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Ok! We (finally) had our 2000th post yesterday, and the great Ferrebeekeeper jubilee continues apace. I promised give-aways, special posts, contests, and…pageantry. Now I have plenty of weird art and cool toys to give away (provided I can think up a contest), but what do we do for Gothic pageantry (it’s Gothic because, well, what other sort would we feature?)?
Alas, my plans to hire great troops of pipers, marchers, ornate festival birds, and dancers have come undone because of coronavirus concerns (although hopefully you are all enjoying the very special fireworks displays which I orchestrated throughout the nation). Thus, due to, uh, the constraints of this era, our pageant will have to come together in our imagination rather than in the real world. We can list out the elements here though and fantasize them coming together as a sort of parade!
When I thought about what sort of Gothic pageant we would want, my first question was whether those splendid glistening white peacocks are available in Gothic black. It turns out that they very much are (although such peafowl are quite rare)
Next I wanted pipers, and when I looked up “gothic pipers” I was taken straight to Ferrebeekeeper’s own long forgotten post concerning pig bagpipers (which were a popular medieval ornament for reasons which are now subject to debate). Obviously these musical pigs are perfect, so after the sable peacocks lets have some of them.
Following the peacocks, pigs, and pipers, it would be good to have some soldiers (who esteem pageantry on a supreme level that only the most flamboyant showfolks can ever hope to match). I have taken a page from the pope’s book here: my favorite soldiers (for decorative novelty use only, of course) are late medieval/early Renaissance billmen with ridiculous heraldic garb. The pope’s own Swiss Guard are instructive here, although of course pipers in our procession would be wearing magenta, vermilion, and icterine.
I think a legion of such characters would be extremely impressive (especially coming immediately after the black peacocks and the musical pigs).
Next we would need fashion mavens dressed in resplendent gowns covered with lace appliques and dark ribbons. I couldn’t find the right picture on line (and I started to get scared/alarmed by how many dress pictures there are), but this sort of thing should do.
Finally, we would need a parade float to serve as centerpiece. My favorite underrated artist, the matchless Piero di Cosimo, was famous in his time for designing parade spectacles and, although the actual originals are, of course, long gone, I imagine that his floats would be much like the monster in his masterpiece, Perseus Rescuing Andromeda. I would have a similar float to Perseus and the monster, except it would be Cronus mounted upon an enormous flounder.
Sadly, this is how my brain works and I could go on and on like this forever…creating ridiculous fantastical processions which the world will never see, but I think we had better wrap up by putting the entire extravaganza in a great pleasure garden with a Gothic folly tower in the middle.
The The real world example which best suits my taste is St. Anne’s Church in Vilnius, Lithuania (pictured above) which I think is the prettiest building ever, however the master illuminators of Belgium also loved such structures and they drew them without any real world constraints which bedevil architects.
Imagine all of those strange magical animals and people and frogfish passing in front of this, and I think you have imagined the Ferrebeekeeper parade we would have staged…if only we could fully assemble outside right now (and if I were an impossibly rich archduke of fairyland).
The fun of this exercise is really imagining what sort of procession you would craft if you were a grand parade master and could do anything. Tell me your ideas below! Maybe we can incorporate some of your plans into my next parade…as soon as I finish teaching these pigs to play the pipes and sewing all of these orange and purple striped tights for mercenaries.
Tonight is the last night of Carnival…tomorrow is Ash Wednesday which begins the ritual austerities of Lent (which means spring is now truly on the way). I grew up reading eye-popping tales set in Venice during Carnival (or in Medieval France, or New Orleans, or Rio de Janeiro), yet somehow I always miss out on carnival’s over-the-top pageantry and mad frolics. I blame this on my Methodist upbringing: Protestants conceive of Lent very differently than Catholics! (even fallen Methodists) but maybe I should blame the weird schedule. I am sure there are carnival festivities going on somewhere in Brooklyn right now, but, come on, it is Tuesday night. I just got home from work: there is no time to put on 50,000 beads and learn a samba routine.
\Anyway, to capture this strange mixture of temptation, wariness, sin, redemption, and multi-color ultra-spectacle (and as a call-back to yesterday’s rainbow serpent post), I have decided to post pictures of some snake themed carnival floats from around the world/internet.
