Salvador Dali’s waxed handlebar mustaches are made of spaghetti curled up at the edges to give him the look of a startled butler or a comical circus ringmaster. Dali caricatured the Shakespearean buffoon, the only one with daring enough to speak the truth in jest, the cat looking at the King (like my new cat Mozart who has turned out to be of mountain lion stock – looking down on the Queen) and say and do boldly what no-one else (politely brought-up) dared. (Is rudeness or plain-spokenness being “true to thine own self”?)
Dali was intrigued by Freud’s theory of interpretation of dreams and found different ways of seeing or interpreting the mundane… as in poetry we strive to express the human experience by using a different – yet common – perspective, to use words as tools to communicate emotions and experiences that resonate with the reader. The BBC showed a clip of a man with a neurological condition whereby he associated the names of the London Underground stations with the smell and taste of food. So, for example, Tottenham Court Road spelt out spaghetti bolognaise with sausages – for him it was “normal” and he could not imagine life without that experience.
Dali challenges our senses, his surreal images crossing over into the world of dreams to represent our fears, hopes, desires and yearnings from other perspectives. So, spaghetti could become entrails of tangled relationships or a pile of dog poo, or be hatched from an egg and turn into the worms of worry. Each noodle could be a snake on Medusa’s head or the new way to communicate with Mars. The possibilities are infinite. We just need to follow the long and winding noodle.
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