this binding
these ENDPAPERS
I say nothing abt taste or craftsmanship but you know it’s art if it makes you dizzy. if it gives you a migraine it’s double art
"The carbonari hat was looked upon with suspicion; and when Liszt, who travelled from Switzerland in 1853 in a soft grey felt given him by Wagner, appeared in the same at Karlsruhe, he had some difficulty with the police"
these are the wages of wearing a hat given you by Wagner
"Side by side with the courtesan in her half-mannish dress was the corresponding man in his half-womanish costume, curled, laced in, and scented like her...same over-tight short jacket, over-small hat, and over-thin cane. About this time the men also began to wear bracelets"
("this time" is the 1850s. I am just telling you about the Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century bc that is what is hiding inside the terrifying Eternity-Cessboard binding)
"in Prussia in 1846 young barristers and post-office clerks were forbidden to wear a mustache"
many novels were written in these times about the agonies suffered by a young man forced by Society to choose between his Métier his Morals & his Moustache
not absolutely too much, but relatively too much attention is paid to 19th c. anti-corsetry sentiment & not enough attention paid to the warnings against too-tight trousers worn by men. by (I think) the same anatomists
"in 1799, at a masquerade in Bückeburg, a couple appeared as Adam and Eve 'clothed in nothing but their innocence'...in 1801 a lady in Hanover laid a wager that she would walk through the streets dressed only in a chemise & a neckerchief...won her bet easily"
what if the Victorians really DID ruin everything! is it time for contrarian counter-revisionist history yet or has that time come and gone
(you understand I don't know from history. all I know is in Victorian times women were obliged to wear clothes, for the most part)
—say, kid, do you want to come over and see my human skull, it’s a good one. yrs truly etc
—yes please mr. Bierce I should be honored. yes this is a fine skull to be sure. may I touch it
you see I follow Sayers’s guidelines for writing wonderfully realistic male conversations
"how could you, a woman, have known how men talk to one another about Skulls, in private!"
"why Sir I simply imagined that men offer and accept skull-viewing opportunities in the same tones & emotions as regular people do"
& then my interlocuter goes away with much to think about
don’t always sit at the window with the total blackness of the abyss behind me & my elbow on the sill next to a potted plant, but when I do, this is the expression I wear on my face
IMPORTANT IMPORTANT
I am reliably informed that the young Scheffauer addressed Ambrose Bierce as "Thor" and "Magister" (in gratitude for being shown the skull? most likely) so I have to revise the dialogue above a little bit accordingly. please do so yourselves too, mentally
he also uh killed a woman towards the end of his life so don't develop a sentimental attachment. he was no good
his wikipedia page is a three-volume novel and buries the murder at the end, which is despicable and typical. only murderers who publish get this special treatment
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rose up to a sudden happiness on realizing that the Hob. numbers for Haydn are short for Hoboken, not whatever I thought they were, like Hobshawm or Hobbiton or some fucking thing. then a swift descent as soon as I found out it was for Anthony von Hoboken & not New Jersey
old anthony von hoboken came from Rotterdam they say. off on a bad foot to begin with: confusing. but do they mean Rotterdam, NY, in Schenectady county? no they absolutely do not.
after all this man is nothing to me
what's the whole thing with pogorelich? like what's his deal
I mean why did he record two haydn sonatas and then stop
why would you do that
only noticed now the clear implication by messrs. Fischel & van Boehn that Liszt, at Karlsruhe & perhaps all the way from Switzerland, was not only wearing the soft grey felt [hat] given him by Wagner, but was wearing nothing else.
I mean if he was, they would probably have said
"When women were beginning again to wear corsets, waistcoats and coats were cut so close to the figure that men were obliged, whether they liked it or not, to lace themselves in, and those who refused to wear corsets had to substitute a basque belt worn next the skin" c. 1830
no more listening to pro- (or even anti-) victorian corset historians who conveniently leave out men's architectural underpinnings! NO MORE problematizing/championing women's armatures as if the men belting themselves in under their crimson satin waistcoats are of no interest!!
that NYT guy explaining how he assesses the risk to his family from his contacts without a word on the risk he'll be bringing back to his contacts from his family
the important thing is to indirectly kill someone else's parents, not your own. to know who matters
the people most fixated on 'travel-shaming' are the ones who have never felt shame. the fascination of the innocent for a dirty word they looked up in a dictionary. Is this shame? they wonder. is THIS shame? oh but you'll know it when it finds you. if it ever does
a full day of maniacally distracting myself with antiquary cares & 19th century fashions and I am still angry at the guy everyone has already been comprehensively mad at. one last pointless thing to say:
the smithsonian is closing again! what a wonderful way to find out that it had opened again at some point, for some reason
for god's sake will the government give me some money to stay home and practice the piano on weekdays, I promise to stomp over to the Capitol and/or the mayor's office to play them a tune once I'm vaccinated, to prove it was money well spent
fuck's sake
there's a wonderful feeling in the air every year when the number of people in the city drops like air pressure & there's a sudden POP of emptiness as people who don't actually like to live here go away. I am so stupidly naive I did not expect to feel it this year, bc obviously
you could write a book about genesis 2:19-20 and somebody must have. not that I would read it
(I mean the invention-of-narcissism part where Adam is unwilling to take for Friend & Companion anyone or anything that was not a literal piece of himself)
p.s. Eve has Adam's pre-split memories, right? she must have. so we must say Adam's early choices were hers also.
& so as far as eve knows, this is a Prestige situation. from her perspective, she is hugh jackman looking at second hugh jackman wishing she had a pistol on her
I disclaim all religious feeling & education, as usual, but I still am upset by the part where god parades the lynx & the ibex &c. in front of lonely Adam Prime & says Aren't these neat, you can make friends with any of em, what do you say, "a boy and his dog," is that anything