"The face of total evil is the face of total need."

New ArtistsThat Are Actually Good

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:44:33 GMT

I have the attitude of a seventy year old when it comes to music. It isn't unknown for me to mutter 'young people these days' etc. when I hear stuff like Umbrella in shops. The muttering is quickly followed by walking out.

Here is some stuff I personally feel is good, or at least interesting. It's certainly not Rihanna.

Marina and the Diamonds:

The Real Tuesday Weld:

The Real Tuesday Weld vs. The Puppini Sisters (beware, it's icky):

Emmy the Great:

Camille O Sullivan:

And, in an effort to restore the gender balance, Franz Ferdinand:

Anger

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:41:43 GMT

STOP WITH THIS TWILIGHT OBSESSION U.K PUBLISHING FIRMS!

Seriously. I don't care how many thirteen year old girls buy the book.

This file is saved as 'The Horror':

Edward and Bella's favourite book. Bah.

I will just summarise by saying this - I hate Twilight. I hate, hate, hate it and have more jusficiation for doing so than I usually do in these kind of cases because I suffered through the first 120 pages of it.

Anyway, I need to pack. Be seeing you, and if anyone is here from FF.net, please nag me to write. It's not like of capability, it's pure, unadulerated laziness.

Chapter Ten

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:43:09 GMT

Okay, I lied.

Toby had found a few of his favorite figures and was playing with them on the floor, and after returning Lancelot to the bed I joined him. He was delighted to have someone to play with, and told me in a remarkably solemn voice that he was He-Man and I was his archenemy, Skeletor. I moved my action figure around mechanically while Toby enthusiastically simulated battle cries and repeatedly tried to knock my figure over, winning every time because I held it loosely.

Toby and I spent lots of time playing silly, childish games together. We acted out Cowboys and Indians dozens of times and I always ended up being the tragic, doomed Indian. I soon perfected a death act. When Toby’s plastic pistol sounded my hands would move suddenly to my heart and I would keel over, sprawling elaborately over the grass and remaining perfectly still until Toby ordered me to get up and become Skeletor for him.

I returned the book to its place calmly. Nothing was confirmed, I told myself. For all I knew, Emily Brontë had written an alternative version of her book where Cathy and Heathcliff confessed their undying love for each other in chapter two.

I couldn’t help but wonder what she would look like. My clippings of her had stopped years before, and my memories of her face were foggy. In my mind, she was a magazine cover. The picture had been taken for a minor teen magazine, not long after her high school graduation. In the image, she wore a blue, polka-dotted dress, her black hair was pin straight and she had turned her head toward to the camera. Her red mouth was caught in an enigmatic half-smile, her cheeks were pink and soft, and the outline of her lovely blue eyes had been traced with silver eye shadow. She was the image of perfection.

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The Wuthering Heights video can be credited to Nienna.

Sleep Never Looked This Good!

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:00:55 GMT

I have a confession; there are three illustrators in my life. Their names are Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Today, the latter wins.

Drink Wine: for 'neath the clay in silent gloom
Long shalt thou sleep, with none to share thy tomb;
Reveal this hidden secret unto none -
The wither'd tulip ne'er again will bloom

And, because I can and I wanted something to go along with the sleep theme. A video from my favourite 'no one in the entire world has heard of them' band, The Real Tuesday Weld, with guest vocals by Cibelle. The film is positively spellbinding:

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I never realized posting pretty pictures could be so addictive...

Say it with me: I hate formatting, I hate formatting, I hate formatting....

This is the fourth edit of this post, and it will be the last...

It'd better be, anyway...

Chapter Eight: The Wiz and the Wuthering

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:45:21 GMT

For now, this is the end.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

I was too tired and excited to locate my nightclothes, so I simply stripped down to my T-shirt and went to bed in that. Before drawing the curtains to, I stared out onto the city. I got a good view of the car packed streets, and made out hundreds of tiny, scurrying figures in the light radiated by the huge, high wattage advertisements that were stuck to every significant building for miles. I was glad my window was closed, if it hadn’t been the city would have produced a roar. I had a ridiculous impulse to cite Mister Baum as I looked out, but a yawn warped my face before I had the chance and I went to bed instead.

However, I managed to track down the town’s theatre - The Harlequin. It was up an obscure street, and I had to apologize to half a dozen people for wasting their time before I found a person who could direct me to it. I felt crushed when I saw it. It was embarrassingly small and the posters only announced one show; a comedy called You Can’t Take It With You.

