Went to Versailles last Friday, took the wife for the first time for the wife, third for me.
Amidst the throngs of people getting off a bus to quicky fulfil their lifetime dream of taking pictures around France, I always enjoy places like Versailles. Not for all the history and facts, I forget them quickly. For the notions born by people that form constructs we take for granted today.
Things like John Locke's treaties on property that gave us the very idea of property - something we never think of as an idea, just part of our social order. Or in the summer outside St. Andrews drove through the home of Adam Smith - he had a fair bit to do with the whole capitalism thing. Versailles is a great testament to many of the constructs that form civil government today. Plus the great displays of what a great ego can construct.
This time, I was really intrigued by the faces. Probably because there is a Murakami exhibit at the moment, which subtled encouraged me to look at things I don't normally, at Versailles or anywhere else.
This about sums it up. Spawns some thoughts about context, and one of the many unanswerable debates in advertising of the importance of aligned context. No alignment here, but it abo ut sums up how well we have progressed and matured over the past handful of hundreds of years.
Then I saw this guy, his official purpose is a little nob that hold a piece of strign keeping the elaborate curtains for blocking light. My favorite face and quality candidate as the originator of Movember.
There were many other faces. Talk about statue clutter. This was my final select because nobody was paying attention to it. Following the hall of mirrors and the King's "workbench" just off it was a little ante-room. This chap stood with dignity, wearing ony a marble cape and a nice beard.
Right then. So that was last Friday. Back to advertising...