BRICOLAGE

I first encountered the term bricolage in an article on modernist poet T.S. Eliot when doing research on a postcolonial topic. That's how it happens, folks. The concept is related to found art and montage and collage--a sort of magpie thing--a magpie being a bird who collects shiny objects to decorate her nest. I'm taking the magpie approach to this blog, because I have found as a writer (and as a teacher) that if you build it they will come--the ideas, I mean. Postmodern architecture is sometimes characterized by bricolage--collecting elements from past time periods and recombining them, re-membering them, deconstructing and coming out with both/and rather than either/or--breaking down the binaries, blurring the boundaries. Postmodern music, too, does something similar. I linked a couple of You-Tube videos (a distinctly postmodern phenomenon) that use music sampling. One is Amon Tobin, the other They Might Be Giants (fondly known to their fans--including me--as TMBG). Someone put together a montage of movie and television images to go with Tobin (he has a CD called "Bricolage"). The TMBG video is the "group" itself, consisting of two men named John who are musical magpies--their song is from the point of view of a night light. Like another favorite of mine, Shel Silverstein, TMBG write for children and also write stuff that is decidedly NOT for children.