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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Cows 'n Fish...
Date: 2004-08-28 07:23 am (UTC)Dairy trivia: I don't know if this is typical, but my brother lets half of his cows (200 head, I think...) sorta "lay fallow" (or should that be "lie fallow"?) up in the summer pasture. I can just see the cows with the summer off using the time to "plot with the fish".
I seem to remember hearing about a former Princess Kay who served her butter head at her wedding reception & encouraged everyone to "eat her head". Also, I'm pretty sure the sculpting is done in a fridge, not a freezer. I have some footage I shot a couple of fairs ago. I could send you some shots from it.
re: "Chekov's gun on the wall". Was he the one who said that if you introduced a gun in the first act someone had better shot it in the second? That line came up in a sketch I was plotting out in my head. (We're planning a future episdoe of Channel Surfing Wipeout to start with either Sue or Chris making an announcement that this particular show was funded by a grant from the N.R.A. Someone off camera yells, "Don't you mean N.E.A.?" Nope, it's the N.R.A., and then we cut a a flurry of gun related sketchs...
Re: Cows 'n Fish...
Date: 2004-08-31 07:19 pm (UTC)