felt in Act II between Miranda and Ferdinand is real. Prospero wants them to realize the value of their love, but is it love or was it just that Miranda so “magically” appeared when Ferdinand was in need of companionship and love? Ferdinand seems to throw his words around so freely on this subject. I can’t quite grasp how much magic on Prospero’s part is involved.

PROSPERO
“Soft, sir! One word more.
(aside)
They are both in either’s powers, but this swift business
I must uneasy make lest too light winning
Make the prize light.
(to FERDINAND)
One word more. I charge thee
That thou attend me. Thou dost here usurp
The name thou owest not, and hast put thyself
Upon this island as a spy to win it
From me, the lord on ’t.”

Beauty and fear

Once again, I have started reading The Tempest, a play that seems to be assigned each and every semester to me. I can honestly say though, that until tonight The Tempest never spoke to me in the way that it does now. I never appreciated this piece of work to this extent.

The first thing that got me was the representation of the sea- this vast unknown place. It got me thinking about not only the amazingly dark, yet beautiful imagery in The Tempest, but the music that surrounds the island. I found a song, used in the movie of The Tempest, Sigur Ros "Sæglópur" (meaning: lost at sea) the song is sung in Icelandic (and also mixed with "hopelandic"- talk about imagination), from what I have gathered through translations, it is about a seafarer, lost and returning home.



Similar to Shakespeare, this music video leaves the viewer hanging on, wondering if the child was actually saved- it reflects the imagination and desire for resolution.

The sea and the storm in The Tempest depicts fear and chaos in a more imaginative way than anything else I have come across.
GONZALO:
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground: long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death."

The sea is an enormous creature with more life in it than we could ever fathom. The enormity of its waves and its ability to completely engulf us in one sweep overwhelms my mind. Miranda provides for me (at least within the first 2 acts) the most beautiful, frightening image of the sea when she says:

"If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to th' welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her
Dashed all to pieces. Oh, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed and
The fraughting souls within her."

Souls, lives, evils, dreams- all captured in this one body of water. I find the sea to be extremely terrifying, yet stunning all at once. It draws me to its waters, though I am hesitant. I remember this feeling when I was whale watching (I will not capture this well enough through words), the day was cloudy, the temperature within the 60's. As we went further out to sea, the wind picked up, the sky grew darker- I was so excited to be on this boat, viewing the most spectacular life that we could ever catch a glimpse of. These enormous creatures, in those vast, dark waters, deeper than I could ever imagine. Leaning over the boat and trying not to blink so as not to miss one moment, a humpback whale approached the boat within feet (I was amazed and had never even see a humpback whale up close!!!!!). Here I was looking so hard to spot a whale and he was there right in front of me. Anyways, the whale was so close, the boat so small- I thought to myself, "dear god, this whale, or these waves could swallow me up in a second". I was ok with dying in that moment if that is what it came to be. My fear became excitement and anxiety all in one. I always have said to myself that if I die, it will be doing something I love- I would have died enchanted, loving, breathless.

When I spent a month in Carmel, CA, the ocean became an escape for me. I wandered down to the beach so often to think, journal, and just be. The sound of the waves crashing were soothing. The sea doesn't speak, it just sings. A constant rhythm- back and forth. I wrote in the sand, one single word knowing that within mere seconds, it would be erased, washed into the sea- no longer with me but somewhere deeper, hidden. This became a habit for me, a therapy of sorts. There was always anxiety though watching those waves wash away a part of me, those grains of sand that my fingers ran through, creating something larger, never to be touched or seen by me again.

The personification of nature (specifically the sea and sky) never ceases to amaze me in The Tempest. There are elements of fear and pity reflected through the sea and sky and this next excerpt created an image that I wish I could draw out. It is so clear in my head and I am going to try to illustrate it this week!! The sea screams, but the sky sighs. BRILLIANT! I don't know if anyone could do imagery of the sky and sea as well as Shakespeare does in this play! I am speechless.
"There they hoist us
To cry to th' sea that roared to us, to sigh
To th' winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong."

The next lines that I really, so badly want to capture through my own, very personal illustrations are these:
"Salt of the sea and salt of tears.
When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,
Under my burthen groaned;"
We have the sea, a single tear drop. This quote speaks to me on a much deeper level than I realized until I started blogging. I want more time to really think and write about this though. I am feeling fatigued, overwhelmed with emotion and weighted down by more than I can handle at the moment. I have more to say about tears, the sea- and those two things becoming one.

The Statue

I was reading Jenny's post about the statue and the question as to whether the statue was real or not. It got me thinking about the fact that "we see what we want to see"...usually- or sometimes we see exactly what we DON'T want to see. Either way, the mind and the imagination are so complex that what we think we are seeing as real are really just figments of our imagination. Jenny also asked why Shakespeare would create such a statue with wrinkles, etc. with age comes beauty and wisdom (or so I like to believe) For me the statue represented not a perfect image but an image of flaws and imperfections (mirroring Leontes' own qualities.

I can't help but think though that Hermione and Paulina were staging some sort of clever plan to get Leontes to want Hermione. It reminds me of a really depressing country song my sister told me to listen to ("If I die young")...part of the song goes:

"A penny for my thoughts, oh no I’ll sell them for a dollar,
They're worth so much more after I’m a goner
And maybe then you’ll hear the words I've been singin’
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin’"

It's just like real life! Leontes doesn't realize her worth until she is gone (or so he thinks) and then when he sees that she is resurrected he wants her back. Does love have no worth until it is lost? That is what it seems to be, tragedy or comedy. Love has to become nothing before it really becomes something.

Tying back to my previous post, I am thinking about how much a statue stands for remembrance. We have a statue to remember a person by, yet we also have this disconnectedness through the aging process- she is both known and unknown. This helped me to create my own vision of the statue and allowing room for imagination to flow. Is it real or not? Why is she imperfect? Let's see how far our imaginations can go...

Another part I loved, that could have blown right past me:
"she thrice bowed before me,
And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes
Became two spouts"

There is such a fine line between dreams and reality. Dreams foster imagination, they show us what is both real and not, creating these false emotions in what I like to call "the other life". To me, my dreams are my other life. I am there in them, I especially felt this in the summer when I dreamt of something absolutely horrible, something I had never experienced and wish I hadn't. Just 2 hours after I woke, this horrible "dream" was a reality. To feel such emotion and disturbance through dreams is something I will never truly be able to explain.

So, I continue to ask, what in Shakespeare is real and what is not?! I can never quite tell. Thankfully, shakespeare is a supporter of dreaming and imagination so I will continue to wonder and create while reading his works.