For love

Keep my secrets. Treat me kindly when you can, and respect the walls of dignity and honour that I build. Listen to me when I need to tell of worries or of victories, and understand, that they are not more than me, that they do not lift nor lower me from that level where we found each other standing in the shade.

And I will help bury the bodies deep beneath the ground where the earth sings to those who yet have living ears to hear with.

Det klør

Irriteret: min hud kravler over mine knogler, langsomt, mine indre organer murrer, min højre nyre er stadig ikke overbevist om, hvad det er, den skal her i livet, ligesom jeg heller ikke selv er, ikke mere siden d. 16. september. Jeg har i stedet, primært, været syg. Fordi et eller andet sted må man jo stoppe, og når man er ustoppelig, så må det ske igennem organernes fejlfunktion. Ha. Host. Har også læst, er, sådan set, forfærdeligt interesseret, samtidig holdt tilbage, i både 1900 Wien, de sidste romantikere og æsteticismens småreligiøse tendenser, stadigvæk alt, hvad der er centreret omkring lidelse og længsel, fængslende indrammet i Klimtguld og vildtvoksende plantegrønt med dertil rådnende idealer, der er megen skønhed her i verden. Mit projekt:kunsterliverkunst, også velsignet med samme slags spænding som i mit "arbejde", jeg er gartner, jeg fremdyrker det og i min have, der er dunkelt, her er ingen helt sikre på, hvad de vil, hvem de er, hvor de er på vej hen, i en eller anden forvirring af romantiske forviklinger, hvor der ikke er skelnes kvalitativt mellem relationstyper eller følelser, så længe det kan mærkes. Jeg gennemgår alle slags eksperimenter, så jeg til enhver tid kan sige, at jeg har smagt livet, jeg har set verden. Det er selvfølgelig en lille smule bullshit, men også kun lidt, for jeg holder som regel tilbage, en buket af hemmeligheder, som jeg nogle gange kommer til at vise, og så bliver folk bange, og så har man mistet dét venskab, man må passe på. Til gengæld for diskretion får jeg almindelig respekt, det er markedsværdi, det kan byttes til mange ting. Eksisterer med en slags kontinuerlig intensitet, fuldstændigt uundværlig, men hele tiden nærmende sig en ny normal, kan let glemme, at alt, hvad der gør det værd, i virkeligheden er helt vildt meget mere end hvad der normalt forventes, at hvis jeg falder ned, hvis jeg pludselig en dag åbner øjnene og der ikke er flere giftplanter, så vil der heller ikke være nogen skønhed tilbage. Jeg kan ikke nøjes med hverdagen, den generer, den strammer, den er det rene polyester, eller nej, den er fin, den er nødvendig, men det går jo ikke. Jeg kan ikke rende rundt og præstere noget som helst ekstraordinært på en diæt af høfligheder og lejlighedsvis orientalisme.

Jeg er træt af ikke allerede at vide, træt af pludselige opblomstringer, der forsvinder igen med det samme som gløder i damp, træt af at opmønstre panik blot for at gøre det, for situationer der sejler i forbipasserende, livsflod og snart vil være væk.

Schedule

Goal for the next three days:
Read for Art Theory: Fashion and Temporalities. Feel mortally offended by Nietzsche's view on women's wear, continue onwards in good spirits to Barthes and The Language of Fashion. Be thankful that my classes are on such interesting subjects. Supplement with some Lehman and other thoughts on clothes and language.
Educate myself on Victorian writing and empire. Think fondly of Edward Said while battling John Ruskin and Rudyard Kipling. Be upset with Britain in general but inspired by the British university system.
Enjoy some quality time with the Pre-Raphaelites' relationship to the past. Read through no less than seventeen texts on time before and after Raphael.
Formulate a plan for an essay on the subject of transgressions of hyperrealism into the fantastic in art inspired by the Dutch masters. Must include either phenomenology or semiology. Read Wittgenstein's philosophy of pictures. Mold own methodological approach. Attempt to find some theory on Otto Frello. Consider the decay of matter and how nothing really matters. Do the same for the 19th century, except look at Vernon Lee and Kant's sublime, possibly Faust, Carlyle, Kristeva, the uncanny, and discuss the artist hero's fatal attraction to an immanently evil inspiration which will surely consume him just as if it was a woman (because yeah, that didn't happen last week, as you are SUPPOSEDLY not supposed to cough up blood. Who knew, right?). Cry. Read about the devil. Come up with yet another essay and do the research and put together a bibliography for Eleanor F-Brickddale's The Little Foot Page which hangs in Liverpool, look up cross dressing as a performative but totally normal act in theatre of earlier ages. Read all the Scottish ballads, stare at Queen Guinevere and her bread rolls while meditating on memory, mourning and the modern life subject. Tinker with tensions between old and new, and possibly, possibly contrast evil and neutral androgony.

Tactic so far: 
Get drunk and draw. Repeat.

