When Mozart Was My Age...

He was dead. Or near it. Last I heard, undercooked pork was the likely cause of death, but still, it makes me realize how much time I've squandered.

Yesterday’s thoughts of triptychs vs. quadtychs got me to thinking of Hieronymus Bosch, one of my personal heroes in the world of art. His visions rival anything by Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí or André Masson for surrealism. Bosch is beyond psychedelic, beyond surreal. If there’s evidence of the supernatural, I’d aver Bosch’s Hell trump Michelangelo’s Heaven any day.

These dark visions, you’d think these were 20th Century works. They even used a detail from 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' for the cover of Joey Goebel's second novel, 'Torture the Artist.' A fitting cover for the title, to be sure.

But Bosch isn't modern. This post-modern painter died in 1516. To put that in perspective:

• That’s 169 years before J.S. Bach was born.


• It’s 24 years after Columbus found ‘India’ in the Caribbean.


• It’s closer (301 years) to the signing of the Magna Carta than to the Civil Rights act of 1964 (448 years).


• Bosch was dead 48 years when Galileo was born.

Bosch’s contemporaries, loosely, would include Copernicus, Gutenberg, and Leonardo DaVinci.

Quote for today:‘I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a hot-gusshing, butt-cramping, gut-hosing orgasm.’—Chuck Palahniuk, in ‘Choke’