Can there be a more poetically potent act than that of drinking, and literally drawing sustenance from, another creatures tears?! Drinking tears for christ sake! Really, in human terms, it does not get much more poetically evocative than that, unless of course there is an animal lurking out there in the underbrush who subsists exclusively on the torn-out hearts of pregnant war widows.

For the animals who engage in this behavior, mainly a few species of moth, nothing could be more straight forward. Tears are as good a source of water and salt as any other (not to mention those delicious trace-levels of protein! Yum.) and hell, if no one else is gonna make use of it… Mommy didn’t raise no dummy-larva!

Even so, as a human it would seem nearly impossibly to explain lachryphagy without at least tacitly acknowledging the crazy, unintentional drama the whole undertaking is fraught with from our emotional and symbol-ridden point of view.

Quote: “Some species of moth engage in an almost romantic kissing of the eyes. Mara elephantophila, for example, which drinks the tears of elephants, is among the smallest of such moths. A shy, delicate creature, its tiny size allows it to steal a tear without elephants seemingly noticing.

The highly specialized Lobocraspis griseifusa Does not wait for an animal’s eyes to moisten. When it has landed, it sweeps its proboscis across the eye of its unfortunate host, irritating the eyeball, encouraging it to produce tears. It can even insert its proboscis between the eyelids, ensuring it can feed even while its host is sleeping. Whereas a moth of the genus Poncetia goes to the opposite extreme. It’s proboscis is so short it must cling to the eyeball itself to drink. But it must be careful. If its weeping host blinks, the moth is often crushed to death.” -Matt Walker, from Fish That Fake Orgasms: And Other Zoological Curiosities.

Yes!!!

I literally can’t read that without my brain just shivering in delight. 

“Delight?” you ask. Well, yeah, I mean, we’re talking about insects drinking animal tears. As with Love and War, all’s fair in Nature baby, that’s just plain good times. If, on the other hand, moths were dunking those proboscises (who knows where they’ve been!?) and greedily guzzling the wine of human sadness, well…

Quote: “I was observing zoophilous moths in a herd of zebu. One C. ludovicae took tears from a zebu at 1840 h. Shortly afterwards the specimen flew onto my wrist where it sucked perspiration for 10 minutes before it flew onto my naked leg and back onto the front of my head where it continued to take sweat. It flew off and back to my cheek, climbed towards my right eye. finally settling near its lower edge. The perception I now felt was unpleasant and was comparable the that of a particularly edgy grain of sand being rubbed between eye and lid. the source of th epain is revealed in a flash photograph (pictured above) I took 1.5 minutes after the moth settled: the right fore tarsus was hooked onto the delicate conjunctiva of the lid near the eyeball, while the the tear sucking proboscis applied to the eyeball caused less disturbance. Unfortunately the flash scared the moth away which did not return.” - Hans Biinziger, from the paper Remarkable New Cases of Moths Drinking Human Tears In Thailand. (pdf)

No!!!

That moth got away and its tear-fattened progeny are almost surely licking a human eyeball somewhere in Thailand at this very moment! Not to mention these guys…

Yeesh. See, now my brain is shuddering in repulsion, and rather than the sensitive and knowing Emersonian verse which had been growing in the back of my mind, I find poorly written scripts for low-budget horror flicks scrolling across my mind’s eye… Hey! Stay away from my mind’s eye, you damn pesky tear-burglars.

Anyhow, thinking it over, I cant help but get to wondering. Were it not for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth scaring them away, would moths prefer the hormone and painkiller-rich vintage of “psychic tears” (i.e. the type created by stress, suffering, or pain induced weeping) over the run-of-the-mill “reflex’ brand? And for that matter would, say, a toddler’s skinned-knee tears be more or less delicious than a 17 year old’s “we’re both going off to different schools and will want to see other people” tears? Are the tears of a Cubs’ fan in September any good? And what about crocodile tears or the tears of a clown?

Your average elephant or water buffalo doesn’t care much about such things, they just make a loud noise and shake their head about to scare off the moths and then get back to their business, but as I said in the beginning, such is the joy of being a deliriously “aware” human. It is our purview, and ours alone, to get wrapped up in the poetry and metaphorical emotional payload inherent to the survival strategy of an insect, who given the chance, will fly directly into an open flame.

Afterword 1-

The image which began this post, of a deer’s eye surrounded by tear bandits, is a fabrication. I concocted it to resemble a very low resolution image I found showing a similar gathering around a water buffalo’s eye. As much as it pains me to admit it- the deer is stuffed, the eye is glass, and the moths are, well… I don’t know what they are.

How is this even remotely relevant to the discussion at hand you ask? Well, coincidentally (or not), in seeking to create the illustration I found that, for a layman at least, the act of searching out images of specific moths, armed with nothing but the maddeningly complex knot of Latin genus/subgenus/family/sub-family/tribe/ names also happens to induce lacrymation, rather quickly and angrily I might add, and I half expected my face to be swarmed with fluttery little wings terminating in thirsty barbed probosci.

Afterword 2-

In the year 2048, after the fall of western civilization, when an individual’s knowledge and skill-set no longer qualify he or she for well paying jobs but rather automatically initiate them into vicious, roving, cannibalistic street gangs, murderous and vengeful lepidopterologists (and Nabokov scholars) will appropriate the image of the lachryphage, potent and poetic as it is, and use it in the following manner-

And this tattoo will strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. 

Hope you enjoyed.

Related from New Scientist:
Moths with a taste for tears
Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

Possibly related:
The Jimsonweed Junkies

Religiosity penetrates language like mold veins an exceptionally blue cheese. This is true for the English language in general but is particularly pronounced when it comes to profanity. This fact is not remotely surprising if you take even a second to think on it. The word profanity itself is a religious one for Christ’s sake! ⊕ Were it not for the act of measuring all utterances against God’s hair-trigger wrath, there would, strictly speaking, be no such thing as “profanity.” 

