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Fun fact: I will hold your hands while eating you out.

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if boring means at peace, i‘m ok with that.

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Théodore Géricault’s "Self-Portrait as a Dying Man" is a haunting painting that reveals the artist's struggle with mortality and mental anguish. It was painted towards the end of his life around 1822.

In this self-portrait, the artist presents himself as gaunt, pale, and weary, with hollow eyes that reflect deep suffering. At the time of the painting, Géricault had been grappling with severe illness, both physical and mental. In fact, mental illness had run in the family.

The painting’s raw emotion shows a man who was confronting his own mortality, without any of the romantic or heroic embellishments seen in other works of the era.

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Circular song

Medieval music books, with their merry notes jumping off the page, are a pleasure to look at. This sensational page from the 14th century adds to this experience in a most unusual manner. It presents a well-known song, the French ballade titled En la maison Dedalus (In the house of Dedalus), be it that the scribe decided to write both music and lyrics in a circular form. There is reason behind this madness. The maze created by music and words locks up the main character of the song, the mythological figure Ariadne, who is a prisoner in the house of Daedalus - she is represented by the red dot. The book contains treatises on music theory, notation, tuning and chant. In other words, it was meant for experts readers. The beholder likely enjoyed the challenge of singing a circular song (did he or she spin the book around?) and how it held its subject hostage in the merriest of ways.

Pic: Berkeley, Music Library, MS 744 (made in Paris in 1375). More about the manuscript here, including more unusual images. This is a study of the book (the ballade is discussed at p. 14).

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Miles Davis ‎– Bitches Brew (Columbia GP 26, 1970). Cover by Mati Klarwein.

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