If you’re doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there’d be no point. I’m trying to think if there’s sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that’s true, there really isn’t. And there’s probably no happy nonsense, either.
–Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
Going to keep it short on this Sunday Christmas Eve morning. Always been a fan of Edward Gorey and his darkly skewed perspective on things. I think his words above echo my own feelings on things, that anything that really reaches across to people on an emotional level, be it children’s books, music, literature, painting or any other medium, is seldom totally happy.
That probably applies to holidays, as well. I imagine that mixed in with all our happy memories of past holidays there are more than a few instances of sadness and disappointment.
And that might be the beauty of it.
Who knows?
So, for this Sunday Christmas Eve morning let me share the images and prose from the collaboration of Edward Gorey and John Updike that is The Twelve Terrors of Christmas. It is darkly droll, the perfect counterbalance to seasonal saccharinity of Hallmark movies and wooden Christmas songs from popstars.
It makes me smile and that’s all I need today.
At the bottom is the full instrumental version of Christmas Time is Here from the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Somewhat like the work of Gorey, it is bittersweet. Beautiful yet not fully happy.
Enjoy.
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Redtree Times 