Again - because I posted this in the middle of the night - I love this pic

[applegrove]

horse & train by Alex Colville

They are monsters on a track. We human beings are alive. We are tool-makers. Sociopaths are the rule-makers. We created them (the corporation). We have options. We are the horse.

It looks scary... but we can get off the track. They cannot. They are what they are. We will evolve.

We have the advantage!


anything else?

[whistle]

1. Ohoooo.....

:kick:

[autorank]

2. Perfect.

Nominated :kick:

[rwheeler31]

7. nominated for?

Please explain.

[applegrove]

10. Nominated for greatest I would guess. This picture gets people or

it does not. It speaks to anxiety about all that we have created.

[autorank]

13. Lobby/Latest/Greatest!

:thumbsup::thumbsup:
:thumbsup:

[Kali]

3. ever seen what a train can do to livestock?

sorry couldn't help myself. Just finished writing up some claims for livestock killed by Union Pacific. With photos. YUCK

[applegrove]

11. Yes - does this horse have the sense to get off the track? I take it

your livestock did not. What.. were they in a herd or something?

But this horse..does it have to stay on a track built for some other entity?

[i miss america]

4. I say the horse should drag a tree onto the track and derail

that friggin' train.

[KlatooBNikto]

5. I like the imagery of a natural being against an artifact.But then, I have

always dreamt about a bionic horse capable of doing 80 miles an hour on the ground for a range of 600 miles as the answer to our gas shortage.I should add on just one bag of oats.As a topper I also want that bionic horse to be able to fly like Pegasus.

[rwheeler31]

6. wonderful perspective

great phtography ,great message, thank you.

[applegrove]

9. Horse is metaphor. For perhaps a more sustainable past. For

the natural against the machine. For the options open to mankind.. The horse too was a creation of mankind.. but at a time when creations sucked less out of the environment.

[chlamor]

8. Lakota Proverb

" If we are not careful, we will end up where we are headed."
                                                              Lakota Proverb

[applegrove]

12. Yes that too. We don't have to play by their rules of baiting and attack.

We can use our empathy which they have none of. We don't have to fight the fight they present to us.

We are free.

[Sparkle]

14. I approve!

Awesome.

[CoffeeCat]

15. Applegrove, thanks so much for this...

...and for your thoughts.

I really like what you had to say about this picture.

It was beautiful and frightening--at the same time.

When I first looked at the picture, I was reminded of the movie "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron." Although the movie was an animated feature film marketed toward children--it had such a profound impact on me.

You are right--the train seems to represent mechanical, unemotional behaviors. The light of the train looks dead and hollow; the light and shadows on the horse look lively.

I like what you had to say ..."but we can get off the track. They cannot. They are what they are. We will evolve."

That's very poignant.

It's also a reminder that it's unhealthy to argue, debate and stay on their sick "track." We need to quit operating under their pathological paradigms. They will win if we do that. They chose the course--that doesn't mean we have to stay on it.

We'll be free if we quit playing their sick games, jump off of this crazy train and run free with our own ideas and solutions.

Thank you Applegrove for sparking thought--and for sharing that with DU! :)

[applegrove]

17. Thank you. n/t

[wovenpaint]

16. I love this pic too!

I've made it my wallpaper-thanks!

[intheflow]

25. I made it mine, as well.

It's a bell of mindfulness every time I boot up. :)

[Nothing Without Hope]

18. What a wonderful image! Thank you.

Such a powerful juxtaposition of metaphors. The one I like best is the idea that the horse can wake up and get out of the way. But the one that came to me first is that it is like people or corporations or governments who believe that they will succeed as long as they go as fast as possible in whatever direction they have chosen. Doubts are answered not with rethinking but with efforts to more speed in the same direction. Sound familiar? It did to me. But that horse CAN wake up in time and turn aside, it isn't hopeless yet.

There are some things that cannot be lived through except by changing direction to a new path, even though this breaks the comfort and rhythm and certainty.

[applegrove]

19. yes - I wish I had put the idea of getting off the neocon track in my post

The idea that we do not have to argue the arguments they bring up..because that is the propaganda. That is how they dance us outside of our own dam selves.

That we can have our own track.

I also forgot to mention the smoke. Look at all that pollution.

[Nothing Without Hope]

22. The image is working on multiple levels, I keep finding more

On my monitor I can't see for sure - is the horse a black-colored female? If so, it is the classic symbol of the nightmare, the helpless dream state in which terrible things come at us. So is that another way of escaping? Not just turning from the tracks but waking from the evil dream altogether, into another world?

The land is utterly featureless, again like a dream landscape. At least judging by the image on my monitor, there isn't true sunlight, but rather a dull grey cast over everything. All dreamlike. As I look at it, I imagine that despite the oncoming engine and the puffs of released steam, the pounding hooves, there is no sound at all in that world.

There are multiple cultural and archetypal symbols working together to power this image. It surely hooks into some resonant subconscious territory.

Edited to add some official art history info:

The Art Gallery of Canada says this about this stunning picture...

'One of Colville's best-known works, Horse and Train, goes straight to the heart of this source of human anxiety and raises an essential question: can destiny be altered A helpless witness to imminent disaster, the viewer of this painting can never know the outcome. Clearly, the train cannot deviate from its track, but the horse has a choice - we think. Is it mesmerized by the light Is it challenging a foe Is it aware of the terrible danger If not, can the engineer stop the train in time The animal may be driven by instinct, but the human faces an ethical dilemma: Is it worth stopping How much does the death of a horse matter Which is more dangerous - to brake and cause a possible derailment, or to keep going and risk a deadly collision Can we halt time - the little that remains

The picture was inspired by a poem published in 1949 by the South African writer Roy Campbell. Words by Wilfred Owen serve as the poem's epigraph: "None will break ranks." The poem itself includes the lines: "Against a regiment I oppose a brain / And a dark horse against an armoured train."

During his military career, Colville had exhibited an independence of mind that was not always appreciated by his superiors; it is a characteristic he subsequently cultivated, like his opposition to the various forms of 20th-century abstraction. In Horse and Train, the artist seems to be emphasizing the unavoidable need to make choices: despite the apparently hopeless situation and the magnetic power of the train's light over the animal, we are witnessing a confrontation between two freedoms. The horse is free to change direction, the engineer to engage the brakes.'

[applegrove]

23. Read all that stuff too. Yes the military does seem to fit well with

that train. And the independent mind. The choices. Also a horse is an animal that has lived by man..and picked up mankind's anxieties.

Nightmares go on in the daytime too. If you had been to war or been stalked.. it would resonate as a daytime nightmare too. And since he was a soldier..I think it is about daytime nightmares. But again.. that is just me. Funny - PTSD people like me often like being awake all night and sleeping during the day.. sort of an alternate universe from the horrors we faced 'out there'. And then you have to go out and get a job and it is all ruined.

Great picture. Glad you appreciate it.

[applegrove]

24. Actually I just hear the horse panting and the hooves.

[Liberal In Texas]

20. Guess who wins?. I won't bet on the horse.

[applegrove]

21. D'ya think? If we play the game they have layed out.. we will be

creamed.