"Simply stood my thoughts, they were as deep as wells"
2009-09-08, 10:55 p.m.

So I went to go put on my new bracelet this morning (see previous entry) and I just couldn't wear it out the door. I felt like because I was going to school, which for grad students in applied fields is a professional setting, I couldn't wear something so bold or loud. I was afraid I'd offend someone inadvertently because I had pictures of the madonna on my jewelry, and I'm not catholic. I was however raised in the catholic church, and these icons have special meaning to me for sure- mostly though they hold a certain beauty, and I admit a morbid fascination with religious art, and especially religious renaissance art. For me it's the first form of dark art, what we would consider 'gothic art' in modern day.
For example:
modern -
http://www.smashingapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/23-very-conceptual-and-terrific-dark-art-photos.jpg

medieval-
http://veronika.kaer.dk/wp-content/uploads/jesus_passion_.jpg

I'm not sure which of those paintings is darker, more painful to look at. They aren't the best examples, I kind of chose them at random, but you see where I'm heading. There is something so raw, yet beautifully refined in the way renaissance art depicts pain (physical and emotional) using religion as a mask. Who more than the Virgin Mary is more full of torment and anguish? Yet she does it all so gracefully.

So my intention isn't to be sacrilegious, by any means. I think if I were just going out, I wouldn't mind wearing the bracelet (I wore it to the quarter this past weekend) but taking it to school just didn't seem like the appropriate, or professional, thing to do. . . kind of like how it wasn't really appropriate for a student to show a clip from South Park in class today (whatever, whatever, I do what I want- that one). Funny shit, but I felt sooo uncomfortable watching that with my professor and students I don't really know that well.