Let me see…a melodic art form of our emotional connections and the ensuing roller coaster ride. So now we come to art forms.

How does the art form connect to us? Art truly expressed is an emotional outburst of creation. Of taking something that we feel and breaking it into some type of components towards reconfiguring either the system or components into an original piece that generates an emotional response in others. There is another form of art, when someone takes what they know how to do beyond perfection and into self-expression. Aesthetics is the key here. If you look at it from the melodic arena, there are only seven notes with differences in octaves, duration, flat or sharp, rhythm and harmonies. This is a limited or finite set of rules that produces an infinite combination. This leaves alot of room for creativity to connect or express.

Some people never learn how to express themselves. Some people try to make up for everyone else’s inability to express themselves. But no matter if you do or don’t know how to express yourself there is something that we can all agree on. We like it when things are made look nice. Whether its people, a thing you own, a symphony you have created out of your work environment; everything gives off better vibes or makes people feel better to be around this one item or place or person that looks good. The other symphonies we are drawn to are sometimes the music we use to generate a soundtrack that accompanies our very lives.

There have been studies that define what we like to look at or what we are drawn to. Symmetry and colors are prevalent along with upbeat rhythms. Did you know the first make up was for statues? Around six thousand years ago makeup was put on the statues of the gods to make them look alive. Then people started to put it on their faces to animate their images, create more symmetry and to use as sun block. Paint was also used to produce pictures and recording of our history began even before makeup. The advent of architecture was the combination of utility and beauty in symmetry and sometimes color that really showcased the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Royalty and Catholics in a very tangible way. Flutes from around 35,000BC have been found in Europe and Germany to denote musical inclinations in prehistoric man.

We have found multiple venues for generating and expressing ourselves through art. Not only are we the most adaptable species on earth, there is a spirit and logistics within the ability to take aspects of the everyday life and find a focus of beauty. Even with feet of clay there are transcendental moments or sounds to brighten the day.

A best friend takes a picture of a rainbow on his phone and sends it.  The daughter comes in and offers to do the dishes while you put her newest drawing on the refrigerator. You sit on the front porch to watch the sunset. The newest great song comes on the radio and you just tap the rhythm while you smile and let the music move your body. The greatest musical art form is the inspiration to generate new music. The ability to focus on the beauty of the day instead of all the tragedy is a great gift that can help you manage the day. It is not a waste of time…but truly a gift you not only give to yourself but share with all you interact with daily.  

Our ancestors come from Venus? Speculation about extraterrestrial civilization during the last century, deals with the American astronomer Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996) – author of many popular science books and literary Pulitzer Prize winner, known in the world, especially for his work contact (filmed 1997). In the search for extraterrestrial life is focused on the neighboring planet – Venus. The scientist believes that the inhospitable conditions of life on this planet are the result of long exposure to the greenhouse effect. It is therefore possible that here in the millions or perhaps billions of years ago there was tech life? These considerations, to pass the weird theories of human origins. They are descendants of people unknown beings from outer space? Perhaps from Venus? Space teachers hypotheses about extraterrestrial origin of humans find their increasingly disenfranchised.And if you have someone in professional circles not agree with this idea a bit eccentric, often at least suspend the possible existence of some “space teachers”. The original primitive inhabitants of Earth are reportedly from visitors from outer space to acquire new knowledge, technology or skills. Proof of this interplanetary exchange of knowledge is said to be records of various ancient artifacts whose purpose remains a mystery even today. Likewise, allegedly revealing interplanetary contact with highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations as some architectural structures, whose origins are shrouded in mystery. They are the authors of these technical achievements of ancient creatures that our ancestors were immortalized in the form of statues in spacesuits? Similarity purely coincidental? Ancient artifacts, whose importance we can not quite explain to appear on all continents of our planet.The paintings of mysterious objects oval criss-crossing the clouds and brilliant shine or issuing figures in suits, but which at the time of its inception, according to our current knowledge did not exist when it adorns many a rock or cave. How is it possible that the scenes apart thousands of miles bear very similar characters? It’s just a coincidence that people in ancient times invented gods descending from the heavens and the gods are in different parts of the world alike? Or are they on the right track, those who believe that thousands of years ago the air hovering flying saucers and their astronauts in spacesuits? Clues to unravel the entire mystery of the alleged to be the statue of unknown origin. Under some extreme hypothesis, supposedly to reveal the origin of Earth’s human race.

