Funeral of my Muse

In the throws of a despairing Sunday mourning,

I drew my belt to

A casualty:

my written word.

Turning a frail stature to the pavement, facing a coffin, a cask

where feet slapped upon stone in motions filled with deliberate, yet careful steps.

As I left behind the sullen church and its congregation (the celebrates of another lost)

I had to admit that the vapid transience of the living was something to be admired.

God

was he who seemed to be a spirit

a-drifting presence whom bounced through

the atmosphere, from cloud to cloud.

His creed seemed akin to the words, my words: void of expression; yet implicated with mass.

God, was he,

who was hollow.

Like the places where

 

Vowels and consonants gathered together

in the hardened pews of my teenage mind;

huddled in the dark expanse

with but a single match.

 

 

 

Royal, Curial Robes: On The Sape, and Niccolo Machiavelli

I credit these insights into Niccolo Machiavelli to an Politics teacher who handed me a copy of The Prince last term. “You’ll love it,” He proclaimed. When I noted the size – a mere 150 pages, at most – he went on, “It’s only a pamphlet.”

But unlike any ordinary ‘pamphlet’, The Prince was no skim-reading. It took around four attempts before I could totally immerse myself in its literature; Machiavelli’s ideas (“It’s better to be feared than to be loved”) appearing obtuse, even masochistic.

However, at the heart of Machivelli’s declaration of Loyalty to his Sovereign blooms an intense want, perhaps need, to find himself equal with the institutions of monarchy, church and state which he has long admired. In a letter to a friend, he wrote:

‘When evening comes I return home and go into my study, and at the door I take off my daytime dress covered in mud and dirt, and put on royal and curial robes; and then decently attired I enter the courts of the ancients, where affectionately greeted by them, I partake of that food which is mine alone and for which I was born; where I am not ashamed to talk with them and inquire the reasons of their actions; and they out of their human kindness answer me, and for four hours at a stretch I feel no worry of any kind; I forget all my troubles, I am not afraid of poverty or death. I give myself up entirely to them.’

It’s interesting to note that in order for Machiavelli to fully engage himself in his writing, he had to change out of his ‘daytime dress’ and into ‘royal and curial robes’. He goes on to say that this ‘decent attire’ allows him to portray a sense of authority, in which he can converse with the ‘ancients’ – the monarchy, his prince – with no fear of intimidation. By donning a different outfit, he feels he can appeal to the grandeur of his superiors just as he himself may feel superior.

This ideology has transcended all time and place in fashion. The belief that clothes (well, their aesthetic value) can make us ‘feel good’ that has ensured the Fashion Industry pride of place within Capitalist society. Moreover, just like in the 16th Century, these clothes may also emulate power, authority, and legitimacy – they not only state our beauty, but these appearances may also state our wealth and social standing, too. 

Outwith the context of Prada Bags and Jimmy Choos, a modern take on this theory can be found in Brazzaville, the largest city  in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here, a group of men referred to as ‘The Sape’ – The Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People – express a ‘joie de vivre’ through the wearing of tailored suits, designer kilts and other forms of flamboyant dress. The Sapeurs are part of a bloodline, passed down from father to son, in honor of a single tradition: to perfect ‘The Art of being a Gentleman’.  In spite of living in relative poverty amidst the struggles of the state’s political upheaval, these men manage to cobble together enough Parisian couture to make their first great ancestor – thought to be André Grenard Matsoua, a congolese politician newly returned from France in the twenties – go wide-eyed with complete, unadulterated glee.

 

Photo credits: Danielle Tamgani, Gentlemen of The Bacongo (2009)

Inspired from the high fashions of other ‘Dandies’ – from Oscar Wilde to Prince Charles – The Sapeurs seek to emulate the amity one may feel when eyeing over the formal dress of a monarch, a prince, a saint – all at once, uplifting and reverent, in mutual respect of power, tradition, and self-expression these elitist fashions may emulate. The Sape may have more in common with Machiavelli’s robes than first impressions allow. There is hidden politics in the lapels of a Chanel Blazer, too: It is an act of cultural integrity. Once dismissed as ‘primal’, The Sapeurs of the Congo are effectively pledging their gratitude to the french missionaries who sought to civilize the congolese  via the trade of cloth: an effective ploy in re-establishing the Congolese ‘identity’ as men of great moral worth, not just as slaves.

To Machiavelli and to The Sapeurs,  fashion is more than a statement; expressing a fondness for tradition and culture they were born out of.

 

 

 

 

 

Strangers on the train, 1/7/2014

Portrait of an Artist

A lot of ideas that I’ve been having recently all revolve around the perception of the ‘Artist’. For example, what makes someone Artistic? Is the Artist really embodied in a person, a living entity, or is Art (to clarify, the need to create Art) just based upon a feeling? Is it really justified to refer to any one individual as an ‘Artist’, whilst others are so unworthy of such attention?

