Category Archives: juxtapoetry

De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis

La Dormeuse (1765) by Pierre Antoine Baudouin

Recent scholarship by Sholem Stein has revealed that the protagonist reader in this painting by French artist Pierre Antoine Baudouin had been reading either Sinistrari d’Ameno‘s Demoniality Or Incubi and Succubi or Claude Le Petit‘s “Apologie de Chausson.”

The woman reader was previously believed to have fallen asleep of boredom by reading Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, professor Stein now confirms that she probably died of excessive lasciviousness.

Boudoir noir

boudoir noir

“Behold me then safely ensconced in my private Boudoir, a fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility—alive, with the qualifications of the dead—dead, with the propensities of the living—an anomaly on the face of the earth—being very calm, yet breathless. —Poe via Loss of Breath.”

Illustration All is Vanity (1892) by Charles Allan Gilbert

I am the Dying Gaul

This is my death scene, I was not given a deathbed. I do not represent the most famous death scene. I am outdeathed by Jesus Christ who died on the cross and Jean-Paul Marat , both after me.

I seem to have been born in a culture of death, yet I was not given any last words. This fascination with death in Western culture. Why? Why so pervasive?

Why did Jane write A Death-Scene?

So I knew that he was dying-

Stooped, and raised his languid head;

Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,

So I knew that he was dead.

Why this fasicnation with crime scenes?

Why did Andy Warhol produce The Death and Disaster paintings?

And why is every sensationalist corner of video-libraries around the world filled with copies of Faces of Death?

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5GDcs8i2ng&]

Bonnie and Clyde

Why do we enjoy the slow motion death of Bonnie and Clyde and countles other movie death scenes?

Aristotle, had I known him, would have answered me:

Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. —Aristotle via the Poetics.

Life is a gift

Let me tell you about life

Life is

A gift

But it takes a lot of tending and pruning

Sometimes to the point of exasperation

And always consider

That death is not the end.

History of O

Egyptian hieroglyph `ir

Proto-Semitic O

Phoenician O

Etruscan O

Greek Omicron

Brought to you by Waloli, our reporter in Tokyo

Thomas Cook @200

Thomas Cook @200*

Thomas Cook’s guide books contributed to the concept of the armchair traveler.

Many people still prefer the real thing.

So did our protagonist.

She asks:

“Where are you going?”

He answers:

“To the Great Exhibition in London. I took your copy of The Stones of Venice , I hope that’s alright?”

“I booked a ticket with Cook“

She shouts:

“Don’t leave me now!” – “Where are you going?”

He answers:

“To the Exposition Universelle in Paris. I took your copy of Walt Whitman‘s I Sing the Body Electric, I hope that’s alright?”

*Thomas Cook was a British travel agent, born exactly 200 years ago today. He commodified the Grand Tour and invented tourism as we know it today. He gave you a A Room with a View in Tuscany. His guide books contributed to the concept of the armchair traveler.

François Caradec (1924 – 2008)

François Caradec is dead. “Oh no,” shouts Jane Avril

“We’ll see about that,” says the café concert visitor

“It’s not a farce,” says the book that ought to know

François Caradec (Quimper, 1924 – November 13, 2008) was a French 20th century writer, biographer and historian of French popular culture and the history of the comic book in particular. He was a member of the Oulipo and a regent in the Collège de ’Pataphysique. He is the co-author of the history of farces, Encyclopédie des farces et attrapes et des mystifications.[1].

He wrote biographies on Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel (translated by Ian Monk for Atlas Press), Alphonse Allais, Henry Gauthier-Villars, Le Pétomane and Jane Avril.

Hauntology and Burial Mixes

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68RrcW3yVjY&]

“What a Mistry ” Tikiman

Hauntology is a concept in nascent state (to borrow a term from Francesco Alberoni). That’s why it is still flexible. Any good music with the word “burial” in it deserves to linked with the concept. Not including Basic Channel‘s Burial Mixes has been an oversight. I just set that straight. (within 15 minutes from time of posting, check Google)

Some background info on Basic Channel and its reggae releases labeled Burial Mix. If Wackies Records is the natural heir to Lee Perry (the same laid-back percussion, flying cymbals en relaxed groove), then the Burial Mix releases are the natural heirs to Wackies. There, we’ve just connected the 1970s to the 2000s

Some obliquely related burial imagery:

Tomb of Pompeii by Jean-Baptiste Tierce, 1766

Cenotaph for Newton (1784) by French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée

Any computer-dating questionnaire will try to match intellectual like with like

Click for credits

“Physically, men and women are generally attracted to each other because of their differences. Ask any group of men from any culture to assess the attractiveness of a female, and they will tend to opt for the figure which curves where they are flat, is soft where they are strong and — though this may be a matter for aesthetic as much as scientific debate — swells where they are narrow. The same, in reverse, is true of women, who will tend to express a preference for men with broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips. … Yet in every other respect, we expect the sexes to be attracted to each other because of their similarities. Any computer-dating questionnaire will try to match intellectual like with like. —Brain Sex

Ecphrasis and the bedness of things

A Reasonable Amount of Ice (2008) Jahsonic

ekphrasis

and

the

bedness

things