When I was a little girl growing up, my mother collected records. One of her favorite artists was Todd Rundgren, and for many many years, his album "Acappella" was framed and hanging on the wall of our apartment living room. A lot of other children might have seen this and felt perturbed by it, but I was a strange little girl who collected dead animals and couldn't do math to save her life. I was drawn to this imagery, for reasons that, now, make absolute perfect sense. In many ways, this was the first mask I ever really was capable of appreciating as a piece of art.
Lots of countries use masks. Whether they're decorative or they're used in actual ceremonies, they're a big part of certain cultures. Thanks to the website History Of Masks, I was able to ascertain that masks in West Africa are used in ceremonies in which the purpose is to communicate with ancestral spirits. In fact, Africa likely utilizes masks to the upmost extent out of everyone in the world. Some are made as animals, to communicate with animal spirits while others are made with closed eyes so as to symbolize tranquility, while a bulging forehead masks represents wisdom. There's even war masks. Africa really gives the rest of the world a run for their money when it comes to mask usage. Hell, one of the first posts on this blog was about death masks in particular.
But this mask in particular, the one good ol' Todd boy here is using is the most iconic mask to me. It looks, I wanna say, related to something either middle eastern (somewhere like India or something, but I could be totally wrong, it could be more Asian in its descent, what do I know, I'm just some dumbass white girl who sucks at geography). Seeing this thing every single day, it sort of created a love for creativity and art in ways that not many other things did when I was growing up. I have a lot of issues with my parents, with my childhood, but I will give them one thing; I grew up in a very cultured environment, which meant being immersed in art at all times. Whether it's going to museums, seeing broadway shows or what have you, I recognize that, despite all the terrible things I'm still trying to recover from thanks to my upbringing, I was very lucky in that regard.
The extremely amusing thing about this, however, is that the album, and artist too, have no other real impact on me whatsoever. The album is whatever, there's nothing really about the cover of it that I can find, and I am only a mild Todd Rundgren fan at best. The album came out in 1985, a mere 4 years before I was born, and there's no other mask adjacent things regarding the album outside of its bizarre cover art.
So really, it's just an album art that I grew up around and was very inspired by for many different reasons. Life is strange, you never know the kinds of things that you might become attached to. Who knows, without this album art, maybe I don't find some weird love for masks that ultimately leads me to start this blog, for better or worse I suppose. I just think it's very likely this album cover had a hand in my interest in masks, and strange art in general, since I grew up seeing it every single day. There's something about, obviously, the mask design itself but even beyond that; the colors of the mask and the background meshing together so well and the fact that Todd chose to wear just black is a perfect addition, something solid and dark against that moderate tangerine backdrop to play off of. There's something oddly cozy about the entire thing, and I love it with all my heart.
If my mother leaves me with nothing else once she dies, besides unresolved trauma and a financially viable way to survive off of it, I hope it's this, because this I would treasure for the rest of my life.
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