After Beef

I think my cow diversion has nearly runs its course.

The cows that decorate the world's major cities as part of the global public art movement, CowParade, are oddly fascinating. (See earlier blog: Car Parade: Budapest and Boston.)

I have spent too much time thinking about why people love these dressed up plaster bovines. But delight they do. Maybe it's the shared common form--your basic cow--transformed. You don't see a cow, you see how the cow was interpreted and that gives a jolt of pleasure as you impress yourself with your ability to understand the visual pun or message of the artist. People "get" this art. (In a way they don't get modern art?) This gives pleasure. Hence the cow parade goes on.

I can't help but think that in one hundred years, art historians will write books about early twenty-first century public art. Perhaps with the following title: "The Bovine Consciousness Emergent in Metropolitan Byways: A study." Or how about: "Heifers Rising: The Rise of Bovine Beauty in Early Twenty-first Century Urban Pastures."

But didn't I just say that my cow diversion was in its final throes of passion? Ready for the slaughter.

Let there be cows.

(Yet, it is so much more satisfying to write about parading cows than to attempt to write about the cow in the middle of my life, which is related to the elephant in the room, if you know what I mean.)

Vow to self: less caffeine, more tennis, less chatter, more keyboard clatter, and so forth.