Idiom!

LAUNCELOT: ... At last! A call, a cry of distress! This could be the sign that leads us to the Holy Grail! Brave, brave Concorde! You shall not have died in vain!!
CONCORDE: Uh, I'm - I'm not quite dead, sir.
LAUNCELOT: Well, you shall not have been mortally wounded in vain!
CONCORDE: Uh, I - I think uh, I could pull through, sir.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, I see.
CONCORDE: Actually, I think I'm all right to come with you, sir -
LAUNCELOT: No, no, sweet Concorde! Stay here! I will send help as soon as I have accomplished a daring and heroic rescue in my own particular... [sigh]
CONCORDE: Idiom, sir?
LAUNCELOT: Idiom!


Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975.


I’ve been in one of those periods of uncertainty, when I wonder if I might ever get my particular idiom figured out. I know that all along I’ve been honing certain qualities that are definitely "me," but there are infinitely more trials and errors to make and more paths to explore.

Painting isn’t so difficult when you don’t know ... But when you do ... it’s quite a different matter!

So Degas said. I envy those who are seft-taught, because I’ve always believed they can retain more of their original selves in the learning process. Sometimes I feel so detached from my old way of seeing (my creatively boundless, high school art class way) because of good teaching - some unlearning of it here and there will probably be necessary forever. Of course this detachment could have been caused by the gradual filling in of my brain’s more potent recesses by all that cortisol from depression. If only I had a Pythonesque cartoon brain-cleaning guy up there to scrape away the residual plaque.

(For those who have never seen this, and those who have:)