explaining the unexplainable.

The most interesting thing that happened to me today (as I was in a state of frightful zombie-ness for the better part of the day) was the question posed to me by a thoughtful friend.

What am I supposed to see in this? she asked, indicating Salvador Dali's "The Hallucinogenic Troubadour."

What does it mean? she questioned.

Is there some kind of interpretation? she wondered.

I have a poster print hanging in my front room given to me on another birthday by someone who was once my very closest friend. This friend and I once went to Florida together and she made it a point that I visit the Dali Museum, which resides in the ho-hum city of St. Petersburg, Florida. I remember when I saw the "The Hallucinogenic Troubadour;" we had turned a corner from a relatively small room and into a larger space where it seemed one wall was covered with the bigness of this one painting, and it seemed nearly fifteen feet tall and it was a spectacle, really, a marvel. I was so awed by its size, by how it could be so big and yet still be so carefully detailed.

And it is interesting to explain to someone else what something is supposed to mean. I don't know what it means. I suppose I could do some research, Dali was pretty vocal and talkative, but who knows if he explained his work. It's not like something with a fixed association, like a the word for hand pretty much represents hand. Art is so abstract, especially on the level of meaning.

I think the reason I like this piece of Dali's more than some of his other work, is that to me it represents the mind's eye and how we are always making patterns and seeing things the way we want to see them and if someone tells us, look see the man in the painting, he becomes all we can see.

But what I told her was probably less coherent. Something about chaos and how the world is always at a point where it's past and future are colliding.