Image by Gruban via Flickr

During the restoration of Independence of Lithuania between 1989 and 1991, many monuments of the Soviet period were dismantled and piled up without any use. Those sculptures referred to a period of oppression of the country and no one wanted them in their original locations but they were representative monuments of an epoch in the history of the country and so, shouldn’t be destroyed.

A Lithuanian millionaire and former heavyweight wrestling champion of Lithuania, Mr. Malinauskas, decided to buy and show all  these sculptures in the region of Caves, south of Vilnius, and the park opened  in 2001 with 86 works from 46 authors.

There is a very well presented selection of statues, an authentic “cattle wagon”  transporter and an interesting museum with pictures and documentaries denouncing the ideology of the Soviet era and the genocide of the Lithuanian nation. A trench and watchtowers surrounding the area create the illusion of a concentration camp and you ear soviet music while walking through the park.

There’s a restaurant where tourists can order the most popular dishes of the Soviet period, such as vodka and herring, borsch and cutlets.

Children can also enjoy the park in a playground and a small zoo.

Every year on April 1, Grutas Park organizes a party with caricatures of the Soviet period, making presentations with humorous figures of the time, like Lenin, Stalin, secretary of the Central Committee, etc..

In 2010 the Grūtas Park was officially declared to be one of 10 the strangest museums in the World.

Viliumas Malinauskas, the establisher of the Grūtas park, was awarded with the lg Nobel Peace Prize for creating this exceptional place symbolizing the total absurdity of Soviet regime.

Links:

Official site of Grūtas Park

Grūtas Park (Stalin World) Flickr photos

wikipedia

Gulag Fun Park – TIME europe

Fallen Monument Park – Moscow, Russia

The Fallen Monument Park is perhaps the most well known part of Muzeon Park, a sculpture park in Moscow that displays over 700 sculptures into different themed series.  This section of the park was created when the Soviet Union collapsed  in 1991 and statues of the Soviet era were removed from their pedestals, hauled to the park and left in their fallen form. They were rectified later, although missing original pedestals.

Links:

wikipedia

Tretyakov Gallery Flickr Group

Memento Park – Budapest, Hungary

Memento Park is a unique museum in Budapest, including Statue Park with monumental statues from Hungary’s Communist period (1949-1989). In the open air museum you can see statues of Lenin, Marx and Engels, as well as Hungarian Communist leaders such as Béla Kun, Endre Ságvári or Árpád Szakasits. The park was designed by Hungarian architect, Ákos Eleőd, who won the competition announced by the Budapest General Assembly (Fővárosi Közgyűlés) in 1991.

Links:

Memento Park official website

A Sentence on Tyranny – Photographic images of the re-presentation of Soviet-era statues at Szobor Park

wikipedia

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           Cupids Arrows

He sits patiently in the shadows,

so still that you think he is a statue.

But don’t be fooled by his deception,

he is known to be a master at that.

Don’t let his boyish looks get to you,

his blue eyes and blond curls will do it.

Its been said that his smile is charming,

many women has been fooled by this.

**

On his muscular body is white wings,

its fine feathers a bird doesn’t posses.

The wings are strong enough for flight,

but no one has ever seen him do it.

In his strong hands is a bow and arrows,

the arrows are sharpened by angels.

They also carry a potion that is lethal,

there is only one known remedy for it.

****

A couple passes by the still statue,

the statue raises his muscular arm.

The lethal arrow hits its mark well,

the statue turns back into cupid again.

The couple don’t know that it was cupid,

doing what he is supposed to do best.

He helps the two people fall  in love,

helping them with his magical arrows.

