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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Review: Substance Clad In Shadows - Nietzsche and the Eternal Return





Fanfiction: Substance Clad In Shadows
I've been the prey, praying for a way out of mazes of my own making. Weak, wanton. 
ch 25

He eyes me warily. "You don't know what I want."
But I'm sure I do. Because everyone wants power, but few understand that it isn't titles or speeches or money — it's a whisper in a dark place, a kiss in the corner, a shapeless something in the shadows.

It's in the predatory smile of a young man as he seduces his prey on the cold stone bench of a garden maze. ch 26



I smile at him and inhale, searching for the familiar rush, the beginning of something new, an escape from escape itself:

Freedom. ch 22

He complies, shoving into me hard, hard, hard enough to hurt but it's good, it's the best and I want more. Suddenly I'm moving through the deep, through the dark, through a red haze and an old maze that unfurls like a wrinkled banner and there is no monster here, no blood or victory, there's nothing but release and freedom and up, up, up until I breach the surface of a faraway sun, gasping as I come. The sound is ugly and sharp. ch 22

Is the myth of Daedalus and Icarus well known enough?

King Minos of Knossos had commissioned the Athenian artisan Daedalus to design a labyrinth in which to imprison the monster the Minotaur. Daedalus gave the key of the maze to Minos's daughter Ariadne, who gave it to her lover Theseus so he could enter the labyrinth, slay the Minotaur and find his way out. For this he left her and she became consoled by Bacchus (Dionysius), the god of wine, laughter, excess. For his disobedience Daedalus and his son Icarus are imprisoned in the labyrinth and Daedalus knows the only way out is the sky. He designs wings for them to fly out telling Icarus not to fly too low and be drowned in the sea, nor too high or the sun will melt the wax securing the feathers of his wings. 

In other words, "Take the middle road. Not the road of excess."
Icarus flew too close to the bright hot sun and perished, drowning in the Aegean Sea.

Another variation has Theseus laying a thread down as he enters the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur, so he can find his way out.

And Bella is constantly "following the thread" in her thinking and actions.
But then breathe,
breathe again,
and follow the thread, ch 26

The myth of Daedalus and Icarus

King Minos and Daedalus had great understanding at first, but their relationships started deteriorating at some point; there are several versions explaining this sudden change, although the most common one is that Daedalus was the one who advised Princess Ariadne to give Theseus the thread that helped him come out from the infamous Labyrinth, after killing the Minotaur.  http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-daedalus-and-icarus/

The most important aria in either version is "Großmächtige Prinzessin" / "high and mighty princess", is sung by Zerbinetta. Other important pieces of the opera are the arias of Ariadne "Wo war ich...?" / "Where was I...?", "Ein schönes war es..." / "There was something beautiful..." and "Es gibt ein Reich..." / "There is a realm..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_auf_Naxos

Bella's beloved Ilse her German Nanny of her childhood, who refuses to drug her and leaves would connect the German language and the music.

Her reply is unintelligible, and then footsteps fade, leaving only Ilse's soft, half-sung German.
"Weißt du, wieviel Mücken spielen
in der heißen Sonnenglut?
Wie viel Fische auch sich kühlen
in der hellen Wasserflut?" ch 24 

Substance Clad In Shadows has a scene near the end at the opera when Turandot is being performed. I would suggest an editing with Ariadne auf Noxos instead. The novel consistently is structured round the metaphor of the labyrinth - the maze - on a real and conceptual level. Ariadne auf Noxos begins with Ariadne in a grief stricken state because Theseus has left her. 

Bella's intention is to free Edward and make him hers. To tear the veil of illusion - maya -  from his being as she has done with the others, who revile her for doing so. She is going to slay the god of her childhood, destroy him as he is now, but she becomes caught in her own maze game, as Daedalus  was caught in his labyrinth. She also tries to fly out but finds there is nowhere to go. She is caught in the Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge/normality/capital, another name for The Maze of mythology. Her only flight is the excessiveness of Eros.
The genius of this fanfic is that hollelujah has fictionalized the Panopticon, the surveillance mechanism in the Foucauldian Grid 
of power/knowledge/normality/capital
If I listen closely enough, I can hear the clink of glasses from the rooms inside, the 

chatter of his 

parents' guests, so perfectly groomed, raised to their places by a million petty rules, by 

the 

captivity of caring for reputation, for convention. ch 26


The ubiquitous people. Always asking, always talking.
"

Good of them to notice I was gone," I reply.


