The attraction to all things new, flashy, shiny is deeply embedded in the human psyche, that’s why new toys are difficult to resist.
That’s also why attraction to said new toys doesn’t last long and needs constant renewal.
Smartphone, tech and highly addictive apps related to “social media ” are designed to trigger in the psyche the same reaction as new shiny toys and induce the pursuit of the gratification they procure.
Damages caused by these tech and apps are being studied and documented, yet their propagation and access to younger minds is not thwarted. It’s difficult enough as a teen or a grown up to resist the temptation of round the clock entertainment…. so for youngers, imagine….
How many of us are having this peculiar feeling that there’s a perfect turmoil looming over us?
Full moon over Vienna
Capitol in Washington, summer 2020
Abe Lincoln memorial
Brazos Bend Park, Houston
Place of the Heroes, Vienna
Mascaron in Paris and Bust of the Poet Lenau, Vienna
Lockdowns, lockdowns, empty cities, empty streets, curfews, empty sies, no travel, remote schooling and working, social distancing, masks, more virus mutation, more lockdowns, more climate turmoil, depletion of resources, the rise of depression, lack of energy, sugar addictions, tv addiction, social media (nothing social in them) addiction…
Climate patterns took leave of their predictable behaviours, super rich people build rockets, polarisations divide citizens in radical ways, the virus which must still remain unnamed on the internet is mutating, defying human frustration and need of control (the latter being different within each person, the former being increased by the said need of control), a nerd uncomfortable with social interactions (but a billionnaire nonetheless) exulting in creating a virtual world he hopes everybody will gleefully join (there’s nothing weirder than being more excited to not meet friends in real life and not experiencing things that makes humans human, maybe he’s a robot, as he suggested as per a recent speech slippage during a conference), recently discovered artefacts and cities that clearly show human high tech and advanced civilisations largely predates the admitted / mainstream academia of historians or archeologists, thus reshuffling the cards of our evolutionary steps as a collective, and bestowing new questions and no satisfying answers (think Disk of Sabu for instance, or Göbekli Tepe), webs of lies (from “celebs” or politicians, journalists, presidents even, or 15 min stars, Warhol-style) being told, then spotted, fact-checked and documented but nothing being done about it, and Alexa going mute when asked if she works for the CIA or the government (try it, if you have the house elf of said name, its weirdly funny but slightly worrying)…
So many questions. So many doubts… Are these things real, or manufactured to feed a narrative that eludes us?
It seems that more and more ask: Quid Bono? Who profits from this?
And so, rightfully, we can ask ourselves : What’s going on?
And what about the massive rise of consciousness, sense of spiritual self, and personal growth that are inversely proportioned to the “old systems” that we know ( and have experienced) to be unsustainable in the long term?
It seems a new era is opening up, and the old paradigm is fighting to justify its (dying) existence.
Time to reconnect with ourselves, I suppose after distractions were given a free rein for too long…Time to rediscover our spiritual, emotional layers hiding within our souls, and probably make peace with the part of our being that we forgot or were told is not existing or is not real, or worth acknowledging. As this year draws to an end, I am engulfed in reflecting more intensely on those past 2 years, I sailed through so many personal turmoils and losses, that my sense of self, purpose, life path even have been dramatically challenged and my inner world turned upside down. Possibly also because I’m soon to change decade. I have all those writing projects that need completion, Deep Waters, first, then another one about more personal family matters (in a pastiche/ non-sensical humor style a la Monty Python), then Mallory, and an art project…
The resurgence of the creative flow in myself is irresistible, its commandeering urge to translate into something tangible is not to be questioned, and man, does it feel good, after too long of lulling it back into the dark realm of doubt and undreamt dreams.
A little doodle to celebrate Emeline qPankhurst and her courage. I drew her on a black paper.
I used white ink to materialise her stepping in the light, leaving the darkness of the background her born a female would dictate her to dwell into.
She gradually captured the meager window of freedom she was given and boldly transformed it, multiplying it and defracting it into a myriad of beams, like millions of diamonds and droplets of enlightening wisdom and perseverance that inspired others, waves rippling onto the steady but muddy and stale waters of patriarchy.