The snake is obviously an important carnival animal, and I can see no other interpretation of the reptile other than in its Biblical role as a representative of temptation and sin (which are obviously themselves major components of carnival). Perhaps the snake’s ribbon morphology is a secondary component (since this is a great shape for floats). It is worth noting though the the West African religions which syncretized with Christianity to create the vodou faiths of the New World are very snake oriented. One of the most august Vodou loas is the great fertility/father figure Dumballah, who is represented as a great serene river serpent. I wonder if he might be an influence on some of these displays.
Hopefully these ARE carnival snakes. As I was looking for them, I kept finding Chinese “Year of the Snake” floats and Saint Patrick’s Day “Get these snakes out of Ireland” snakes (to say nothing of Hindu cobras and Australian snakes of some unknown provenance). Maybe parade-goers simply love snakes because all parades kind of are snakes at some level. Or perhaps there is a deeper cultural connection which eludes me on Tuesday night and must be looked into further in snake-themed posts of the future. In the meantime Happy Shrove Tuesday! Go eat some colorful cake and start getting ready for a new season!
The Great Flounder Float at the start of the 2019 Mermaid Parade
I’m sorry about last week’s paucity of blog posts. I was busy building a float for the 2019 Mermaid Parade at Coney Island! This annual festival to Poseidon occurs on a Saturday close to the Summer solstice and is the scene of enormous creative extravagance and burlesque merriment…all in the name of ocean appreciation, of course. Last year I attended with a rolling flatfish float, and although that was a hard day, it was also a noteworthy success.
Mermaid Parade 2018
Alas, parades are like Hollywood blockbuster movies…sequels require even bigger and better special effects (and it is easier to get things wrong). Last year’s float worked and people really enjoyed the spinning wheel of horoscope signs, but it was nearly impossible to transport. After an unhappy run-in with the front door, my roommate and I ended up death marching the thing to Coney island (which is about 7 miles away) at 2:00 AM the day before the parade. Thus, for this year’s Mermaid Parade, I decided to build a magnificent 6.5 meter (21 foot) flounder puppet out of fabric which I could roll up and transport with ease! Genius! We could handle the flounder high above our heads with 3 meter (10 foot) wooden poles and their would be no difficulties like last year.
A quick trip to the trimmings district provided me with hundreds of iridescent ultrasequins to use as scales. Then it was just a matter of hours and hours and hours with the scissors and the hot glue gun (coincidentally, I don’t think I have fingerprints anymore). I bullied some hapless friends into attending the parade with me and another one of my friends, the great Lebanese artist Lara Nasser took these pictures (you should check out her brilliant but disquieting art which contextualizes the uneasy nexus of religion, politics, and gender in contemporary Beirut).
Now, people who have jobs as actuaries, account supervisors, and crooked economists do not recognize this, but when you make actual things, there are always unexpected problems. I should have built some prototype giant puppets, or at least watched old footage of carnival in Brazil. Although I did some test runs and reinforced the fish with some struts made of rigid plastic tubing (cough, chopped-up hula hoops), the great flounder float had a tendency to droop when there was not a stiff wind. When there was a stiff wind, the mighty halibut was more than capable of manhandling the puny humans trying to move it around the Coney Island environment.
The giant tablecloth was weirdly translucent, yet it was heavier than expected as well, as were the 10 foot poles. In the disorganized scrum to line up we kept getting stiff armed by groups of majorettes and half-naked flamingos.
Then, as the parade started in earnest, so did the wind and we were suddenly wrestling a giant sky halibut. It must have looked like a sad episode of “America’s Stupidest Catch” as we reeled around Surf Avenue trying not to get knocked down. The fish gods were angry!
Although we tried valiantly to contain this situation, the float was stronger than the three of us. The glistening flatfish snapped the two outermost poles and then angrily bludgeoned the woebegone attendants with its fins as the audience watched with good-natured drunken derision. We tried to carry the flounder horizontally (like the tablecloth it originally was), but soon there were recriminations, counter proposals, and a decision to withdraw. Arguably this was the right decision, but we were trapped in a 2 mile chute bounded by steel barricades. There was no escape except a long sprint of shame with the now unworkable fish sadly dangling behind us.
This stung at the time, but, in retrospect, who cares about a good competent performance? This is America in 2019 and what we love most here and now is a hot mess! Parades are about spectacle anyway.
So, um, does anybody want to come with me next year? I am not sure how I can top being beaten up by a 21 foot long flatfish in front of 50,000 people but we will think of something (although this particular group of friends may not be into additional parades). There is no way to know what will happen in 2020 (not without some sort of all-knowing oracle, anyway), but I have a feeling it is a year which will feature plenty of new melt-downs and unintentional floundering.
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