Frozen on walls and ceilings, subjects pose still. There's the outlandish symmetry of the historical painter's eye. The different angle on physics. In this place, the modern teen enters as a sacrilege wearing an iPod garland around his neck.
Caught, but not restful, the subjects tumble forth in spirit: Napoleons and Marie Curies, legionnaires and milkmaids, knights and peasants and virgins holler at the noisy tour group familiarly, like their mothers would do were they present.
"Tuck that shirt in!"
"Pay attention!"
"Speak clearly, don't slouch."
"Live, explore, collide!"
Without noticing, the teens stumble around listening to audio tours: this tapestry, that jewel, this scupture, that javelin. Yeah.
Would they had a medium to channel the outrage of history ignored. She could give voice to the terrible message of captive time.
Would they had different ears than their fathers and mothers, and their parents fathers and mothers. But still they do not improve upon anything, each learning the same lessons again and again and again while history sighs.
***Shameless self promotion!***
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
~L'histoire by Rion~
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2 comments:
Pictures like these filled my seventh grade history textbook. Most students gave these photographs little more than half-interested glances. They were too concerned with passing notes or experiencing the thrills and nascent feelings that characterize puberty newly arrived.
No football coach will ever do the subject of history justice. Multiple choice tests and endless cycles of round-robin reading do not suffice for good education. Most of my fellow students had been given no reason to care about Charlemagne and even less reason to want to plow through pages upon pages of long forgotten battles, kings, and disconnected dates.
Upon finding this textbook at the school's used book sale, I jumped at the chance to take it home. Ten years of being thrown across classrooms and stowed away without much care between book bags and lockers had left the cover decidedly worse for wear.
No matter. I wasn't after the cover. I was after the pictures. That's why I took a sharp exacto knife and decided to liberate this image from a world of hormones and facial blemishes.
L'histoire
Frozen on walls and ceilings, subjects pose still. There's the outlandish symmetry of the historical painter's eye. The different angle on physics. In this place, the modern teen enters as a sacrilege wearing an iPod garland around his neck.
Caught, but not restful, the subjects tumble forth in spirit: Napoleons and Marie Curies, legionnaires and milkmaids, knights and peasants and virgins holler at the noisy tour group familiarly, like their mothers would do were they present.
"Tuck that shirt in!"
"Pay attention!"
"Speak clearly, don't slouch."
"Live, explore, collide!"
Without noticing, the teens stumble around listening to audio tours: this tapestry, that jewel, this scupture, that javelin. Yeah.
Would they had a medium to channel the outrage of history ignored. She could give voice to the terrible message of captive time.
Would they had different ears than their fathers and mothers, and their parents fathers and mothers. But still they do not improve upon anything, each learning the same lessons again and again and again while history sighs.
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