Profane,  from the Latin profanare “to desecrate,” from profanus “unholy, not consecrated,” from pro fano “not admitted into the temple (with the initiates).

The term has been broadened, in modern usage, to encompass any “naughty” words not fit for “polite” company ⊕ Even so, the desire to have something forceful to say, which properly utilizes a good long row of exclamation points ⊕, when we stub our toe, or cum, or get punched in the neck, or open a cable bill while in public has lead us to coin a plethora of seemingly benign substitution expletives.

Today these substitutes, so numerous as to vastly outnumber the “curses” they stand-in for,  are mostly the kind of limp, forceless words you associate with grandparents, cartoon characters, and 7 year-olds. They are also the kind of words that are so ingrained in our language and minds that we never give a thought to their origins or what they are actually standing-in for. A euphemistic substitute of this kind has a name, if you were not aware, and that name is “minced oath.” ⊕

Minced Oath.  A semi-technical term for a specific kind of euphemism or disguise mechanism, whereby an offending term or taboo phrase is modified so as to be used without giving offense. Periphrasis or circumlocution is the most common modification, that is, to “speak around” a profane word, implying it without saying it.

While there have long been linguistic taboos associated with the scatological and the sexual ⊕ it will not surprise you to learn minced oaths are, as a group, overwhelmingly Religious in origin.

Just a few examples:

Gosh darn it — God damn it
Jeepers Creepers — Jesus Christ
Tarnation — Damnation
Dad gum — God damn
Doggone it— God damn it
Jiminy Cricket — Jesus Christ
For Pete’s sake — For St. Peter’s Sake
By golly — By God’s body
By Jove — By Jupiter/Jehovah
Judas Priest — Jesus Christ
Good gravy — Good God
Drat — God rot it
For crying out loud — For Christ’s sake
Goodness gracious — Good God
Holy mackerel — Holy flesh
Jumping Jehosaphat — Jumping Jesus
Suffering succotash — Suffering saviour
Blimey — God blind me
Dangnabbit — God damn it
Gee whizz / geewhillikers — Jesus’ whiskers
Good grief — Good God
Egad — Oh God
Gadzooks — God’s hooks
Zounds — God’s wounds +
Etc…

That there are so very many of these types of minced oaths is actually somewhat comical, not to mention quite revealing in regard to Man’s outlook on taboo language.

Why comical? Because these archaic forms sound silly to our modern ears? ⊕ No. Because as a good hardline theologian (or hardline amateur) will happily remind you, any God worth the knee-pains of prostrating oneself before would not, could not, be fooled by a bit of loophole-exploiting linguistic flimflam. Which is to say, minced or not, the intention is identical and so the iniquity is equal.

 
Quote: “It is a vain endeavor on the part of some to avoid the guilt of profane swearing by mincing their oaths, as is the practice of many whose consciences still trouble them so much as to hinder them from the more out-breaking forms of this sin. Minced oaths are either oaths, or they are nonsense. If oaths, they are of course profane. If they are nonsense, they are not “good nonsense,” and are clearly forbidden by Matt. xii. 36. -William S, Plumer, D.D. LL.D., The Law of God, 1864.

It’s our persistence, in spite of this fact, which I find revealing. It would seem that we modify our speech knowing full well that the modification does not successfully solve the “problem.” We are motivated not by fear of God’s wrath ⊕ evidently but by fear of more tangibly immediate reprisals by the morality patrol. In short we will modify our behavior so as not to hassled by other (very real, persistent, and annoying) humans but not to protect against “eternal damnation” in the (very theoretical, abstract, quite possibly imaginary) afterlife.

Eeentahresting.

I am tempted to say that not only has profanity been historically framed by Religious attitudes, but that ultimately, and in more than merely a semantic way, it’s precisely Religion’s imperative against profanity which powers the great profanity dynamo. The whole purpose (and satisfaction) of cursing is the emphasis it affords, the action of saying something instantly an unmistakably recognizable as apart from genteel speech. Had Religious attitudes, over centuries, not explicitly shaped an entire canon of taboo utterances for us to utilize… well, where would we be then? We’d be grunting and groaning in exclamatory frustration.

Either that hurling fistfuls of feces.

Anyhoo, let’s amble back around to profanity and my atheism shall we?

As I said, I tend to feel betrayed by my own profane vocabulary when cursing. As though using Religious words, in the service of that perfect angered emphasis, were offering free press to Christianity, or worse, an implicit acceptance of their “sacredness.” It is habitual, after all, yet I can’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance that even in the midst of my passionate, animal, fist-shaking, secular tirades Religion ought to impose itself into my life. Of course, when I take the time to analyze this reaction, the irony of it, I can’t help but laugh.

For one thing our modern take on the term “profanity” has clouded an important distinction…

“The person on the street uses the term “profanity” broadly to refer to all categories of offensive speech. however, profanity and blasphemy are specific categories of religious speech sanctioned by religious authorities. To be profane means to be secular or indifferent toward religion. Blasphemy is more troublesome; it is an attack on religion and religious figures. It represents and intentional and offensive threat to religion…” -Why We Curse: A Neuro-psyco-social Theory of Speech, by Timothy Jay

So adhering to this more precise definition my existence is the “profanity,” while my use of Christian terminology, when swearing oaths, is more accurately “blasphemy.” That distinction goes a long way in easing my mind since blasphemy is something, as an atheist, I really don’t need to lose any sleep over or shy away from. 

Moreover, when you get right down to it, were I able to remove all references to “bearded men in the sky” from my angry outbursts, what would be the result? I’d be very obediently following the 2nd commandment in a way most devout, minced-oath-bandying believers can’t seem to manage, and that, my potty-mouthed friends, is just plain crazy talk.

In closing-

Having thus, worked it all out in my mind I’m confident I will no longer feel embarrassed by involuntary blurtings of “Jesus fucking Christ!” when, say, a rabid squirrel scampers up my pant-leg or a coworker, smilingly, asks me about my weekend.

