Art References

push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.

get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.

stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything.

buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.

buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small.

strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.

organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.

have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.

push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog.

message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.

think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything.

become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.

me: wow i wonder how our heroes are going to take this guy down! he’s evil!

female villain: i’ve killed and manipulated people for my own betterment and feel no remorse

me: 

me, when I’m not reminded every hour on the hour that I’m Loved:

The fact is that ISIS makes a huge amount of its revenue to support its activities from the looting of terrorized communities, and anyone who pays for those looted objects is by simple correlation paying for that terrorization. I took an Islamic art course my freshman year, and my professor showed us several slides of artifacts and sites which had been destroyed with the past five years or even five months. I’ll never forget the day she showed us a slide of an ancient temple-turned-marketplace, where just that weekend one of her esteemed colleagues and good friends was tortured and hanged from one of the collonades there for refusing to tell ISIS agents where some of the community’s most valued historical objects were being held. This shit isn’t theoretical – it’s a horrifying and pressing reality for those of us in the field of protecting the presence and integrity of historical art today, right now. It’s a war where the collateral is our history and our lives. 

Here’s an article about his murder and the beautiful lifetime of work it ended. I legitimately choke up when I read anything about this man, because he died protecting art he loved passionately, art he dedicated his whole life to studying and his death to protecting. He saved the Palmyra antiquities at the cost of his life, but Hobby Lobby and everyone like them who willfully buy looted artifacts undermine he sacrifice and the integrity of his work by funding the same people who killed him and aimed to destroy what he loved.

It doesn’t matter how involved you think your daily life is involved with art history, it’s an incredibly important field that people are putting their lives on the line to protect. We need more news coverage and public attention on these issues, otherwise we risk losing them to obscurity.