So, this is an experimental blog. I'll keep saying that until it sinks into my head. I come here to write things I wouldn't write elsewhere, so if you have a problem with that...well, you should probably seek your blogosphereing jollies elsewhere, because here I stand (recine, actually) and I can do no other (in point of fact, I can, I just choose to remain here, writing away).
Thoughts on Matisse. The sign is high over the museum entrance: MATISSE in large silver letters, standing out against an eggshell colored wall, with the exhibition dates like touring rock band. YEAH! We're going to the ART MUSEUM! WOOOOO! I don't know about you, but that is exactly how I feel when I step inside the iron and glass threshold of the Art Institute of Chicago, just gets me all warm and fuzzy, art is...art, beautiful, wonderful, uncritical, the paintings rarely judge you, and the sculptures do not ask anything of you, no commitment of blood or soul, just your eyes, your ears, your nose, just those senses you've been born with (barring some accident of genetics or earlier life), and even those only for a little while, you'll have them back eventually, and memories besides, memories of sight, sound, smell, maybe the touch of a brass railing, never touch the artwork, we all think, impulses begging otherwise, wanting desperately to reach out and feel the perfectly tropical breasts of Gauguin's figures, bathe in those cool lagoons, grab a cup of coffee, just hot enough to drink, with the Nighthawks, pass around cigarettes for everyone, feel the bronze of a Rodin, a Manship, maybe even the achingly beautiful curves of a Bernini, of marble lovingly chipped away, revealing a hand clutching at the thigh of Persephone, fingers pressing into that perfect leg, leaving marks exactly the way my fingers do when I run them along my lover's legs, each moment recalling a different type of beauty, one artistic, the other cosmic love. Still, we go into the exhibit, free for the first hour to members, giving us a superior edge of sorts, no plebeian lines for us. First ones in the gallery, greeted by sketches from Marrakesh, beautiful pencil and ink things you'd never see outside of this exhibition hall, the same hall we are in later on that year to see a work by Da Vinci, Madonna of the Yarnwinder (Private Collection), a painting that rarely makes it out of whatever palatial estate owns it. It is beautiful, causing old German ladies to stop and mutter 'Oh, Leonardo.' approvingly to one another, the oldest of them probably met him when she was a child, beating out Jeanne Calment by centuries. A trio of students, two of us scruffy, the third absolutely ravishing, stare in awe at the work, knowing we will probably never see it again, this bringing to mind a sort of fury within my breast, art should be for the people, the Socialist in me rails, give this to a museum, a free museum where people can come and marvel at the total wonder of art, don't just keep it in a high rise penthouse or restored French chateau. Fuck that idea. I shake my head, and travel back in time a year to the Matisse exhibit in the same gallery, it is the special gallery, and I've seen everything from Van Gogh and Manet to Olmec and Aztec statuary in this hall which can be quite cavernous whenever it wants to be. Right now, though, the walls have been shifted around to give it an intimate feeling, a false feeling, of course, canceled out by the alarms and guards everywhere (the alarms having more brainpower than the guards, who all seem to be taken from central casting as either whale or weasel like in build, each with the bitterness of not understanding the beauty in which they work every day. The might as well employ the blind, but even Borges, Milton, and Homer had appreciation for the arts, so perhaps the blind, deaf, mutes, simply broadcasting 'Stay away from the ART, do not look at the walls for too long. NO PICTURES. NO SKETCHING. NO DERIVATION OF PLEASURE.' into the minds of all the people strolling through the gallery--in my mind, blind, deaf, mutes get telepathy to make up for being blind, deaf, and mute--life ain't like that, which is a shame. I'll return to Matisse later on, I have a lot to say about him.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Phone sex and the Single Eye
This blog...well, this blog is entirely experimental.
If you hate it, that's wonderful, tell me why.
If you love it, great, again with listing reasons.
I am writing this blog entirely for me, even if it might sometimes be addressed to you, the reader, well, you are just another type of me, and...so there we are.