Still, I think that it would be useful to have a good long list of non-religious oaths at our disposal should we choose to “go in another direction” with our anger. In as much I’ve started a post over at the annex where I’m soliciting your best minced oaths, in-use, inherited, or invented. If you’d like to contribute click here.

Hope you enjoyed.

First let me get you up to speed on what exactly Klein’s invention is all about in case you missed the story-

NPR’s site explains it as follows:

Quote: “Klein says this all started when he used a modified version of Skinnerian training to teach his cat to use the toilet, and it worked really well. That made him think that he might be able to use the method with crows. The first inklings that he would work with crows came about 10 years ago, at a cocktail party, when he argued that harnessing the birds to do something useful would be a much better plan for his native Seattle, plagued by crows, than mass slaughter.

In the first two steps of his four-step experiment, Klein says he provides crows with coins, peanuts and the vending machine, in order to get them used to the materials. Then he provides the birds only with coins, and in frustration they bang around until the coin gets in the machine’s slot. That introduces the next step, when the machine dispenses a peanut as a reward for each coin. In the fourth step, he gives the birds nothing. But the crows see that coins have been spread on the ground near the machine. This reveals what’s special about crows. Squirrels, for example, look at the box a half-dozen times, then disappear to play in traffic. Crows make the connection: Pick up the coin, put it in the box and receive a reward.”

Because the crows “make the connection” the vending machine idea works, as might more complex ones some day.

Crows have demonstrated their intelligence time and again. They have a penchant for trickery (a.k.a. tactical deception), seem to create their own “dialects” as a means of differentiating family groups, and have exhibited the ability to solve a problem spontaneously by crafting a tool, a feat not even our cousins the chimps have managed. All of this seems to points to sophisticated cognition skills, a trait which itself suggests crows share some abstract thinking skills with us humans.

So… the point is crows are smart.

Which got me thinking.

If we start stimulating their abstract thinking, with that most stimulating of abstractions– cash, what associated experiences might we be opening them up to? I mean, what else might our cognitive brethren learn, that we ourselves have learned, by being placed on this fast track of abstract thought? What epiphanies and what unpleasant shocks lay between them and their eventual empire of the birds?

These are questions responsibly-all-powerful and world-shaping beings must consider. For instance…

Will they learn the gut-twist and discomfort of the “awkward encounter” as multiple crows arrive simultaneously at the vending machine? Will they stare at their claws after a polite, but not overly welcoming, caw? Will they learn to feign interest in some banal object in the safe haven of the middle-distance? Will they pretend the machine is out of the particular peanuts they like and walk away, preferring to sneak back later when that super-annoying crow from accounting is gone?

Will the crows learn the infuriation of trekking all the way from their nest, with exact change, only to have their quarter clank through the innards of the machine and spat out again, and again, and again, until they, feathers beginning to rustle, inspect the coin and find it’s… Canadian!? Will they caw a beak-clenched epithet at Canada? Or at the deli clerk who passed the thing off? Will they throw the coin in disgust before flying away or, irrationally, and with no good reason whatsoever, keep it?




And what if after a few generations of commerce their abstract thinking improves to the degree that they notice the variances in iconography which help to differentiate one coin from another? And what if their jump-started cognition actually produces some sparks of recognition?

What if, in the lazy hours of the afternoon while distractedly fondling a smooth coin with their wings, they begin to look more closely?

I would assume that the fierce eagle, so beloved as symbol in these United States of America, might have somewhat different associations for the moneyed crows about town.

And the feathers in some American Indian’s headdress? Surely a celebration of the proud splendor and noble traditions of indigenous cultures would not be the very first thought to pop into their minds?

As for our mythologies, our winged women and our Mercury’s and Pegasi and Griffons and Sphinx’s… well, I can’t even begin to imagine the crows’ consternation at the thought of these, most likely hungry, abominations.




Lastly, I wonder what, a hundred successfully-vended and belly-filled years from now, when the crows have learned well and their dependance on the coin has increased… when the first few murders of young have already been born with enhanced coin-detecting vision that sees straight through pants pockets and purse leather… when a crude “pawnshop dialect” has been invented approximating human-sounding phrases like “oh hell naw!” and “c’mon mister, that’s a family heirloom!”... I wonder what those unfortunate crows not fortunate enough to be hatched with a silver dollar in their beak might be reduced to?

Not so funny is it?

Anyhow, it’s a fascinating invention, so kudos to Mr. Klein… my low-browed, yuk-yuk, ah-cha-cha-cha! sullying of it notwithstanding. You can read more about the vending machine, Klein’s ultimate aims, and see a short video as well, at the official site.

Hope you enjoyed.

News was just recently released that Penguin will be publishing a novel co-authored by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs which was written in 1945, before either achieved fame, or, one might argue, before either achieved talent. Not that this is necessarily a case such as that sketched in my over-dramatic first paragraph, but I can say with something approaching certainty that there is a reason why artists decline to put particular works out there.

Is this one a festering pustule on the golden, glorified legacies of two beat luminaries? I have no idea. Burroughs himself dismissed it as “not a very distinguished work.” ⊕ So the question begs to be asked, though we hail famous artists as “geniuses,” and fawn over their pronouncements, and make pilgrimages to their grave sites, and gobble critical texts parsing their brilliance, does it just so happen that the one area in which they are totally deficient is judging the merits of their own work?

The title of this “undistinguished” novel is evidently something Burroughs heard on a newscast about a zoo fire: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. I actually love the title, though perhaps And the Artists Were Exploited in Their Caskets would be closer to the bone.

The events which inspired And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks certainly sound novel-worthy, complete with obsession, drunken knife-fights, murder, body dumping, and the incarceration of our intrepid beat luminaries. Surely its publication will have some redeeming value? Whether just for historians and completists and rubber-neckers, or as a work in and of itself, is yet to be seen.

