My Darling Prometheus

My Darling Prometheus

A Song of Love

by Steven Holland

My darling Prometheus—

Prometheus my darling!

Bright angel of despair!

How dazzling you are!!!!

Blinding!

my burning eyes—

Your naked form                                                                    Oh!

more perfect than a sculptured bronze!

Prometheus!

Defiant!        Sullen!        Brooding!

Fucking HOT!!!

Victorious over the bourgeoisie!

Take me, sweet demigod!

            —with you I fly

above the low and conquered mountains

above all the mighty empires We have brought to ruin!

We soar high—

so high!

above the hypocrites in their holy houses

singing their hollow hymns

Let them have their fossilized morality—

They know nothing of our

Rare and radiant ecstasies!

                                    Oh Prometheus! Baby!

My longing for you is exquisite!

Now, Titan!

Ravish me!

Give me your glittering love

my glorious well-hewn god

that I, your darling sweet, may proclaim

a thousand litanies of delight!

            Now, Titan!

Now, Promethe!

Oh! OH! OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Sweet Promethe!

Ecstasy is upon us!!!!

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Jove miserere nobis

I am the rain

kissing your desolate cheek

                        Jove miserere nobis

            coursing down your noble chest

in streams of sweet despair

                        Jove miserere nobis

            falling to your lovely feet

bathing you, my Beauty

in my famished tears

                        Jove miserere nobis

            oh sweet Promethe

Jove miserere nobis

            my sweet Promethe

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! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!

            His Titanic Majesty!

Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!

            You! Darling of the Dawn!

Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!

            Triumphant! Victorious over the Universe!

Glorious! Glorious! Glorious!

            The gods can fuck themselves!

Conqueror! Conqueror! Conqueror!

            We are the Destroyer of Worlds!

Domine! Domine! Domine!

            How small are all the little, little kings!

Marvelous! Marvelous! Marvelous!

            Prométhée! Mon Chéri!

Fabulous! Fabulous! Fabulous!

            Fuck me, Radiant One!

Bring Heaven’s fire to the holy of holies!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Perdu!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Sauvage!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Maudit!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Glorieux!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Impossible!

Prométhée!

                        Mon Doux!

*

I first beheld you                                            (darling dearest demigod)

            in the earliest rays of dawn

—I longed to be her rosy fingers—

            caressing your sumptuous face

            to be the gleam in your luscious eyes

                        soft upon your majestic breast

                        my delicate play upon thy—

                                                                        wondrous places

Oh Promethe................

Now all Love’s splendor’s lost

Let us raise our virtuous hymn

In memory of Immortal Beauty

For you, my glorious, are Poetry

And you, my love, are Love

And you, my sweet, are Heaven

And you, my dream, are Lost

And you, my darling, are Beauty

And you, my beloved, are Light

And you, my heart, are Immortal

And you, my dearest, are Pain

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Prometheus the Bold!

—falling like

                    L          I           G         H         T          N         I           N            G

across the many-coloured world!

—falling like thunder against the dawn!

You!

            bitter burning brightest one!

Prometheus my Incroyable!

I your Merveilleuse!

We, like gods ascended

            gazed upon the earth

                                                                                    so far below!

and knew it to be ours

WE DEFY YOU, MIGHTY JOVE!

They will sing to you

            from their sick satanic shrine

            their memory is dead!

            their memory is fled!

Rise up! Rise up!

Holy ancient dawn!

We declare Prometheus

Unbound!

Unbound!

Unbound!

My darling one stole your precious sacred flame—

Well guess what, pompous Zeus?

                                                FUCK THE LAWS

!!!!!!!!

We don’t need the world, sweet Promethe—

                                                                                    Immortality is ours

*

Prometheus!

Dost thou hear me?

            Let not my prayer be lost to Heaven—

Oh Prometheus—

            no statue, finely chiseled, could match your delicious form

            no nymph’s wild cry could ever express thy ecstasies!

Take me, Titan!

Plunder me, Promethe!

Let there be nothing left of me

            that is not yours!

Prometheus, my darling—

            don’t you remember who I am?

!!!!

I am your famous, I am your fabulous!

I am your glittering glamorous!

I am your rare resplendent Queen

            —opulent and obscene!

I am your trembling Antoinette

            —perfumed, precious, and perverse!

I await thy fire, brave demigod

            —do not keep me waiting

for an empty eternity!

I am silky soft

            quaking beneath your

                                                            electric fingers

Prometheus! I!

am your luscious and fuckable Queen!

Promethe, look at me!

Let me stare into your endless eyes

That you may know the fury of my love

And the rage of my desire!

                                    For ever must I sigh,,,,,,,,

Oh Promethe…

            sweet Promethe……

you, Perfection

Oh Promethe…

            sweet Promethe……

none so darling to me as the Night

i whisper, soft and close,,,,,,,,

in the darkest dark I say,,,,,,,,

            oh Promethe…

my sweet Promethe…

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                        The world will never know about us

Holy, holy, holy

            is the Night

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The darkness broke—

            the ringing dawn!

The muses all proclaim—

            Prometheus the Beautiful!

The gods call you Damnatus

We call you Bringer of Heaven’s Light!

O Prometheus!

Thou hot, sexy demigod!

O Prometheus!

Noble scourge of the bourgeoisie!

O Prometheus!

Perverse and sacred Imp!

You descended

like lightning upon the heath

And with you Fire

And with you Thunder

And with you Poetry

And with you

            the Memory of Eternal Beauty!

********

I am no one’s perfect companion

I am the bird of demiparadise

            I am the flower of infinite longing

—you cannot contain me

I have never been contained—

I am auroral!

bursting forth!

amazing!

I am Purple I am Pink

I am Ruby I am Rose

I am all the violence of Violet

I Am The Amaranth

I am Lavender and Lilac

I am Nature’s bright Magenta

I am……..

                        HOT FUSCHIA!!!