If my father

 notices my sarcasm, he does not acknowledge it. "Everyone notices 


everything. Reputations rise and fall on perception, Isabella. Ours 


could be destroyed in a minute." ch 27

"Randolph Bourne said that 'Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue it likes,
and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.'"ch 9


 "There is no choice," I choke out. "There's 

nothing else." ch 26 


"There is no outside," says Vija Kinski quoting 

Foucault.



There is no knowledge that is not power, my father quotes from behind a stately-looking podium. - Emerson  ch 23

She understands that seduction is the only way out to endure the Grid, the Matrix. An endless seduction that raises the ante, that increasingly challenges, challenges increasingly, within Nietzsche's Eternal Return.

Because it can't be love. I don't want poems or well-wishes and I will not sacrifice for his happiness, I want nothing to do with it if it means letting him go. ch 26 (Ayn Rand)

I am not enough — but I will be enough. ch 26

And what we have here is a relationship from the future. A sign of a possibility from the future. A possibility that we can provide space and time around it to nourish it, to bring it into being. A relationship that does not leave a man wanting a prostitute for the kind of sex he cannot get or ask for anywhere else. A relationship that does not leave a woman bored and yearning and longing. An erotic relationship where each is both prey and predator turning around and around, challenging each other, seducing each other, wanting each other, gratifying each other. Two people who do not need to provoke sex from others for variety, because they create their own variety. 

Monday, May 27, 2013

FANFIC Review: Substance Clad In Shadows

Rodin The Kiss Wrapped in 1 Mile of Twine by Cornelia Parker
"Rodin's 'The Kiss,' re-imagined," the curator closest to me explains in reverent tones. "Tate Britain is exhibiting it as a piece by Cornelia Parker. The artist wrapped Rodin's sculpture in one mile of string to represent the 'claustrophobia of relationships.' You'll notice the contrast of the two materials: the high culture of the marble, and the low culture of the twine." 
ch 19
Fanfiction: Substance Clad In Shadows
Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals


Nietzsche: The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The first time I lay eyes on him that night, I think of the desires of Nietzsche's true man. ch 10

He thinks I don't notice the looks he receives as we make our way to the roof. Women watch him, wistful or lustful or smug, their memories or fantasies playing out in an unsubtle panoply of desire across their features. And then their gazes inevitably catch me walking behind him, after which they occupy themselves either by glaring at me openly or looking down and away.
Look at yourselves, I want to sneer. Waiting for me to leave his side so you can simper at his every word, laugh at his inane jokes as you surreptitiously ask the universe for a way to master your gag reflex so you can suck him off in a back room well enough to warrant a quick fuck and a phone call the next day.
There are blondes and brunettes and redheads of all different shapes and sizes, but the vacancies in their eyes make them all look the same. They part unwillingly for us.
I'm sure their panties are wet already. Small wonder that he's bored.
For now. chapt 9

First, that the burly man does not appreciate Armani-clad barflys attempting to seduce his girl. "He kissed her!" he yells. ch 10

I see him, I think. I see him. ch 10

 This is a man of hidden wants, buried needs, and I'm going to leave him sated, satisfied but first comes the extraction of his longings and I'll dig, god I'll dig right into him until he's free and mine. ch 11
"I see you," I whisper, and his mouth opens to form words he doesn't yet know. ch 11
Mapplethorpe
Akhmotova - Modigliani

"Your women are too easy, Edward Cullen," I whisper in his ear, nipping at the lobe. "They're so happy just to have you look twice at them, do you know why?"ch 11

"Those women take what they can get from you because they don't know their place. They don't know how bland they are, how bored you are." ch 11

 "'We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.'" ch 19

"I am your danger and your play," I hiss. "And I'm going to make you work for it." ch 11

"Bella, Bella, Bella," he breathes, and I'm one fantasy closer to owning him. ch 11

He is everything right now, my prey and my prayer and my captive, my spoils of war, my conquered city and my friendly fire. He is the thief of my skin,
my monster in the maze,
my sun god, grounded.
He is mine. ch 25

I sink down even further and stare as he comes apart, panting and chanting my name and fuck, fuck, fuck. ch 11


"Edward," I grind out, the sound trial and triumph. "You have to know… I'm the best you're ever going to have." ch 11
_____________________________________
"The Blacks are being more than accommodating right now, especially in light of this… indiscretion, Isabella," he says sternly. "Make sure you remember that when making new friends." ch 11


