FB Post – 7/31

I usually have very little to add to these posts because I’m not very good with art history.

However I happen to be a tremendous fan of Winston Churchill’s and this quote in particular.

Churchill was a brilliant tactician and much of Europe not being decimated (or currently speaking German) is owed to him.

And he was charming as all hell. They legit wanted him to surrender to the Nazi’s and Churchill managed to convince all of Parliament to dig in and fight the Nazi war machine. That’s a big freaking deal.

One of the ways the Nazis tried to defeat Britain was by inviting them into smaller skirmishes that the Nazi’s knew they could win. Splinter and fracture Britain’s forces. Churchill’s way around that was to simply ignore them. Head straight to the arms depot, or simply dig in. You know, ignore the barking dogs. Reach the destination.

So what does the quote mean? It’s all about focus. You must focus on your destination, your desire (what you lust after) and ignore the distractions. If you spread yourself too thin and give attention to every barking dog, every shiny toy, every new allegiance option… you will never succeed.

There is another fun Churchill quote though that I think also applies to us as a community…

“If you’re going through hell, then keep going.”

Oh and Jack Black has huge tits in the background of this and I don’t know if that’s relevant or not.

@thebuz It is. It always is.

First thing I thought when I saw the image was that the crowd was worshipping something. The title indicates some kind of agitation, but there’s no reason they couldn’t be agitatedly worshipping, in fact a lot of worship could probably fall into that category. After a quick search on equestrian statues, it appears that many have “been portraits of rulers or, more recently, military commanders.” As people (probably @wanda102) have pointed out, the futurists were very into the idea of a war and violence as a way to rebuild society. In that sense this painting displays a large crowd of people worshipping, or at least in a state of nervous excitement before a military monument.

Much of the language BOS has used is tied to violence and war in an effort to tear down OSDM, but they haven’t indicated that they want to rebuild it in any way. If Encroaching Darkness is tied to the OSDM they appear to be into the idea of rebuilding society in a different way, but we haven’t really seen much violent language from them.

There are also a handful of elements in the painting that I’m not sure about, the figure that @thebuz out on the right, the man with the beard on the left, and the three women with their backs to the painter’s eye. The other people in the image aren’t as distinct as those five and actually blend into a mass in the background. Also, what appears to be part of a woman’s face in the sky.

In addition to the point of focusing on the greater goal as you said @thebuz, I wonder if this is also aimed at the weekend’s events and the community’s reactions to it. I’m also likely just clouded by my own outlook on everything from the weekend, BUT:

If we shut down the flow of this thing every time our feelings are hurt or we regret an action or we get blindsided by change, then we’re spending more time arguing about things in the meta than we are actually being present and immersed. We’re about a month and a half away from when the live event component started last year, and that’s when (presumably) EVERYTHING will change again this year. While it is important to think about the ethics of what we so, and the morality of our actions seem to be playing a large part in this story, we need to be sprinting at full speed towards whatever’s going to be in front of us, not arguing.

It may be completely wrong, but that’s my takeaway.

@thebuz I think you are right on.

@addisonborn I think you are right on.

This reminds me of the familiar and popular phrase “choose your battles”. If you have a destination in sight, but you exert all of your energy towards every bump in the road, every obstacle, or altercation that crosses your path, you will not have the means within yourself to get to where you want to be. It would be wise of us to take this quote to heart, help it ground us, and apply focus (as @thebuz mentioned) to what it is we most desire. Put blinders on if you have to, but if we allow the distractions to weaken us along the way, we will never make it.

A bit of context for the painting from a critical piece called “Futurism and the Crowd.”
(The statue in this painting is of Cansignorio, a feudal prince)

Significantly, the equestrian monument to Cansignorio, ded- icated to a feudal court, presides over a serene, enclosed cemetery located in the center of Verona. Rather than romanticize this emblem of a bygone era, Boccioni portrays the prince as rigid and insubstantial; lacking cor- poreal presence, his virility and power are sustained only by his stiff posture and the absurdly phallic plinth. Crudely outlined and with hatchmarks that do little to establish a sense of volume, the prince appears as an illusory being, the collective projection of an hysterical upper class threatened by growing demands for democratic reform. Seen in this light, Boccioni’s drawing unmasks the claims to power of this class as rooted in the political myths and symbols of the distant past. Yet this image can also be read as revealing Boccioni’s own fascination with virility and power, as manifested by the “leader” who electrifies and dominates the crowd.

To;dr:
So in our context, does this represent need for reform from a older ruling class (old school OSDM tactics)? Or a clamoring to a powerful “leader?” Either way, a change is coming. And it’s coming soon.

But wait there’s more! (Sorry in and out of work things but art talk lures me in)

Both sides of our current experience will read this painting differently. For example, I’ll read it like the clamoring for a leader who is reforming OSDM, which applies to the different kind of behavior we’ve been seeing from OSDM and Noah possibly as that new leader. BOS members will see it as either Morgan rallying troops and demanding change or Noah fighting for them.

The prince in this drawing means nothing though. He’s not the focus. Boccioni didn’t even name him. It’s not about Noah. It’s about the movement; it’s about the future.

@wanda102 This is awesome, thank you for sharing!

Boccioni portrays the prince as rigid and insubstantial; lacking cor- poreal presence, his virility and power are sustained only by his stiff posture and the absurdly phallic plinth. Crudely outlined and with hatchmarks that do little to establish a sense of volume, the prince appears as an illusory being, the collective projection of an hysterical upper class threatened by growing demands for democratic reform.

So is this “prince” Noah? Or Horace? Are the OSDM threatened by the “growing demands of democratic reform”, which could be the increasing interest in The Resistance?

I have so many thoughts right now…