I am a million shades of Mauve

*

Prometheus!

            We like gods ascending!

                        We rise! We are rising!

Only Fate can stop us!

            I, the glittering expanse of Night—

You, the many-splendored Dawn!

Daring, darling Prometheus—

            Steal Heaven’s flame, sweet demigod

and bring it down, down, down

            all

            the way

to me

Forget the impure heathens—

They know nothing of such joy!

Prometheus!

Ecstasy is ours!

,,,,,,,,

                                                O Promethe…

sweet Promethe…

            I remember when you first drew near to me

that soft eve in Heaven’s garden

                                                                                    oh baby

and brought me

all the brightness of your Love—

            I, like a sacred nymph, lay

upon the cool earth, awaiting

            your holy fire from Above—

                                                                                                oh baby

oh Promethe—when you told me you loved me—

            that I, of all mortals, was chosen

            that I (yes, I!) was your darling sweet—

                                                                                                oh baby

oh Promethe—I had never known such bliss—

            nothing could surpass!—but your

flame-bearing kiss

                                                                                                oh baby!

Promethe!

you lit me ablaze!

And how all the birds sang so sweetly                                   oh baby

And how all the flowers trembled and sighed                       oh baby

And how all the stars rejoiced with us                                   oh baby

And how my heart burst like the sun!

oh baby

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I, Icarus

dared to touch

the very face

of Heaven

and now fallen, broken, lie

upon the cold and mortal earth

by cruel Zeus condemned

to wander the world in waste

and in my desire

die

                                    WHY DOST THOU ABANDON ME APOLLO

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Oh Promethe

Not ours a diurnal place

—cozy and domestic—

No—our love

abides in a nobler realm above

in a finer and a rarer space

Where still dwells the grace

from which we, my angel

fell

*

            I hear the birds

the heralds of the dawn

sing your splendid name

            across the sun-sprinkled lawn

shhh!

            —do you hear it?

a whisper in the early dark

a sigh on the dim horizon

as faint as distant raindrops

resounding across the world!

                        Oh Prometheus…

            The wind—softly

stirs the flowers

            makes them call your name

                                                                        Prometheus

                        Prometheus

                                                Prometheus!

The atmosphere—strange

            charged with dreamy electricities

unknown pressures, currents, airs

Everything now is wondrous colors

            —the long low roar

of vast unimaginable thunders—

Prometheus!

We are the barbaric storm!

We the fulguration and flame!

We crash upon them, rage!

We are

            Thunder! and Fire! and Poetry!

            Heights! and Majesties! and Beauty!

            Vastness! and Depths! and Eternity!

            The Sun! and Azaleas! and Glory!

            Lakes! and Swans! and Love!

            Oranges! and Lightning! and Pain!

                                    We are the Bluebird dawning

How powerful they have made us, Prometheus!

                        They have indeed made us gods

We soar so high above them—

            how small their world appears!

            Let them have Happiness—

Glory belongs to us!

Look, Prometheus!

            Far below!

There lies the rotting corpse

            of our great eternal love—

its stench far sweeter

than anything the bourgeois hordes

are capable of imagining!

*

Look! The thunderclouds awake!

Our muses near

high upon the rumbling nimbus

Inspire! Fire! Desire!

Let us now raise our holy hymn—

A Litany of All the Saints of Fabulousness!

Sancti Elizabeth Taylor!

                                                Mirabilis!

Sancti Audrey Hepburn!

                                                Fabulosa!

Sancti Julie Andrews!

                                                Gloria!

Sancti Judy Garland!

                                                Mirabile!

Cher!   Madonna!

Donna!                        Diana!

                                                                        Olivia!

MONROE!!!!                         

Sancti Grace Kelly!

                                                Domina! Domina! Domina!

Amazing Grace!         Grace Abounding!

Queen of all Mercy and Fashion!

You thunder above the mundane world!

O Lady, grant us thy Fabulousness

and lead us not into boring, unstylish bourgeois respectability

but unto Glamour and Glory forever!

Amen

            And appears shining from on high

Our fairest and our brightest Muse—

She is the Form of Eternal Beauty

She is the luscious Amaranth

She glitters, loveliest of all stars

            forever unreachable

            invisible from the earth

She dwells above the rainbow’s arc

How many consecrated virgins

            aspire to her noble heights?

O Muse, darling Muse—

Sing to us now of Heaven

            of Gorgeousness upon Gorgeousness!

            of Light upon Light!

            of Beauty upon Beauty!

            of all Love’s rare and radiant joys

that we shall never see

She is the frustration of all desire

            revealing the sublime splendor

of the infinite waste

just like Olivia Newton-John singing Xanadu

            she brings us nearer Christ the Lord

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My darling Prometheus—

            Prometheus my darling—

Our paradise is lost

            Now only in Heaven found

If Heaven be at all

Our home never to be reached

                        —anywhere! anywhere!—

Across the wide burning earth

Alas! our great eternal Love—

           

The world could not contain it

It exploded into being once

            Like the miracle of Dawn

But the jealous gods stole our flame, Promethe!

            And now our Light is gone—

            Leaving the dim and desolate Universe

Even emptier than before

How we have fallen, sweet Prometheus

            as far as only angels can fall—

all the way—

            the long, long way—

from Heaven

O Prometheus—

                        I am become Poetry

like endless waves

                        beating against

your shore

Report on the 10,000 B.C. Art Biennial

AGARTA CAVE -- The 10,000 B.C. Agarta-Kintuk Art Biennial, popularly known simply as Art Agarta, in many respects presented an interesting departure from previous biennials. Unlike the 10,004 and 10,002 shows, which were held entirely inside caves, Agarta 10,000 was held partly out of doors, in the open air of the beautiful Durnur hills, with only about a third of the exhibits inside spacious Agarta Cave itself.

