Hi:
I’m gonna post a sketch soon, but meanwhile here’s the ideas… at first i wanted to explore my dear Nietzsche’s master and servant morals concepts, but always ended up on kinda political statements that i don’t really want to bring here.
I’m now considering two ideas:
About the master and servant relationship between Daedalus and king Minos, representing the gift of art put to serve others by force, or, in other words, the aberration of art. This story goes beyond the elusive figure of the muse who comes whenever she feels like, and flees when the artist seeks her consciously; Daedalus story is the Requiem for a Dream of an artist, everything decays inevitablely, and in his encounter with Minos he’s put in such position that he must use his gift to the will of those in power. Finally, he’s trapped on the greatest of these works: the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur (born thanks to another of his works on command: a cow suit for Mino’s naughty wife, jejeje). The rest of the story, and another alternative, is about freedom from this prision, for wich he builds wings with feathers and wax to fly away with his only son Icarus. In this case they’re both binded (and put as servants? I’m not sure yet) to their skill: if you go too far up, you’ll fall because the sun will melt your wings… is the creative drive subdued to the limits of going too far up or too low, and yet commited to keep going, as a servant is commited to his master?
A much simpler idea came as an instant “snap!” in my head, while i was reading legal definitions of the master/servant condition in work laws… suddenly started to see the ritualistic (is that a word?) value of those roles, as in a play. Well, maybe that doesn’t have much to do, but the next image was a typical urban scene of my country: office men go to nearby squares or walks to polish their shoes; they stablish a distinctive master-servant relationship with the “shoe-shiner” (again, does that term even exists), determined by the postures of the participants: the client sits on a -very funny- little throne, while the person doing the job gets down on his knees to perform. The client meanwhile reads the paper conspicuously, but the shoe-shiner is absort on his real master: the shoe. This job has honor that goes on from father to son, beyond and besides the urges to get money to eat. I’m eager to portray these characters, the little bourgeois on his condescendant stand in that pathetic throne, and the keen expression of the shoe-shiner, be it an old man with a skin made of sun and wine, smoking the filter of a cigarrette, or be it a child, spitting on the shoe to get that extra-quality shine no other product gives.
Well, hope to make up my mind soon.
Good night
Sir Patroclo
