To: condorboy
Date: Monday, December 12—11:53 PM
Subject: deep thoughts
Dear Connor,
Today in art class, everybody was talking about Dalí this and Dalí that, like he is the greatest thing that ever happened in the world, like the words “Dalí” and “surrealism” mean the exact same thing. Some genius freshman even thought he and Diego Rivera were the same person. He was like, “Oh yeah, he was that Communist guy who hung out with Trotsky and was married to the lady with the eyebrow,” and I was like, No, you racist asshole, there is more than one famous painter with a Spanish name. We were looking at slides of Dalí’s most famous paintings, the elephants with the stick legs, the bubble lady, the photo of him with the flowers on the end of his pointy hipster mustache, and of course everyone oohed and aahed at the stupid melting clocks they love so much.
Everyone loves Dalí like he’s the only surrealist that ever lived, but that’s only because he was a marketing genius and knew how to sell himself. But what about all the others? Ernst, Man Ray, Miro? FUCKING PICASSO, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!! What about all the writers who started Surrealism in the first place? What about the fact that Dalí was kicked out of the movement for being a capitalist pig? What about the fact that Magritte is way more awesome and versatile? Magritte didn’t feel the need to shock and show off. He was more classy, more subtle. Like you can look at one of his paintings, and for a second it looks like any old painting. Like that one The Empire of Light, where it seems like a totally boring and realistic picture of a house, but then you realize the light’s all fucked up and all of a sudden it starts feeling haunted. You start feeling like something’s off, like something doesn’t add up. And you can’t figure out what it is for a while, you just feel it in your gut.
That’s what dreams are really like, you know? They’re not full of melting clocks or floating roses or people made out of rocks. Most of the time, dreams look just like the normal world. It’s your feelings that tell you something’s off. Not your mind, not your intellect, not something as obvious as that. The only part of you that really knows what’s going on is the part of you that’s most a mystery. If that’s not Surrealism, I don’t know what is.
Oh boy. Deep thoughts with Isabel. That was exhausting. I think I’ll go watch some TV.
Love,
Isabel