"Do you want me to stay?"

I have never wanted to nod more in my entire life. I wanted to launch myself across the car and embrace him, I wanted to cling to him and for him to cling to me back. I wanted him to be Burt Lancaster to my Deborah Kerr, kissing each other passionately on a sun-baked beach. But I didn’t move. I just continued to stare at the raindrops as they slipped down the windscreen.

As I chewed my sandwich (back in bed) I read the first few pages of Wuthering Heights. I had meant to start it months before, but hadn’t found the time. I was bored of it by the time I had finished the sandwich; the blurb had lied to me, I could see no trace of a free spirited Cathy or a brooding, conflicted Heathcliff. I had just read four pages about a dull, unremarkable man’s struggle to find a place to stay. I put it down on the floor, grunting in annoyance when I stumbled over it as I took my crumb-covered plate back to the kitchen downstairs.

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I love the version of the Kate Bush song Wuthering Heights I've tacked on at the end, mainly because it becomes weird by virtue of the its being an ordinary take on a bizarre sounding song.

Chapter Seven: Heroes and their Holy Houses

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:45 GMT

Aloha, reader. The photo dump for chapter seven follows.

Mr. Lawrence got his revenge a few months later when he cast me as Hero in the school’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. God, I hated that character. She was wetter than the Pacific Ocean, and showed a talent for only one thing: fainting. By the end of rehearsals I would have willingly put my hands around my own neck and squeezed to spare myself having to say another one of her lines.

I found Orwell’s book quite amusing, mainly because the most remarkable thing that happened to me in 1984 was viewing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the cinema with Dad and Irene. It scared the bejeebus out of me, and I had a horrible, horrible nightmare afterwards: I watched myself drown in a pit that seethed with insects and vermin, and I was powerless to reach a hand out and save the other me. Fear paralyzed me. I woke up at two-thirty in the morning, sweating and breathing raggedly, feeling like I had my throat crushed. I sat up and pulled my blanket back to get up and go into Dad’s room for comfort but stopped when I remembered Irene was with him. I lay back down and closed my eyes. Moments like that reminded me exactly why my stepmother incited jealously.

My parents bought me the Walkman I had been bothering them about for months, and a bundle of cassette tapes to go with it. I’m sure you don’t care, but I am going to list them anyway; I have them at hand, you see. I became the proud owner of Slippery When Wet (I was infatuated with Jon Bon Jovi at the time a fact that was testified to by the huge poster of him I had in my bedroom), Houses of the Holy (Dad, surprisingly considering his overall conservatism, adored rock music) and True Blue (Irene, unsurprisingly, found great pleasure in pop). Normally, I would have hated being forced to listen to music chosen by my parents, but I didn’t complain. I actually found some of it quite enjoyable, in small doses anyway.

Chapter Six: Poets and Princesses

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:42:38 GMT

An economy of images this time, but the included images are very important to the story. I will warn now, I can never please myself so the wording is likely to change slightly when the final, final edits are posted.

I could visualize Ophelia effortlessly: she was being borne to her grave by the gentle flow of a sun-flecked river. Brightly colored blossoms were clutched loosely in one of her beautifully formed hands, and the fingers of the other broke through the water’s surface, feebly trying to stop themselves being submerged. Her lovely ashen face was surrounded by a halo of wispy chestnut curls which bounced delicately on the surface of the water. Her face was frozen in an expression of absolute despair. Her pale, blue lips were parted slightly but I could tell her mouth had produced a gasp, not a word. Cold, bitter grief had smothered her voice. The scene was astonishingly vivid, as if I had recently witnessed Ophelia’s lonely, quiet death from the bank of the river and passed an account of it onto Shakespeare.

I looked at her -- and froze. It was me. The angel was me. Her gown, her elaborately arranged hair and her startlingly white skin made me recognize her from my dream. She seemed flawless at first: one of her fine hands was pressed against her heart, and her skin was as white as fresh milk which I couldn’t help think made her look slightly wrong, wrong in the way a beautiful, marble effigy is wrong. Although I couldn’t think why, she wasn’t fully convincing. I examined her more closely. Her hair was a bed of delicate, silver threaded curls. Her profile was hard to make out; my eyes were denied her face. My gaze traveled down instead and I stared at her neck; it was dominated by a diamond necklace that flickered in the final glow of the sun. It climbed and fell with her weak, strained breaths,. She was trembling; her closely-bound chest shuddered from the effort it took to survive. I frowned; she wasn’t supposed to struggle, there wasn’t meant to be any pain. Shunning my concerns, I moved on, taking in the sight of the dazzling white gown that contained her small, feeble looking body. It was the same dress I had worn in my dream. The beautiful, snow-white dream that had seen him take me in his arms and dance with me.

