Oh God so Mesmerising....

reblogged from pagan poetry on tumblr

Has anyone ever read any vintage Playboys?

They are seriously good! There are articles about sexual and gender difference, things about women rights and feminism- the whole she-bang (ho ho ho). Even the photos are of a much better standard, and the pubic hair much, much more dense and ever-present than the squeaky clean, slightly stomach churning shots of today's Men's Mags. I am thinking of investing in a job lot on ebay if I ever come across them. There is at least two hours good reading in each one. And when I say reading, I don't mean time spent in a toilet cubicle or in your locked bedroom with a stapler holding it open on the centre fold. I mean actual reading, of the tremendously written (and exceptionally lenghty) interviews (the one I read was from 1976 and had a particularly amazing interview with David Bowie) and of the articles which range from (very good) smutty humour to gender politics.

"Except in movies- of course"

I have lately been stalking various "tumblr"s, even though I do not have one, and did not know they existed until I stumbled (don't ask how) across one called "I Love Pornography" (ILP), which now seems to have been taken down or something! Just my luck- there were some seriously staggering shots on it, smut or not. So yes, from what I have seen so far, tumblr's consist of mostly glorious, completely pretentious and superficial things. And I mean that in the very best, complimentary manner. I am particularly enamoured with these accounts (clicky for links) :








Probably because of the high proportion of attractive women, bright & shiny things and the large amount of vintage-style photography. I have no idea how these people find the time to trawl through the piles of awful pictures on flickr etc etc etc and consistently (we are sometimes talking like fifty photos a day) come out with utterly beautiful photos. People might say that they simply have too much time, but I don't care. They are providing me with a zeitgeist of various kinds of lovely, and that is fine by me!

"the play's profound message, namely, that mirage and reality merge in love"

Has anyone read Lolita and completely forgotten the fact that it was about paedophilia? I constantly finding myself internally "aww"ing at some of the things Humbert Humbert says or comments on, and then he mentions "pubescent glow" and spindly, boyish limbs and I remember that he is sexually objectifying a twelve year old child. The poetical language really fucks up the entire thing. Which he knows and keeps referring to, saying things like "you can always rely upon a murderer for exacting prose" or something similar. It is like he is trying to escape the facts, even though he is describing them in minute detail, by cloying them with florid prose. It makes for some odd sensations when you realise you are being forced into the point of view of, and actually sympathising with, a paedophile. The Mirror would have a field day.

I have been reading the Annotated Version, which in one way is very lovely as I can keep flipping back to translate the French exactly instead of relying on my own rough linguistic estimations, but it also means that a book which should have taken me a maximum of five hours to read has taken me weeks- snatching time to delve into it here and there. Because you have to delve. It is not one of those books you can simply skim read or flick through when there is something else going on around you. You need a decent forty minute bus journey, or an entire pot of tea, just to begin making headway. Like I found with Crash last month, I am experiencing increasing difficulty in reading very image-laden books. I think it is because I force myself to concentrate on the way they are writing- the modification, allusions and imagery used. Actually the way they form sentences and how each writers' style differs from another quite significantly on that basis if no other. Which is interesting but fucking laborious. Possibly I am subconsciously trying to see the ties between visual and written art in mental preparation for my Masters. I bloody well hope so. It is either that or I am just a pedantic sod with nothing better to do.


Oh, and listen to Menomena. Wildly different songs but all extremely enjoyable in their own way, even though they do occasionally seem to be in danger of slipping into something like parody of various genres.