I have to wonder what the artists themselves would think were they alive? Would they be embarrassed? Displeased? Would the fact that even their “undistinguished” works made it to a clamoring marketplace simply satisfy their egos and overrule their internal editors? Would they grin from their easy chairs unable to beat back the maniacal words, “I am legend”?

Letting “unsuccessful” works linger in drawers and boxes under beds is a weakness for most artists I’d say, but then, when they are your creations, even abortive ones, abhorrent ones, embarrassing ones, and your intention is to mournfully review them every decade or so as you would review old correspondences or family photographs, they retain a definite personal value. A personal value.

After Henry Miller’s death Moloch and Crazy Cock came to light, neither of which were sterling examples of his incredible talent ⊕, likewise Bukowski has had damn near as many books of poetry published since his death as before. At what point does the pile of “not ready for prime time” work of an artist begin to tarnish his or her legacy? Does it ever? Is our insatiable desire to know everything about those we’ve immortalized self-defeating? And are we actually entitled to see the things artists didn’t want to have seen? It may well be that we afford our idols more “personal space” physically, after their deaths, than we do metaphorically. 

It’s a moot point I guess. There’s money to be made and industry marches on. ⊕ And perhaps, just perhaps, the rationalization that even a turd from a master is better than nothing is true. One thing we can be sure of is that neither Jack, nor William, nor Henry, Nor Buk give a good god-damn either way right now, and we can take heart in the fact that while they lived, their art was their own.

Evidently audiences in the 60’s and 70’s had other ideas because in 1967 a ballet came to the stage which became an absolute sensation. It was called Astarte, after a naked semitic Goddess of fertility, sexuality, and war, who’d eventually be absorbed by the Greeks under the name Aphrodite.

Choreographed and directed by one Robert Joffrey it was considered groundbreaking in its staging and it remains the only ballet to ever grace the cover of Time magazine. A spread featuring it’s two lead dancers recreating poses from the ballet was also published in Playboy 5 years later. It ran for just short of a decade.

The images which follow were created by photographer Herb Migdoll. They are not documentary shots of an actual performance but rather interpretations of what took place on the stage. They are montages, built up layer by layer, with multiple color photographs way back in the mists of pre-photoshop design.

Have a look—

I’m particularly fond of that last one for some reason.

Looking at these as a group I can’t help but think of Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd, on mushrooms, at Cirque Du Soleil, or indeed of my own experiences in a similar vein. It’s easy to see from the photos why the late 60’s / early 70’s audiences flocked to it. After all, the Pink Floyd Laserium light shows didn’t really take off until 1974.

Oddly the other thing which these bring to mind for me are “the future.” Seems ridiculous, I know, but I have so many science-fictional images which were produced in this era burnt into my mind that’s it’s a kind of pavlovian response. In as much, though we scoff instantly today at anything which produces the faintest whiff of goofy utopian hippy psychedelia, I can actually imagine a revival of Astarte being quite successful a millennia from now.

By then all the hippies and their spawn and their emulators and their collective patchouli cloud will be long gone. Time will do it’s little trick of erasing all the negatives and complete failures and hippies will be viewed, on decaying film reels, in grey concrete cities, as some kind of wonderful. A new mind-obliterating nano-drug will hit the streets and blam! out will come the day-glo paisley leotards.

Actually, now that I think about it, today, with theater evidently completely out of ideas, with every shitty band having a show cobbled around its music and with scores of movies having a musical version staged, perhaps it won’t even take a millennia. Let’s just give the desperate producers time to run through broadway productions of House M.D. and 24 and To Catch A Predator and then we’ll see what’s what.

Anyhow, hope you enjoyed.

For more check out the following:
Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company.
A Rock Classic: Astarte Remembered.
Dance, Sex, and Gender.
Time magazine’s original piece: Rituals in Rock.

Lastly you can hear a few snippets of the “hard rock” music used in the production as played by the original band Crome Syrcus.

When, as children, we first catch wind of the existence of astrological symbols we are at a point in our lives when anything which might help solidify our identities by differentiation is something deserving of our attention. Most of us, I would venture to guess, take hold of our symbol for some short interval as children, and wring whatever meaning we can out of it, drawing corollaries between ourselves and others who shared the same sign, taking heart in character traits supposedly attached, bolstering, through mythical means, our sense of ourselves. When later in our lives we reject astrology as fanciful and amusing hokum it hardly matters. Our signs are still there as the tiniest footnote at the bottom of our appraisals-of-self. We will always see in them the faintest reflection.

An analogy might be that of the lapsed Catholic, who was brought up going to church, but who on adulthood rejected religion outright. Catholicism was something born-into, something outside oneself, something not chosen but inherited. Even after a definitive choice is made to reject it, however, the symbol of a cross will always manage to successfully travel that guarded pathway to our interiors. Whatever judgement the brain passes that symbol will still hold sway with the eyes.

When I was in art school I was obliged, as all hopeful image-makers are, to re-examine the personal symbology of my life. Did any of the tired old symbols carry any weight or meaning? Could any of them be used, adapted, perverted? It dawned on me around that time that though I was fond of “The Balance” as a symbol ⊕, the equal-armed beam balance which is universally used seemed not quite right. This scale with its symmetry and elegance and precision could simply never be an accurate symbol for me, my mind, or the life that I lived. It was altogether too platonic.

A few years later while working, for a short time, as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art an alternative symbol presented itself. During a shift I was stationed in one of those wonderful, dimly-lit, and comparatively empty areas of the museum ⊕, beside some long glass cases containing Roman artifacts. There were small functional and decorative objects of all kinds inside —vessels and tools and little statues and amulets all jostling together like a the contents of Romulus’ hall closet.

