Sobriquet

"Hey, hey, Teach.  What's with the clay-head?"

--Not-my-student asking about the prop for Macbeth class today.

Second favorite event after the baby duck on campus.  

Since this was the last day of regular classes and I will be suffering from not-teaching soon, I liked hearing the sobriquet.

Julius, Post-Ides: sculpture mix, pit-fired on Ocean Beach, SF, CA.

A Lump of Clay

Vercingetorix.

Vercingetorix: Two Views

Vercingetorix: 

sculpture mix; sea-foam glaze, too thinly applied.

Or, The Apple Man.

Squeezing In Some Reading?

Julius, Post-Ides: sculpture mix, pit-fired on Ocean Beach, SF, CA.

My second-ever head from years ago.  I can walk you through the 14 flaws, if you'd like.  I keep the piece in my office to make "draft" discussions a little easier; I've got the perfect piece of realia,  a prime example, right there.

Also, when I teach Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, I bring in the head while we're discussing Acts Four and Five.  I want to guarantee that Great Caesar's Ghost gets due weight . . . .

Roman Holidays?

Or, CLASSICAL DOGGEREL (circa 1995)
     And "doggerel" means fairly bad poetry, or wannabe poetry, or something that looks a bit like poetry, but isn't quite.  I've written my share of sea-doggerel.  Here's a piece of classical doggerel from an old notebook . . . though at the bottom of the blog-entry, there's a chorus from a really cool dysfunctional would-be love-song: "Rome Fell."

NOR SWIMS*
     Neither reads
A fool the old
Roman gibe
But Caesar
Swam, wrote
Books, scrolls
Historical, political
Who knew
The Rubicon, the die
Once only, but cowards
Cleopatra loved
Egyptian grain
Against odds
King Nicomedes 
Too, but after
Laurels, bald
Truths too few
Posterity, can't
Plan for it:
Paine's idea,
Burke agreed.
Julius, wily
Julius: he
Flourished
For a while.

--I just found this doggerel in an old notebook from grad school, the notebook itself entitled "Dioscuri" and dated "1995."  I've lightly edited this piece, something that had grown out of my reading in Julius Caesar, of course, but Byron too--however unnamed--as well as Shakespeare, Talbot Mundy, English Romantic era political theory, and Roman history.  Barton's Sorrows of the Ancient Romans is probably the source of the Roman proverb, the Roman definition of a fool*--He neither reads nor swims--which I've presented previously here.

About that time I also wrote a song called "Rome Fell," but I can't quite recall nor find those old lyrics.
I can sing the chorus for you:

ROME FELL
Like I fell for you
ROME FELL
You can walk through the ruins
ROME FELL
Empires never last
ROME FELL
Who cares about the past?

(REPEAT!)

(REPEAT!)

"There Is A Tide In The Affairs of Women . . ."

Or, "But Actium, Lost For Cleopatra's Eyes"
--Byron's opening to Canto VI of Don Juan:


'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood'--you know the rest,
And most of us have found it, now and then;
At least we think so, though but few have guessed
The moment, till too late to come again.
But no doubt every thing is for the best--
Of which the surest sign is in the end:
When things are at the worst they sometimes mend.


There is a tide in the affairs of women
'Which taken at the flood leads'--God knows where.
Those navigators must be able seamen
Whose charts lay down its current to a hair;
Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen
With its strange whirls and eddies can compare:--
Men with their heads reflect on this and that--
But women with their hearts or heaven knows what!


And yet a headlong, headstrong, downright she,
Young, beautiful, and daring--who would risk
A throne, the world, the universe, to be
Beloved in her own way, and rather whisk
The stars from out the sky, than not be free
As are the billows when the breeze is brisk--
Though such a she's a devil (if that there be one)
Yet she would make full many a Manichean.


Thrones, worlds, et cetera, are so oft upset
By commonest Ambition, that when Passion
O'erthrows the same, we readily forget,
Or at the least forgive, the laving rash one.
If Anthony be well remembered yet,
'Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion,
But Actium, lost for Cleopatra's eyes,
Outbalance all the Caesar's victories.


He died at fifty for a queen of forty;
I wish their years had been fifteen and twenty,
For then wealth, kingdoms, worlds are but sport--I
Remember when, though I had no great plenty
Of worlds to lose, yet still, to pay my court, I
Gave what I had--a heart:--as the world went, I
Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never
Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.


--Lord Byron

Minerva, Mermaid: sculpture mix: sea foam glazing; copper wire.

When In Rome . . .

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.
------------William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (4.3)
The character Brutus is speaking.


Never let the future disturb you.  
You will meet it, if you have to, 
with the same weapons of reason 
which today arm you against the present.
------------Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book VII
(Staniforth translation)


The gladiator takes his counsel in the sand.
------------old Roman proverb
(Barton translation)

"Et Tu, Brute"

Julius Caesar: sculpture mix, pit-fired. 1999? 2000?

This may be the ugliest piece of claywork I've produced, and it is the second (of seven or eight) full-sized heads I've made, the first without teacherly supervision, and you can see the rookie mistakes in the flatness of the face, the buggy eyes, and so forth.

The great thing about pit-firing, especially for a beginner like me at the time, is that you just don't know how the piece will turn out, which colors and where. I had hoped for a more thorough blackening effect, but what I got was post-assassination theatrics.

I like to bring this head into the classroom while teaching Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, just as a reminder in Acts 4 and 5 . . . .

Hail, Caesar!

"There is a tide in the affairs of men . . . ."

Sea-Jester: sculpture mix; shino and blue glazing, layered.

Fall 2011.