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dinosaurtsukki · 4 years

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across the sea | a bokuaka fanfic (act. I)

inspired by the movie ‘portrait of a lady on fire’ by celine sciamma which is sad and lesbian

pairing: bokuto koutarou x akaashi keiji

word count: 21.8k words

contains: historical setting (actually the setting is vague bec if i tried to describe it more it would take 5 extra pages), heavy angst, slight fluff, greek mythology references, implied smut

summary: when Bokuto accepted a portrait commission for the young, engaged Akaashi Keiji, he never expected him to be so beautiful. he knows it's a mistake to be attached, a mistake for them to fall in love in a time when they know it's impossible for them to be together.

a/n: i’m a sad gay who loves sad lesbian movies and portait of a lady on fire is peak film. a lot of the things here are based on the film so i suggest you check out this beautiful movie, but i added a few tweaks here and there to make it my own.

chapters: act. I, act. II., act. III

“You’re not the first painter to come here,” the ferryman said. Actually, it wasn’t the first time Bokuto had heard that. And now, he was sitting in the middle of tiny, fishing boat, clutching his tattered suitcase and the thin, wooden box where he kept his canvases for dear life. Mostly due to the fact that if his suitcase or canvases found their way overboard, Bokuto would have no choice but to jump after them.

“Is he a terror?” Bokuto asked, deciding to make conversation with the ferryman anyway.

“A terror? No, none of the painters who came back looked scared. Maybe frustrated or lost is the right word,” the ferryman said. “He never leaves the manor but they say that he’s more beautiful than his suitor.”

“I’ve heard that too,” Bokuto muttered as he gazed over the horizon to the shore where the boat was headed. He wasn’t particularly fond of the job he had to take: a portrait commission. Bokuto would much rather work on the commission from the church in his hometown with his master, painting bodies and landscapes were his specialization. On the other hand, Bokuto was not as confident with drawing the human face, specifically, capturing emotion in the eyes. Which were very, very important for a painter hoping to make his own way into the world. And because of that, his master sent him off to the Elysium Estate, a secluded piece of land nestled along the coast of a provincial town owned by the Akaashi family, to paint Akaashi Keiji’s portrait to send to his suitor.

An hour later, the boat had reached the harbor and Bokuto promptly got off, grateful for steady, unshifting land, thanked the ferryman and paid the fee. Then, clutching his suitcase and canvases, he made his way up a rocky trail to where the estate was. Up close, the large house looked dark and gloomy, as if nobody lived there, at all, but it still looked quite grand with its Greek-inspired architecture and marble columns framing the entrance. Standing outside, as if expecting him, was a young man with short, black hair, dressed in a butler’s uniform.

“You must be the painter, Bokuto Koutarou,” he spoke, bowing formally when Bokuto walked up. “I’m Kageyama Tobio, the estate butler. If there is anything you need during your stay here, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thanks!” Bokuto grinned. “Um, no need to be so formal though. I’m just an apprentice painter.”

“The madam ordered me to treat you as such,” Kageyama said, holding out his hand to take Bokuto’s belongings. Bokuto contemplated it for a while and handed him his suitcase, keeping his canvases closely to himself. Kageyama opened the door to the estate and they walked into a foyer that was dimly lit by a few candles.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot of people stay here, huh?” Bokuto said as he looked around.

“Only the madam and her son are currently living here,” Kageyama explained, taking an oil lamp from the table and walking down a hallway near the grand staircase. “You will be staying in this room for the meantime,” he added, opening the door to a room that was much larger than Bokuto’s master’s studio. Inside was a large, four-poster bed, windows that almost covered the entire far wall, a fireplace, and an easel already set up. When Bokuto glanced at the wall nearest him, he could see a door that probably led into his own bathroom.

“Wow, this is… a nice room,” Bokuto said, unable to find the words to say.

“The madam and young master Keiji have retired for the evening but he has agreed to meet you for breakfast in the dining hall,” Kageyama said, leaving the suitcase on top of the chest at the foot of Bokuto’s bed. “Would you like me to bring up some supper?”