"Have you found her?" a man asks nearby.
"I've got her. I think she was stuck in the maze." ch 12
____________________________________
Warm us on his skin, my fingers cry plaintively. We are frozen. ch 12


He blinks. Stares. Breathes in, breathes out, and then: "Who are you?"
"I'm the only one in this building who knows what you are," I answer quietly.
He frowns. "What am I?"
+.+.+.++.+.+.+
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound...
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
[Anna Akhmatova, "Lot's Wife"]
+.+.+.++.+.+.+

"You already know what you are. I've already told you. You're bored. You're bored and you're lazy and you're mine. You think I don't know what it's like? To be surrounded by people who don't know, who can't know. ch 12

He is stone-still beneath my hand, his eyes hard. "Will you ever want more?"
I am silent for a moment, a series of moving images flashing across my mind's eye: domesticity, predictability, two-sink bathrooms, tragically tight smiles, a home in the
Hamptons, a ring on my finger, a swell in my belly, a staff to clean the penthouse and put a roast in the oven each night. Dinners in the city with his colleagues, his former fucks. Cold brunches spent staring at one another with open resentment. And boredom.
Above all, boredom.

Every bit of that life seems a shackle, another lock to keep me in a different kind of cage.

"Peter Ustinov thought it was true... 'through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.'" ch 18

 I'm not complaining – I have a good life. But it's rare to be around someone real."
"Am I real, then?"
His eyes find mine, unreadable. "I think so. And I think... you may have ruined me for others who aren't," he confesses quietly. ch 16
Hamlet and Ophelia - Louise Bourgeois
This Bella is a Nietzschean strategist. We see her like in Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a woman who is determined to destroy Howard Roark. Dominique has been interpreted for almost 70 years in the psychological swamp of interpretation as a masochist, rather than a Nietzschean strategist. 

We are married by a French clerk, and I wear red dress. ch 28 
Dominique wore black.

In DeLillo's Cosmopolis the Foucauldian character of Vija Kinski tells Eric Packer in a quote from Foucault, "There is no outside." She adds that money no longer refers to anything at all except itself. Money talks only to money. Foucault in discussing the end of representation in language argues that Cervantes Don Quixote is the first novel in the western world to leave the fetters of representation, Quixote refers only to literature. Substance Clad In Shadows is fanfiction and the first one to make clear that the Edward/Bella/Twilight fanfic refers only to other to itself. SCIS refers to Twilight both the books and the films, to other fanfic, and to Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson in their personal lives and their tabloid lives. All these resonate within SCIS as well as the poetry of Akhmatova whose language has been absorbed by hollelujah along with a multitude of quotes from literature past and present, classic and pop. It is a joy to read, and an erotic joy.









Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Reading Kristen Stewart's and Rupert Sanders "CHEATING" Images Through Mark Tansey's Paintings

THE KEY - MARK TANSEY

THE INNOCENT EYE - MARK TANSEY
In this painting, “a cow stands in front of Paulus Potter’s The young Bull,1647, now at the Mauritshuis, the Hague, while the human experts wonder if the cow can distinguish artifice from reality.” (Metropolitan Museum) The painting is monochromatic, which is his unique and primary painting style. It seems that Tansey used realism in describing an experiment about whether the bull could tell the reality, but actually it is not realism. The audiences themselves are also in the experiment, and the experts want to see our reactions about the painting, which is what we think the cow will do: respond to the Bull or to Monet's Haystack on the right.
(blue my change and addition)
Actually the painting is in response to the very old story told by Baudrillard for one:
There was/is a contest for the best 

Trompe l'oeil

 illusion painting.
The two finalist artists revealed their paintings to the judges. In one the berries were so realistic that birds came through the windows to eat them. Who could top that! 
The other artist was told to move the curtain aside so the judges could observe the painting.
The curtain was the painting.

One painting could fool birds (innocent eyes), but the other could fool judges.
Kristen Stewart and Rupert Sanders Fabricated Photoshopped Photos
They fooled "Innocent Eyes" - Dumb Animal Eyes - EYES OF HATRED -  Jealous Eyes - BUT NOT THE EYES OF LOVE


STILL LIFE - MARK TANSEY
Trash reality and honor the Simulacrum. Trash their real life and treasure the walking Papz Pics.
FOR THE HATERS
Toss the originals and love the fake 
WITH YOUR DUMB ANIMAL EYES

The Defense Rests
The Jury is in
The Ruling has been given
Hater Fans Prefer the Simulacra Every Time