Explanations

So, in the precious few minutes that Dangerboy is still asleep, I'll try to explain the meaning of my blog title. It is inspired, of course, by the poem The Lady of Shalott (by Alfred Lord Tennyson) which I have loved ever since Anne of Green Gables. (I love the paintings too.)

In the poem, the Lady sits all day in a tower on an island in front of a mirror, which reflects the world outside. She weaves into a tapestry all the images she sees in the mirror of people passing on the road behind her, and she is mostly happy. One day she glimpses Lancelot and decides to leave her tower to follow him. When she gets up, the tapestry is destroyed as she climbs into the boat that will take her "down to Camelot." Apparently she can't take the journey, because she dies.

I see this as a metaphor for the artist's life: if you focus solely on expression, but haven't lived enough to have anything to express, your art will suffer and you will too. So the "escape from Shalott" refers to an attempt to experience all that living has to offer--for the inherent benefits of such experiences, but also to benefit expression and Art with a capital A (ideally, anyway).

Of course, these days I'm doing more experiencing than creating, thanks to my masterpiece DB. Which is why this blog is mostly about him! And also for the benefit of absent family members. But I'd like to do some me-journaling too.