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arthistorycuriosity · 3 years

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My Cabinet of Curiosities

My cabinet of curiosities from top left clockwise: Farewell to Kings by Rush, an apple head with human hair, a watch from Paris, a bear claw, my father’s tooth, my cat, my great-grandma’s silverware from the 1930′s, letters from my penpal in Germany, my TI-84, and The Vancouver Province announcing Barack Obama’s first presidential election win. All these items are displayed in a vintage trunk. Farewell to Kings Album

Closer to the Heart by Neil Peart

And the men who hold high places Must be the ones who start To mold a new reality Closer to the heart Closer to the heart

The blacksmith and the artist Reflect it in their art They forge their creativity Closer to the heart Yes, closer to the heart

Philosophers and plowmen Each must know his part To sow a new mentality Closer to the heart (Peart, 1977)

The Farewell to Kings album represents music, Canadian culture, literature, and sexism. Rush is my favourite band. They are a Canadian rock band. Their members are Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Sadly, Peart passed away due to brain cancer in January, 2020. All three band members are intellectuals, especially Peart, who is a published author. The Farewell to Kings album art is a scene of post-atomic destruction with a doll representation of a king in the foreground who looks broken and dead, with his crown in the rubble near a destroyed bunker, with industrial pollution and a cityscape in the background. Many of the songs’ lyrics are war protest songs. The album title is also a reference to the novel, A Farewell to Arms, in which Hemmingway’s character walks away from World War I, because he is about to be unjustly executed. The character escapes with his girlfriend (who later dies in childbirth) (Hemingway, 1957). Peart also lost a wife and child. Rush is one of the most successful-ever touring bands, members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, recipients of the Order of Canada, and holders of honorary PhD’s (Ankeny, 2020). However, can you see something wrong with Peart’s lyrics? The lyrics have such a positive sentiment, to live a life true to one’s feelings, yet Peart always employs the universal “he”. Not surprisingly, most of Rush’s fans are white, nerdy males. (At least that is the stereotype.) I would almost rather hear about Motley Crue’s treatment of groupies than suffer Rush’s utter absence of the female. So, it is with ambivalence that I present this token of my favourite band.

Apple Head

People indigenous to the Amazon rainforest originally shrunk heads to frighten off enemies and to compel the spirits of their enemies to serve them. When western cultures contacted these people, they prized the heads as travel mementos which obviously caused more killing (Santillan, 2020). My shrunken head is an apple. My dad’s friend carved it about twenty-five years ago and he attached a lock of his sister’s hair. Over the years it has hardened and blackened. It is just over an inch in diameter and has acquired a sheen over the years. Its face is laughing and its hair is ash blonde. We joke about it and say that people will think that we are into witchcraft. My dad talks about it protecting him on the road (because it normally hangs in his minivan) and I think he might half believe it. The significance of the head is to represent the study of cultures, and to remind me that when somebody else’s culture seems repugnant, adding mine to the mix can make things worse. It also represents my own irreverence toward all things supernatural, because nothing could be less sinister than a silly apple, even if it looks kind of creepy. Watch

This pocket watch represents my travels to Europe. It is silver and the cover depicts the Eiffel Tower. The word Paris is embossed onto it in cursive. It has floral and beaded detailing around its face. The numerals are Arabic and its hands are lightweight and simple. I bought this watch at Versailles when I was nine years old. On that occasion, I went to France with my family and we saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles, Beaune, Nimes, and Carcassonne. The rich history of the French Revolution impressed me because I kept thinking about the guillotine, which killed the nobles whose images I viewed and whose homes I visited. On my second trip to Europe, I went alone as a nineteen-year-old student. I studied in Berlin at Humboldt University. Everywhere I went, there were remnants of the Holocaust. After that shocking experience, I traveled to Strasbourg by train to visit friends. My hosts and I watched the July 14 fireworks, even though there had been terrorism in Nice the year before. From Strasbourg, I took the high-speed train to Paris and visited the catacombs, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre and Montmartre. While I was in Paris, I stayed with wealthy friends of my Strasbourg hosts. They were nice to me. I felt like I was their daughter. They had an impressive house and the whole downstairs was just for me. I had a super fancy bathroom. For dinner we had sausage or something. Afterwards, they asked me if I liked cheese and I said yes, so they brought me a huge selection of cheeses, all of which I sampled, despite being lactose intolerant! Later, I was glad to have the downstairs suite to myself. Anyway, the significance of this watch is to remind me of a history that is so much bigger and more horrifying than what I can normally mentally process. It also reminds me of my ability to act outside of my comfort zone. Bear Claw