We have five senses: the freedom to touch, taste, smell, hear and to see. The latter is perhaps the most significant when referring to our ‘perception’ of the Artist – or indeed, anyone at all. First impressions are often driven by aesthetics.

This is ultimately what continues to make visuals (and the Artist, who creates them) so important. Each painting, sculpture, film, advertisement is subject to the utopia that is seeing and looking and thinking. Concepts can often satisfy in the same way they can contort; indulging the shallowest and yet, the most intrinsic of all our senses. This sense of stature behind the Artist’s occupation makes it all the harder to portrait an honest depiction of ‘self’.

In referring to the conflicting elements of ‘Stature’ and ‘Self’, I refer to Rene Magritte’s iconic Self-Portrait, The Son of Man (see below).

Rene Magritte’s ‘Son of Man’ (1946)

The Apple

Magritte was famed for an ardent hatred of symbolism. He used them nonetheless. Within this self-portrait, the viewer is forced to identify with a rather strange focal point: The apple. Positioned directly in front of his face, it conceals all of his facial features. Instead, it may be said that the Apple symbolizes identity, as much as the common forms of eyes, nose and mouth may do within a typical portrait. It may also be interesting to note that this apple sits directly in line with the eyes. Eyes are known in Christianity as ‘windows to the soul’:

“When too late, Adam and Eve saw the folly of eating forbidden fruit.”

–Genesis, 3:6

The symbol of the Apple is appropriated from the biblical passage of Genesis. This quote describes Adam (Son of Man) and Eve (Daughter of Women) surrendering to temptation (their ‘folly’) by eating Apples from the Garden of Eden. Within christian context, the eating of this ‘forbidden fruit’ has been the source of all greed in humanity. In using this symbol, Magritte forces the viewer to overlook appearances, and to instead look upon the ‘formers’ of his inner self: his greed, and his vanity – characteristics which define us all.

The Suit & The Bowler Hat

“Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

 -Magritte on ‘Son of Man’

A contradiction of sorts, Magritte was the ‘anti-hero’ of the Surrealist movement. This is illustrated in his wearing of a suit: the conventional working man’s dress. Despite reaching critical acclaim at several points within his lifetime, Magritte believed that his talent for painting was of no great stature, saying: “Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.” Magritte refused to reduce himself to the aprons and overcoats worn by his artistic contemporaries in front of the canvas; once claiming that beginning a new painting was no different to starting a working day, and so he should present himself at his best at all times. The Bowler Hat acts as an accessory to this formal attire.

When questioning how the ‘Artist’ should be portrayed, it is important to see Magritte’s ‘Son of Man’ beyond its pleasing imagery. In spite of Magritte’s great gift for painting, he felt himself defined by the very sins in which we all, as members of the human race, are guilty of; Ordinary, in any measure, from the suits he wore to the professional manner in which he worked for his living.

‘The Artist’ is a person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do.”

Rainer Maria Rilke is – and shall remain – one of my favourite poets.

This quote, taken from Letters to a Young Poet, describes the circumstances that every ‘creator’ (perhaps someone who is not quite a writer, poet, or painter) has to endure. The act of creating comes in mixed emotion. First, what Rilke words as ‘sadness’ – the fatal fear that the creator cannot create, for they have no mind to. This sadness ‘rises’; much like a tidal wave, easy to overwhelm.

The second phase of feeling is ‘restiveness’. Naturally, ‘restiveness’ opposes the ‘sadness’ which may cause artistic inactivity. Restiveness embodies the feeling that we must create, regardless of the what, the when, the why. Ironically, restiveness also can inspire. For poets like Rilke, this sense of mental disturbance reminded him of his calling as a writer. The quote continues:

“…You must think that

something is happening with

you, that life has not forgotten

you, that it holds you in its

hand; it will not let you fall.

Why do you want to shut out of

your life any uneasiness, any

miseries, or any depressions?

For after all, you do not know

what work these conditions are

doing inside you.”

In feeling so helpless in the absence of all desire to create, we unintentionally remind ourselves of the significance of our role as creators. As individuals, we all share a want to manufacture from life, and to emulate a sense of ‘self’ within creation.

The metaphor of the ‘hand’ is also a point of interest.

This bony, five-fingered appendage at the end of your arm is another mutual factor within the Human Race. All ideas manifest themselves in the hands. For example, the playing of an instrument to make music. Greater yet; the building of a home, a school, a hospital, from drawn architectural plans. Hands that act as the catalyst to social, political, economic change. As do our ideas: often formed from a single, distraught little thought.