Misadventures in the Land of Fables #30
This illustration in the traditional Chinese ‘ink wash’ style* inspired the following fable: ~~~ A butterfly saw a frog squatting on a rock. “I wonder how long its tongue might be,” the butterfly asked itself. “This long,” answered the frog, as it grabbed the butterfly and swallowed it whole. ~~~ These two creatures could be […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #29
~~~ Well well well. I thought I knew the story of ‘The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ but it seems I didn’t. Not exactly. There are, or were, three quite different versions in circulation. This may be because it is one of those fables incorrectly attributed to Aesop. The earliest example dates from the 12th century […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #28
~~~ ‘The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs’ is one of those fables that have stuck. Like ‘sour grapes’ and ‘crying wolf,’ the phrase “to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs’ has become common parlance, crossing the blood/brain barrier from narrative to idiom. It captures the self-defeating destructive tendencies of greed. The story […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #27
In the documentary ‘Bosch: The Garden of Dreams,’ Chinese artist Cai Quo Quian picks out a relatively innocuous detail in the surreal, polyamorous super-abundance of Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights.’ An image of animals drinking from a river or lake. He connects it with his own work, specifically the installation entitled ‘Heritage’ in which all […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #26
Can something be both superficial and deep-rooted? You’d think it would be a contradiction, but if you consider roots horizontally extended over decades and centuries, the space opens for the two concepts to co-exist. A superficially attractive idea, an assumption based on appearances, an error, these can persist and the longer they do the more […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #25
To eat a tortoise you must first break its protective shell. Chances are, you hadn’t given this particular challenge much thought up to now, but it seems to have been the prompt for two Aesopic fables, two which over the years have undergone a number of transformations. The key action, as it impacts the victim, […]