Of Richard Gere, Impressionism & Boris The Spider

"Richard Gere, why him?" Asks LJ, still groggy from sleep during which she dreamt that Richard Gere painted a portrait of her, but not a full portrait, only her waist and bum. In answer to her question, I could only smile, saying "Why indeed", although I put his anatomical focus down to the role he played in American Gigolo. Thus, a fictitious celluloid character re-emerges in dreamland.  After all, Fellini said that 'Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams'.

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When I tell you that I spent a recent evening chatting to a couple of philosophy tutors whilst attending a private view of a friend's paintings you might get the wrong impression; namely that I am, if not a bit posh, then almost certainly middle-class. But as regular readers will know, nothing could be further from the truth. Still, Impressionism, as I've decided to call it, despite that being completely the wrong word, therefore demonstrating my lack of either education or literary capability, is big, these days, isn't it? Online, where we all live, we may be what we want others to think we are, such as someone with impeccable taste and infinite knowledge (thanks to Wikipedia & Google). That said, I'm aware of the fact that others like nothing better than to bare heart and soul online, along with their failings, thus using forums and FB as therapeutic outlets. Perhaps even perfect online façades reveal covert imperfections, such as the desire to inhabit ideal alter egos rather than be honest, to err, and therefore be human. 

Whilst the tutors joked about the relative merits of John Stuart Mill I calmly drank wine rather than worry about being 'out of my depth', as the saying goes. Luckily, we later found waters in which I could swim quite comfortably, if I may continue the analogy, although by then I was actually drowning in red wine. I talked music with one of them, who revealed his love for The Who, along with his occupancy of a canal boat he shared with spiders. At last I was able to teach the teacher something; that all spiders must be called Boris, after The Who's song, 'Boris The Spider'. He agreed, naturally. Whether my advice impressed him or not is another matter.