And now here is the long and winding post related to this work by Dali.
If you hate it, that's wonderful, tell me why.
I am writing this blog entirely for me, even if it might sometimes be addressed to you, the reader, well, you are just another type of me, and...so there we are.
And now here is the long and winding post related to this work by Dali.
I wrote the following just now, not reading it over, simply going until it was played out appropriately. Okay, so I went back and altered one or two things, but that is for the sake of…well, not clarity, really, just…for the sake of writing. I hope you like it. Please feel free to send me comments in my ask box. I really do like comments, good, bad, indifferent, and otherwise slanted.
Peace.
—-
Alex loves the burning giraffes wherever they appear. In a lot of ways, I think I’m like a burning giraffe, oddly tall, almost ungainly, and with a tendency to light myself on fire without really meaning to. This work by Dali fascinates me, as most of his stuff does, largely because you can really see his preoccupation with Surrealism, and…I do love me Surrealism, especially the Spanish schools, partially because I think they have more influence than anyone is willing to admit on the magical realists of South America. I’m still working on putting this into a sane theory that I can use for my Master’s Thesis, so don’t go running off with it and publish something on your own—if you do, you will feel my knife, and it will not be a good feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this work by Dali, and think about having a telephone line snaking its way through your legs, running its segmented and chromed metal along vulva, clitoris, foreskin, glans, moving over smooth skin or perhaps the marble of Bernini’s perfectly frozen bodies, Peresephone, Hades, Daphne, Apollo, maybe getting the proverbial rise out of you if you are into that sort of thing—can’t imagine that would be very comfortable, though, the wire probably feeling more than a little cold on softest skin of all, not skin, your mind corrects, sex organs, generators, the ultimate artists, creating these things called humanity, and I’ve always been a fan of humanity, of people, and not just in that base, biologically sexual way that all of us are, however we are wired, but in the more intellectual way, or way that I hope is intellectual, of considering all our achievements, artistic, architectural, literary, religious, poetic, hell, we made it to the moon…though think about being a real anthropomorphic telephone cabinet. In a way, we all have these cabinets within us, these drawers where we put memories, emotions, internal formations, bits of a soul that we maybe thought we lost—we didn’t lose it, it is still there, in the heart and eyes, sometimes we just see reflections of it in the world around us, and we put them in drawers, special drawers lined with velvet and corduroy, soft fabrics to distract the soul-reflection from its new home in your breast, under your breasts next to your heart, lungs, ribcage, maybe a cracked rib or two from forcing a drawer in when the humidity makes things stick, maybe even an entire drawer missing, ripped out and thrown on the floor while you search for something within it, ignoring the now gaping wound in your chest, a wound with perfect drawer-shaped edges, fuck, maybe you ripped a handle off one of the drawers and now its contents are irretrievable without sticking a hand into yourself (I’ll let you figure out the mechanics of that, which, I suppose, depend upon where the drawer is in relation to the various points of ingress) and pushing in the back of the drawer. When it pops open, finally, you smile as you look at all the memories you thought were lost, all the brown paper packages tied up with string and lovenotes you went crazy looking for, maybe even , fuck, I don’t know, maybe these drawers don’t have anything in them, and are just filled with the lightness of memory, something which can weigh more than the moon when lodged in the breast. Maybe you just decide to write on the inside of the drawer itself, scribbling notes, warnings, entire books in the smooth marble, slightly gnarled wood, or velveteen lining, just writing, maybe some pictures as well, a new sort of ideogram, putting Chinese and Ugaritic to shame in the course of an afternoon, impressing departed Calvino, Borges, and the living, sainted Eco with your linguistic playfulness, a brand of semiotics for this century, for all centuries, the sequel to the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus, a puzzle and delight for scholars of the future, perhaps of your own future, interior monastics puzzling away in the scriptorium behind your third rib, weakened from a fall years ago, a bad fall from a