Seventeen-year-old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat and dances on wine bottles in June 1958. Her performance was based on a dream. She practiced for eight hours a day to do this.
Photo by Carlo Polito
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Passarge of Hamburg dresses up as a cat and dances on wine bottles in June 1958. Her performance was based on a dream. She practiced for eight hours a day to do this.
Photo by Carlo Polito
“But isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent?”
— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse
“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more.”
— Milan Kundera, Identity
“To encounter anything fully is to touch its absence.”
— Rosmarie Waldrop, from Letterbox
john keats: the lavender in sunsets, flowers in the rain, sunlight slipping through clouds, lazy summer afternoons, the heavy scent of musk, flickering candlelight reflecting off the gold titles of books, fireflies on a cool summer night, being wrapped in fresh bedsheets, the ache of wanting what you can never have, dripping sunlight like gold, loving someone so exquisite, soft lips and soft whispers, fingers through hair, names of lovers carved in trees, broken glass, the insistence of being perpetually dreamy
f. scott fitzgerald: mahogany wood, crisp winter skies with cold bright stars, the solitude of an early autumn morning wrapped in fog, empty bottles on stacks and stacks of books haphazardly placed in a messy room, pale bruised arms reaching out into the darkness, cigarette smoke just barely hiding the scent of alcohol, a wall of books all poetry and old and weathered, a bad thunderstorm occurring at the end of a beautiful day, the way tragedy strikes in your heart but ends up stopping your breathing for a moment, your favorite sweater, parties spilling into four a.m. with the stars above spinning and dancing, the contrast of blood against snow, a purple split lip oozing blood, black eyes fading to blue to pale skin, the butterflies of falling in love for the first time, the statues falling apart over time in cemeteries, the romanticization of self-destruction
franz kafka: the weight of dread that sits heavily in your stomach when thinking about the future, decrepit houses cloaked in mystery from children telling stories of people who died there, the way not even light can escape a black hole, the rich smell of old books, delicate veins in the wrist, ghosts filling lungs, shattered bones, raindrops on the tongue, rusting metal, nostalgia that aches, the way hope feels like a plastic bag over your head
h.p. lovecraft: the anxiety felt when staring into an unknown cave, pouring rain and mud, a child’s fear of the dark, thinking so many questions about your existence as you stare at the vast expanse of never ending ocean, the silence of three a.m., danse macabre by camille saint-saens playing on a record in an empty house, the possibility of aliens and the weird feeling it gives you that you can’t explain, unexplainable phenomena, strange lights in the sky in the dead of night, ouija boards and urban legends
jack kerouac: the brisk pine air of being on a mountain, travels without a destination, those nights where you’re missing three hours of memory, screaming to a lifeless desert about how you’re so alive, coffee shops late at night, car rides at night spent speeding and laughing in the dark, naps spent in the sun, novels highlighted and underlined with notes and epiphanies in the margins, the way uncertainty sits on the shoulders, ignoring flaws and loving life, wind through hair, depression as fog in the brain, impossible ideals, a quiet sunrise, walks alone, when you think about trying to discover all the secrets to the universe, dazzling people, open lands stretching out into infinity, falling in love with being alive
edgar allan poe: the ocean’s horizon inseparable from fog, hollow bones, a preserved heart held in hands, twinkling stars above an old graveyard, the way everything turns to dust, silent black birds with eyes full of wisdom, self-inflicted flames, perfection depicted as a rotting corpse, death as bricks in the heart, lips barely brushing against each other, glassy glazed eyes, biting into a lemon, heart-shaped bruises, rotting flowers on a grave, dried blood and spilled liquor, the hush of dusk when it begins raining, the intimacy of a secret
memes-and-dreams-13 asked:
neil-gaiman answered:
Of course. We are definitely friends. Class 8E1 and me. And by now, on first name terms.
I’m hoping that the kid in your class who was murdered wasn’t actually literally murdered though.
Kit: I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail… boom! Right away, I had a different problem.
Jacques: …
Lemony: She makes a strong case.
“January 14. Dim, weak, impatient.”
— Franz Kafka, from The Blue Octavo Notebooks (via prjona)
God forbid I’d compare the moon to your face
Or the tall cypress to your stature and grace.
Where in the moon are ruby sweet lips to be found?
What cypress sways with the luminous grace of your ways?
When you, an author, are abducted by aliens, you are let out into the alien’s world. They put you in a small apartment, and mostly leave you alone. Needing to make a profit for yourself to survive, you start writing books. Self-help books. For the aliens. Write about your adventures becoming the best self-help writer on a planet where you are the alien.
bomberhead67 asked:
neil-gaiman answered:
I was. I was a freelance journalist. But that’s still a writer. You get taxed in the same way as you are when you are a writer of fiction. In the eyes of the Tax Authorities, fiction and nonfiction are the Very Same Thing.