Weekly Challenge #227: Circus Life

Challenge: Circus Life

This is this week's challenge:

Hello to all the Diva challenge followers! I am Lee Darter CZT #15. The Diva was at my training seminar as the key note speaker and I was so inspired by her story. I have been tangling for 8 years. I took my first workshop with Suzanne McNeill in Texas 2008. I was hooked, it was like the mother ship calling me home. I felt the same way when I got certified. It is an amazing experience to be around so much talent. I did not want to leave. 

My challenge is based on our annual family beach trip to Florida where we have a house. We will be on Anna Maria Island near the summer home of the Ringling Brothers winter home and museum in Sarasota. 

What do you think of when you think of the circus?

I think of fun, striped tents and lots of action and movement.  

For my guest challenge, create a tile using the tangles Cack by  Adele Bruno and Tropicana by Kate Ahrens. 

Then just just like a 3 ring circus - chose from either Florz, Linq by Lara Williams or Fescu to add a third element to your design. 

Circus Finale

The last night of the circus before it packs up and moves on.  A bird's-eye view of a fireworks show, as the audience looks upward to the exploding, glittering, flashing display over the safety net in the center ring.

I am rarely this literal, and I believe I overthought this week's challenge.  I had never used either Cack or Tropicana, and so had to learn them first, and I did not feel inspired by them.   And the challenge to consider what I think about when I think abou the circus led to the insight that the circus culturally is always some sort of metaphor.  And that led me to recall a favorite poem by Archibald MacLeish called "The End of the World."

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot

The armless ambidextrian was lighting

A match between his great and second toe,

And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting

The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum

Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough

In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb

Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over

Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,

There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,

There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,

There in the sudden blackness the black pall

Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all. 

Obviously, by "white faced, those dazed eyes" are looking up not into the "black pall" but into a dazzling fireworks show.

As I was mulling over how to respond to the challenge, I coincidentally heard  for the first time on the radio a lecture by e.e. cummings:

“Damn everything but the circus! ...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy. That won't throw it's heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence...”

I would like now to read his Non-Lectures (1953).  I also came across this:

"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus" (1925)

So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed--after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels--to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art--for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.

from E. E. Cummings, "The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair 25 (October 1925): 57 & 98.

In conclusion:  I explored two of my favorite poets using the Circus as a metaphor in very different ways.  So, the challenge led me on a rewarding excursus.

As for my own attempt:  I cannot say what the zentangle is a metaphor of.  It requires more analysis and meditation.  Certainly something about spectacle, something about art, something about risk and safety nets, and something about the mutability of all things--the circus finale.  And perhaps the geometry of form that informs all things, including the circus.