horse, leaving the ribs cracked and your chest wrapped for three weeks, breathing shallow was necessary for survival, to silence the screaming of your lungs with every deep inhalation, mindful breathing becomes impossible while things take time to heal. Eventually they heal well enough, even if you still wince whenever you pass by the field where everything happened, everything turned in an instant, turned to stones given up by the earth at the end of winter, like the passing of a glacier, these frostheave remnants dot this brown pastureland, turning its muddy expanse into a moraine, hoofs falter, struggling for control, you slip from the stirrups, falling for an eternity before first an arm hits, rolling up into the right side of your chest, feeling the snap as two ribs break, others are bruised, knowing how lucky you are not to have punctured a lung, you stagger, muddy, bruised, broken, after the horse, and with the help of a companion, eventually make it to the local hospital, leaving your mount with this comrade of yours in a daze as you stagger in. The doctors seem almost amused at your injury, and you want to break their ribs for the smiles you’d swear you can see behind their eyes. Ugly eyes, these, lifeless, colorless, not that they change color and are hard to define, simply that no color exists, they have been sapped by years of staring at worse injuries, the dying, the dead, the ulcerated and gangrenous limbs, missing fingers, frostbitten toes, lovers on the way out, some quietly, others bemoaning their tragic, tragic fate, and so the color slips away with each body, each numbered case put into a file, each file put into a drawer somewhere in torsos of their own, locked away, never to be examined, reviewed, memory is a painful, stabbing bitch sometimes, like sleeping in a bed with shattered glass on either side of you—lie down in it awhile if you must, but move carefully, and don’t turn too quickly else the sheets will be covered with blood. The drawers don’t bleed, that is the amazing thing about them, they pull out easily, greased by a mind that cares about them, by a cabinet maker who knows they are doing—even pulled out, behind them you see wood and the barest hints of a spinal column in oak.
Blonde hair flows down her back, maybe your back, telephones entwine her legs, grazing against a recently shaved sex disturbingly wet with anticipation of this ultimate collect call, the absolution of the 900 number’s operator picking up, smooth voice disguising that she hasn’t left her house in days, hates going out into the street, no, all she wants to hear is ‘Hello again…’—they don’t deal in names, neither the blonde nor the operator, and just talk in a way not befitting such a phone service, paid off in ten minute increments, time in purgatory, about what can only be called problems of the middle class, worrying about bills, in-laws, that boat your brother Roy bought to run guns for the Columbians, well, maybe that isn’t such a middle class problem, but then again Roy always was a special one. She doesn’t want to talk, but the operator, a transcendent, naked, floating eye of Whitman’s, draws words from her lips, keeping her on the line, pulling her closer to that ultimate union with the grandest switchboard of all.
All that remains of her existence, the phone disappeared with her, you see, is a silk shift, barely even clothing, wrapped around her legs in the fashion of a sarong, yet not serving any real purpose except comfort—it felt amazing on her legs, especially when she shaved them, and she did that twice daily, though not because she needed to, simply because it was a way to pass the time and watch as the herds of pyrotechnic ungulates (even toed, odd) roamed by outside her bathroom window, into the desert, out of the desert, it was always so damned hard to tell.
At last, her arms stretched out and finally reach the iris at the exact moment one of the phone tentacles brings her to orgasm, wiping away any insecurities about her clitoris, radiating out and cleansing lips, pelvis, thighs, belly, knees, breasts, calves, flushing with pleasure as the waves of this perfect feeling, this one true union with the universe achieved via collect call rocks through her being, taking her away while rooting her more firmly in existence than ever before, her toes and fingers twitch at the same moment, gasping, sighing, begging for an eternity like this, a kind of constant moment we all seek, and many of us are lucky to find in the arms of a lover, under or on top of this lover of ours, maybe next to, maybe thousands of miles apart, you breathe in love and it wraps around you, never letting go. There is no afterglow, in that ever expanding moment of climax, wet, dripping, heaving, moaning…all adjectives are transcended.
