Feeling like a vandalized Vermeer

[oneirophrenia]

I just put another starter in my car. This is the third one I've put in it in under eighteen months. Fortunately this time my car was here in Uniontown, and the starter never quite died--just started acting sluggish--so fortunately this time I got to take it to my one old friend's garage, and he fixed it for around $125 all told. I had him check over my entire engine, too, to see if there is anything obviously wrong with it that would be killing these starters, and he couldn't find anything. I guess starters just don't like me. *sigh* Nonetheless, it's not gonna matter in the long run, since I plan on getting rid of this sinking ship of a car sometime in the next four or five months. I'd certainly like to replace it with a Hyundia or some sort, but, then again, I'd also like to see if I could scrounge up a Jeep of some sort--a vehicle that I can take offroad and beat around the mountains this summer. I haven't been to Pine Knob in ages, and that's just not right.

In much better, lest costly news...man, do I want to see Girl with a Pearl Earring this weekend. I've recently rediscovered my love of Flemish painters, and even though I've never been that fond of the actual painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring," I generally like Vermeer's output and his life has always fascinated me--as has his timeperiod. I just know that after seeing this film, I will be all inspired again to continue plotting out my epic retelling of Hieronymous Bosch's "life"--which will be entirely fictitious, since next to nothing is actually known about the man, and will involve lots of psychotropic visions, communications with esoteric dimensions populated by fantastic (and oftimes psychotically violent) beings, and tulips.

Comments

[cyano.livejournal.com]

interestingly enough, the reproductions of Girl w/a Pearl Earring don't really do much for me either.

The actual painting itself... well, it's like lightning in your brain. By the time you realize you struck, it's too late.

I was lucky enough to see the show at the National Gallery in DC, they had 25 of the 30 or so known Vermeers. My favorite one of them all was this small painting of a girl making lace. It reproduces badly, because they can't get the colors or the detail sharp enough.

I love Bosch too. they are both some of my favorite painters ever. If you decide to do the story on Bosch, let me know, I might be able to help you with it.

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[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

I have just about every book on Bosch that I can think of, and even though some feature a bit more biographical detail than others, 98% of what we know about the Man Himself is speculation or circumstantial. His life is almost a complete mystery. Hell, the one extant portrait of him might not even *be* him! This makes my job as a writer much easier: I can literally invent damnear anything about him that I want to...which is a lot of fun, since it gives me license to give the man a life as surreal as his paintings!

[mirvana.livejournal.com]

OMG, GwtPE was made into a movie?! I have to see it too. Read the book. It was one of my faves.

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[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

They did! Scarlett Johansson's in it, and...oh, crap, I can't remember the name of the fellow who plays Vermeer--but nonetheless, it seems to be a wonderfully-done historical film set in one of my alltime favorite places and periods: the Flemish Lowlands in the Renaissance.

Have you ever read any of Tracy Chevalier's other books? In particular, _Falling Angels_? If not, seek that one out: it's a great book featuring lots of detail about late-Victorian mourning customs and gravediggers and stuff like that. The ghoul in me absolutely loved it, though the story was a little weak and soapopera-ish.

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[mirvana.livejournal.com]

I did indeed read that one as well, yes, melodramatic, but interesting as social commentary on Victorian society.

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[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

_Falling Angels_ would make a surrealistic kind of Tim-Burton-meets-Alfred-Hitchcock kind of film, with all the characters played very over-the-top and off-the-cuff, so that the melodrama of it is exaggerated so greatly it becomes stylized and the commentary on late-Victorian/Edwardian society becomes very prominent.

[blackcatbon.livejournal.com]

I'm still anxiously awaiting two films...

the film version of The Last Unicorn
and
the new film adaptation of The Stepford Wives

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[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Yum. _Stepford Wives_. I want one of them. No...actually, I don't--the idea of a robotic, subservient housewife really turns me off: I *hate* human puppets. On the otherhand, a robotic *hellcat* of a wife...yeah, I think I could dig. Heh.