Like a prayer…

I was surprised to find myself listening to Madonna’s Material girl and Like a Prayer on the tram into work this morning.  More surprising was that I was doing so as part of my Open University course. The first term has been looking at Reputations across a range of art disciplines and asking questions like -

• Why are some people widely remembered and others not?
• Exactly what makes a person famous, or infamous?
• How does someone acquire a reputation?
• What is the relationship between a person’s reputation and what we can discover about their life from historical record?

I am really enjoying the course. Its a whistlestop tour through various art disciplines and topics. We have covered Antony and Cleopatra; a Christopher Marlowe play, Dr Faustus; the science and faith of Michael Faraday; the art of Cezanne and the reputation of Stalin. Goodness, in only 6 weeks!

At the risk of turning into a advertisment for the OU I am overwhelmed by the support and educational materials that I have been able to access. Face to face tutorials with other students who have willingly given up their saturday mornings to come along and value studying together; telephone tutorials, guided visits to art galleries with respected art historians; books, CDs, DVDs, DVD ROMs, online resources….

Coming up is an introduction to poetry and and examination of the Dalai Lama…

As I pull into Sheffield city centre, reading the chapter on Divas, Maria Callas is singing and I am being asked how I would describe the vocal melody in the aria “Una voce poco fa” from the opera The Barber of Seville. There’s a smile on my face. Studying shouldn’t be this fun, should it?