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The effigy in the second image is of a real person,Victoire Auguste Antoinette of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, who died in 1857 at the age of 35, a minor German royal. She died due to complications from childbirth. Hers was the most appropriate effigy I could find to illustrate what I am trying to get across.

Elizabeth Siddal, the model for Ophelia in the first (and very famous) painting by John Everett Millais, died at the age of 32 under tragic and heavily debated circumstances that are too complex and convuluted to write out.

Chapter Five: Bands, Boys and Broadway

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:12:08 GMT

I have recently become extremely obsessed with an anime called Blood+, which is bad because I need to be working and should not be humouring my obsession by watching a 50 episode long anime...

Anyway, chapter five. Lots of photos this time. I will warn in advance that there won't be any more pictures posts for the stage of the story where Sarah enters fantasy land...

So, chapter five. The first picture is dedicatded to misofuhni, for painstakingly talking me through the popular culture of the eighties.

Once every mark of the old, immature Sarah had been banished to the attic, I reformed myself, becoming a normal, inoffensively-rebellious girl. I brought posters of rock stars and teen idols to stick to my wall, listening to their music on the radio and renting their films. I soon knew all about Bon Jovi and dutifully purchased their singles, playing them at full volume in my room. Tom Cruise’s dully handsome face swiftly became familiar, and I had soon seen all of the films of his they had at the rental store in town. Irene poked her head through the doorway when I was watching one of them, sweetly asking if I would like a snack. She was thrilled by my efforts; her step-daughter was finally displaying telltale signs of normality.

The record I played was the weirdest song I have ever heard. It wasn’t really a song; it was more like a recording of a solemn voiced girl saying strange, ambiguous things. It was very fragmented, I got the impression that parts of the song were missing. The record player hadn’t been used in a long time, and the music blared when I first started playing the song. I hastily turned it down, letting the song play quietly. It unsettled me even more when the girl singer began to whisper. I lifted the needle away before it could end.

On one occasion, I told them about the time my mother’s clever, well connected boyfriend had introduced me to Patti LuPone in 1980 after a performance of Evita. He knew I idolized her, and orchestrated the encounter as a treat. She bent down until her eyes were level with mine, shook my small, podgy hand and asked if I had enjoyed the show. I wanted to say yes, but my reply got stuck half way down my throat and I ended up glancing shyly at the floor. She laughed and got up, moving away. I remember watching her beautiful white gown trail across the floor, it was so awkward and heavy she had to stop and hoist the back of it up before she could walk on. She had joked about it to her friends, and the last thing I heard from her was her loud, boisterous laugh. Both of my friends gasped in amazement and bombarded me with questions after I offered a lengthy, mythologizing explanation of who Patti LuPone was.

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Chapter Four: Nostalgia Land

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:35:39 GMT

Howdy folks, here is the photo (and, in this case, video) dump for chapter four.

I felt sad when Dad left, vulnerable and exposed. I remembered the time I caught the flu when I was seven. Dad had had to go to work so he had asked Nana and Granddad to come and take care of me. I had hated him for leaving me. His abandonment of me had made me feel unwanted and unloved; I managed to convince myself he preferred his miserable old clients to me, his sweet, lovable little girl. I was open about my misery. I wept into my pillow. I screamed and wailed and kicked when Nana tried to comfort me. In fact, I refused to calm down at all until I was presented with a huge bag of sweets; I sucked on them continuously for hours. I chewed them silently; the only sound in my room was the obnoxious clicking noise produced whenever a sweet knocked against my teeth.

Irene subscribed to it and back issues were scattered all over the house. The sleek-haired models that occupied its covers always looked the same: they boasted the same forced smiles and pink glossed lips. They looked maddeningly insipid and I hated them.

Ironically, I could be one of those girls now. I look starved, courtesy of my illness; my looks are dark and well-defined and my face is strikingly hollow. All I need is crimped hair, bangs and a great big smile.

