statue

there is something very wrong about statues and, in all my life i have not been able to explain the spine-tingling eye-shaking feeling i get when i see those frozen giants. i cannot explain it. but here is an intellectualized explanation because it fits my purpose today:

statues are sentiment encased.

that much is obvious. statues are time capsules: erected at a time when they mean so much that their very beings breathe the breath of the time. they are embodiments of a sentiment, a new world order. but once you encase a sentiment in bronze you freezeframe it and it stays stuck as the times pass so that your life-breathing monument dies, but dies alive so that statues (disregarding their gigantic size) are dead-yet-alive replicas of life but still as still as rigor mortis. it's like catching the clock at 11:11 or true deja-vu, that feeling when your brain perceives perfect symmetry, event perfectly placed on event. here: life is placed on death and they co-exist to make me my mind whirr.

and i hate it.

didn't freud say that seeing old rome superimposed but co-existing with new rome should cause elation? i don't think the mind likes to see itself in the world.

i haven't even started with my hypocrisy rant, re:
...A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore...

did you know that emma lazarus actually wrote this poem for the colossus of rhodes and not for lady liberty? the colossus of rhodes was a world wonder that toppled over in an earthquake.

ozymandias anyone?

...whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things....

exactly my point.

but my very favourite statue belongs to ms. barrett-browning:
...Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death-- Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: If it could weep, it could arise and go.

and this is exactly where my statue theorizing begins to mock my very existence.