"We are entering a new millennium," declared Murklik-Tashgurk, president of the Agarta-Kintuk Art Biennial International Committee, during his opening remarks. "As we are all aware, the long Ice Age is finally coming to an end, the world is growing warmer, and the progressive lifestyles of the future will take place increasingly outdoors. Art Agarta demonstrates its forward-thinking approach this year by hosting the first-ever art biennial not entirely confined to the caverns."

Indeed, ultramodern fields such as architecture, agriculture, and organized warfare were represented in works by a number of this year's artists. "The Paleolithic is so 10,001," stated avant-garde sculptor Rocroc, whose new work Petrified Horseshit, described as a work of "found art", garnered a great deal of attention at this year's event. "The art world doesn't revolve around Lascaux anymore. I mean, you've got these conservative judges who think that if it's not a cave painting of a large mammal, it can't be art. Well, you know what, they need to catch up with the 10th millennium."

One aspect of the biennial remained little changed from previous years, however. The extravagance of the art collecting elite was on full display on opening night, with many women spotted wearing the exotic furs of luxury fashion designer Turlip-Shamshash and precious gems from the Surkul-Noomvin mines. Some saw this as more evidence of the increasing dominance of the art world by the uber-rich.

"Look, I like to make a living as much as the next guy," said sculptor Krikrik-Bontish. "But honestly, these fat cat buyers wouldn't know really interesting or important work if it clawed them in the face. They always go for the latest, most faddish or shocking thing. And, quite frankly, I think that represents a threat to the integrity of contemporary artists and their work, since in order to survive many of us feel pressured to cater to these [buyers'] shallow bourgeois tastes. My work doesn't fetch the highest prices anymore--statuettes of extremely rotund women aren't considered trendy these days--but I won't let the whims of the buyers dictate my art. Some of us still believe in beauty."

Others aimed their criticism at some of the artists. The controversial iconoclast Xixax, known for his elaborately plumed outfits, sparkly jewels, and charcoal-smeared eyelids, was particularly skeptical about the merit of Rocroc's work. "Look, darling, I'm all for experimentation, but I've got to say that if Petrified Horseshit is the future of art, just kill me now. Can we say boring? Also, to be quite honest, I think he's a total fake. There's no way anyone can prove that's an actual piece of petrified horseshit. If you ask me, it's just some ugly rock he found gods only know where. I mean, let me put it this way, honey: the only shit I'm seeing over there is bullshit."

Another sculptor, Lilim-Varna, however, saw progress in the art world. "It's really encouraging," she said, "to see more women artists represented at the biennial this year. I like to think this means that the domination of the art world by men will soon be a thing of the past."

One surprise feature at Art Agarta this year was the performance art collective Roaritania, who traveled from a desert kingdom that is said to lie beyond the southern sea. Their appearance alone made quite an impression on this Ice Age European crowd, most of whom, it is fair to say, had never seen anyone whose skin was not a blindingly pallid shade of white.

"I think it's great," said abstract painter Lorry-Penkaza, "that the Committee is working toward greater diversity and representation. It's important for all of us to be aware that there is a world beyond the glaciers."

One young attendee, identified only as Ug, summed up his experience at the show this way: "I'm excited because I've always wanted to be an artist but my parents always say there's no money in it, you'll never be able to support yourself, blah blah blah. But now, seeing how much Petrified Horseshit sold for, I think there's hope."

Dreaming of Me: Identity and the Ideal Self in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine

Brian Slade

The following is an essay I wrote in 2008 on one of my favorite films, Todd Haynes' masterful glam rock epic Velvet Goldmine. It was originally published on another blog but the link is now defunct.

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Dreaming of Me

Identity and the Ideal Self in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine

Velvet Goldmine (1998), Todd Haynes' glittery, decadent tribute to the glittery, decadent glam rock scene of the early 1970s, revolves around Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) and his obsession with rock star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), both as a starry-eyed fan in colorful 1974 London and as a disillusioned journalist in a bleak 1984 New York. Though Brian Slade and fellow rock idol Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) are the ostensible central figures in this rock-n-roll drama, Arthur is the true center of the story, a situation which reflects one of the primary themes of Velvet Goldmine: the search for one's identity in that of others. Arthur's story, in fact, which may appear to be secondary through most of the picture, carries the film's true dramatic power, in contrast to the trashy melodrama of the two rock stars.

"I needn't mention how essential dreaming is to the character of the rock star," says Mandy Slade (Toni Collette), Brian's jaded ex-wife, and this statement points to the film’s central meaning. If it’s about nothing else, Velvet Goldmine is about dreaming. Not the kind that happens during sleep, but the metaphorical kind in which we see a vision of the future, a vision of a fully realized (and idealized) self, a vision that inspires and enables us to see a reality, or a possibility, beyond what the eyes can perceive. The film is even structured like a dream, a series of free associations and obscurely connected images and scenes, rather than a series of events told in chronological sequence. There is no doubt that the film is telling a story, but the telling of it is so complicated in structure that it is difficult to piece together the chronology even after multiple viewings. Nevertheless, this does not dilute the impact of the narrative and, if anything, guided as it is by intuition, emotion, and memory rather than objective chronology, the seemingly jumbled narrative achieves a greater power than it might have if the story were told straight.

The main story, or at least the ostensible main story, takes place in the early seventies in London, where Brian Slade (a thinly fictionalized David Bowie) becomes the rising star of the glam rock scene. A teenage Arthur Stuart is one of his devoted fans, a shy lad with many inhibitions striving to break out of the repressive mold in which his parents and society would seek to restrain him, who feels within himself stirrings of some grandeur, beauty, and freedom that he sees fully realized and reflected in the glittery, glamorous, and uninhibited Brian Slade. It is a classic Romantic theme, perhaps even a tired one—the young person in conflict with societal and parental restraints—but Arthur’s meekness, masking as it does a deep courage to be himself even if it’s not what other people want him to be—makes him a sympathetic hero. Arthur is not a stereotypical rebel with a snarl and an attitude to match. He is quiet, outwardly unremarkable, obviously not wanting to shame or outrage his parents yet chafing against the expectations that he feels stifle his true personality and feelings. We sense that Arthur has grown up as an introspective, daydreaming loner whose seemingly boring exterior masks a profound imagination and sense of beauty, and that these inner qualities have been especially awakened by his fascination with Brian Slade.

