Does the word Mona make your heart go all a-flutter? There are 36 entries for Mona in Wiki. Which ones will get your pulse racing.
Could it be Cercopithecus mona, the African long-tailed monkey? Doesn’t do it for me – nor, I’m guessing, for you. Or MV Mona, a Swedish vessel in service 1957-63? Not panting with excitement? What about Mona, Homer Simpson’s mother. Warm, but no prize.
I reckon just three could do it for you.
The first is the Mona Lisa. This painting can be ho-hum in pics and everyone knows it. Yet it’s beautiful, intriguing, mysterious. If you’re lucky enough to see it live, after your first comment “I didn’t know it was so small” you will be entranced. Probably because you know a genius painted it. Your heart will quicken.
Second? The Mona. The “Museum of Old and New Art” Gallery in Tasmania. Wow. Built by self-made rich man David Walsh, a tour de force which after 12 months is Tasmania’s biggest tourist attraction. Dug three levels into limestone, housing
Egyptian mummies next to Warholesque PopArt next to touchy-feely uber-nouveau art pieces. If anything defines Post-modernism, this gallery does. A must-see for anyone going to Australia.
Number three? Mona. A song by Ellas Otha Bates AKA Ellas McDaniel AKA Bo Diddely. It was a B side released in 1957, produced by the Chess brothers in Chicago, it’s unique driving beat leading to many covers, best-known one by the Stones. Bo did the trek from Mississippi to Chicago with his family, worked Maxwell Street in the 1940s (where 20 years later Robert Nighthawk recorded Live on Maxwell Street).
So this is the one that’s gets the heart really going, as Bo himself sings:
“Yeah can I come out on the front And listen to my heart go bumpety bump I need you baby that’s no lie Without your love I’d surely die”
There it is folks. A painting, an experience, and a song.
Three to get your heart racing. Or, alternatively, you could get yourself a girlfriend called Mona…