Beauty No. 7: Nine

[imomus]

So, Beauty No. 7: the culmination and climax of my beauty series. One object, one sound, one person or image that sums up the nec plus ultra of beauty for me, personally. What to choose? The art clown sleeve for Bjork's beautiful new album "Drawing Restraint 9"? An anti-war song from "Cripple Crow", the new Devendra Banhart record? An outrageous outfit by Cassetteplaya? A poem by Paul Celan?

But no. I am a man, a heterosexual. The most beautiful thing in the world for me can only be a woman. So I have decided that Beauty No. 7 is Nine. I don't just mean how Nine looks and dresses, but also how she sees. Nine lives for and in intense beauty. Nine is half French and half Japanese. Nine is a student of literature. Nine is a brilliant photographer. I admire Nine's style and find her life more glamourous than my own. I don't know Nine, we had some brief correspondence a year ago (so I can tell you that Abe Kobo is her favourite writer) which I spoiled by my impatience, my clownish rush to lust. I am in a relationship now and I think Nine is too — she's certainly surrounded by beautiful boys. Nine and I have some friends in common, and we both live in Berlin, but we never see each other and probably wouldn't speak if we did. I'm twenty years older than Nine, for Beauty's sake, she could be my daughter! But in some way, Nine can all the better represent Beauty No. 7 for the fact that our relationship is so unreal, stymied, embarrassing, problematical, detached, mediated. I consume only the parts of her life that Nine selects and posts, but based on the glimpses I get of her life, I trust her sense of beauty more than I trust my own. And that, for an artist, is the most humbling thing to say. Nine's is a world sparse in detail but rich in texture and imagination, feeling and soul, like the world you create in your adolescent head around a rock star you don't know too much about. Nine really is a rock star and (because I'm just irrepressibly chatty, daily, political, familiar, didactic) I really am not. Nine is the secret muse of my Otto Spooky album, her influence is all over it. I could tell you exactly which lines and which songs her beautiful ghost haunts, but that would just spoil the mystery, wouldn't it?

Well, so, voila, it's all very blushy and bashable, isn't it, very LiveJournaly (see Chapter 7 of that link, "The Structural Meaning of LiveJournal-Bashing"). Finally beauty is something almost embarrassingly personal and situated. It's something a man feels and, in the manner of a 12 year old girl, confesses in his LiveJournal. Perhaps that's why I'm here. Deep down, I'm a 12 year old girl. And a lesbian, apparently.

Comments

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

She certainly has good taste in authors.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

does she know she's the star of all that?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

One of her friends will probably tell her and they'll mock me cruelly for precisely 3 minutes and 22 seconds then forget all about it.

almost anon

[(Anonymous)]

Nine functions as a pluggo for this mish-mash.

[merzbow.livejournal.com]

I`m totally with you on this!

Gushing

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post. I do appreciate gushing.

Talking of "embarrassingly personal and situated", here are three such things that mean beauty to me, but may, to others, mean I am a loon:

1. The cover of Hunky Dory by David Bowie.

2. Kate Bush's leotard.

3. Tom Baker's portrayal of Doctor Who.

Re: Gushing

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was gazing in wonder at the back cover of "Hunky Dory" when I was staying with a friend in London recently. I think that's the image I like most of Bowie, with that long hippy hair, and the scrawly scribbly writing, and him calling himself "the actor" and acknowledging all his artistic debts. I think, because of that photo, I fell irreversibly in love with him when I was a 12 year old girl.

[jbmurray.livejournal.com]

I am a man, a heterosexual. The most beautiful thing in the world for me can only be a woman

Really? Why is that?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a rhetorical question, isn't it? (Don't answer, my question is rhetorical!)

[(Anonymous)]

And maya?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Maya is Nine's best friend. Maya and Nine were both there when Toog and I played at Pelagique (http://www.imomus.com/dailyphoto280702.html) in Paris in 2002.

[sam-solea.livejournal.com]

Aah, you like Paul Celan! I read 'Corona' just before breakfast and it's beautiful.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Paul Celan, Corona (http://www.artofeurope.com/celan/cel2.htm):

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people
look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

I feel extreme empathy.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Are you cheating beauty by not reproducing?

[shadowblue.livejournal.com]

Aw, we all have a little 12 year old girl and lesbian in us.

Besides (or, perhaps, quite properly because of) that, I relate completely to this entire post.

[(Anonymous)]

Who was it said 'everyone is a woman when they write' ie in the female mindset, so from a Livejournal point of view lesbianism is perfectly straight.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

Nick, i can't believe you. You're my absolute hero.
I'm maybe going to witness those 4'33" and say nothing

Stadium Blog?

[(Anonymous)]

Someone's started a thread on ilx about Rhodri Marsden.