In Brian, Arthur sees a mirror of himself. Not himself as he is, but as he might be… an idealized version of himself. At a deeper level, however, this mirror does reflect himself as he is—that is, as he is “deep down inside”, a truer self that has lain dormant, potential waiting to be made actual. Arthur is conscious of this self-reflective aspect of his hero worship, as we see in the scene in which he is watching Brian Slade on television. As his parents sit sternly on the couch, Arthur sits on the floor glued to the set. Then we see him jumping up and down, pointing to the telly and shouting excitedly, “That’s me! That’s me!” In the next scene, he is once again sitting quietly as before, and we realize that the intervening scene only took place in his imagination. It is a scene indicative both of Arthur’s sense of repression (that he cannot express his true feelings) and of his identification with his idol, a recognition of himself in someone else. Brian Slade has achieved a full realization and expression of the qualities that Arthur feels hidden within himself. There is a special poignancy in his joy at self-recognition and his simultaneous inability to share that joy with his parents.

Curt Wild

The film’s greatest irony is that Brian Slade himself, the object not only of Arthur’s but an entire subculture’s hero worship, is utterly devoid of his own identity. He is at once overflowing with charisma and empty of substance. He is a predatory creature, all hunger and ambition, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Early in his career, when he witnesses American rock-n-roll rebel Curt Wild’s over-the-top, completely untamed performance, Brian is mesmerized—and also devastated. He feels a deep envy of Curt Wild’s total freedom from inhibition, his defiant rejection of social standards and blatant disregard of what other people think. “They despised him,” Brian reflects sullenly afterward. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

Brian does think of it. He reinvents himself as the fictional character Maxwell Demon (a la Ziggy Stardust), a flamboyant, androgynous, proudly bisexual rock demigod. In so doing, he finds his fame and his stardom. He is as reviled by traditionally-minded adults as he is adored by their glitter-wearing children. Once he is a star, he develops a personal and professional relationship with Curt Wild and helps to revive the latter’s sagging career. The pair becomes a sensation, both for their joint recording and performing and for their tabloid-fodder sexual relationship. Eventually, inevitably, the relationship goes sour and the two part ways. Brian Slade, for reasons never made completely clear—perhaps because he wants to shed his current identity and find a new one—stages his own fake on-stage assassination. When his fans learn of the deception, they angrily turn against him, and his career is over. Or so it seems.

That was 1974, and a decade later, Arthur Stuart is a somber journalist working in the United States, which seems to be a bleak, gray, Orwellian version of 1984 Reagan-era America. On the tenth anniversary of the assassination hoax marking the end of Brian Slade’s career, Arthur’s boss asks him to do a “whatever happened to…” story on the former rock star. Arthur undertakes the project reluctantly. The “frame” structure of the film consists of Arthur’s investigation into Brian Slade’s history and present whereabouts, including interviews with several people who were close to him. The tales told by Brian’s associates become intertwined with Arthur’s own memories of that time period and his personal experience of the glam rock scene.

Arthur Stuart

In a reflection of Arthur’s earlier self-discovery through his obsession with Brian Slade, Arthur’s investigation into the rock star’s past and present becomes a rediscovery of himself, or perhaps a continuation of the self-discovery that had begun a decade earlier and been forgotten in the intervening years as optimistic youth gave way to mundane, dreamless adulthood. What starts out as an unenthusiastically undertaken assignment to research a feature article on a pop culture has-been becomes a quietly passionate and driven quest for self-knowledge.

What Arthur ends up discovering about Brian Slade is that he has indeed adopted a new identity—that of a 1980s pop star named Tommy Stone. Stone’s conservative image (he wears a suit and is supportive of “President Reynolds”) is a decided departure from the flamboyant, decadent iconoclast that was Brian Slade. With this revelation, all illusions about Brian Slade are finally and completely shattered, and he can be seen for what he really is: a man disturbingly bereft of a real identity, an empty hole that craves attention and adoration far more than authenticity, and is all too willing to sacrifice the latter to acquire the former. Like the title character of Citizen Kane (a film that this one overtly references), Brian Slade is ultimately a tragic figure, a seemingly powerful, godlike man whose larger-than-life ambitions and glorious achievements conceal a deep, aching emptiness.

Tragic though he may be, it is difficult to feel much sympathy for Brian Slade in his self-absorbed striving. At any rate, unlike Citizen Kane, Velvet Goldmine is not a tragedy but something more like a novel—that is, a narrative in which the protagonist undergoes a process of transformation and is left a changed person at the end. And Velvet Goldmine is more about Arthur Stuart than it is about Brian Slade. Arthur’s transformation is one of moving from a state of complacent slumber to one of awakened self-knowledge.

Arthur’s awakening to the reality of himself occurs in parallel in both the 1974 and 1984 narratives. In 1974, after Brian Slade has committed career suicide in singularly spectacular fashion, Arthur attends a “Death of Glitter” concert at which a number of glam acts perform (with the former leader of the scene, Brian Slade, conspicuously absent). By this time, Arthur has moved out of his parents’ house and is beginning to explore his identity. He hangs out with members of the band Flaming Creatures and dons makeup. When the Creatures take the stage and delve into the fiery opening guitar riff of T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy”, Arthur’s spirited, energetic dancing at the front of the crowd signals his newfound freedom to be himself.

