“In Our Fatal Magic, it is the wound or cut that produces the portal that enables the double movement between becoming and unbecoming.” Bridget Crone, ‘Wounds of Unbecoming’, introduction to Our Fatal Magic by Tai Shani (Strange Attractor Press, 2019) This article should be more properly called ‘On Tai Shani’s Our Fatal Magic’, as it… Continue reading On ‘Phantasmagoregasm’
Category: culture
On Pervy Old Men: Part 2
"Finding oneself in the position of the beloved is so violent a discovery, even traumatic: being loved makes me feel directly the gap between what I am as a determinate being and the unfathomable X in me that causes love. Lacan's definition of love - 'love is giving something one doesn't have ...' has to… Continue reading On Pervy Old Men: Part 2
On ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
“The problem for us is not whether our desires are satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire? There is nothing spontaneous, nothing natural about human desires. Our desires are artificial - we have to be taught to desire. Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what… Continue reading On ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
On the Paintings of Rouen
I've been writing a bit about painting recently. Oddly enough, it actually took a couple of years of writing this blog to get going on painting analysis; I started writing mainly about film, literature, and other assorted cultural ephemera (lesbian vampires); I would continue making my own work in watercolour and oils, but painting remained outside my writing.
On Bacchus and the Beast
“ ‘All present, Cap'n!’ responded the mate Opheltes, leading along the shore what he thought was a prize he had won in a lonely meadow, a boy with a beautiful face like a girl's. Their captive appeared to be staggering and struggling behind a drowsy, drunken stupor. I looked at his dress, his face and… Continue reading On Bacchus and the Beast
On Decisions
"In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences ... it organises a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity. Things appear to mean… Continue reading On Decisions
On Saint Sebastian
Detail of 'St. Sebastian' by Sandro Botticelli, 1474 Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constantly under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph; and the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art as a whole, yet certainly of the art we speak of… Continue reading On Saint Sebastian
On Esmeralda
During quarantine, we've been drinking a lot of vodka and watching Disney films, which has been cathartic as I cry every time (a good way of releasing pent-up emotions). Even though I regularly watch my favourite Disney flick The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (mostly when very hungover) I have more clearly realised how fabulous the… Continue reading On Esmeralda
On the Jar of Moles
This weekend my sister was visiting me, and we went around some free museums in London on Saturday afternoon. I like to do these kind of tourist activities when I have a visitor from home, it's when I most enjoy exploring odd, curious corners of the city. Everywhere we went in central London was about… Continue reading On the Jar of Moles
On Delphyne: Part 4
Smoke and Visions Rosie Dahlstrom: digital collage of Delphyne with a cigarette, 2018 'Feet don't fail me now,Take me to the finish line,Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take,But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine.'Lana Del Rey, 'Born to Die' (from Born to Die, Polyador/Interscope Records, 2012)… Continue reading On Delphyne: Part 4
Sertraline Dreams 