The voice comes on again when the scene is cleared, there is only a phone booth now, receiver waiting in the cradle, hot to the touch, the black plastic almost blushing, satisfied with itself, with the world.
Peace.
—-
Alex loves the burning giraffes wherever they appear. In a lot of ways, I think I’m like a burning giraffe, oddly tall, almost ungainly, and with a tendency to light myself on fire without really meaning to. This work by Dali fascinates me, as most of his stuff does, largely because you can really see his preoccupation with Surrealism, and…I do love me Surrealism, especially the Spanish schools, partially because I think they have more influence than anyone is willing to admit on the magical realists of South America. I’m still working on putting this into a sane theory that I can use for my Master’s Thesis, so don’t go running off with it and publish something on your own—if you do, you will feel my knife, and it will not be a good feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this work by Dali, and think about having a telephone line snaking its way through your legs, running its segmented and chromed metal along vulva, clitoris, foreskin, glans, moving over smooth skin or perhaps the marble of Bernini’s perfectly frozen bodies, Peresephone, Hades, Daphne, Apollo, maybe getting the proverbial rise out of you if you are into that sort of thing—can’t imagine that would be very comfortable, though, the wire probably feeling more than a little cold on softest skin of all, not skin, your mind corrects, sex organs, generators, the ultimate artists, creating these things called humanity, and I’ve always been a fan of humanity, of people, and not just in that base, biologically sexual way that all of us are, however we are wired, but in the more intellectual way, or way that I hope is intellectual, of considering all our achievements, artistic, architectural, literary, religious, poetic, hell, we made it to the moon…though think about being a real anthropomorphic telephone cabinet. In a way, we all have these cabinets within us, these drawers where we put memories, emotions, internal formations, bits of a soul that we maybe thought we lost—we didn’t lose it, it is still there, in the heart and eyes, sometimes we just see reflections of it in the world around us, and we put them in drawers, special drawers lined with velvet and corduroy, soft fabrics to distract the soul-reflection from its new home in your breast, under your breasts next to your heart, lungs, ribcage, maybe a cracked rib or two from forcing a drawer in when the humidity makes things stick, maybe even an entire drawer missing, ripped out and thrown on the floor while you search for something within it, ignoring the now gaping wound in your chest, a wound with perfect drawer-shaped edges, fuck, maybe you ripped a handle off one of the drawers and now its contents are irretrievable without sticking a hand into yourself (I’ll let you figure out the mechanics of that, which, I suppose, depend upon where the drawer is in relation to the various points of ingress) and pushing in the back of the drawer. When it pops open, finally, you smile as you look at all the memories you thought were lost, all the brown paper packages tied up with string and lovenotes you went crazy looking for, maybe even , fuck, I don’t know, maybe these drawers don’t have anything in them, and are just filled with the lightness of memory, something which can weigh more than the moon when lodged in the breast. Maybe you just decide to write on the inside of the drawer itself, scribbling notes, warnings, entire books in the smooth marble, slightly gnarled wood, or velveteen lining, just writing, maybe some pictures as well, a new sort of ideogram, putting Chinese and Ugaritic to shame in the course of an afternoon, impressing departed Calvino, Borges, and the living, sainted Eco with your linguistic playfulness, a brand of semiotics for this century, for all centuries, the sequel to the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus, a puzzle and delight for scholars of the future, perhaps of your own future, interior monastics puzzling away in the scriptorium behind your third rib, weakened from a fall years ago, a bad fall from a horse, leaving the ribs cracked and your chest wrapped for three weeks, breathing shallow was necessary for survival, to silence the screaming of your lungs with every deep inhalation, mindful breathing becomes impossible while things take time to heal. Eventually they heal well enough, even if you still wince whenever you pass by the field where everything happened, everything turned in an instant, turned to stones