Meanwhile, in 1984, Arthur the journalist, having pierced the illusion of Brian Slade, enters a bar. There he chances to encounter Curt Wild, who doesn’t seem to recognize him despite the fact that they had met at the Death of Glitter show a decade earlier. Neither does Curt, the final interviewee, seem to know what became of Brian Slade. Or perhaps he does know what happened, not only to Brian but to all of them. One exchange sums up the disillusionment of adulthood and the disappointment of youthful dreams:

CURT: We set out to change the world… ended up just changing ourselves.

ARTHUR: What’s wrong with that?

CURT: Nothing, if you don’t look at the world.

***

Jack Fairy

At the beginning of Velvet Goldmine, a spaceship descends from the heavens and drops off a baby, together with a green brooch, to a family in 19th century Dublin. The child, it turns out, is none other than Oscar Wilde. This conceit serves perhaps as a symbol of aesthetic and artistic inspiration, but also of a special identity. The brooch is apparently magical and grants its owner a mysterious enchantment. In the 20th century, the brooch is accidentally discovered in the ground by an outcast young boy named Jack, who as a young man becomes Jack Fairy, the ethereal, highly androgynous godfather of the glam rock scene. Jack does not appear to be a musician himself (he only performs one song in the movie, at the Death of Glitter concert), but his image alone—Hollywood glamour taken to a surreal extreme—gives inspiration to the glam scene. One who falls under his spell is the young Brian Slade, who is captivated by Jack’s appearance at a party (much as he is later fascinated by Curt Wild’s performance) and who craftily steals the brooch from behind Jack’s ear while kissing him. With this theft, Brian claims the magic of the brooch and evolves into the god of glam. Brian later gives the brooch to Curt, and Curt in turn offers it to Arthur at the bar in 1984. Arthur, however, humbly refuses it.

Significantly, Brian Slade is the only owner of the brooch not to have received it as a gift (in Jack’s case, it may be considered a gift of fate or providence). This act of thievery is symbolic of Brian’s “stealing” of an identity that is not his own, as well as of his amoral striving. If the entire mode of glam consists of artificiality and posing, Brian Slade is the quintessential glam rocker. But how do the artificial constructions of the poseur relate to his “true” identity, assuming there is such a thing? Brian is revealed to be a chameleon, a mass of appetite and need with no center. His identity not only as Maxwell Demon but also as glam rocker Brian Slade is a mask for his inner emptiness. Brian Slade, it turns out, is not even Brian Slade.

It is unclear to what extent Jack Fairy’s and Curt Wild’s personae are “true” expressions of their inner selves. But in the case of Arthur Stuart, we sense something more authentic. We can’t imagine the utterly cynical Brian Slade gushing with Arthur’s joy of self-recognition (“That’s me!”). Brian’s image is all craft and calculation, a marketing ploy in the service of his insatiable ambition. Arthur’s quest is a more spiritual one, motivated by profound longings and a desire for self-realization.

After Curt Wild leaves the bar, Arthur takes a sip of beer and is startled to discover that Curt has surreptitiously slipped the brooch into his bottle. He beholds it, laughing with a mixture of surprise and joy. Arthur’s quest is complete: in searching for Brian Slade, he has found himself. In the end, Velvet Goldmine is a fairy tale. Not only is the glamorous demigod revealed to be a sham, the plain lad turns out to be the one who possesses true beauty.

***

Message from the Future

Greetings.

My name is Shakshak and I am sending you this message from about 5.6 billion years in the future. Shakshak is not my real name, but it shall be convenient for you to call me by it. Your kind lacks the anatomical capability of using or understanding my language just as surely as a sea worm is unable to use or understand yours.

The information I am about to give you will probably prove of no practical value to you whatsoever. I feel the need to state this as your human race places a bizarrely high value on that which you deem useful. We long ago evolved beyond such lower level concerns. In any case, I merely offer this knowledge for your pleasure, as even your primitive species displays some slight valuation of knowledge for its own sake.

You will not be surprised to know that our science is incomprehensibly more advanced than your own. We have been able to learn far more about the universe and its history (and likely future) than you may have thought possible. In fact, the extent of our knowledge dwarfs your own scientific attainments on the order of something like ten billion to one. In other words, we know about 10,000,000,000 times more than you do.

However, lest you should consider this mere bragging (a behavior which is utterly foreign to us), I should also point out that our knowledge of our own ignorance exceeds your own such knowledge by a far greater magnitude. This is because, as one of your own sayings puts it so well, the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. With each tremendous advance in knowledge, there is an even greater increase in the awareness of how much we still don’t understand. You humans really have no idea just how little you know about things. That is not an insult, it is a simple statement of fact. We have a far more extensive awareness of our ignorance, and, according to our best estimates (which we of course cannot know are even remotely accurate), what is left to be known, or perhaps what is never knowable, outnumbers the known by a factor of 125 quadrillion to one.

So, if there is any practical “takeaway” from this missive, it is this: You will never know everything, not even close; in fact, the more you learn, the more depressingly obvious it will become how much there is that you can never know. So get over it. Accept the fact of perpetual ignorance and move on.

However, we now have far more knowledge of cosmic history and can date things with a fair degree of accuracy.

For instance, what you so charmingly call the Big Bang (your understanding of it is still very childish, but the general concept is correct) we now know occurred on a Saturday morning—to be exact, it was September 3rd in what you might call the year 13,846,347,188 B.C. at precisely 8:01 a.m. local time.

It should be noted, however, that there is a margin of error of +/- 2.66 million years.

Be that as it may, the time cited above is generally accepted as the exact moment of Creation. Further, we have been able to determine, via methods that are light years beyond your comprehension, what most likely existed prior to the Big Bang: Nothing.

That’s right. No pre-existent matter, no form of energy, no fluctuating quantum state. Nothing. Not even “empty space”. Just plain nothing. So it appears that somehow, in ways no one may ever understand, at one non-moment (as time did not yet exist) there was absolutely nothing, and then all of a sudden the universe just exploded into being.

