(no subject)
I am mulling over how I might assemble an exhibit around phylacteries, the precursor to the thought and speech bubbles of the comics, cousin to the Egyptian cartouche. Phylacteries, devotional objects in Judaism, leather-bound scriptural extracts worn on the arm and the head during prayer; the unfurled and often devout sentences that issue heavenwards from the mouths of figures in medieval paintings and frontispieces from early printed books, like the blossoms that seem to tumble out of the graces' mouths like speech in the Primavera.
I have a gris-gris I got from my friend Ismaila's marabout when I was in Senegal, tailored to my needs to cure my gloom, sewn closed in leather and threaded on a cord. I was poor, he gave me the standard issue amulet in lieu of the ornately illuminated pages torn from the Korans lying about his room: felt tip marker on typing paper. I preferred it that way. I have no idea what text he chose. We communicated poorly, my hobbled, scant broken French distilled through my lisping friend into Wolof and back again. Maybe he wrote: there is a sad white girl with a speech impediment; do what you can.
I love how words and speech are reified in these things, folded up, unrolled like scrolls, ensconced in mezuzahs, touched, held; I love the literality, the quiddity, of the word in certain cultures, Koranic quotes as holy objects, their scripts becoming devotional emblems, their legibility moot, the role they play in countries without written languages.
This is too vast, too unAmerican, and too ahistorical to fly anywhere here.
And too hard to talk about without using brazen loser decon words like reify. A word I secretly love.
I would have to confine myself to books and such anyway, for the most part, print on paper. Handily, we do have the first several years of Wonder Woman comics. Wm. Marston, psychologist and inventor of the polygraph, attempting to create an assertive role model for young girls and future bondage enthusiasts... Hmm.
Perhaps all I really want to accomplish is to sneak something infidel or naughty in under their radar. Satisfy my tiny demographic of one.
I have a gris-gris I got from my friend Ismaila's marabout when I was in Senegal, tailored to my needs to cure my gloom, sewn closed in leather and threaded on a cord. I was poor, he gave me the standard issue amulet in lieu of the ornately illuminated pages torn from the Korans lying about his room: felt tip marker on typing paper. I preferred it that way. I have no idea what text he chose. We communicated poorly, my hobbled, scant broken French distilled through my lisping friend into Wolof and back again. Maybe he wrote: there is a sad white girl with a speech impediment; do what you can.
I love how words and speech are reified in these things, folded up, unrolled like scrolls, ensconced in mezuzahs, touched, held; I love the literality, the quiddity, of the word in certain cultures, Koranic quotes as holy objects, their scripts becoming devotional emblems, their legibility moot, the role they play in countries without written languages.
This is too vast, too unAmerican, and too ahistorical to fly anywhere here.
And too hard to talk about without using brazen loser decon words like reify. A word I secretly love.
I would have to confine myself to books and such anyway, for the most part, print on paper. Handily, we do have the first several years of Wonder Woman comics. Wm. Marston, psychologist and inventor of the polygraph, attempting to create an assertive role model for young girls and future bondage enthusiasts... Hmm.
Perhaps all I really want to accomplish is to sneak something infidel or naughty in under their radar. Satisfy my tiny demographic of one.