Monday, November 2, 2009

True Love

Story from www.l-vii.blogspot.com

My grandmother was the first person I saw with tattoos, she had eight to be exact. I was fascinated by the marks on her right forearm. Two scorpions, a bird, her name and some other drawings. As a child, I often asked her about the markings and she'd say 'igba sisi mi ni mo ya won' (I got them as a young woman) but that answer was never satisfactory. I moved to England and I forgot about Alhaja's tattoos until I turned 19. I got the urge to get my own tattoo and I thought of her. I know now there was some defiance behind her tattoos, my father told me so. When she was getting ready to marry my grandfather, he objected to her tattoos and she was given the option to either get the offending marks drawn over (my grandfather, a devout Muslim, did not like images of animals drawn on what he perceived to be a holy temple) or forget getting married. My Alhaja chose the latter and according to my father, she told Alhaji that the markings were there when they met and he liked her, so, they'll stay. They parted ways, he went off to fight the Germans in Algeria as part of Her Majesty's army and my grandmother married another man.

They met up again in 1949, my grandmother was about board a bus at Adeniji Adele when they walked into each other. My father told me my grandfather knew she was already married then, he told her then that he'd seen so much death and destruction that he was no longer sure about God. He asked her about her tattoos, she told him she still had them. He told her he saw scorpions in the desert and he thought they were signs from her, offering him protection.
My Alhaja left her first husband at the age of 22, he had become a serial womaniser, who left home for weeks on end. They got married, Grandma and Pa, a month later, Alhaja wore a western style wedding dress that showed off her tatoos.

... and that's what they call true love people :D

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

On Modern Art

Tracy Emin's "My Bed"


Damien Hirst "A Thousand Years"

Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary"

From the Occidental Observer
"Let me ask you a question. If someone tried to sell you his excrement for $10, would you buy it? Probably not. Well, consider this: on May 23, 2007, a can labeled Artist’s Shit, purportedly containing the excrement of artist Piero Manzoni, was sold at Sotheby’s for €124,000 (US$ 180,000).
How is it done? Is a can of shit worth its weight in gold? It obviously is — if people are fighting to buy it.
A larger question: If you can con people into buying shit, can you also con them into evil wars in the Middle East and mass cultural suicide in their own homelands? Nothing easier. It’s being done right now."

Hmm... read the rest here, will comment later http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtII.html