One question that vexes our philosophers is that, given the presumed start time of 8:01 a.m., how do you explain that everything, including time itself, began when it was already 8 hours and 1 minute after midnight? And it was already Saturday morning—what happened to the rest of that week?

These are just a few of the quadrillions upon quadrillions of questions we may never be able to answer.

Now, as for the age of the earth, it is difficult to state with precision due to the fact that the earth, unlike the universe, had the courtesy of not just suddenly appearing out of nowhere at some singular moment in time (namely, the very first moment in time). The earth, as you well know, gradually accreted from the materials of the solar nebula, a process which took many millions of years. However, our best guess for the moment at which the earth achieved its full mass is 5:37 p.m. on Thursday, February 30 (the earth’s rotation was different back then and February actually had 32 days), 4,681,355,476 B.C., give or take 1.25 million years or so.

Life first appeared on earth in what is, in your time period, New Jersey, at 6:13 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, May 12, 3,866,554,789 B.C. The first fish to crawl up onto the land—well, it depends. You see, it first happened at 7:57 a.m. on Monday, July 13 in the year 398,512,654 B.C., near your city of London; however, the fish only remained on the surface for a few minutes before retreating back into the water (it was, after all, Monday morning, and even in our time we know how difficult it can be to really get going on a Monday). However, I am glad to report that the following day, Tuesday, July 14, the fish climbed up onto the land once more and decided to stay this time. How it managed to breathe, given that it was a fish who had spent its entire life underwater, we still do not know.

The first human being of your kind—what you so adorably call Homo sapiens—was born at 4:28 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, 186,244 B.C. in the land you know as Kenya. Her parents did not notice that she was in fact an entirely new species. They just thought her a rather odd-looking child with a few strange yet endearing quirks. Sadly, she got picked on a lot at school; but I am happy to report that she went on to have a brilliant career as a maker of innovative new tools.

So much for your past. Now to enlighten you as to your future.

The good news is that world peace and social justice will be achieved—at exactly 10:04 a.m. on the morning of Friday, June 24, 2380.

The bad news is that it will not last long. World peace and social justice being such inherently fragile things given the nature of your species, this sublime yet passing state of utopia will begin to unravel, alas, as early as the following Monday morning, June 27, when a certain Malko Darson, residing in the suburbs of Cleveland, accidentally spills scalding hot coffee on his hand and then goes on to be in a cranky mood all day. It would be too tedious and depressing to recount the unlikely chain of events that follows which eventually leads to the complete dissolution of world peace and social justice. You’ll find out.

However, for anyone who happens to be alive in 2380—enjoy that weekend.

You may be wondering about my species’ relationship to your own. Well, as we are separated by some five billion years, it is difficult to trace with any degree of certainty. Our scientists tend to assume that we are your descendants. This is because, assuming that your race did not simply die out at some point (the fossil and historical records are unclear on this point and I can assure you it is a source of heated controversy among scholars), then we are more than likely, in fact almost certainly, among your many descendant species. Yes, many. Think of it this way—each person who leaves behind descendants typically ends up having a multitude of them, continually branching out across time. It is similar to how your ancestors become more numerous the further back you go in history.

Species are the same way. If the human race did not go extinct, then a large number of the species alive today are your descendants, from my own highly advanced race to the lowly sea worms of the Martian oceans (which, I am sad to report, are severely endangered at present due to the expansion of the sun).

We are as different from you, however, as you are from the early forms of sea life that populated the earth. In fact, given the far greater distance in time, we are even further removed from you than you are from them. This does not necessarily mean we are better, and if we are more advanced it is not a matter of evolutionary necessity. As I said, the Martian sea worms may very well be your great great infinitely-many-greats grandchildren too.

And as I stated before, we do not even know with certainty that we are descended from you. It seems the most likely scenario, however, because, apart from the theory of human descent, we have the darnedest time trying to figure out just exactly where we came from.

It is no use telling you what we call ourselves, since, as I mentioned at the outset, you lack the anatomical capability of “speaking” our language (we do not really “speak” as you understand the term; it is a mere analogy).

Oh, by the way, I should mention too that the earth was burnt up by the red giant sun some ages ago. I would say it’s been about 300 million years at least. My species dwells in a vast network of thought clouds scattered all over the solar system.

You may be interested to know that intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the universe. However, don’t get your hopes up. Most of them are either dreadfully boring and unsophisticated or else too pretentious and self-absorbed to bother with. We have tried making friends with many species across the Milky Way but, except for a few other intelligent cosmic outcasts like us with whom we exchange infrequent messages and visits, we remain isolated and lonely. The galactic community isn’t nearly as glitzy and glamorous as you might imagine, and we don’t care about being invited to their parties anyway.

One way in which we are quite different from you is that we do not exactly reproduce. Not being bound to biological forms, we continue via a type of information preservation and recombination. We have something like what you know as love, but unlike you, we do not associate it with reproduction. Ours is a purely intellectual love. Our ancestors evolved beyond sex eons ago and we do not miss it at all. We observe sexual behavior in lesser species and it is a phenomenon that arouses in us almost universal revulsion and horror. I am sorry you still have to deal with that.

Finally, we have been able to calculate the exact moment at which the universe itself will end. What happens after that we do not know, although the best guess is what came before: Nothing. If an observer could somehow travel there (which would of course be impossible as there is literally nothing there to travel to), he would not be able to find a single trace of evidence that the universe ever existed. So it will be just as though the universe never did exist at all. No one will remember you or your life; there will be no one there to remember. Therefore, enjoy it while it lasts.

However, the good news is that we have a very long time left until all of reality disappears without a trace. According to our best estimates, the universe will go poof at precisely 7:55 a.m. on April 24 in the year 10 to the 10^th to the 54^th A.D. (give or take 981 quadrillion years).

It will, of course, be a Monday morning.

