Composition in Gray and Green with Landing Light + A Rabbit Hole Story

 

There are two people in my little online world, Petrea and Dive, who periodically send me down rabbit holes. I'd sent Petrea a link the other night to a video that I thought illustrated the risk artists, writers, and performers face when posting any of their work online, that it will be stolen by just about anyone anywhere for their own use. I then proceeded to watch that video - again, in which a woman who is a fashion historian and seamstress, shows the differences in the quality of her work compared to the crappy knock-off she'd found for sale online. It's a wonderful video, full of quiet, snarky anger. 

I then went on to another of her videos demonstrating the creation of her version of Mr. Darcy's shirt. From there I went to the Etsy site where one can buy the pattern to make their own version of that wonderful, romantic garment. That shop offers a lot of period corsetry for sale, most of which seems to be made to order and is not inexpensive. While there, I found a corset from the 1810s, reminding me that I really wanted to know more about that period so that I could write more knowledgeably about a damn boat ride some people took down the Mississippi River in 1811. I made a note to myself that I needed to find out how builders of steamboats determined the most efficient number of buckets (paddles) to install on the wheels of their steamboats, then watched another of Bernadette's videos, one in which she evaluates the accuracy of the period costuming in various movies.

The movies discussed in the video range from the Vikings to the 1800s, with some time-traveling thrown in. Here she admits her lack of knowledge of certain periods and cultures and brought in several other people to discuss the historical accuracy of costuming in African, Indian, and Korean films. It was here that I was, again, reminded of just how large and rich the world is beyond my little parochial window. It amazes me to think about all the different sorts of people and cultures there are, of how beautiful it all is. There is so much out there to know and that I'll never be able to know enough is sometimes frustrating. But like Bernadette, I can be smart enough to call upon the knowledge of other people, such as the guy who knows a lot about the costumes in Korean movies, when I get out of my depth. Most days, that's just about to my ankles.