Eyes, for Lauren (and for myself)

[readingredhead]

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together,
Headpiece filled with straw...

 

This was the first of the Hollow Men sketches.  I was sitting and watching X-Files on TV and looking at a blank page when I drew the central figure -- the "Hollow Man" of the image.  Then I thought of the quote and decided he needed a "direct eye," and when there was room I decided the poetry was necessary to explain the image.  I don't like the scan of this very much -- it's pretty high res, but that means that it looks funky if you shrink the image too much.

I dunno, something about the figure's gesture really does strike me as empty.  It's movement, sure -- but where to, and where from, and why does it matter to the viewer?  Under the scrutiny of such a clear gaze, the figure is frozen, a mere shadow.



This, Lauren, was probably as a direct result of your eye picture.  I wanted to try the shading out, so I did it.  But then I thought about what it means to have an eye in black and white -- the irony of this great capturer of color being pictured in monochrome.  Hence the quote: "The eyes are not here.  There are no eyes here."  For how can it be an eye if it can't see?  It's a hollow eye, providing the user with only a shadow of sight.

The quote for this is, "Here, the eyes are sunlight on a broken column."  This takes a bit of explaining, but when Tony and I were studying Hollow Men (and everything else) for IB orals, we came across a site which mentioned that a broken column is a common grave marker in the case of a premature death (http://www.aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Poem.htm).  I thought this was so much more fitting than Dr. Chris's interpretation of the crumbling churches, because hollowness isn't just about religion -- it's about the inherent will and passion to live, or lack thereof.

The death of a child dying young is mourned because they have not yet had the time to live.  The death of the Hollow Men should be mourned for different reasons -- because they had all the time they could have wanted, but they made nothing of it but their own personal Hell, the "desert kingdom" here on Earth.

And that's all the ones I feel like scanning, though I've got one more...but I think I'm going to color it in, just to see what it looks like that way.  I'd be afraid of ruining it, but it's not good enough to begin with for me to worry about that.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Comments

[incaseineedyou.livejournal.com]

yeah, I know what you mean. Well, unless you're talking on a deeper than physical level- I am distracted often (ok, all the time) by thoughts like this, and by the time I can tear my attention away from whatever new revolution is occuring in my mind, I have no idea what is going on around me, and people always have to repeat things. My friends get really mad sometimes. Also, I will hear really random phrases that make no sense in the context of the conversation, but have the same basic sounds as what they are saying. Something about intonation, I don't know. I think my hearing just really sucks.
There are other times, though, where someone will say something and it feels like there is a meaning to it I am not grasping. Sometimes it's phrasing, but usually it's facial expression or intonation... like all that I get from it is the idea that there is a connection I'm not making, a meaning I'm not grasping, but nothing about what it is. It actually happens a lot, but usually only really mildly.

I'm going to go read it! Yay!

And I hate asking more than once for someone to repeat something. If I don't hear it the second time I usually just nod and go "mmm," and hope it wasn't a question. Or, you know, a declaration of love.