*

They then plan a wedding in the fall,

a union that will last them a lifetime.

Later have children to be complete,

sending cupids potion deeper within.

Somewhere in the floating clouds Cupid smiles,

his lethal arrows has hit the mark once again.

Cupid will play a statue on another evening,

a brand new couple will feel his special potion .

This project was believe to be taken for 36 years before it was totally completed. The archaeologists that excavate the tomb found 6,000 figures of massive clay army buried with the emperor. Most of the figures were found in standing formations. They originally held weapons of bronze spears and swords or bows and arrows.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

To protect the tomb,  it was being rigged with booby trapped crossbows. Still, robbers found and looted the tomb and most of the weapons healed by the soldiers were pilfered centuries ago.

Incidentally the tomb was found in 1974 in the Huang River Valley by Chinese peasants who were digging a well. The buried army has military figures- archers, officers, charioteers, and horses.

The soldiers was found in their bright painted uniforms in a variety of colors ; red, green, blue, and lavender. They were individually crafted, the head the hands, with attention, even to such details as their hair and eyelashes.

The statues were apparently modeled after a specific soldier. Some of the statues, have a stamp on the back of the head bearing a name, most probably of the soldier or the artist who created its likeness. As they stand in long straight ranks, they appeared as willing to take their duty to guard the tomb of their emperor.

Thus began an extraordinary year in which religious icons all over Ireland reputedly exhibited varying degrees of unexpected mobility. The site of the greatest fervor, however, was the shrine at Ballinspittle, County Cork, whose 152 kg statue of the Virgin Mary was claimed by 17-year-old Clare O’Mahoney and her mother to have rocked backwards and forwards as they walked by its grotto on the evening of 22 July. This initiated a flurry of interest, which led to great numbers of people visiting the shrine during the next four months and numerous allegations that the statue was indeed rocking on its heels, sometimes moving its head and shoulders too. Two days after the O’Mahoneys’ sighting, it was watched with some alarm by Sergeant John Murray of the Garda Siochana, who stated that it was vibrating from side to side to such an extent that he had wondered if it was going to fall over.

Happily it did not, but events at Ballinspittle nonetheless reached a dramatically violent climax when, during the early evening of 31 October, two men attacked the Madonna with a hammer and an axe, badly damaging its head, hands and the illuminated halo around its head. After jeering the horrified crowd for being “stupid fools, worshipping a plaster statue”, the two men and a colleague who had been photographing their vandalism jumped in their car and drove off. Although soon caught, they were acquitted at their trial on a legal technicality.

In The Moving Statue of Ballinspittle, Lionel Beer listed 47 locations in Ireland that experienced reports of moving statues or other phenomena connected with the Virgin Mary during 1985, and a collection of journalistic accounts concerning these remarkable incidents featured in Seeing Is Believing: Moving Statue in Ireland, edited by Colm Toibin.

If they did not compromise authentic miracles, the sightings were presumably due to various optical effects. Investigators of the Asdee reports have shown that an illusion of movement can be effected with the two tall statues in St Mary’s church merely by staring for a short time at the small round window between the statues and then gazing at either one of them.

Similarly, the glare of lights illuminating various statues in dark conditions might well have stimulated unconscious eye movements in the observers, thereby eliciting illusory movement by the statues. This is a likely explanation for the many claimed sightings that occurred outdoors at night, or inside churches with subdued lighting.

Another illusion is the autokinetic effect, often experienced by mountaineers, in which stationary objects seen at a distance and lacking a detailed background can appear to move. Perhaps, this couple with the power of suggestion, always a potent force, was responsible for some reports too. After all, the Ballinspittle Madonna stands over 6 metres away from the viewing area, in a dark alcove on a hillside, from where it would surely be difficult for even the keenest-eyed observers to state categorically that they had detected genuine movement.

Last, but certainly not least, while stopping short of citing mass hallucination, it is evident that if there is a sufficient desire to see something, people will see it, whether it is real or not – a psychological situation arising time and time again with mysterious phenomena.