Amongst all of this iron and bronze a single object seemed to demand further scrutiny. It was asymmetrical and brutal looking, with its dangling chains each terminating in a hook. I had no guess as to its function or purpose. Torture device? Weapon? Brutish tool of animal husbandry? Looking at its little placard I discovered it was called a “Roman Balance” or “Steelyard” and that it was in fact a scale. I marveled for a moment at the coincidence. Of all the objects to draw my eye and interest it had to be a scale. I knew immediately that I’d found an object I could get behind, an object which resonated with me somehow. I’d found a proper Libran symbol for myself.

A bit of background information:

The Roman balance (or statera as it was originally known) is so called because no instance has been found of its existence prior to the Roman era. A similar principle was used in ancient Egyptian balances, however, and independently created examples have been found in China. Some evidence seems to exist that this type of scale was actually in use among Greek craftsmen in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E. before Hellenistic mathematicians like Archimedes ever formally demonstrated the theoretic basis for their workings. 

The Romans brought these scales to Britain around 55 B.C.E. and the English word ‘steelyard’ by which they are referred today is thought to be a mistranslation of the German ‘Stael-hof’ ⊕, which was itself the name of the base of the Hanseatic merchants of the Middle Ages, who used the Roman balance extensively in their businesses.

Functionally steelyards differ from the balance because they have unequal arms and employ a counterpoise, rather than a series of fixed-mass weights, which is shifted along the long arm in relation the the fulcrum. At the place where the counterpoise keeps the beam exactly horizontal, the weight of the object is indicated on an engraved scale on the long arm. ⊕

Though steelyards are less precise for weighing small objects like coins or jewels ⊕ they have the benefit of employing a single weight for a wide range of loads. They were particularly useful for weighing heavy objects like vehicles, sides of beef, and humans. Additionally they had the benefit of cheap manufacture and portability. In as much they were used as industrial scales straight through the eighteenth century and remain in use in markets all throughout Asia and and the Middle East today.

I happen to find them, with their precarious asymmetry, their hooks and chains and their myriad forms of sculpted counterweights quite compelling, and beautiful.

Visually, viscerally, the steelyard seems to embody some aspect of balance, or perhaps the personal quest for it, which the equal-arm balance does not. After having discovered it there at the Met I visited it often. It didn’t take me long to realize that this object had symbolic potential far beyond the whimsical introspection it might supply for the comparatively small group of us who were born under the sign of Libra.

What, after all, do the scales symbolize for the rest of humanity?

Justice.

Thinking of the equal-arm balance, alone, in silhouette, or held aloft by the left hand of Themis / Justitia / Lady Justice, notions undoubtedly come to mind. They are precise and unambiguously immediate, aspirational and inspirational, they are resplendent and exalted, they are incorruptible and pure. In other words they have no relation whatsoever to the realities of human justice as it is experienced and met out.

Now look at the steelyard. It is hard-looking and vaguely menacing, all hooks and chains and lengths of metal. It has a brutality to it somehow. You can imagine wielding it like a club or a flail and imagine the damage it might do were it wielded against you. Then there’s its asymmetry, which on first glance seems so counterintuitive to achieve any kind of balance. By design its sides are unequal, set against one another at cross-purposes. One side only holds the weight while the other only passes judgement, and a not quite precise judgement at that.

It’s a strange, hard, dangerous looking object, all angles and points set against a shifting bluntness, and one could imagine that were you to hand one to a child she’d be just as likely to smash in a skull as to balance anything whatsoever.

Though functionally the steelyard can achieve the same aims as our aspirational equal-arm scale, visually it suggests a complexity and precariousness and menace entirely more human, and I’d argue entirely more appropriate, symbolically, for our notions of crime and punishment, corporeal or otherwise. If a pound of flesh needs weighing this is the scale for the job.

Add to this to the forms which the steelyard’s counterweight took, and could take, and all sorts of explicit symbolic relationships emerge. In the past these “poises” as they are sometimes called were often fashioned in the shape of gods, men, women or animals. One could easily imagine a slab of beef on the hooks counterbalanced by golden McDonald’s arches for instance, or an emaciated corpse counterbalanced by an Iron Cross, a knife counterbalanced by a black glove, a smoldering retarded child counterbalanced by a weight in the shape of Texas, a boot stamping on a human face, forever, counterbalanced by a giant silver dollar, or… well… whatever delightful image strikes your fancy!

The steelyard can do it all.

Anyhow, since happening upon that Roman balance about 12 years ago I’ve adopted it in my mind. When I think Libra I think steelyard, and so, conversely when I think steelyard I think, in some small way, of myself.

When I see a statue or etching of Lady Justice my mind reflexively erases that flimsy equal-arm balance with its impossible precision and imaginary exaltation and replaces it with its hard, practical, rough and ready, asymmetrical cousin. ⊕

Symbols are what they are, obviously, and not much more, but shouldn’t good ones reflect in some way the truth of a thing? Shouldn’t they hold their weight as it were? For me the steelyard does the job admirably and, yes, before you ask, even Nonists need symbols they can believe in.

Hope you enjoyed.

Cavellini was born into an Italian merchant family and ran a dry goods store, which in the post-war years following World War II he transformed into a thriving department store. In the late 40’s he began using profits from the family business to buy art. This is how his initial inroads into the art world began, as a collector and early (albeit decidedly amateur) proponent of Modernism. It wasn’t until about 1960, when he’d exhibited and sold much of his collection, that he began trying seriously to transition into becoming a creator of art rather than just a collector.

This was not, strictly speaking, his first foray into art-making however-

Quote: “At 15 he was dressing windows for the family shop and skillfully using brush and ink to letter price cards for the vitrines. This new-found graphic facility inspired some youthful experiments with sketching and caricature which continued during his army service and led to his being charged with lettering Mussolini’s slogans on corridor walls. A chance encounter with a local painter, Domenicao Mucci, resulted in some informal instruction in fundamentals. Right after the war Cavellini tried his hand at drawing landscapes, self-portraits and other figurative subjects. The wealth of art that he saw in the museums and ateliers of Paris during his 1947 trip persuaded him to abandon his paltry efforts, but about 12 years later he felt compelled to make art once again.” —Marcia E. Vetrocq, Art in America, 1993.