In Indigenous cultures, especially here in British Columbia, bear claws represent protection, leadership, strength and healing (The Ancient Symbol, 2020). This bear claw was given to my mom by an Indigenous man in Pemberton. The base of the claw is amber-coloured, whereas the portion that protruded from the paw is charcoal-coloured. It is curved and has a slight hump on the inside. It resembles a dead fish with its head cut off. It is roughly an inch and a half long. The pointed end could definitely tear you to bits. The man who gave it to my mom had watched her band play at the pub, and they had conversed during the band’s break. At the end of the night, the fellow presented her with this bear claw, which is hardly what she would wear for jewelry, because she is not partial to hunting, but she sensed his generosity and sincerity and so she thanked him and kept the bear claw with a feeling of respect and gratitude. This bear claw is significant because it reminds us that we are very fortunate if we are welcomed by Indigenous people and it reminds us to look at their gifts through their cultural lens and not our own. My Dad’s Tooth

This is my dad’s tooth. I am not sure what type of tooth it is. It might be a wisdom tooth. It is rotten and disgusting. You can see dried up blood and black tooth decay. It is roughly 3/4 of an inch long. Luckily, it does not stink. This tooth is in my collection because I like gross things and I think every treasure chest should have at least one gross curiosity. This semester, I am studying anatomy, so body parts are important. This tooth is a reminder to maintain proper oral hygiene and to floss every night. People die from tooth abscesses and this is a stupid and avoidable way to die (if you come from a rich country). Hygiene practices are also especially important now in our current pandemic. My Cat

This is my cat, Shit Rock. He is black, white and gray and his back has a leopard pattern. His fur is thick, healthy, shiny and soft. He smells like nothing, which makes him so much better than a dog because dogs stink. I love him as though he were my child. At first, when he was a kitten and we rescued him from a barn at my aunt’s house, we used to call him Bubbi, and that is his name at the vet. But Shit Rock is his real name, and this is stolen from the Trailer Park Boys, whose character, Bubbles, is a cat lover. The Trailer Park Boys are icons of Canadian counterculture whom I like for their comedy, irreverence, and Canadian-ness. They also like Rush! Shit Rock is a naughty little kitty, but he has a sweet side as well. He can bite, scratch, and growl when he is hungry or wants to go outside. When he is outside, he likes to cross the road to play with his other kitty friend, which is dangerous. His sweet side comes out when he is full and sleepy. He cuddles, kneads, licks, and purrs on the fluffy blanket on my bed. My Great Grandma’s Silverware

This is my great grandmother’s silverware, which she received as a wedding gift in the 1930’s. She did not use the three sets that remain in the original packaging. The box in which the knife set is housed is blue with vintage lettering. The cardboard is frail and thin. The knife handles are plastic, but they look like yellowed ivory. The spoons are dark and tarnished. The significance of the silverware is to remind me of my father’s Mennonite family history. The Mennonites were expelled from Germany and Russia and other Slavic countries and they dispersed through North America and South America from the 1870’s through the World Wars (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019). My father’s maternal relatives settled in Altona, Manitoba in the 1870’s, whereas his paternal relatives escaped from Siberia and came to Canada during World War I. The Mennonites were pacifists and although my father is irreligious, he has kept this trait. He once had a conversation with a Dutch serviceman, my mom’s step-cousin, whom he told, “If I were called to war, I would tell my government to shoot me before I would ever kill anybody.” The cousin seemed favourably impressed. As for the unused silverware, it speaks of frugality, of saving things for a more important time that never arrived. This stinginess also translated into a parenting style that involved a lot of disapproval, the tone of which got less toxic with each passing generation. (I am not making this up… Just read a Miriam Toews book.)

My Letters/Postcards from Antonia

In 2012, I met a German girl named Antonia on Twitter. We shared an interest in One Direction, a British boy band. We became very good friends and decided to start writing each other real, snail-mail letters. I have kept her letters in a box in my room. It is funny to reread them and remember my tween years. I have studied German since the ninth grade, and to this day, Antonia and I practice English/German with each other. I met her in person in 2018, when I studied abroad in Berlin, and she was just as lovely as I could have imagined. Antonia took an airplane from Bavaria to spend a day with me. We attended an anti-neo Nazi protest. It was a wonderful day. This photo shows a Christmas card she sent me in 2019, and a few postcards too. The Christmas card has a Christmas tree made of glitter on the front and on the inside, she put little dashes of glitter too. The postcards are from Prague, Berlin, and Salzburg. The postcards represent the acquisition of language and cross-cultural exchange. They also represent two parallel comings of age on separate continents: when we first met, we only had a boy band in common, but when we met in person, we had enough in common politically to join a protest together. My TI-84

