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the object as muse
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1953
Then there are the other reasons for collecting. Not just memories or souveniers, but objects as inspiration.
From top left and clockwise: Seashells, locally found amber, antique ivory chess piece, Palindrome Cork (1991, Ravenswood), large piece of amber with insects entrapped, neolithic flint, crystal skull, seashells, snuff bottle (contemporary), hand painted from the inside, row of dinosaur teeth, plastic reliquary containing the plastic reproduction of a saint, mailbox plate.
A small selection of the ornaments on my shelf. 1991, a good year, the logo (3 interlocked ravens) and the date contain a certain symmetry. The snuff bottle, meticulous Asian craftsmanship, to sit with a single brushed hair and paint the bottle through the narrow opening, finer antique examples cost in the thousands of dollars. The Ivory chess piece, knight, a stream of associations -> Parsifal and the Holy Grail, The errant knight, the odd move, the knights tour. The crystal skull and plastic saint, cheap bits of forteana, amber with insects (visible through a magnifying glass), tangible worlds within worlds.
Right: Fossil Nautilus(ammonite?) shell.
And the Nautilus, the golden mean and proportion as simply laid out as possible, underlying mathematical principles for growth and development, fractals, time....
Left: Georgian Keys
Keys, of course, access to secrets, initiation, antique keys because the new swipe cards, microchips and passwords somehow lack poetry, the keys as an object themselves are beautiful, rusted and patinated iron, ornate patterns hand cut to fit the lock.
Above: Brain Coral, buddha, buddha
And Buddha's, I need more of these, the finer Indian bronzes, the pantheon of Gods contained in a printing box shelf...
Collecting...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1795
I've taken this collecting thing a bit far. I mean, to see my place, it's packed to the rafters, overflowing with stuff.
Stuff, as in, not especially valuable stuff, probably most of it worthless, but my stuff. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. It's been over a year and I sitll haven't unpacked.
Most of it is worthless, junk, but sentimental. With everything there is associated a memory, the 1930's vintage Rolex Oyster Observatory, junk, but the memory, the surprise of finding it in a Value Village in the southeast of Calgary. The 50's 16mm film camera, the realizing of it's potential, the quick reframe of thought at a garage sale, from "What is it" to "I have to have it....". And so on and so forth. The dinosaur bones, small fragments, memories of Drumheller, walking in the badlands. The native artifacts, walking the local rivers at sunset. An antique ivory chess knight, memory of an antique shop in Greenich, that, the keys, the bones, coins, crystals, all serve to jog the imagination, archived, preserved inspiration, a moment of time, recent or long ago, held captive and displayed in a series of old wooden typeface drawers, themselves a souvenier.
On the shelf above my desk...2 Coins, Roman, (Maximus & Trajan), coin, chinese (15th century), pendant (chinese), cheap rock crystal skull 1" across, a lead soldier, 3 18th century keys (the rest on a shelf elsewhere), 2 native beads, many stones with holes through them picked and thought too neat to be discarded, 2 fossilized bison teeth (1 from Crowsnest Lake, the other picked along the Bow), a pine cone, many sea shells, a nautilus, postage stamp, lock, piece of amber with insects....
The objects, they're only the landmarks on the journey. The physical signposts.
Other people fill their houses with warm memories of Ikea and smooth talking salesmen. Well dusted kitchens, scrubbed floors and orderly bookshelved. Mine is packed with junk and memories.
Joanna Newsom
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
- Hits: 1406
"...
And the little white dove
Made with love, made with love:
Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers
..."- YS - Sawdust and Diamonds
Absolutely amazing. Listening to her voice, frail, up and down, pursuing haunting melodies, her voice, childish, distant, as if from another time. 5 out of 5 stars. Her other albums are also well worth listening to.
Visit her website here: http://www.joanna-newsom.com/
It's an instinct...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2604
It's an instinct, this treasure hunting.
And the garage sale season having passed, a short season this year, hampered by finances and transportation, the instinct seeks its outlet.
I take the children to a riverside park in the neighborhood to look for stones for their rock tumbler.
And sorting through the gravels, the abundant pebbles, we're surprised to find an old indian bead.
Small, perhaps an inch and a half, with a perfectly bored hole straight through it.
And it triggers the instinct.
There are no buried treasures in Alberta, well, very few anyways. There's the Lost Lemon Mine, if you credit the legend, and undoubtedly more than a few mason jars filled with farmers life savings buried under fence posts, but there's none of the classic treasure hunting raw materials, gems, gold, sunken ships.
But there is history, in it's way a sort of treasure.
Before I go too much further I should note that it's illegal to look for archeological artifacts in Alberta. If you see or spot an archeological artifact you are supposed to call the provincial museum and leave the site undisturbed. All artifacts are property of the state.
Now, on paper this is ideal. It speaks to our highest and noblest selves, our shared history is our shared property to be preserved for future generations.
But like many laws that at first glance look good on examination we can discover that it lacks both teeth and foresight. We think nothing of building entire neighborhoods (In Calgary, think Bowness, Crescent Heights, Mount Royal, Hawkwood, and many, many more) over Native sites. We build highways over them, farmers rearrange the stones on their field, taking apart medicine wheels, teepee rings, burial grounds are buried beneath parks, golf courses and basements. The vast majority - over 99% of the paleo and archeological history of Calgary - lies buried under suburbs, or has been churned by bulldozers and ploughs destroying any contextual value the sites may have provided.
We turn a blind eye, or excuse it with "You can't stop progress".
Which is true, but laws that allow and encourage laypeople to collect, document and report finds and artifacts would would save much of this.
No government could ever afford to staff a province or even a country the size of Alberta with the number of archeologists we would need just to keep abreast of progress. Of the expanding highways, cities, suburbs, oil sands.
It is, upon examination, an idiotic law that is in its way far worse than having no laws at all. The kind of law that is intended to reassure the people that "we're protecting our history" when in fact we are systematically destroying it. Destroying it through ignorance, through "Let the experts handle it", through progress and neglect. Presumably countries that don't have similar laws have no valued history, you only need to look at countries like the US or Great Britain to see how their lack of competent legislation has destroyed their history....
I digress, but I will return to this theme again and again.
So we discover the bead, and search through the gravels but find nothing more, some fossils, other stones that might look good polished, but that is all.
But the seed is sown.
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