Magritte's Label and Mickey Mouse's Soul

The first visual semiologist - Magritte himself has finally been named.

I've always been fascinated with the mystery of language and the emphasis and confusion surrounding words, images, their meanings within contexts and the separation between things in one's mind versus "things" in the world.

This leads one to study things like General Semantics, modern Physics (the philosophical implications), Zen, and to appreciate novelists like Walker Percy and directors like David Lynch.

Something to do with the disjunction of superficial socially required survival tactics and the underlying or at least disjointed bulk of reality - it constantly comes up around me.

Recently, Magritte's paintings speak enough to me that I've decorated my work cubicle with ironically easy enough to snatch from the web and print on a two-cubicle-next-door printer and then pin-cushion them to my my short pseudo wallish separating panels. (You can call them walls if you want - but they're not.)

Of course no one consciously appreciates this art. But how could someone living 8 hours a day in a cubicle not understand the apple in a box picture? Or keep a toothbrush, comb, and snack in their drawer without relating to the accessories in a cube painting? Or even the fact that these people put up pictures of outside views when they themselves have no window and don't see true daylight ever during their long work shift? This should at least cause them to appreciate any of Magritte's framed paintings or pictures of people floating in clouds.

Its all a mystery to me.

Today I feel like the guy with no face that's simply seen as another apple. A commodity with no essence. No different than any other consumable piece of fruit. (I started this looking for that picture to pin up on my "wall".)

You know the writer Bukowski said that he hated the image of Mickey Mouse? He said it was a completely soul-less character. Is that the warning hidden within? That if we ain't careful, we can turn into faceless, soul-less, Darth Vaderish semi-human objects with all our meanings wrapped up in words within our minds or on our tongues while losing our own spirits?

My son recently told me he read Brave New World and could relate to the savage whom everyone admired but who could not himself assimilate into modern society.

I can relate to him also. And this Brave New World depresses me. Many an artist saw it coming. That's fascinates me.

And I never did like Mickey Mouse now that I think about it.

(I like Magritte's paintings though. They tell me that I'm not the only one stunned by these mysteries.)