Now, just because you are compelled to create does not mean you are creating anything of particular interest to anyone else. I am of the opinion that if creating art fulfills you then the act of creation itself, its rush, its internal convolutions, its compelling emotional peaks and valleys, its ability to keep you engaged and distracted from self destruction, is reward enough. You may proclaim “I am an artist” in crowded rooms all you like, or you may work in a vacuum and never let on. Little matter, so long as you are actively fascinated and successfully avoiding the great emptiness at the center of it all, then positive outside valuations of your work are a luxury, comfy and gratifying but ultimately inessential. Cavellini did not seem to agree. For him, joining the canon was the only goal.

Public response to his work was tepid at best. He cycled quickly through styles and traditions seeking to find a voice which others might actually want to hear. He worked on abstractions, gestural pieces, collages, imagery of pop culture Icons, assemblage, etc, etc. Ultimately, the words which best describe his output to this point, however, are reproduction, homage, and appropriation. His work was “openly and blissfully derivative of the artists whose works he admired or collected.”

Quote: “Cavellini’s aggression toward the system of art, stoked by experiences of rejection both as a collector and as an artist, was expressed in acts of comically flagrant plagiarism accompanied by outrageous claims of authorship, in the seemingly endless reproduction and recycling of his own and others’ imagery, and in unabashed gestures of self-promotion.” —Marcia E. Vetrocq, Art in America, 1993.

He had 6 gallery shows between the years of 1962 and 1970 which by his yardstick were total failures, resulting in only two sales and total critical silence. It was this period of failure which inspired the conceptually self-referential “Autostoricizzazione” or “Self-Historification” which would occupy the rest of his artistic career, and find him trying desperately to “enter Olympus without asking anyone’s permission.”

Quote: “The biography of an artist is frequently written after his death, imperfectly and incompletely. Since I don’t want any such biography to be written about me, I’ve decided to write my own.” —G.A. Cavellini.

This autostoricizzazione put him at the center of a fictional art history in which he was a towering figure. He created a fake encyclopedia entry for himself ⊕, posters announcing centennial exhibitions of his work at museums around the world, and a series of postage stamps honoring him in the context of the great masters. He created frontispieces of fictional works like Dante’s Divine Cavellini, Leonardo’s Treatise on the Painting of Cavellini, and Nietzche’s Thus Spake Cavellini. He commissioned portraits of himself by better known artists which he used in his own work, he travelled with a “court photographer,” and created a seemingly endless amount of self-portraiture.

This was all the tip of the autostoricizzazione iceberg, for Cavellini had become more than anything a conceptual artist and the one concept he explored, over and over and over, was himself and his own towering position within the history of art.

Quote” Here in Italy, perhaps, there are still people who want to label me «the famous collector,» or to think of me as a rich provincial who amuses himself with sophomoric experiments in making art. «Self-Historification» may still be too far ahead of the times; people still aren’t ready to take it seriously since they find it paradoxical, anomalous and full of presumption. They act as though they considered me an artist «to be kept under observation» as though I were still waiting my turn finally to «make it». Perhaps my way of doing things is still unclassifiable, and even though I’m no longer a young artist, I’m simply never mentioned whenever the critics try to put together a show of the most significant developments in art in recent years- Either criticism has no eyes to see with or else it thinks of these free-wheeling operations of mine as belonging to a world of the future that’s still to be materialized. The critics don’t want to admit or to understand that I’m a new Duchamp.”

“For quite some time now, I’ve been receiving daily testimonials in the form of art works that give praise and pay homage both to «Self-Historification» as a phenomenon and to me as a person. Nothing like this has ever happened to an artist before. This material is all destined to go into a «Cavellini Museum,» and scholars will sooner or later be forced to study and consult it, since it’s an entirely unprecedenied phenomenon in all of art hisiory, and it’s not likely ever to happen again.”

“By now, an incredibly large number of facts and circumstances has grown up around my process of «Self-Historification» and I feel that I have every reason to be convinced that it’s destined to be a great deal more than just a meteor that flashes for only an instant through the skies; slowly but surely, «Self-Historification» is destined to become one of the most firmly fixed stars in all of art hisiory. (It) has already proved to be an indication for the construction of a new civilization and an entirely new way of thinking.” —G.A. Cavellini, from Autoritratti, 1981.

Cavallini went on “self-historifying” himself right up until his death in 1990, leaving behind a mountain of works and papers, all designed to help him storm the annals… so let me ask you, had you ever heard of him before now?

Personally I’m not particularly bowled-over by Cavellini’s works pictorially speaking, though some are compelling, nor am I much interested in conceptual art of this kind. I do find his quixotic quest interesting however.

It strikes me that though most of us may never have heard of Cavellini, he has had a modicum of success at attaining his goal of artistic immortality. I am, after all, writing about him right now and extending his post-humous reach. And though I purchased his book of self-portraits in the Strand’s bargain bin, it was there to be purchased.

To me Cavellini is a bit of a sad clown character because the lengths to which he took his joke seems slightly tragic. Rather than the sly wink and implied mystery which many self-aggrandizing artists employ to better effect, Cavellini seems to me more like a hammy vaudevillian.

The analogy which immediately comes to mind is that Loony Tunes cartoon, called Show Biz Bugs, in which Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are competing for an audience’s applause. Bugs does a simple dance and gets wild applause. Daffy meanwhile goes all out, dances with visible effort, slides toward the audience on his knees with arms outstretched in expectation… and is greeted with the sound of crickets. For me that dance is Cavellini’s career. 

