I've been working through a Heavy Metal music appreciation course set up by one of my former students on and off for about a year now. I'm moved through the stuff I remember from the 80s and 90s and into the Brave New World (thank you Iron Maiden) of the 21st Century. This past month has featured Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Kamelot and I thought the "Angel of Afterlife"(a nod to Phantom anyone?) from the album cover would be a great subject for my new pad of black paper. Trying to conceptualize everything in terms of negative space still throws me for a loop, but I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it (in a high school art student sort of way). My wife adds that this looks like Karen Sullivan (a character from an unpublished novel). I can imagine a shade like this emerging from the stacks of the old library after hours.
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old. That's a couple years after it first came out. The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer. I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit. It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows. With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play. What was that first game? It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge. It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing? There were stretches when I didn't. Many times, I've just been too busy. There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
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