Monday, March 25, 2013

Beyond the Runway

Sante d'Orazio, Versace, 1997.
Ethereal photographic treatment of fashion -- the fantasy beyond reality.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Buck Up

I have adopted the motto before to 'do one thing every day that scares you', and it has been really enlightening to notice those moments where fear paralyses you from action and, consequently, to let it go and move on.

I've also heard the expression 'Man Up', which in its batting around of gender in stereotypical ways really bothers me. Another expression in the vein of facing your fears and rising to the occasion which I think suits much better is 'Buck Up'. Whereas it is essentially the same as 'Man Up', somehow in jumping species, the use of the masculine gender as a verb doesn't seem as offensive. Man or woman, I think we can all buck up, i.e. don our antlers or horns and charge ahead!

Marc Swanson,  'Untitled (Black Fighting Bucks)', 2009


Saturday, March 16, 2013

Dance Me to the End of Love

I didn't realize Leonard Cohen's song grew out of such a place. Darkness inspires beauty.

"'Dance Me to the End Of Love' ... it's curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that's why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity."