Butterflies and hacks.

     The other day, The New York Times ran a piece about two naturalists, Henry Walker Bates and Fritz Muller, whose ideas have led to surprising insights into how evolution works ("Solving the Puzzles of Mimicry in Nature", March 12). Much of their research concerns butterflies. I learned that no group of animals have contributed more to the science than butterflies. Who knew?
     In particular, Bates noticed a species whose bright wing patterns closely resembled other butterfly families in the area. Actually, this species mimics other butterflies – it's what they do to avert prey, because, apparently, to a hungry bird or lizard, these mimicked butterflies look about as appetizing as jellied moose nose.
     So, I get it: Rather than risk having a beauty all your own, they choose to blend in with those who have worked hard to be safe from extinction. Smart little flutterers. I know some creative people like that.
     The other night I saw a spot on TV that anyone would have sworn was the latest work from Barton Graf. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as funny or absurd. A quick search on my iPad informed me that, sure enough, it was created by a mimicker.

     It's the age-old dilemma: Risk rejection and the possibility that a client or boss will have you for lunch for exploring new worlds, or, court acceptance by doing what's already been accepted. Make work that resembles art. Or make art.
     It's funny but in the article, the mimicking butterflies were not even mentioned by name. It's as if they didn't matter enough. It's as if someone thought, "Why give their name if they're not worth remembering?" I mean, we all know what a Monarch butterfly looks like for a reason – it has a singular beauty.
     Make work that is forgettable. Or make art.
     Anyway, the article goes on to say that Muller discovered some other butterflies that were already unpalatable but still mimicked other beauties. Why would a butterfly do that? Well, if there isn't a name for Muller's family of mimickers, I have a suggestion: Coppius Catticus. It's got a nice familiar ring to it.

A captured audience

     I had been entrenched in World War I. I had just finished The Eye In the Door, the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, and while there were many thoughts and images ricochetting in my head, there was this one particular sentence about the poetry sparked by that war – by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves – that emerged from the smoke: "What had intrigued Rivers most was that human beings should respond to the highest mental and spiritual achievements of their culture with the same reflex that raises the hairs on a dog's back."
   Those poets, known now as the 'War Poets,' have become towering figures in literature, certainly in Britain. Their poems hit home and they stay with us. They capture the doom of the soldiers, driven by the remorseless generals into the welter of mud and slaughter. They make you feel the same horror that the soldiers experienced. Listen to this. It's by Wilfred Owen.

     If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
     Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
     And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
     His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin...
     My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
     To children ardent for some desperate glory,
     The old Lie: Dulce et decorum set
     Pro patria mori.

     The Latin is from Horace. I looked it up – it means, "It is sweet and right to die for your country."
     So that's what I was thinking about when I visited MOMA the other day. I had forgotten about this particular iconic work being currently on display, but, the point is, there I was, sensitized to some kind of horror, and there IT was:

     I was vulnerable and I got hit.
     So I got to thinking: We're always looking to tap into a topic that is on people's minds, right? We hope that our message, with just the right timing, will feel like serendipity, a coincidental build on something that had been important to them. Do you remember Nike's commercial for Y2K (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhF7dQl4Ico)? That's what I'm talking about. When something like that happens, our message gets compounded and its emotion intensified. That's impact.