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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

coelacanthm is of course very pretty, and dresses well (though I think Nine has the edge there) but it's interesting that she chooses Trever Brown as her favourite artist. I once had a go at him (in an interview with Quentin Crisp of this parish, actually, for Terror Tales, a goth zine) for making S&M cute. Again, a kawaii version of that "dark religion" thing, and it all veers off into tattoos and piercings and Suicide Girls territory.

I've been disappointed with my friend Toog's obsession with Asia Argento for a few years now, for much the same reasons. I consider Asia Argento a "fashion goth".

It's really interesting to me that Japanese women who stay in the Japanese culture zone are never "fashion goths" in this way. The photos they take tend to be much more positive and life-affirming: tendril ferns, a clear sky, a delicious cake, a seahorse. That positivity shows that Japan is part of another culture bloc. Because they never had Christianity in Japan, they never got too gothy. It's a fantastic relief, to be in that Shinto-Buddhist cultural zone and not a post-Christian one. I plan to steep myself in that, and make my next album the least gothy record ever made. Just pure unbridled pleasure and positivity and constructiveness. The fashion goths will hate it.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I don't really like the Trevor Brown stuff either, and a few hours after I had glanced at coelacanthum's page found myself wondering what would become of her in a few years time. Her "shtick" is quite clearly a game for her right now, one at which she has remarkable fluidity. She obviously quite intelligent and talented. So, will she be unlucky enough to fall into some kind of self-destructive vortex or will she outgrow it?

As for Japanese culture being death and violence free, I think you are mistaken there. There are a host of counter examples. I'm really not fluent
with these because I have no interest in them myself, but some random examples come to mind like rope bondage, violent & sexual but aesthetic films such as "Irezumi" (this one is beautiful enough that I would recommend it anyways), etc... I've seen some pretty weird things in the "ura" side of big Shinto shrines to know that it's not all about life-afirmation.

Overall perhaps we're less likely to see the "dark side" because there's a more judicious separation of ura & omote. And I'm happy about this. I'd rather not be confronted with negative and violent imagery everywhere all the time.

BTW skull shirts and accessories are very big in Japan this summer, but that's just because young people want to be up-to-date.

[coelacanthm.livejournal.com]

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*that was me falling down a vortex of self-destruction, just in case you were wondering! Except that since we're on the internet and I have absolutely zero skills as a visual artist, it's just gonna have to have to be an upside down triangle of self-destruction for now. i know, i know, it doesn't have the same sort of ring that "vortex of self-destruction" does, but hey, it's the best i could do for now!

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

[Let's try that again]

Oh Wow! Touched by greatness.

I doubt we could interest you in the

Momus Fashion Goth Remix Contest (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sparkligbeatnic/34629.html).

[channel83.livejournal.com]

Why would you have a go at somebody for making S/M cute?

I am puzzled.