On my drive to work this morning, I realized that the news on the radio was exactly what I had just heard on the tv before leaving home, and switched it over to a classical music station.
I recognized the piece immediately. The standard metaphor for "spring morning." Apropos, I thought, as the sun came up on the 15th of April. Then I got to thinking that it is really beyond a metaphor, almost a cliché. When does symbol cross over into caricature?
A question I could pose to my friends and family - if I could name the music. I hadn't even tried yet, not on one cup of half-caf and the sun not completely up. It was definitely a staple of my cartoon-watching childhood, but called to mind no images of hippos dancing or dinosaurs wandering, or even a centaur caught in a rainstorm...
Right then the next movement started, and drove any need for caffeine right out the window. At the first note of the trumpet fanfare, I went: oh. (And despite my childhood, I did NOT immediately think of the Lone Ranger.)
So whose idea was it to play the William Tell Overture to sleepy driving workers? And what do you think - has that slow part become so synonymous with spring that it's a caricature?
Image: René Magritte's The Son of Man, 1964, courtesy of Wikipedia and sister J (who knew the painter's name from my description of the painting)
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