to reclaim the romantic rejected by leftists, then kidnapped by reactionaries.



when be is finale of seam

Charles James


Images from 
Beyond Fashion

Metropolitan Museum

May 8-August 10, 2014

for larger text with images, zoom in, under View.

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I, art, a perfect paradox, am only naked here in being the clothes themselves, stripped down to my essence -- love not yet named, stirring on the ocean floor in the heart of darkness to break into life's light spun into the cocoon of dreams... 

Oh joy, the lower I kneel, the higher I feel,  my stitches those of a surgeon suturing the wound in the world, the fabric of the word world awakening gently to float across the floor, a vibration spreading in all directions, a frothy undulation, rising up into a structured form, a torso with unfurling swirling train, all self-contained, placid in motion, no extremities. 

Ever the abject servant of the wickedest stepsister, all the world's vanity, ever I kneel before, then spiral up and down around the body. 
On bended knee, I pin and stitch, lost in the kiss of my prince, poverty of spirit.  Oh marvelous kiss -- I hope others in the throes of it don't lack imagination and must lose it to know what they have -- but alas, it is a fallen world, and when off duty, duty necessitates even my donning gas mask and plastic gloves and moving money. If I breathe one whiff of it though, if it touches the fingers it passes over, I die.

  

Did all this really happen?  I thought it was a dream until I slid into the prince's slipper.  Sigh, I now must play the queen and rule the land.  I must do well, must carefully choose counselors and increase the staff of servants to continue to perform all the sewing by hand, lost in that kiss of sincere spiritual poverty.  At least I've been set free of this banal label, art, with all the nonsense it protects, I have the key and can pass at will in and out of this chattering monkey cage they call the art world.  

Of course, the wicked stepsisters and their henchmen constantly foment rebellion. When I speak from the balcony of the royal palace, the shouts are hurled -- Oh how pompous, how infantile, how absurd! This undisciplined populace has never seen anything so hilarious. 

Quiet! Quiet!  This is the voice of art!  I'm a good queen, a patroness of the arts, even "art" I guess, but be careful, even Elizabeth made use of the dungeon!  Remember where I, art, came from. I know who my only real friends are -- the mice.  

My voice is charming indeed, the harder to hear, the more enticing and inspiring to the next inmost inner artist longing to be set free again and again and again... 

The news is spreading, even a few cheers here and there of all hail the queen!  Ah it responded to my entreaty!  

Oh my people, it's a telegram from death! Death is now willing to negotiate, and to prove its good will, has allowed art herself, that which inheres in all the holidays, that which whispers from between the lines, from all the cracks where the light gets in, she who died, or rather always was dead -- a spirit moving as it lists, from where and where going, nobody knows -- to appear before the eyes of all; even Orpheus staggers about here, drunk on the sight of her persistent form.  As if the price had been paid, and the world redeemed.  Alas, many are called but few are chosen.