A true light to cast upon this half of the population that was only forced into silence, various types of enslavement, domination, duress, humiliation, occasionally celebrated for its beauty, but never brains or ideas, or intelligence, by the unchallenged domination of the other half.
Before her, many other women campaigned for votes and equal rights for women. Think Manon Roland and Olympe de Gouges, among others.
Olympe had not been given the opportunity for her Voice to echo within the minds and hearts of good willing souls, men or women. Her fantastic Declaration of the Woman and the Female Citizen’s rights, (written immediately after the Declaration of Man’s rights had been crafted by men of the Peuple who conveniently forgot they were born , married too, loved by, supported and generally encouraged by Women), faded too quickly into oblivion, as she narrowingly escaped the guillotine.
Although her addition to the Declaration of Man’s rights is a masterpiece, it took years before it was brought to light . It is not, to my knowledge, studied in schools, or in history classes
It has been engraved on the entrance walk of the Senate in Paris, though the French political class seem to never have read it in order to respect and follow its principles, as women are still regularly attacked in mean and vile ways by those men elected to represent ALL citizens.
Emeline and her sisterhood of suffragettes took a stand, probably because English society could not fathom sending a gentry lady to the guillotine, even if her plea was irritating to the ears those males.
She fought, they fought. They chained themselves on the fences of the Parliament.
But as she was educated (privately), and rich, and a child of the best society, the crème de la crème, she was eventually listened to
And she won the 1st round of the battle.
Vote.
It was revolutionary in a men’s world.
Apparently, requiring that basic rights be given to all citizen, regardless of sex, status or sexual preferences still is.
Recent sad laws or events show yet again that the need of toxic masculinity to dominate those different to them, in a way (being a female) or another (not being hetero, for instance) is very much a worrying thing.
But let not lose faith, for even giant terrifying dinosaurs and ferocious T Rexes, unequipped for modern times, eventually went extinct.
It’s been such an agony to wait for you to arrive.
How delightful to make your acquaintance.
We all expect you to behave, spread joy, have respect for the elderly, give hand and don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Your predecessor didn’t score high in our hearts.
Better be on the lookout to be a friend rather than a foe.
Best foot forward, and work smart for the best, for hope does not get one into action, really.
I shall not miss you. 2021 cannot b as tough as you’ve been, my father cannot die again of cancer, and all the rest is only repetition, but I’m ok with that.
Take these flowers to lay them in your bed as you rest forverver in our memory, and let go of us.
Sincerely,
PS no need to produce offsprings in your spitting image.
Because this is how is feels somethimes, with all thoses lockdowns and restrictions, news, counternews, data, additional data, claims, false claims, errors and trials and the whole shebang.
If we are being manipulated, I’d say that’s by Mister Corona itself, with its cleverness and the chaos, engineered or not, that follows along.
The other day, I took ink and paper and Count Orlok emerged from the depths of the page.
Nosferatu. Copyright FV 2020
I remember watching Nosferatu, a symphony of horror (by F.W Murnau, 1922) as a cinephile teenager, when I was 16 or 17. Like most of the German expressionist movies, it is a masterpiece, an influential sublime piece of the 7th art. Maybe it was a little less phantasmagoric or dreamlike than The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari or The Golem, yet it has an enduring appeal, made of horror, accuracy and raw aesthetic due to the absence of elaborate decor or superfluous artifice. These gloomy times we go through could certainly fit in the allegory of the disease spreading everywhere embedded in this film.
Incidentally, Count Orlok, the main character stemming directly from Bram Stocker’s Dracula, was played by the actor Max Schreck, whose surname in German means “Terror”. How apt. He is indeed terrifying.
Klaus Kinski would later, in Werner Herzog’s movie Nosferatu the Vampyre, revive the character, with an undeniable success.
The silent B&W movie of 1922 nonetheless, with the iconic stills taken from as equally iconic scenes, remains a powerful horror one to this day. And this is the image I keep from the movie, along with the final one, where Orlok turns into smoke, struck by the fatal sunlight.
Café culture addict 