I'm going to post this quote from the Song of Songs below, and note that I simply asked my friends for a reflexive reaction, as women, to the words, in any kind of form.
Here you go:
**
The watchmen who patrol the city found me: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had hidden and was gone; my soul went out when he spoke; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he did not answer me.
**
Continuing along this chain of events, someone in the house today had turned on Antiques Roadshow, and one of those weird appraisal dudes was looking at a painting by Alphonse Mucha, and though the work was titled "Job", it featured a woman.
I Wikied the artist and linked to a gallery of his work, thinking maybe there would be an image that reflected the aforementioned excerpt from the S.O.S. I found a couple forlorn women (a common subject in the medium, I know), but the one that stood out was a poster advertising an actress playing Joan of Arc.
And I thought, as Joan was crazed from her visions that she was unable to fully explain or gain sympathy for, such is the plight of the woman roaming the city looking for her love in the S.O.S. And just as Joan was eventually burned at the stake for her words, deeds, and beliefs, I'll surprise you by mentioning that there's a continuation to the lines from the S.O.S. (which I excluded for conciseness, and what I believed at the time was a lack of relevance to my own ideas), and here they are:
**
The watchmen who patrol the city found me; they smote me and wounded me; the watchmen of the walls took my jewelry off me.
**
Interesting, huh? Again, I'm not interested in any kind of bible study, or trying to form some kind of DaVinci Codesque conspiracy theories about Joan acting out lines from the S.O.S., but the underlying credo in my artistic endeavors (and view of the universe) is that everything really is connected, somewhere down there. When I write verse, it's coming from a deep subconscious pool of thoughts and ideas that all swim together in the same water. They don't discriminate. Usually our conscious minds call these things forth in particular orders and patterns; when you speak to your friends you don't blurt out run-on sentences in stream of consciousness fashion (well, maybe Bob Dylan used to). But when you paint, or play music, or write verse, or whatever, you have the option of opening that gate, that filter, and letting it all out at once. It's hard for many people to do this. Some use L.S.D. I consider myself lucky. One could take this a step further and imagine being able to harness the information of the Collective Unconscious (you can Wiki that one yourself for a little Jungian treat), but this post has become pretentious and out-there enough so I'll just bring it all back home:
If Job is the man that god tested personally, and Joan is one whose beliefs were tested, theoretically, in a less direct fashion by god, than it seems they have a lot in common. There's a jumping off point here for a discussion of religion and gender, but it's not what I'm interested at this moment. For now I'm content to let these images and words stew a bit and see what comes out. Combined with what some of you have already given to me, it's good stuff.
Thanks for sharing, and letting me share. Feel free to discuss below, be you male, female, or somewhere in-between, and I'll certainly participate.
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