Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Wax That Melts Our Wings

I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.

The Wax That Melts Our Wings
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise

Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.

The Lady Jellypants Guide to Grace and Poise
Shoes, Books & Cynicism
Kate Stone Matheson
Love Me Tender

Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle. 

"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked. 

"What?"

"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."

Love Me Tender

Art

That's The Price I Pay

“The price of love is always just above that what your heart can afford”

— Colin Tegerdine, Unknown Book 13072845

I recently read a Young Adult fiction series (yes, I admit, I am slightly addicted to all the 'end of the world, teenage girl saves humanity from plague/pestilence/pure apathy' books out there) which had an intriguing theme.

What if romantic love was viewed as a disease, and you could be 'cured' of it? If, instead of going through crushes, and infatuation, and yes, lust - one instead had an operation, lost the desire to love - and be loved - and was simply matched with a suitable mate - suitable intellectually, socio-economically, physically? No arguing, no tension, no 'you don't love me' screaming matches?

Apart from the fact that this series really lost the plot (literally), it did make me wonder; because so, so often, romantic love causes some fairly hefty problems. Wars are fought in the name of love - yes, hello, Helen of Troy. You fall in love with someone who doesn't return the sentiment. You don't love someone the way they love you. You have a habit of falling out of love as soon as the honeymoon stage is over and reality sets in - and then you have no idea how to extricate yourself from what you realise is not really your cup of Love Potion Number 9.

So would life be better without Cupid's arrow inveigling its way into our lives? What if amour was, in fact, no more?

I can't imagine anything worse.

Love is painful. It is often unkind, causes tears, obscenely excessive chocolate consumption and glugging of wine straight from the bottle. It is hurtful, because if we care deeply for someone, the desire to hurt if we are slighted comes straight to the fore. Jealousy, anger, the agony of unrequited love - yep, they are all hand in hand with true love.

And yet.

Love is what makes life likeable. It is a shelter and a comfort; if you are fortunate enough to find someone to love, and who loves you back, then life can pretty much go to hell in a handbasket - and it won't matter. Because you have somebody to support and strengthen you. Who is willing to let their own needs go in order to make your life the best it can be.

The best kind of love is all of the things certain religious volumes talk about (and getting a positive message there is a huge achievement, so don't discount it.) Love is patient. Love is kind. Love has no pride.

Art, music, literature, theatre, movies, dance - where would they be without smoochiness? Casablanca would be a blank. Gone With The Wind - who would care if tomorrow was another day? And as for Jane Austen... Jane who?

Love separates us from our baser instincts. It gives us our humanity and our humour. It makes us honest. It makes us - us.

'I love you'.

Three words.

And a lifetime of discovery.

As Billy Bragg says, 'that's the price I pay for loving you the way that I do'...

Send me the account. It's worth every penny.

All That Is True

““I paint things as they are. I don’t comment.””

— Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

I was at the NGA yesterday with the Dread's delightful parents (yes pirates have parents - where do you think they come from - treasure chests?) Anyway, the work of the above-quoted artist is currently on special exhibit there, which is wonderful for the NGA and for Canberra, particularly in her big birthday year.

Toulouse-Lautrec has been one of my favourite artists ever since I chose him as my particular study way, way back in my HSC - or the year 637 B.C. (Before Choos).

Incredibly (and ridiculously) ambitiously at the age of 16, I chose to reproduce one of his most well-known works - that of La Goulue (The Glutton) on stage at the Moulin Rouge - what is essentially a poster, which along with his images of Aristide Bruant are what come to mind when people think of T-L.

And I didn't do a bad job. For a 16 year old school girl who is not and never will be Toulouse-Lautrec, or any other great artist (although I will try absinthe any old time if pressed), it was a bloody great job.

But for me his work has never been about the Eldorado cabaret posters of Bruant, or the cynical twisted grin of Mlle Weber as she enters a restaurant on the arm of her sister. It has always been about his fascination with the demi-monde and his - and I mean this - respect for the girls who made their living sleeping with men for money.

Walking around the exhibition, I saw so much tenderness in his paintings and sketches and lithographs of those from a sphere of society totally removed from his own aristocratic upbringing. His studies give a dignity to these women - but also don't pull any fairytale happy ending punches - about the end state of the life of a prostitute.

I love that he could see the beauty in these broken women. That he found a way to show their humanity in an age when they were treated as no more than pieces of meat. And as they aged, like Mlle Lucy Jourdan sitting at Le Rat Mort, out they went, to be replaced with the fresher and younger and newer.

It'd be nice to say things have changed Henri.

But your sketch pad - or more likely your Nikon, or LifeFrame - would still find plenty of material in 2013. Of a first world and third world variety.

What I am grateful for is that I know you could find the beauty in the subject still. What I would be more grateful for is if the subjects didn't have to exist - or perhaps subsist - to be there for you to capture.

But that I know is a pipedream. So I shall just have to be grateful that things are better than they once were, and keep striving for change. And put up my prints of Henri's sketches on my walls, and feel gratitude for his compassion. And his wisdom. Because with the quote below, in any age, boy he hit the nail on la tête.

““Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it.”
”

C'est vrai. And I am grateful for that too.