And yet as I said, he is remembered to some degree. Why? I would have to contend that in much the same way world history remembers, to spite itself, particularly potent screw-ups and villains, so too does art history make allowances for others than its paragons. In Cavellini’s case I’d say he took a certain brand of conceptual buffoonery to previously unknown levels, and so must be remembered as one of its giants. It’s only fair.

The irony is that today, very similar kinds of buffoonery regularly spawn millionaire art celebrities who are whole heartedly embraced by the art intelligentsia. Indeed in many respects he is conceptually a forefather of postmodernism. So perhaps Cavellini was ahead of his time, just as he said he was, and merely had the misfortune of being born in an era when the art world still had something like accepted standards one was expected to measure up to.

In any case, it’s all subjective now isn’t it? He says “emperor of presumption,” I say sad clown, you say potato. We’re all right and Art just keeps on chugging along.

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Most of the biographical information in this post was adapted from Marcia E. Vetrocq’s Art in America piece, Dispatches From the Jungle of Art. If you are interested in the artist I recommend reading it as it goes into much deeper detail.

The images were all scanned from Cavellini’s book Autoritratti.

You can see more of Cavellini’s work at The Cavellini Archive Foundation website.

Linotype was a hot-metal typesetting process, remember, so each of these images had to be carved, made into a mold, and cast in lead for use. Which is simply to say there was some actual effort involved in making them available. Yes folks, in the storied past even clip-art had to walk 20 miles, uphill, in the snow, to get anywhere.

I realize, of course, that these images were almost certainly not “official” logos and that they were likely just pulled from the vast storehouse of imagery Linotype had at their disposal. But the very fact that, in an election year, they chose to offer symbols for 10 possible parties means that there was enough demand to warrant a supply. Linotype is still going strong after all so I think we can trust their business acumen.

In any case here is the page-

Nice of them to set up a sample ballot wasn’t it?

Interestingly as it turns out their example here was not to different from the ballot that citizens saw in the Presidential election of that year. There were, in fact, candidates from 7 different parties represented. Granted the 5 who were not Democrat or Republican only garnered 5.5% of the vote as a group… but still.

If I were to update their page for the present day (taking demand into consideration when formulating our supply of course!) it might as well look like like this-

That’s no fun is it?

Now in the interest of full disclosure for those of you who weren’t paying close attention the last time around, in 2004 there actually were at least 10 parties represented on the ballot.

“10 you say?!”

Yes, 10. Minus the obvious those parties were the Libertarian, Constitution, Green, Socialist, Peace and Freedom, Prohibition, Christian Freedom, Socialist Equality, Workers World, and the Personal Choice Party.

Sounds just positively bustling and vibrant doesn’t it?

It doesn’t look so vibrant unfortunately. I mean when was the last time you saw the logo for the Socialist Equality Party emblazoned on one of the 20 massive HD screens which are continuously swirling and pulsating behind Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room? In fact, now that I think of it, have you ever seen any of their logos anywhere? ⊕

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

This sounds like a job for Linotype! They can dig into their vast stores of imagery once more for the American electorate and bring forth handsome and heroic emblems which in one bold stroke typify all that the parties stand for… these emblems can pepper posters and banners and bumper stickers across the entire expanse of this great nation and the ideals for which… oh wait, that’s right, there is no demand. Sorry.

These parties already have logos obviously, ⊕  it’s just that so few people care that we’ll never see them. “Miscellaneous characters” indeed.

Setting aside the socio-political ramifications of this essentially two-party system, let’s just say that from a visual standpoint it would seem we the people are stuck with the same dull, uninspiring,

elephant show.

Which brings me, finally, to the issue that I’m certain is gnawing at the young and idealistic designers reading this, who, like teary-eyed children listening to their parents discuss a dead puppy from the top of the stairs, are wondering about the those poor cast-aside logos from the 1920 Linotype catalog, which having once symbolized grand ideals now seem so hopelessly lost in the wilderness…

Let me just say this, you sweet and gentle kids- cry not!

Cry not for the Eagle or the 5 Pointed Star! Cry not for the Fountain or the Book or the Moose! Nay child; cry not for the Torch, the Scales, the Bell or the Strong Arm because in America… in America we graphics professionals see to it that no logo is left behind!

There. Feel better? Good. Now here’s some warm milk, off to sleep with you, daddy’s got a whole lot of whiskey he needs to swallow.

“It’s good luck to find a horseshoe and bad luck to lose one. It is said that when a witch spies one nailed over a door, she must ride every road that the horseshoe has ever travelled; and by that time, it will be morning and her wicked powers will cease. Although this belief can be traced back to antiquity, it is credited in England to Saint Dunstan, the patron saint of goldsmiths.” - Michael Patrick Hearn from The Annotated Huck Finn 2001.

“Among the Romans there prevailed a custom of driving nails into cottage walls as an antidote against the plague. Both this practice and the later one of nailing up horse-shoes have been thought by some to originate from the rite of the Passover. The blood sprinkled upon the doorposts and lintel at the time of the great Jewish feast formed the chief points of an arch, and it may be that with this in mind people adopted the horse-shoe as an arch-shaped talisman, and it thus became generally emblematic of good luck.”

“If a horse be shod with shoes made from a sword wherewith a man has been slain, he will be most swift and fleet, and never, though never so hard rode, tire.” - Robert Means Lawrence, M.D. from The Magic of the Horse-Shoe 1899.

“In Henderson’s Folk-Lore of the Northern Countries of England, p. 187, mention is made of a remarkable method of treatment intended for the development of sickly, puny children who are thought to be under the influence of an evil spell which retards their growth, a notable instance of survival of the old belief in the blacksmith’s magical powers. Very early in the morning the little patient is brought to the shop of a smith of the seventh generation, if such can be found, and laid quite naked on the anvil. The blacksmith raises his hammer thrice as if to strike a glowing horse-shoe, each time letting it gently fall on the child’s body, –a simple ceremony, but vastly promotive of the child’s physical welfare, in the minds of its rustic parents.”

