Warhol, the Fox, and the Dream of Cages (Kandinsky Prince pt 2)

   I had a dream last night, and this is not it: this is just an idea.

   The idea, the dream I had, that they've made their imported plastic action figures, all of them of the Prince's rose, and they are all right now sitting neatly on their shelves in the warehouse, thousands by thousands of them, countless copies of the one rose truly beloved by the Little Prince, the shelves stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction.

   That is just an idea: that is not my dream. It's what I thought about when I woke up. It's a dream in that sense, whatever sense you make of that.

   The sleep previous to that one, the one during Elder Bednar's devotional: there was discussion today, fifteen minutes out of the hour of class in both of my religion classes, where the teacher conversed with the students regarding the subject of the devotional, so I now know what it was about: repetition.

   Repetition.

   I considered appending an Andy Warhol picture at the end of yesterday's post, one of the prints of the Mona Lisa multiplied a hundredfold, all laid out in rows and columns. As if the idea weren't immediately obvious, between the refigerator magnets and mass production and the ideas of individuality, and the fact that all of my art examples came from my musings rereading the textbook to prepare for one of the tests I aced. Obvious. I have to give you some credit, to make connections for yourselves.

Source: Warhol Museum

   Repetition.

   The idea of roses-- the fox explains, that's the difference between the many roses and the one rose, the one difference between the two categories. The prince's rose was loved. Tamed. It always fascinated me, the fact that the fox knew that he wasn't tame. How could he have known that? How could he have known that? How could he have known he was wild?

   That idea was one of a couple that awed me and stayed with me from childhood. Regarding, animals. The modesty of the semi-feral cats who lived around, demurely standing sentry as they defecated into their neat little holes they'd dug in the earth. Peter Wiggin vivisecting the squirrels in the back yard, reverently peeling them open like onions. The fox who knew he was wild, and wanted this Little Prince to tame him.

   How could he have known that, that he was wild?

   I really did have a dream. On my mission. I'm not sure-- it's recorded in my journal, but I think it's from the time-- I nodded off for a bit at church. Falling asleep, again, where I should have been paying attention. Maybe. Either way it couldn't have lasted longer than 5 or 10 seconds from drifting off to snapping back awake:

   I dreamt I was a wild animal, and they put me into a cage. My head in a cage, and my body in a cage, and each of my legs in a cage. And they forced the cage to tilt back, stand up, so that I had to balance on my rear legs in the rear cages, and they forced the cages with my forelegs outward like arms at my sides, and the cage with my head to point forward-which-once-was-downward instead of upward-which-once-was-forward. Put on a little green knit cap beanie on my head, and called me a person. Five seconds.

   And, if this is the same dream, I'm out of my cage now, but: I got into the pantry, they forced me into the pantry, closed the door on me and I made a mess with all the cans and jars and boxes, before the door even finished closing. If they got angry, what did they expect, I was an animal. Ten seconds. Only by those seconds, I was already awake.

   I woke up confused, when people looked at me, why they let me in church and didn't freak out when they were looking right at me. Before realizing that when they looked at me, they only saw human.

   Tame me. Tame me? Could I really say, even after all that, that I know what it means to be that, wild or tame? And is it good to be tamed? I still don't know how a fox can know any such thing, how you can even know the concept of tame when you're still wild.

   Maybe the movie will explain it better...

   Warhol also did prints of flowers like that. Red ones. Roses, maybe; I can't tell...

   I'm still considering putting that Mona Lisa image at the end of last post. It's so juicy, so fitting, even if a tad obvious, and I feel that the end of that post was left dangling too much somehow. So maybe I will do that, put up Thirty Are Better than One there at the end, just like it is in the textbook. But I'm still not sure-- because, lines of the Prince's Rose stretching off infinitely, as terrifying and ironic as that vision is, that's exactly the kind of thing that Warhol would have loved.