My TI-84 is a black, rectangular instrument, about 6 by 2 inches, with a lot of intimidating buttons, all of which have three functional levels. It has an LED screen with intimidating, primitive text in its display. The cover has my name and hearts on it, which I did with White Out during one of my math classes. The back bears a sticker of Jack Black from Tenacious D. My TI-84 graphs functions, and finds their roots, maxima, minima, derivatives, and antiderivatives. It can calculate probabilities for normal, t, chi square, F, binomial, Poisson, and geometric probability distributions. It can perform a wide range of statistical tests. It multiplies matrices, calculates trigonometric values, and is handy with logarithms. I got a C in calculus but an A in statistics. I hate math, but I know it matters. For example, statistical studies have changed the United Nations’ policies on awarding aid. They found that giving money to women in impoverished nations ensured that children would be fed, whereas awarding the same money to men did not result in the feeding of children (United Nations, 2020). Another example of math being important socially is the mathematics of exponential growth, which describes the inequality generated by the capitalistic financial system and which also describes the spread of diseases, like Covid-19. Projection models for the spread of disease help public health officials decide policies. The Province 2008 Newspaper

My last curiosity is a 2008 Province newspaper announcing Barack Obama’s presidential win. It is torn on the backside, permanently folded, yellow, and fading. It stinks a little bit. Obama looks young in this photo compared to now, even though the time since then has gone by very fast. Why should I care whom Americans elect? Well, everything they do affects us; economically, militaristically, culturally, etc. I get very sick of watching their TV and seeing their flags on everything. Pierre Elliott Trudeau said in a 1969 interview with President Nixon: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt" (MacMillan, 2018). This was true when Nixon was in power and it is most certainly true now. I was happy when Obama was elected. I believe that he did his best; however, America is just too far gone. Maybe in many generations to come, they will have free health care. More likely, the country will dissolve into two factions. Or maybe both of these things have already happened somewhat. Now we have Trump, The Proud Boys, and an out-of-control pandemic, and most of Canada’s cases have come from America (Tumilty, 2020).

Thematic Analysis

One theme that recurred in my collection was that of irreverence, even though this was not deliberate in my choice of objects. My kitty is named Shit Rock, which is so off-colour as to be unmentionable at the vet’s office. He is named after the Trailer Park Boys whose humour is founded upon stupidity, drug dealing, and failure. My calculator did not escape unscathed because it bears a sticker of Jack Black in his Tenacious D persona. Tenacious D sings vulgarities with operatic enthusiasm. The apple head is a standing family joke that pokes fun at a creepy looking thing with complete disregard for supernatural associations. Finally, the silverware reminds me of my paternal Mennonite roots and my reasons for wanting to shake them off. As the above thematic links diagram shows, many of the sub-themes that my objects brought to mind are interconnected. However, now I will try to lift another theme out of the objects’ functions. Five of the objects function as memory enhancement. The newspaper stores and helps us recall events of a particular period, in this case the 2008 American election. The TI-84 stores, remembers, and manipulates more mathematical data than any good math student can hold in her head. The watch not only acts as a mnemonic device to help me remember my travels, but it also keeps track of time. The Rush album generates music, which transports its listeners to the time when the music was new, and in this way, it also enhances memory. The letters/postcards serve as a reminder of a long friendship and constitute a written record of two girls’ transition from childhood to adulthood.

References:

Ankeny, J. (2020). Rush: Biography & History. AllMusic. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rush-mn0000203008/biography.

Hemingway, E. (1957). A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner.

MacMillan, M. (2018, June 15). Sleeping with a very cranky elephant: The history of Canada-U.S. tensions | CBC Radio. CBCnews. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-june-17-2018-1.4692469/sleeping-with-a-very-cranky-elephant-the-history-of-canada-u-s-tensions-1.4699017.

Peart, N. (1977). Closer to the Heart - Farewell to Kings. Thornhill, Canada: Anthom Records

Santillan, J. (2020, March 27). 8 Disturbing Facts About Real Shrunken Heads. TheCollector. https://www.thecollector.com/shrunken-heads/.

The Ancient Symbol. (2020). Native American Bear Symbol. https://theancientsymbol.com/collections/native-american-bear-symbol.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2019). Mennonite. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mennonite.

Tumilty, R. (2020, April 30). Canada's early COVID-19 cases came from the U.S. not China. Healthing.ca. https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/canadas-early-covid-19-cases-came-from-the-u-s-not-china.

United Nations. (2020). Reduce inequality within and among countries – United Nations Sustainable Development. United Nations. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/inequality/.

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