Ice palace novel: Butterhead Agnes
Aug. 27th, 2004 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrPerhaps I've not ever come right out and said this before, but I've been thinking about this since the State Fair is starting up.
Have I mentioned before that Solveig's mother, Agnes, is a former Princess Kay of the Milky Way? (That's the title of the "goodwill ambassador for Minnesota's dairy industry," sort of the unofficial State Fair Queen). One of the few duties of the Princess Kay is to spend eight hours in a freezer to sit for a portrait, a bust of her head which is carved out of butter.
So: A harvest queen, sort of a late summer queen, who enters a freezer, a winter environment, to have her portrait made. Suggestive, eh? [Edited to add: Okay, you're right, it's a fridge, not a freezer. Still, the fact the temperature must be lowered and something is sculpted is suggestive.] And you know that winter magic is all about solids, about form, about sculpture, as ice, the embodiment of winter magic, forms over the tops of lakes and ice is sculpted and shaped into ice sculptures and ice palaces.
Summer magic is about about the network, connections, the spaces-in-between. Winter magic is the solid, the sculpture, the form.
What do you want to bet that Agnes has kept that butter sculpture of herself as the summer queen in her deep freezer all these years?
And what do you want to bet that somehow that butter bust shows up at the ice palace at the climax of the book?
Don't know how I'll use it, yet, but I know I will. It's like Chekov's gun on the wall. I'll pull the trigger there, somewhere, somehow.
Maybe the cows, somehow, are plotting with the fish.
Have I mentioned before that Solveig's mother, Agnes, is a former Princess Kay of the Milky Way? (That's the title of the "goodwill ambassador for Minnesota's dairy industry," sort of the unofficial State Fair Queen). One of the few duties of the Princess Kay is to spend eight hours in a freezer to sit for a portrait, a bust of her head which is carved out of butter.
So: A harvest queen, sort of a late summer queen, who enters a freezer, a winter environment, to have her portrait made. Suggestive, eh? [Edited to add: Okay, you're right, it's a fridge, not a freezer. Still, the fact the temperature must be lowered and something is sculpted is suggestive.] And you know that winter magic is all about solids, about form, about sculpture, as ice, the embodiment of winter magic, forms over the tops of lakes and ice is sculpted and shaped into ice sculptures and ice palaces.
Summer magic is about about the network, connections, the spaces-in-between. Winter magic is the solid, the sculpture, the form.
What do you want to bet that Agnes has kept that butter sculpture of herself as the summer queen in her deep freezer all these years?
And what do you want to bet that somehow that butter bust shows up at the ice palace at the climax of the book?
Don't know how I'll use it, yet, but I know I will. It's like Chekov's gun on the wall. I'll pull the trigger there, somewhere, somehow.
Maybe the cows, somehow, are plotting with the fish.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-28 06:16 am (UTC)This takes more work to make work. Specifically, why cows and not pigs, sheep, or goats.
Yeah, that line was just sort of a throw away joke. I do want to keep it fish for winter and birds for summer.
I don't have the inclination to delve into the plots of cows, really. The fish are hard enough to figure out.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-28 06:31 am (UTC)Naa, I don't think that's worth getting into. I think the pocket of cold in the middle of the summer is good enough. Might the head carving be some kind of old magical ritual by which the elders test the magical aptitude of young women? Or is it a negative thing where the elders trap the magical abilities of them?
B