Sometimes I even amaze myself...

The picture above is by the artist Man Ray. It's called "Object to Be Destroyed." I had to do a take-home test for my art history class which included a question about this piece. I got an A+ on the test. I wasn't trying to be funny in my response to the question, but my professor thought my answer was hilarious. (He pulled me aside after the class and told me so.) Here's what I wrote about the piece:

 “Object to Be Destroyed” by Man Ray was more than likely a symbolic representation of his recent ex-girlfriend Lee Miller rather than the “silent witness” he claimed to have created in order to watch him paint in his studio. He had intended to destroy it himself in front of an audience as a work of performance art, but some nihilistic Dadaists beat him to it at an exhibition of the work. The piece is creepy:  a single photographic image of a woman’s eye attached to the working arm of a commonplace metronome. The eye is oppressive, and when it is combined with the tick-tick of the swinging metronome arm, it is something that could drive one to hatred and madness, much like an ex-lover. 

I wrote that answer that way because I once saw a documentary a number of years ago about Man Ray, and if you know nothing else about him, know this:  He was a horrible, hateful, arrogant, abusive, pathological misogynist. (Brilliant artist, but creepy motherfucker.) We even touched briefly on his obsessive fixation with the female form in his works (most of his works are female nudes) and that he was not a nice dude in my art history class, but my professor didn't really emphasize his malevolence, which is fine. We're there to learn about the progression of art through the ages, not rip someone down to their Id. But having personally known men who behaved in ways like or shared attitudes towards women that are similar to those held by Man Ray, I can say with almost (like 99%) certainty that "Object to Be Destroyed," which was created shortly after Lee Miller left Man Ray, is supposed to be her. Especially since if you break up with men like Man Ray, they try to destroy you in any way they can. (Been there, done that, unfortunately.)

I wasn't trying to be funny. Seriously. But sometimes the way I say things makes people laugh. I can be really unintentionally funny sometimes, which I don't mind because I like to make people laugh. But don't ever ask me how the process works or to say something unintentionally funny on the spot. I don't know how that works. The words literally just come out of my mouth (or I write them) that way, and I say it (or write it), and people laugh. 

My brain just works in weird ways sometimes.