MTV never ceased to amaze me with its weirdness, and the music video that was playing on this occasion was no exception. It featured, among other things, dancing ninjas, leather encased teddy boys, and youths who pranced about artistically in their underpants. Incredibly, all of these elements were packed into a film that was barely five minutes long. After a few minutes of intermittent strangeness, the camera pulled back to reveal a group of demon-eyed, slick-haired choir boys. They chanted the chorus and, for no easily apparent reason, one of them swooped across the screen, seemingly intent on terrorizing the poofy-haired singer. Her lack of reaction suggested she saw flying choirboys all the time. At that point, I changed the channel. My life was disturbed enough as it was.

A young woman in an elegant gown was traveling through a moodily lit corridor. She wasn’t walking, she was gliding. Long, billowy curtains blew towards her slowly, brushing the hem of her dress as she passed them. Eventually, she reached a door that spoke to her in an obscure whisper; it was lit by a candelabrum that was clutched by a human hand.

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The film being referred to last of all is La Belle et La Bete, by Jean Cocteau.

Chapter Three: The Whore of Babylon

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:06:13 GMT

For this chapter, I'm going for a minimalistic approach. Two photos and more writing:

I’ll never forget following Nana around the house as she took every image of my mother off display, moving from room to room methodically, only pausing when she came across a photo of the runaway Mrs. Williams. She would pick the photo up and drop into the large, black bag she was dragging along behind her. I asked her what she was doing, I asked again and again, but she didn’t speak. I was never told why all the photos of my mother were thrown away; I had to puzzle out the truth out for myself.

“I viewed a woman astride a scarlet colored beast, full of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in scarlet, and decked out with precious stones and pearls, having a golden chalice in her hand full of abominations.”

I think that’s right.

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It was just that she always treated me with a small dose of apprehension. I think it was because my looks meant I reminded her of my mother. Nana made no secret of her opinion of her; Linda Williams was wicked, the great whore, the traitor whose hated name was not to be said aloud.

Chapter Two: Idols and Illusions

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:32:10 GMT

I hate page breaks, I hate, hate, hate them. Anyway, my internet broke down for the last three days and I have only just got back on. In the meantime, I have received twenty-five emails (admittedly, most of them were junk), confirmation that I have work experience at a television production company next year and more new posts in my forums than I have time to read.

Sometimes, I can't help but think how terrifying dependence on the internet is.

So, chapter two:

Before I started writing this again I was re-reading a memoir by one of Jareth’s aunts, I am halfway through the chapter the deals with her marriage to a man two thousand years her senior. She was an extremely malicious person, and spent a great deal of the passage describing the plans for revenge she was finalizing as she walked down the aisle. When I read her story, I am never sure whether I should be amused or disturbed.

He had the strangest beautiful face I had ever seen on a man; his thick, golden hair made him seem oddly angelic. Maybe otherworldly would be a better term, he never seemed prim enough to be an angel. He was English, intelligent, and sounded ten times more cultured than anyone else I knew. I had only met him a few times, but he had managed to impress me and I could never bring myself to hate him like I hated Irene.

The only way I can describe my position is like this; I was in a tiny, coffin like room and watched myself through a window as I drifted aimlessly through a beautiful ballroom. Many others were in the place with me; the room was thronged with masked people who shot me sly, sideways looks.

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The photo of 'Jeremy' is, of course, of David Bowie.

Chapter One: Consumption and Construction

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:51:57 GMT

I am supposed to be dying prettily in my room right now, wilting slowly like an exotic flower that has been kept out of the sun. But I refuse to lie limply in my bed - saying nothing, doing nothing - and become the human embodiment of such an over exploited simile. I may be many things, but I am adamant I am not and never will be a pot-plant.

The portrait of me is a poor likeness, it makes me look very vapid and bland. I wouldn't be suprised if it turned out to be a slightly altered image of a completely diffirent girl.

I've lost a lot of weight and my skin is pale, I look like I've been made-up for a Chaplin film. If anyone were to draw a finger across my face and realize it isn't powdered they'd think I've had all the blood drained out of me, I look unnatural. I'm cold as well, though I'm always cold so that isn't very worrying. Recently, my eyes have become red and swollen. They sting when they're exposed to bright light, so the candle stays on the other side of the table. No one else knows this, but I've been coughing up blood. I think that's bad, so I don't think about it much.

Then again, my vision's getting better and I'm not coughing better. I've improved a lot.

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Sarah is suffering from tuberculosis, what used to be known as consumption. The photo at the bottom is a composite depicting a highly romanticised vision of what it was like to suffer TB.