Fish

[pegkerr]

Thinking about the book. It's time to start writing again, so I'm going to try to give it some attention every day. I have been thinking about the fish. I had always planned to set a scene, somehow, in the Frank Gehry Glass Fish pavilion (enlarged picture here). What I learned, doing a little sleuthing, is that Gehry is actually obsessed with fish.

Partly as a joke, an answer to his post-modernist colleagues whose recycling of old forms extended back to Greek temples, Gehry decided to challenge them to go even further back, to fish. He made a series of giant fish, in glass and other material, and realized the fish were more than a joke.

"After making them, I started to take them seriously," he said.

They became the symbol for his enterprise, his desire to create architecture that embodies a sense of movement and life. Gehry was also thinking of traditional Chinese landscape painting, how the suggestion of a dragon's tail animates a mountain.

See also the picture here. Still trying to figure out what the fish are doing in the book, and what happens at the Glass Fish pavilion. What do they say to Solveig at the Aquatennial boat race? What do they have to tell her that leads to the turning of the tables that defeats Rolf? What are the connections that Gehry sees between fish and architecture?

I've been asking it over and over again in complete exasperation and still don't have an answer: what are the fish up to???

Must do some more folklore research re: fish. Here and here is some thematic stuff for me to ponder.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I love reading this sort of musing about how books go together. Thank you.

Ice Fishing

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

For some reason the mentions of the ice palace book and fish made me think of ice fishing. Do you remember the sequence in American Gods when Shadow went ice fishing with the old man (spoiler color change)who turned out to be a god exacting a child sacrifice from the town every year? I think it was meant to be a metaphor about the god drawing his sustenance from the lake--which was where the sacrificed children were put. (end spoiler)

Which also makes me think about fishing in general. Oddly enough, the last time my husband served as a lay preacher at our church (last summer) he was having to work with the fishers-of-men gospel text and he decided to use several quotes from A River Runs Through It to illuminate his message. It was very interesting.

I guess I'm just in ramble mode today. One thing leads to another...

The Wisdom Of Fish

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

This is about the ice palace book, right? I recall hearing that at least one block had a fish frozen into it.