Mr. G asked us to apply these things to three paintings. Surely these are first hand natures, but in truth I couldn't bring myself to do any of them. They were just random photos. You know what really got to me? It was the silence. Because as everyone was writing their emotions away, I was sitting there staring at my pencil, panicking because I felt like I didn't know how to express myself.
English intimidates me. It is not the course's content I'm afraid and unsure of, but my capabilities. Literature has no limits, but I was feeling weak. There is no trust between myself and the mighty pen. It's depressing. I don't have a vast vocabulary, nor do I have impeccable grammar or creativity that wows a crowd... I depend on my endless stream of thoughts. Sometimes it's handy, other times it's overwhelming. And then, at that moment, when I needed a bombardment of feelings and ideas, none came to me. None. Zero. Nil. None... That is, not until we looked at The Hollow Men.
The Hollow Men by TS Eliot. How intriguing. The title, the name of the author. It excited me because at once I knew this poem had some kind of dark aura to it. I was excited because I've come to conclusion that it's the darkest of artistic mediums that are the most interesting; they attract more question, theory, and mystery. How could one resist? The first reading of this poem, I have to admit, was empty. Empty in a way that I was not absorbing the poem as I read, and empty in a way that scared me. I could feel the goosebumps on my arms; this happens when I witness (by witness I mean read, hear, see) something that bewitches me. See, the poem was meaningless, yet its words engulfed me, suffocating me with the same question: why? Why are we reading this? Why did TS Eliot write this? Why, why, why? I wanted reason, and I wanted to know what the hell this all meant. The fact that I was already stressing over the meaning had lead me to think that this poem would torture me to no ends. The rest of the class was probably just as frustrated as I was because I noticed the way *blank* scratched his head as he read, and how *blank* rushed to finished and sighed at the very last word. The Hollow Men left my head "filled with straw". Empty, yet full. You know, like a needle in a haystack. I was desperate to find the answer, like it would do some good for my crappy day. A sort of redemption. If I knew the answer that no one else knew, maybe it would make up for all the answers I didn't. At least for today, you know? But empty-handed was what came of this class. Hollow. Empty. Those are the same things right? Is that the meaning of 'hollow' that Eliot was referring to? Empty?
Today, there were no answers; just too many questions. Maybe tomorrow I could make sense of something.
And no, I'm not referring to anything in particular.
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