Dreams vs. Reality

"Scenes tend to occur in waves of three. The first wave brings the few, the adventurous and the enlightened. The second wave brings more, it brings the avant garde. The third and final wave brings the masses. The masses tend to be asses and they murder the scene."
The above quote was from a text remembering Phuket before it became popular. Popularity also destroyed it. In some sense this tends to happen to Art movements as well - just think of Modern and what happened. There was a compact thinking why they did something they did. Mostly against academic painting - or should I say - against other dogmatic people that thought that painting was about brown color, copying Old Masters, avoiding life and pretending that everything could be approached through allegories?

Well, they got their counter attack. Color, wild compositions (if any), splitting the image in facets, experimenting and letting the color drip, drop and splash. Funnily though, the Modern Masters were educated in the atmosphere of the Tradition, so they knew perfectly well how to fight against it. The next generation was not that skillful or knowledge-wise. They simply stuck to the Modern cliches and forms and repeated them endlessly. So much that it finally became so much unlike Modern and they started to call it POSTmodernism - whatever that is. I think it's much of everything and nothing at the same time.

In my mind, Art is much to do with patterns but they need to be review at times to make sure they still are viable and not just repetition without meaning.

I sometimes feel that accomplishing to do an image of Art is like trying to make something very fragile to be stuck on 2-dimensional canvas forever - or that is the goal, very few get that far.

Buri Ram - The Pleasent City

It's been a while since I wrote anything. You know - the New Year in Thailand - it stops anything and gets on your way in every possible way. Thais like to celebrate and I've said before that everything seems to take three times longer than in Europe but they also have three New Years in a row. Yep, you heard correct, 'our' New Year, Chinese New Year and of course my favorite - Thai New Year - also known as Songkhran in April. I am born during those crazy days of Songkhran, the Water Festival, so I don't need to spend it alone. The whole country seems to go nuts.

Well, that's about that. I get excited so easily.
Buri Ram literally translates as Pleasentville, although Thais that I asked about it seemed rather confused about the meaning of the words so I guess they might be rather ancient and more prose than verse or the other way around.

I was there with my friends and climbing to the mountain was a task regarding that it was VERY hot day again. I always try to discourage people to make any accurate plans while traveling in Thailand since the schedule is very likely to change. And I myself am so lazy that any extra climbing and swetting is always wrecking my nerves. My favorite way of traveling is reading books. No sweat there and one can do it in the comfort of ones home.

So there was I looking these ancient ruins. And swetting... First question was why oh why this kind of things are always so difficult to enter. They are fortresses of course but still... Almost first thing that I heard was that someone has stolen the stone images carved above the exits. At least in one spot so those I saw were FAKES (!)Nice. I could have looked similar in any "antique" shop in Pattaya or Bangkok. They have these expensive things that they call antique. When I was young anything younger than 100 years was just old things but development develops so nowadays antique is something that was made a week ago.

When we finally came down and drove closer to town we stopped at another big temple. It was much nicer and much bigger than the one at the mountain top. They said it was a temple for water and rice (growth). More interesting and which was better, no other tourists around. I could've slept there all day in a nice Fisherman's net but as usual I didn't find any clues that they had thought of my comfort. My feeling is - regarding most of things in Art or Architecture or anything similar - that it should be looked from vertical position. Yes. More relaxed, more suitable and time to consider whether it is worth getting up from bed. Frankly said, most things aren't and you have seen them on National Geographic Channel already.

All in all, worth seeing but sitting in a car for 12 hours is not my idea of fun. It translates to back pain and I hate pain.