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=6100532#unread

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

O'Neil's thougts in that article feel quite accurate.

yours is an interesting presence on livejournal. bit of a big kid on the playground, not that that's a bad thing. quite the informative and interactive toy, this Click Opera...all the content of a "issue-blog" without the fourth wall. i used to read your essays on the old site but never felt comfortable in responding then.

i like the interior glimpse in this entry but it feels more voyeuristic than reading the same thing in another blog might. uncharacteristically LiveJournaly, yes...if only because of the nature of emotion involved & the infrequency of its display. plus it's about a fellow LJ-er which is often tricky business [in my experience].

[thelostmaverick.livejournal.com]

so did the drawing restraint soundtrack live up to your expectations?


i enjoyed it, but i know some people and reviews found it 'difficult' and 'pretentious' blah blah etc

[(Anonymous)]

given everything you've said about nine i believe hisae is by far the more beautiful. and all the more beautiful for you having posted at length on your infatuation with another. what is beauty for hisae? (that's not rhetorical).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"It's changeable, and maybe it's easy to say it's beauty just for appearance and artificial level, but the real beauty is something that has got more depth. Maybe that doesn't last for long, but it can change into another beauty."

[(Anonymous)]

Are we any closer to a definition? Smooth space and 'sorrow speeded up', hymnal strings and Satie? Something blue because we're not around? A snowball down the mountain or a carnival balloon. The frosty fold of a child's mitten?

who are you jealous of?

[deadbatteries.livejournal.com]

hmmm nine. i think that i'm not as impressed mostly because she kind of reminds me of a more polished, more educated version of the girls i see running around the newestwrinkle community (i admit to lurking on said community sometimes. there's just something so interesting and odd about girls who take pictures of themselves and their clothes and argue over whether wedged shoes are ugly are not. hee). but perhaps i'm just jealous of her aesthetics and lifestyle, like the way i'm jealous of miranda july (have you ever visited learningtoloveyoumore.com?). i'm always jealous of people until i start learning their favorite brands of cereal or soap, etc., and then i realize maybe i should be more wistful than jealous.

[din-din-dote.livejournal.com]

This is honest, this is good.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know, I found her work particularly blase and inocuous. What I mean is that apart from her being decidedly more attractive than most LJers, and living in Europe, her work and LiveJournal are pretty much identical to a thousand others I've come across. What is it exactly that you see in her work, besides her hapa-good looks?

Of course, I don't claim that anything I've ever done is any better, and it is most probably worse. But I still do not think her works stand out in any special way.

inparticolare nsi

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

"Unabashed Narcissist" is transformed into "Relentless Seeker of the Truth" when you're a bohemian artist.


That's why.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I kind of agree with Anonymous here and looks wise I actually prefer ariael.

coelacanthm is another interesting LJer, her band is on John Zorn's Tzadik.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Had a quick browse of coelacanthm's LJ. Very amusing. Thanks!

almost anonymous

[(Anonymous)]

revel in your camaraderie. continue. for whose sake?

call me the depersonalized bottlenecker who half-chuckling.

Re: almost anonymous

[(Anonymous)]

squeeze ..IS.. between who.. and half...thanks , ha xo

[me-aulnes.livejournal.com]

what right do you have to put someone's private life on display and by doing so invite the judgement of others?

you're a sad sad fuck, and i wish you'd get over yourself. there might be a legion of similarly pathetic creeps out there who are all too willing to pat you on the back for perving on some girl half your age, but their adulation doesn't make this ok.

my, yes, you are brave for admitting your feelings, and lordy, how honest you are, but friend, you've just invited the eyes of your entire herd-like friendslist upon an individual who had no say in the matter.

isn't about time to grow the fuck up?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand your problem. Last time I checked the internet was a big tangle of links pointing all over the place. For instance, by posting here you have linked to your own journal, which a "herd" of people can now read. Nine has also posted on Click Opera in the past, allowing this same "herd" to inspect her own journal. Last time I checked LiveJournal allowed various degrees of privacy in its posting structure. Nine makes her posts public. Last time I checked, it wasn't a crime to commend a brilliant photographer on work she posts on the internet. And last time I checked Nine's site she was welcoming new Friends to her "friends of" list, people who were part of the "herd" you denounce here. So I have to ask what right you have to be the knight chevalier and take someone's public life off display and by doing so uninvite the appreciation of others?

[scharnweber.livejournal.com]

yo nine is all right but check out this bitch
steez (http://www.pamelaanderson.com/portal/journal/journal.asp)

institutionalised

[(Anonymous)]

ha! you are funny/sad/pathetic/herioc.

a bit like starting a new job.
a bit like leaving the city for the small town.
a bit like attending a child's birthday party.

it's good to be reminded that not everyone is like you.