When I work, reality tends to break down

I have always been a bit too authentic for my own good when it comes to one of my main areas of interest: women in Victorian times. Today I am legit coughing up blood while feverishly attempting to grapple with an essay on the portrayal of immanent evil in Vernon Lee's stories of aesthetics and art. Who the fuck knows.
I am absolutely consumed with self pity, but there is a certain poetry in it. In the stories the male genius (that would then be me, all academics are white middle aged men, as is well known) is, in his attempt to portray the muse (write an essay), capture the wild inspiration (not get thrown out of university), taken over by an unknown pagan power (consumption?), and succumbs, usually, to madness or despair (eagerly awaiting this very moment).

I feel

as though

I shall shatter.

Like a rubbery bubble

stretched above

its limit.

My innards

boiling

sulphurous.

I sense

a small

Hell in the pit

of my stomach, 

and smoke

in my throat.

From George Meredith: 'Modern Love' (1862)

I

By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:

That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,

The strange low sobs that shook their common bed

Were called into her with a sharp surprise,

And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,

Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay

Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away

With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes

Her giant heart of Memory and Tears

Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat

Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet

Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,

By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.

Like sculptured effigies they might be seen

Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;

Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

I dreamt that you were next to me, and it made perfect sense battling embraced for kisses. You got up to get something, and in the meantime I woke up to realize you won't be coming back.

#Lifegoals

Dante Gabriel Rossetti is the suffering artist of every teenage daydream I have ever had. His poetry, in shadows, dwell on nothing but longing and sensuality, and his paintings are portraits of pale, unearthly muses:

Venus Venticordia, 1868

Water Willow, 1871

From "Through Death to Love":
Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,--
Like multiform circumfluence manifold
Of night's flood-tide,--like terrors that agree
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,--
Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

Robert Buchanan, however, is the acidic, witty critic I would be honoured to one day become. In 1871 he reviews Rossetti's newly published collection Poems, under the title "The Fleshly School of Poetry". Please, enjoy pieces of poison from his proselike attack:

 IF, on the occasion of any public performance of Shakspere's great tragedy, the actors who perform the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern were, by a preconcerted arrangement and by means of what is technically known as "gagging," to make themselves fully as prominent as the leading character, and to indulge in soliloquies and business strictly belonging to Hamlet himself, the result would be, to say the least of it, astonishing; yet a very similar effect is produced on the unprejudiced mind when the "walking gentlemen" of the fleshly school of poetry, [...] obtrude their lesser identities and parade their smaller idiosyncrasies in the front rank of leading performers. [..] the present drama of poetry might be cast as follows: Mr. Tennyson supporting the part of Hamlet, Mr. Matthew Arnold that of Horatio, Mr. Bailey that of Voltimand, Mr. Buchanan that of Cornelius, Messrs. Swinburne and Morris the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern.  (p. 334)

...in good truth, it is scarcely possible to discuss with any seriousness the pretensions with which foolish friends and small critics have surrounded the fleshly school, which, in spite of its spasmodic ramifications in the erotic direction, is merely one of the many sub-Tennysonian schools expanded to supernatural dimensions, and endeavouring by affectations all its own to overshadow its connection with the great original. (p. 335)

...we question if there is anything in the unfortunate "Poems and Ballads" quite so questionable on the score of thorough nastiness as many pieces in Mr. Rossetti's collection. Mr. Swinburne was wilder, more outrageous, more blasphemous, and his subjects were more atrocious in themselves; yet the hysterical tone slew the animalism, the furiousness of epithet lowered the sensation; and the first feeling of disgust at such themes as Laus Veneris and Anactoria, faded away into comic amazement. It was only a little mad boy letting off squibs; not a great strong man, who might be really dangerous to society. "I will be naughty!" screamed the little boy; but, after all, what did it matter? It is quite different, however, when a grown man, with the self-control and easy audacity of actual experience, comes forward to chronicle his amorous sensations, and, first proclaiming in a loud voice his literary maturity, and consequent responsibility, shamelessly prints and publishes such a piece of writing as this sonnet on Nuptial Sleep (p. 338) [follow link for some extremely dirty stuff, time considered]

We hover uncertainly between picturesqueness and namby-pamby... (p. 341)

We would rather believe that Mr. Rossetti lacks comprehension than that he is deficient in sincerity; yet really, to paraphrase the words which Johnson applied to Thomas Sheridan, Mr. Rossetti is affected, naturally affected, but it must have taken him a great deal of trouble to become what we now see him — such an excess of affectation is not in nature. (p. 341)

The fact that these gentlemen are so easily imitated is the most damning proof of their inferiority. What merits they have lie with their faults on the surface, and can be caught by any young gentleman as easily as the measles, only they are rather more difficult to get rid of. (p. 347)

Baphomet 6.-7. oktober

Not much left. Making sure the stockings fit. Pearls. Faces painted on. Don't tell, don't even whisper. I love you. You are my future. There is someone else. We are all alone now. This never happened, you'll have to forget, can you do that? Taking out chunks of flesh. Get in. Go on. Bring me wine. Skin. Closer to God. I can't seem to stop bleeding. You are beautiful. She was beautiful. I do love you, I do. Did I say you could look at me? I like to buy things that can't be bought. Like people. We are worthy. Come play. I know what would make you feel better. I didn't realize it was like that, I didn't notice.