QUOTE OF THE DAY :: JOHN BERGER | On Song

John Berger by Andy Swapp (iPad) Aug 2012

 “Songs refer to aftermaths and returns, welcomes and farewells…songs are sung to an absence…in the sharing of the song the absence is also shared and so becomes less acute, less solitary, less silent. And this ‘reduction’ of the original absence during the sharing of the singing, or even during the memory of such singing, is collectively experienced as something triumphant. Sometimes a mild triumph, often a covert one. ‘I could wrap myself,’ said Johnny Cash. 'in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere; I was invincible.”

— John Berger, from ‘Some Notes About Song (for Yasmin Hamdan)’, Confabulations

JOHN BERGER

(joke)

Hah! John Berger was an early influence from his wonderful pictorial exploration 'Ways of Seeing' and I went on to read 'G' as a pretentious art student wandering the corridors of Banbury School of Art clutching my talisman. The programme profile later on broadcast posthumously was profoundly moving and he was and still is still a hero to me. Artist, poet, author, critic, journalist (in that order IMO) and yes, does this constitute an 'art blog'? Hope so! 

WAYS OF SEEING II

Ways of Seeing by John Berger taught me to question more what it is that we see . . . . . 

What does this picture below tell us?

What is happening here?

Does it change with knowledge?

Could it perhaps be a daughter and father affectionately kissing on the steps of some communal building perhaps? 

Would that make it adorable? Amusing perhaps? Are they perhaps reunited after some drama or period of separation? 

All these thoughts hurtled through my mind before I considered what my eyes were actually telling me . . .   . . . .

Well would what we feel change if we learned this was a picture taken at the marriage of these two?

Where could this be so? 

How old is the young woman?

Is she a midget? Hah! Could that be true? Or Is she a child? 

Would that change our perception of what is shown?

Does a cultural influence affect what we see?

 The actual caption reads thus:

"Homer Peel kisses his 12-year-old bride Geneva on the courthouse steps. Madinsonville, Tennessee, USA - June 25 1937."

Now how do you feel about this picture?

Horrified? Disgusted, or appalled? Does it make you feel sick? It did me! 

For a moment I thought the world had gone mad, stark staring crazy. From a country where Jerry Lee Lewis married his under age (13!) first cousin once removed (she was Jerry's third wife and may bigamously married Jerry as he hadn't yet divorced his second wife. He was 21. He married his first wife when he was 14) and Elvis Presley first got together with the girl who he would marry when she was only 14.  He was not her first. 

What is portrayed here was legal (presumably) in Tennessee and it was entirely culturally acceptable for this married couple to do this in one of the most advanced sophisticated and highly developed countries in the world which through power has sought to establish itself as the political and moral arbiter for the planet setting the standards for everyone else.

Fascinating huh?