art & lies: 3/30

My first thought when I read the chapter name "Handel", I thought it was an artists name, probably because another name of a chapter was Picasso.  I googled Handel after I read a little of the book, and it was an old German man who wrote opera, which Handel does as well (Not sure if this is coincidence or on purpose).  This book is kind of hard to put together, or retain all of it.  It reminds me of a Wes Anderson movie, like "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "The Darjeeling Limited".  I like those movies, but I'm not sure why I like them or why they are good in a cinematic sense.  This book is kind of like that for me.  I'm not sure how to even describe this chapter.  It seems like it is following Handel's mind, almost like a blog.  It is not exactly like a blog, but the writing reminds me of how a mind works.  It kind of jumps all around, it is not perfectly laid out.  I think the "lies" part of the book so far is how Handel is giving his opinions about the realities of the world.  For example, he mentioned the homeless people; and how since it is illegal for them to be on the street, now people do not have as much sympathy for them.  

Handel interests me a lot.  It seems he has no interest in having a relationship with a woman, but loves women.  He talks about being a devout Catholic, yet he went to a brothel.  I wish there were a lot of footnotes explaining what some things mean, or how in DVDs, there are extra features where the director explains a lot of things.  I wish Winterson was explaining some of the depth of this book.  

When I was thinking of Handel though, it reminded me of a conversation I was having with a buddy a while ago.  A Bright Eyes song came on his computer, and it was a very depressing song.  It is a band consisting of one person, Conor Oberst.  He is apparently some kind of prodigy; he is super smart.  We then talked about how it seems like people who are extremely smart who think really deeply into areas of life are a lot of times depressed or cynical about life.  I'm not sure if this is true, but we were thinking of all these people who fit into that category.  I was thinking about how Handel fits into this category as well.  He is obviously very intelligent; he is a surgeon.  He also thinks a lot about how the world works and a lot of the bad in life.  There are a couple of sentences on page 26 that even touched on what I had been thinking.  Handel says he is about to leave his city and never return.  He then says, "This action, my friends conclude, comes out of an excess of what the French call La Sensibilite.  Too much feeling is not welcome in a man."  This is exactly what I was thinking about, that Handel is nagged continuously by these deep thoughts of his.  When Handel's friend asked "How shall I live?" a lot of people would not have pondered the question at the depth or length of time that Handel did.

I really wondered about a couple of things I couldn't answer.  I was not sure about the significance of the very first paragraph.  It is obviously very significant and important, but I'm not sure what that is.  There also seemed to be a lot of references to light.  Handel is always talking about how light is being shown on different objects.  Handel also points out the color white a lot.  He describes how white the shirt is that he wore to the opera, how white his bed is, how white the brothel was.  I think there has to be significance to all of these, but I do not know what it is.  This is why I wish there was some footnotes like I mentioned above, because I'm sure knowing some of these things would really help unravel the book.