Conflicting Holiday Art

Because of the art I exposed myself to over the holidays, I now find myself feeling conflicted.  And yet I had a very enjoyable holiday, including two weeks off from work.

 

What were these conflicting influences I subjected myself to?

First, I was finishing up listening to “Bebop Spoken Here,” a four-CD collection.  From there, I went on to “Doo Wop Box 2,” another four-CD set.  Meanwhile, I listened to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, and participated in a “you-sing-it” Handel’s Messiah.

Meanwhile, I was reading The Bell Jar and looking through two biographies of Sylvia Plath; and continuing my study of the “Beat” writers—specifically, I saw the new film “Kill Your Darlings,” about the killing of David Kammerer in 1943.

I suppose it was the Doo Wop and the biographies that made me realize how conflicted I was feeling.

After all, the Bach and the Handel and the Tchaikovsky— that music is such a standard background for the holidays.  It forms the standard background noise of the season—along with the Christmas carols we start hearing in November or even October now.  And I’ve been immersed in the Beat material for years—even “Kill Your Darlings” barely raised an alarm with me.  After all, I’ve played through the audio recording of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (same basic story) several times now.

And I’d read The Bell Jar before, long ago; I knew the basic story.

But I didn’t know very much about Sylvia Plath herself, other than how she ended her life.

To read about her, with the background noise of the Beats—contrasting drastically with the syrupy doo wop—now that was a set of conflicting emotions!