This is about heads. The idea of which came from seeing a picture of disused abandoned large heads, with a creepy feeling to it. Although as we know, photographs can make it seem that way, and in person it may just feel like an old field with old discarded things around. But junk yards and things left to waste away do seem to create a certain vide, to me anyway.
Presidents head park, Virginia is the one I saw as below, and got me thinking to all the other heads we have in various forms.
Wizard of Oz sequel (Return to Oz) – this one stands out to me as beyond creepy, and did at the time I first watched it. A very dark film really overall, but the villainous character in that called Princess Mombi, had a room of interchangeable real heads. Of beautiful women from the realm that had been decapitated and their heads then carefully stored in a room of glass fronted cabinets, reanimated with magic powder so she could be a different face and head when she wanted.
Statue busts – we like to make just the heads often for decorative and creative purposes. There are many scattered throughout the world from various times and places, made from different materials and techniques. We like to recreate what we see, whether that be with our eyes or our imagination.
Shrunken heads – keeping heads but the small version. Almost like a strange combination of the two above, not quite skilled enough to recreate one, so will just steal one. But without the opulent storage facility of a cabinet room to display them, maybe shrinking them down to fit in your pocket was a bold fashion move of it’s day. We’ll never know.
Tower of London heads on spikes / Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) – We mostly hear of vlad the impaler when it comes to heads on spikes and the shocking way in which that story is told. But for me, the first thought is of closer to home and the Tower of London, which was also known to display the heads of executed people. As a warning and grim reminder of the ‘rules’ I guess. Also read recently that it turns out our monarch is a direct descendent of Vlad Dracul. Fancy that.
Olmec heads – rather large statues, again of just heads. Whether they ever had bodies is possibly debated, but they stand out for their features and quality.
Hydra – Not quite in the same vein as the others, as it had a body and multiple heads, but the focus for that is still the heads. Cut one off and another takes its place. Suddenly makes me thinking of having to remove or destroy a zombies head in fictional scenarios, always the head.
Medusa – another slightly odd placed one, because again she had a body. But it was the head that had special powers, with her hair of snakes and eyes that bore you to stone. And it was her head being removed from its body that was necessary, yet it retained its power. And to again mention zombies, I read a part of the storyline for The Walking Dead the other day as chose not to watch any of it, and it seems that removing the head doesn’t end them, as a character remained in the series, as a zombified head on a spike, still ‘undead’, so it kind of fits here too.
And in a movie or storyline here and there, they have hinted at the idea of having a disembodied head surviving independent on the body, cheating time and nature. We have stories and myths of headless horseman and various ghosts of that type, and a history of decapitations, hangings, throat cuttings and all sorts of gruesome ways to end the connection between the body and the mind. But that’s in a physical sense, maybe these days they are going for the same result, but in a more subtle and insidious way through technology and promises of immortality, wanting to download you into a system that will keep you ‘alive forever’. That saying again from Rudyard Kipling seems apt here –
“If you can keep your head when all about you, Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”
