Gift Hub

Ut Pictura Poesis

I asked Tutor why he always speaks in riddles. Why not come right out and say it? He told he me he muddies the waters to make them seem deeper. If the waters ever cleared, we would each see our own faces, and then he would suffer for it. The darker the times, the lighter the prose. Children's stories, fables, riddles. Rub a dub dub. Do you have any idea who those three men in a tub were ages ago? The shell of words remains although the nut of meaning was long since eaten. Literature, Tutor explained, is like the Beauty Filter on TickTock. It holds the mirror up to nature, but glamorized so the ugliness is less obvious to the producers and consumers on the platform. "If poetry is as Horace said in his Ars Poetica, a 'speaking picture,'" Tutor continued, his voice rising to that of a confirmed pedant, "it makes no sound." He held up his fore-finger portentously, shut his mouth and pointed his cell phone at his craggy face. I have no idea what he is trying to convey in 2 full minutes of motionless silence with no background music. And I am pretty sure I am better off not knowing. If you figure it out, please don't tell me. Not one person out of millions got to the end of the 2 minutes. He got no followers. No likes. No mentions. If this is literature in action, why bother?  

Lessons from The Bacchae

The Happy Tutor's range of cultural reference vastly exceeds my own. "Phil," he said, tossing his copy of The Bacchae so it rang off the inner wall of our Dumpster at the Intersection of Wealth and Bondage. "Dionysus is the great god who will always have his recompense. Sex drugs and Rock 'n Roll yesterday; today, the theater of cruelty. We monks, ages ago, split Dionysus, the god of revelry, flash mobs, poetic inspiration, drunkeness, and ritual slaughter, into a goat-footed Satan and a Blameless Sacrificial Lamb whose blood we drink, and flesh we eat, our having slaughtered him to confirm our community and bona fides.  Being human we endlessly sacrifice and worship the one in service to the other. He then reeled off what he said were a slew of current instances, which I will spare the reader since neither Tutor nor I have lived blameless lives ourselves. He was Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, back when it was just a Brothel. I was the cabana boy handing out towels in the sauna. I don't believe in torture or anything like that, except among consenting adults for pleasure or money, but I would rather roast you on a spit, than be roasted, wouldn't you? Sublimation is how religion and poetry are supposed to work. Let's us all try harder.