The Sehnsucht of the 1980 Strawberry Shortcake Theme Song

My 4-year-old daughter has liked Strawberry Shortcake (in her modern incarnation) for a long time, but recently she has also discovered the classic 1980s version--which I explained to her was "the old Strawberry Shortcake"--and now enjoys watching those cartoons as well. My sister used to watch the original show back in the early '80s, and, although I can still recall a couple of songs from it, the theme song of the original special, The World of Strawberry Shortcake (1980), did not definitely sound familiar to me when I first watched it with my daughter the other day. It did, however, rather charm me, and I have found myself, at times when I am home alone, looking up the song on YouTube:

 

The song initially won me with its simple, bright happiness, which my daughter seemed to enjoy as well. After hearing it a few times, however, I noticed that this little children's ditty began to have quite a different emotional effect upon me. It was not the emotional reaction I would have expected in response to a cheery, bouncy theme song for an old children's TV show. Strange as it may sound, I actually find the song deeply moving. In fact, it can almost bring tears to my eyes.

It is difficult to understand this reaction, let alone explain it. It is hard even to define exactly what the deep emotion is that the song arouses in me. I cannot chalk it up to simple nostalgia since, as I mentioned, I do not distinctly remember it from my own childhood. It is true that even items I do not specifically remember may sometimes produce nostalgic feelings in me because they evoke the era of my childhood and bring back a bittersweet taste of that lost world. In this case, however, the nostalgia factor seems relatively small. I must look elsewhere for an explanation of my strangely profound emotional response to what seems such a slight item of children's entertainment.

Though it is not really an explanation, I do at least have a word for it (thanks to German, as there is no real equivalent in English): Sehnsucht. This is an emotion I have discussed on this blog before, and it figures prominently in my literary work, particularly in The Bluebird of Happiness and Rainbow. In my essay on Gen X I defined it this way:

the realm of bittersweetness, of inexpressible longing, ... what the Germans call Sehnsucht, a deep and aching yearning for who knows what--something we can't name or describe, but a longing which we nevertheless feel viscerally and painfully. 

This quite accurately describes how the old Strawberry Shortcake theme song makes me feel, so that is how I identify the emotion as Sehnsucht. It is not sadness, exactly, though it certainly contains sadness within it. In fact, it has a touch of grief. It is almost as though I am longing for a long lost loved one and wishing they could come back just for one day. It is a deep, aching warmth that can easily well up into silent tears.

But it is more than just a sad longing. There is a subtle joy to it as well--an equally warm sensitivity to life, a softening of the heart, a quiet sense of wonder at the world--perhaps even something like gratitude. While listening to the song, and afterward as it replays in my mind, I somehow feel more alive, suddenly more aware of the preciousness and the beauty of things. The emotion even has a moral effect too, for it makes me want (even more than usual) to be a good person and to treat everybody with love and kindness and empathy.

Such effects show, I would think, that this is a healthy emotion. Even grief is healthy and natural, and may be considered a form of celebration (since, by grieving, we acknowledge and proclaim the worth of the lost person or thing). But in this case, as with Sehnsucht in general, what exactly it is for which the heart yearns--that which it grieves, celebrates, and is inspired by--is difficult to discern and remains a mystery.

The things that trigger Sehnsucht are seemingly random, often even trivial. On the surface of it, they may appear to be rather unlikely sources of profound emotion. But Sehnsucht is often a highly personal and subjective phenomenon. While some triggers (such as the sight of the ocean, or a sunset, perhaps) may seem quite understandable to most people, others may appear entirely inexplicable and even slightly absurd as instigators of deep longing (like, say, the Strawberry Shortcake theme song).

In any case, my recent experience of being so profoundly moved by a happy little children's song dovetails with my blog post earlier this week, particularly with respect to the significance of the title Rainbow. I have been coming to see more and more of late how the novel's title is rather perfect, despite the fact that it was originally meant only as a working title. It did not occur to me at first that I might actually call a serious work of literary fiction Rainbow.

But, quite unintentionally on my part, that one-word title, in its childlike simplicity, turned out to be quite well suited to the novel's protagonist, Martin Lane. Martin's art is all about taking things that seem childish, trivial, silly, or kitschy, and, by his own unique creative alchemy, transforming these unpromising ingredients into something quite beautiful, moving, and profound. His art, like mine, is play: as I put it last time, "[t]he kind of serious and sacred play that celebrates the mystery of existence, that joins the significance of the lowest and humblest things to the highest and the greatest."

I don't know if I realized it when I wrote it, but that is actually a pretty good description of what the emotion of Sehnsucht accomplishes as well. It is hard to imagine something much humbler than a children's song; yet equally hard to imagine being more deeply moved by a work of art. Unbelievably, yet wonderfully, the effect the Strawberry Shortcake theme song has upon me is almost akin to the cathartic, rain-washed freshness of feeling, the ennobling sensation of tenderheartedness, that I experience after I have finished writing, reading, or viewing a tragedy: akin, in fact, after the dark storm has passed, to the sight of the rainbow.

Rainbow, 2 Years On

Yesterday marked two years since I began writing a novel called Rainbow. I estimate that I am currently about one-fifth of the way (if even that far) along the arc of this story, so unless my rate of progress increases significantly, it will still be many years before I reach this Rainbow's end.

This is clearly a long-term project, and it is nothing if not an ambitious one. The novel may extend to 500 or 600 pages, perhaps even longer. What makes the writing even more challenging is the fact that the story is not told in strict chronological order, and even though I have an outline for it, that outline serves as a rough guide rather than being carved in stone, and I still have to make many decisions about what scene, exactly, to write next. In addition, the story is a constantly growing and developing organism and I am constantly thinking up new scenes. Therefore any outline I create is, of necessity, provisional.

Now two years into this major project, the biggest of my literary career thus far (and, no matter what else I may write in the future, what will surely remain one of my largest achievements in a lifetime of writing), I am put in the mood to step back and reflect a bit on the meaning and significance, to me personally, of this story.