“The historian Diodorus Siculus said that the Chaldeans imagined the earth as having the shape of a round boat turned upside down. The boats still used on the rivers Tigris and Euphrates resemble in form a beehive with a considerable bulge in the middle. Gerald Massey (The Natural Genesis, vol. ii. p. 63) says that this conception of the earth’s figure corresponds to the Egyptian Put-sign with its hollow underneath. Various forms of this formation of the world are extant. The horse-shoe is one. Hence its value as a symbol of superstition. The head-dress of the Egyptian goddess Hathor has the shape of a horse-shoe. The letter omega is another form of the same sign.” - Robert Means Lawrence, M.D. from The Magic of the Horse-Shoe 1899.

“In some Roman Catholic countries the priests are wont to brand cows and pigs on the forehead with the mark of a horse-shoe, to insure them against disease. It was, moreover, an old Scotch superstition, or freet, to pass a horse-shoe thrice beneath the belly and over the back of a cow that was considered elf-shot.”

“We learn from Tacitus, moreover, that the Teutonic peoples used white horses, as the Romans used chickens, for purposes of augury, and divined future events from different intonations of neighings. Hence it probably is that the discovery of a horse-shoe is so universally thought lucky, some of the feelings that once attached to the aninial itself still surviving around the iron of its hoof. For horses, like dogs and birds, were universally accredited with a greater insight into futurity than man himself.”
“In the northernmost districts of Scotland exists a belief that if the first shoe put on the foot of a stallion be hung on the byre door, no harm will come near the cows; and in the same region, if a horse-shoe be placed between the houses of quarrelsome neighbors, neither incurs any risk of evil as a result of the other’s illwishes.” - Robert Means Lawrence, M.D. from The Magic of the Horse-Shoe 1899.

“The Germans have a saying in regard to a young girl who has been led astray, – “She has lost a horseshoe.” This saying has been associated with the shoe as a symbol of marriage, an idea found both in the northern and Indian mythologies. But the phrase has been also thought to refer to the horse-shoe shaped gloria which crowns the head of the Virgin, the horse-shoe thus becoming the symbol of maidenly chastity. Again, it has been suggested, in reference to the same phrase, that the horse-shoe is a symbol of the V (or first letter of the word Virgo), which is used in church records to designate the unmarried state, just as the word ‘spinster’ is used in legal documents.”

“The origin of the horse-shoe as a charm has been ascribed to its resemblance to the metallic aureole or meniscus formerly placed over the heads of images of patron saints in churches, and which is also represented in ancient pictures of the Virgin.” - Robert Means Lawrence, M.D. from The Magic of the Horse-Shoe 1899.

“The present belief in the lucky horseshoe is connected with the ancient emblems of the female genitals, the yoni. In olden times, the people were in the habit of making charcoal drawings of the female genitals over the doors of their houses to ward off ill luck. Now, the horseshoe has a great resemblance with the form of the vulva. From this symbol originates the horseshoes alleged power to ward off evil and to bring luck.” - Bernard S. Tamley Jr. from Love, A Treatise on the science of sex-attraction 1919.

“There is good reason to suppose that the crescent form of the horseshoe links the symbol to pagan Moon goddesses of ancient Europe such as Artemis and Diana, and that the protection invoked is that of the goddess herself, or, more particularly, of her sacred vulva. As such, the horseshoe is related to other magically protective doorway-goddesses, such as the Irish sheela-na-gig, and to lunar protectresses such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is often shown standing on a crescent moon and placed within a vulval mandorla or vesica pisces”  -Cat Yronwode, from Luckymojo.com

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Everyone can identify a horseshoe as a “lucky charm” (purple marshmallow incarnations included or not) but, as with so many cultural artifacts we drag the symbol through the ages with us, generation to generation, becoming less and less familiar with its origins, until we are almost totally divorced from whatever specific properties endowed it with power in the human imagination to begin with. Our modern cultures are positively littered with just such transmogrified items. From prevailing ideas to matters of “common sense” to everyday objects to sprawling institutions to the words we use to describe it all. We’ve had a direct hand in so very little of it and are so far removed from their origins… it’s almost frightening really, if you take a moment to think on it.

It strikes me though that in the case of the horseshoe it’s particularly pronounced and unfortunate. We’ve put ourselves in a position by which our luck, or the portion at least governed by horseshoes, can literally run out. I mean how likely are any of us to happen upon an actual horseshoe, one worn and ridden, which we might pick up and nail above our door? It might be said at this stage in the game that the luck of a horseshoe could be attributed, like that of a four leaf clover, to sheer rarity.

It’s entirely possible that the day may come when the horseshoe no longer exists at all as a functional object; when it will be produced, in the form of jewelry and bauble and talisman, as a symbol only. And what a paltry and impotent charm that would be eh?

Do you want witches running willy-nilly through your apartment at night? Or faeries or goblins? Or hags and fiends? I don’t. I’ve got enough to worry about, so I think it’s time we safeguard our luck. Why not take some direct action instead of letting generations of dead smithies and poets and historians and cult leaders dictate the auspices of our fortune? We only have so much of it after all, and probably too little as it is.

I’ve thought on it a bit and in attempting to land upon something which is functionally equivalent to the horseshoe but modern, which retains some of the symbolic character and is readily available, one solution presented itself which seemed just about perfect, and which I think reflects we moderns nicely–

Hey, the times they are a changin’, the march of progress, and all that.

Hope you enjoyed.

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For more on horseshoes, as luck-safe or otherwise, see the following-

Horseshoes at Wikipedia.

Horse Shoes at The Medieval Technology Pages

The History of Horseshoes at About.com

The Magic of the Horse-Shoe at Sacred Texts or the downloadable full book pdf at Google books

The Horseshoe at Lucky Mojo

The Historical Development of the Horseshoe Scientifiv American Suppliment 1891, at Gutengerg.

The Significance of the Horseshoe at The Wild West