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.

[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.

[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?

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.

[(Anonymous)]

And maya?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[jbmurray.livejournal.com]

I will answer. They were only semi-rhetorical questions.

Indeed, I'd have thought that such an assertion might be a good place to start a series of reflections on beauty, rather than a place to end.

Moreover, though I've enjoyed your previous six entries, I have to say I find this conclusion more than a little troubling. Given how much has been said about women and social expectations of beauty etc. Which is not to say that you can't or shouldn't conclude that the ideal type of that ideal type that is beauty should be (even for a heterosexual man) a woman; but that it can't simply presented as a given.

Anyhow, I'm hoping we'll have a week on ugliness next.

Re: Gushing

[jbmurray.livejournal.com]

Not the (original) cover of the The Man who Sold the World, then?

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't say that one is more Beautiful than the other.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the important word here is "situated". Finally, beauty is, in the old cliche, "in the eye of the beholder": subjective and situated. I'm very much against those people who try to argue that beauty is "objective", inherent in mathematical relations, or even nature. I think it's a projection of personal needs and preferences onto something out there in the world, very much like unrequited love.

[jbmurray.livejournal.com]

Hmm. There is, after all, a fair range of positions between those two (beauty as objective; beauty as projection of personal needs). As some of your previous entries have pointed out, for instance, it is also social and cultural: what or who is considered beautiful in Italy is not necessarily considered beautiful in Scotland.

It's also the basis of conversation, discussion, description, and communication. Which presumes both the possibility of disagreement but also the hope of a shared sense: if I like something, I tell you in the hope that you do to, and that my notion of what's beautiful isn't simply a solipsistic projection. I read your messages as endlessly looking for (or to create) such shared perceptions of beauty and taste.

Anyhow...

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

I feel extreme empathy.

[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.

[la-aquarius.livejournal.com]

Why not 4 minutes and 33 seconds? :D

Perhaps that's why I'm here. Deep down, I'm a 12 year old girl. And a lesbian, apparently.

Ha ha...I have to say this has been one of my favorite posts of yours so far, probably for the naked infatuation of it, and the the pleasant self-mockery. Thanks!

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Are you cheating beauty by not reproducing?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Why not 4 minutes and 33 seconds? :D

Yes, ho ho, I have to say that's much more likely!

[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.

[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

Re: Gushing

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I do like that cover, but for some reason it doesn't have quite the Sistine-Chapel status for me as the Hunky Dory cover with that I'm-the-twisted-name-on-Garbo's-eyes expression on Bowie's face.