The development of Rainbow has been particularly fascinating to me ever since the initial spark of an idea first popped into my head in response to a line from the film version of Hello, Dolly!—a rather unlikely origin for a novel, yet strangely fitting in this case—and all the more so as I have watched that small seed of an idea grow into the tremendous tree of a novel it has become.

What is even more wondrous to me about the origin of Rainbow is the way in which, in the first days after that spark appeared in my mind, the story seemed to present itself to my imagination in a way that was as vague as it was suggestive. As I described it at the time, it was as though I had suddenly become aware of a great and terrible storm looming on the horizon, my ears now beginning to attune themselves to the low rumblings of its distant thunder, my flesh sensitized by a strange electricity that intimated some vast and as yet unseen power waiting to be unleashed upon the world, calling me to become the channel of its appearing.

Over the next few months, the seed began attracting to itself, as though by its own irresistible gravity, a myriad of other ideas and experiences from throughout my life, and all of these multitudinous ingredients began to accrete into the grand formation that Rainbow has become and is continuing to become. Despite occasional lulls in inspiration, Rainbow has always had a vigorous life of its own, continually growing and developing into an ever more vast and intricate story.

And then there is that title. Why Rainbow? That wasn't meant to be the title at first; I began by referring to the new story concept as "Rainbow" (in quotation marks) because it was only intended as a working title, a way to refer to it until I came up with its actual title. I chose "Rainbow" by way of reference to The Wizard of Oz, and the way in which the coming storm seemed to promise some wondrous new land to which it would carry me.

So why did I eventually decide to make Rainbow the actual title of the novel? At one level, it sounds silly, perhaps even gauche, as the title of what is intended to be a serious literary novel. It sounds as though it should be embossed in large, glittery letters on the cover, in colors to match its denotation. The word connotes unicorns and the cuteness of cultural objects marketed to and very often enjoyed by little girls. How could this ever be the title of a serious work of High Literature?

Well, as it turns out, there are many reasons (besides simple bravado, which may be part of it too) why I have come to feel that Rainbow is in fact the perfect title for what I intend to be a grand literary novel. One reason is its very simplicity, which lends the title a wide range of possible meanings, connotations, and interpretations. That is entirely appropriate to the nature of the story and of its main character, Mr. Martin Lane. Martin himself may appear at first to be rather nondescript, not the most interesting or exciting person in the crowd. But in the course of the novel he will be revealed to be much more than meets the eye. I hope in these hundreds of pages to acquaint the reader with Martin enough to see, despite first impressions, just how colorful and complex a personality he really is; and yet I also intend to leave him, at the end, a puzzle tantalizingly unsolved, a man who remains forever mysterious.

If my stories are about nothing else, they are about longing, and in particular the longing to know (someone or something). Whereas my first novel largely revolves around Thomas Fairchild's painfully unfulfilled desire to know Alexandra Grey, Rainbow is largely concerned with Martin's desire to know himself (as well as his desire to know other people and their desire to know him). The opening sentence and central question of the novel is "Who is Martin Lane?" By the end, readers will no doubt feel that they have come to know Martin rather well, and yet find themselves unable to really answer that question. As Martin himself says, "How do you define a person anyway?"

I have been aware from the beginning that, even though Martin Lane is not meant to be an autobiographical character, nor Rainbow an autobiographical novel, one of the primary reasons that the story is so powerful and relevant to me is that it is, in part, in addition to many other things, an exploration of who I myself am. That certainly does not mean that Martin is me, and I would never wish my readers to mistake my fictional characters for their author. But there is a very real sense in which imagining Martin and his story is helping me to process and perhaps begin to resolve my own internally felt contradictions, and to help me understand how many seemingly disparate qualities can peacefully coexist in the same person. If my story helps other people do the same, to feel that it is not just okay but actually rather kind of beautiful and amazing to be the crazily complicated person that you are, all the better.

In any case, aesthete that I am, I do not write my stories or my poems in order to achieve any sort of useful purpose, either in society or in the individual reader. I write primarily just because it is enjoyable, a form of play, and I hope in the process to provide my readers, whoever they may be, with some of the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic treasures of literature. My faith in the aesthetic approach to literature is that such pleasures as novels and poetry have to offer do not only constitute an inherent good, but will by their very nature lead on to other benefits without the author having to try too hard to teach a valuable life lesson or make some important political statement. I believe in the intrinsic worth of beauty, its vital relation to truth and to the good, and indeed its necessity to a fully lived human existence. I resist the puritanical impulse to employ my art in the service of moral or political propaganda (or, to put it a little less bluntly, "messaging").

The upshot, with respect to Rainbow, is that the ultimate worth of this story, to which I have already devoted two years of my life and to which I may end up devoting many more, is not something reducible to a message or a formula. It is not something I can say in another (nonfictional) form, such as the currently trendy memoir. I cannot condense its meaning down to a few bullet points. As I have said before, I can only express what it is I want to say, I can only communicate the vision I am seeing, in the exact form that Rainbow finally takes. Otherwise there would be no need to spend years working on a novel of epic proportions that most likely will never pay off in monetary terms.

Art seems to have had its origins in celebration—in particular, the celebration of religious rituals, the symbolic expression of humanity's relationship to the world in which we live and to ultimate reality, however we may conceptualize it (just as our conception of the observable world can only occur via the symbolism of thought and language, all the more so any conception of the ultimate nature of reality). My aim for my own art is to celebrate in this ancient and timeless sense.

Rainbow is not a self-help book; it is not a political treatise; nor is it a light, entertaining, and ultimately forgettable beach read. It is meant to be something far more profound than any of those things: it is meant to be play. The kind of serious and sacred play that celebrates the mystery of existence, that joins the significance of the lowest and humblest things to the highest and the greatest.

Rainbow—a childish title, really. And that is what makes it perfect.