given up by the earth at the end of winter, like the passing of a glacier, these frostheave remnants dot this brown pastureland, turning its muddy expanse into a moraine, hoofs falter, struggling for control, you slip from the stirrups, falling for an eternity before first an arm hits, rolling up into the right side of your chest, feeling the snap as two ribs break, others are bruised, knowing how lucky you are not to have punctured a lung, you stagger, muddy, bruised, broken, after the horse, and with the help of a companion, eventually make it to the local hospital, leaving your mount with this comrade of yours in a daze as you stagger in. The doctors seem almost amused at your injury, and you want to break their ribs for the smiles you’d swear you can see behind their eyes. Ugly eyes, these, lifeless, colorless, not that they change color and are hard to define, simply that no color exists, they have been sapped by years of staring at worse injuries, the dying, the dead, the ulcerated and gangrenous limbs, missing fingers, frostbitten toes, lovers on the way out, some quietly, others bemoaning their tragic, tragic fate, and so the color slips away with each body, each numbered case put into a file, each file put into a drawer somewhere in torsos of their own, locked away, never to be examined, reviewed, memory is a painful, stabbing bitch sometimes, like sleeping in a bed with shattered glass on either side of you—lie down in it awhile if you must, but move carefully, and don’t turn too quickly else the sheets will be covered with blood. The drawers don’t bleed, that is the amazing thing about them, they pull out easily, greased by a mind that cares about them, by a cabinet maker who knows they are doing—even pulled out, behind them you see wood and the barest hints of a spinal column in oak.
Blonde hair flows down her back, maybe your back, telephones entwine her legs, grazing against a recently shaved sex disturbingly wet with anticipation of this ultimate collect call, the absolution of the 900 number’s operator picking up, smooth voice disguising that she hasn’t left her house in days, hates going out into the street, no, all she wants to hear is ‘Hello again…’—they don’t deal in names, neither the blonde nor the operator, and just talk in a way not befitting such a phone service, paid off in ten minute increments, time in purgatory, about what can only be called problems of the middle class, worrying about bills, in-laws, that boat your brother Roy bought to run guns for the Columbians, well, maybe that isn’t such a middle class problem, but then again Roy always was a special one. She doesn’t want to talk, but the operator, a transcendent, naked, floating eye of Whitman’s, draws words from her lips, keeping her on the line, pulling her closer to that ultimate union with the grandest switchboard of all.
All that remains of her existence, the phone disappeared with her, you see, is a silk shift, barely even clothing, wrapped around her legs in the fashion of a sarong, yet not serving any real purpose except comfort—it felt amazing on her legs, especially when she shaved them, and she did that twice daily, though not because she needed to, simply because it was a way to pass the time and watch as the herds of pyrotechnic ungulates (even toed, odd) roamed by outside her bathroom window, into the desert, out of the desert, it was always so damned hard to tell.
At last, her arms stretched out and finally reach the iris at the exact moment one of the phone tentacles brings her to orgasm, wiping away any insecurities about her clitoris, radiating out and cleansing lips, pelvis, thighs, belly, knees, breasts, calves, flushing with pleasure as the waves of this perfect feeling, this one true union with the universe achieved via collect call rocks through her being, taking her away while rooting her more firmly in existence than ever before, her toes and fingers twitch at the same moment, gasping, sighing, begging for an eternity like this, a kind of constant moment we all seek, and many of us are lucky to find in the arms of a lover, under or on top of this lover of ours, maybe next to, maybe thousands of miles apart, you breathe in love and it wraps around you, never letting go. There is no afterglow, in that ever expanding moment of climax, wet, dripping, heaving, moaning…all adjectives are transcended.
The voice comes on again when the scene is cleared, there is only a phone booth now, receiver waiting in the cradle, hot to the touch, the black plastic almost blushing, satisfied with itself, with the world.
‘Modern Rhapsody’ by Salvador Dali, 1957
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