“Yes please,” Bokuto smiled politely and Kageyama left him in the dark, grand room. Bokuto took the time to start a fire to light up the room. Then, he unloaded his canvases. The wooden box that was custom-made for it was nailed shut and Bokuto pried it open with a small tool stashed in his suitcase. To his relief, the canvases were both as pristine and white as when he first packed them. Bokuto lovingly ran his finger across the surface, already eager to break out his paints and start the commission. Just for the sake of being able to paint again.

After a warm meal of bread and soup, Bokuto lay on the soft bed of his room and fell asleep.

The next morning, he was woken up by Kageyama knocking on the door. Remembering that he would be meeting Akaashi for the first time, Bokuto quickly washed his face and dressed into his best pair of trousers and a clean shirt before hurrying to the dining room. The room was half the size of the manor’s living room, but better lit with tall windows that reached the ceiling. The long table was set for two and already sitting there, was Akaashi Keiji.

The rumors about his beauty were true: with his tanned skin, hair the color of chocolate that fell in short waves around his face, his graceful facial features, and eyes the color of deep emerald that followed Bokuto as he walked to his seat. Under the table, he felt his hands itch for a piece of charcoal and paper.

“U-um, Bokuto Koutarou,” he stammered, remembering that he had to introduce himself. “Pleased to meet you… um, sir.”

“There’s no need for that,” Akaashi waved his hand. His voice was soft but he spoke and enunciated every syllable. “So, my mother sent you to become a companion before I’m carted off to Italy to get married. Hopefully, I get to enjoy some kind of freedom before that happens.” He paused and fixed his gaze on Bokuto. “What do you think about all this?”

“Well, your mother seems concerned about you and your health—”

“You don’t have to talk as if she’s here,” Akaashi interrupted him. “She’s the one who’s paying you, not me. Tell me what you really think.” Bokuto blinked at the interruption and one look at Akaashi told him that he would detect any lie. So, Bokuto decided to tell the truth, or as much as he could without spilling the fact that he was painting his portrait in secret.

“When I entered the workforce to get a job, I never thought I’d have to be hired to be a personal companion,” Bokuto chuckled. “But it beats working in a factory. About your situation however, I think it’s a bit sad.”

“Sad? Do you pity me?” Akaashi’s expression was neutral.

“In a way, I do. It must be lonely having to stay here. Maybe your mother hired me so you’d have someone to talk to. In a way, I guess I am perfect for job,” Bokuto grinned. “People say I’m talkative enough to hold a conversation for two.” Akaashi looked down at his plate, as if thinking over what Bokuto said, and then looked out the window.

“I want to go down to the beach today,” he said, Bokuto silently let out a sigh of relief. He had passed whatever test Akaashi had set up. “Accompany me after breakfast.”

“Yes sir,” Bokuto nodded. In front of him, he saw the corner of Akaashi’s lip turn up.

“I’m younger than you. You may call me Akaashi.”

An hour later, Bokuto made his way down the beach with Akaashi behind him, wearing a dark green scarf around his chin and a jacket over his shirt. Bokuto couldn’t help but notice how Akaashi looked at the beach as if it was the first time he was there, and perhaps it was his first time at the beach. Judging by how thin his frame was and his breathing that was almost labored while he walked down the beach, Bokuto could easily tell how sickly he was. Bokuto considered sitting on the sand with Akaashi, but another part of him wanted Akaashi to experience much more. As soon as they reached the beach, Bokuto kicked off his shoes and socks and walked over to wade in the sea.

“Come on,” he smiled and raised a hand encouragingly at Akaashi who eyed him curiously before taking off his shoes and socks, as well as his jacket and left them in a neat pile beside Bokuto’s things. He dipped his feet hesitantly in the water, before walking forward and joining Bokuto.

“Thanks to you, my mother allowed me to finally come down here,” Akaashi said, squinting at the horizon. “We came to live at the estate because the doctors said the sea breeze might do me good, but they kept me locked inside.”

“What do you do to pass the time?” Bokuto asked.

“Read, mostly. Actually, all the time,” Akaashi answered. “Even if I wasn’t allowed to go out, my father consistently sent me books and tutors so at least my learning was up to standard. My mother joins me in the library sometimes to work on her embroidery.” He looked sideways at Bokuto. “I know a lot of things, like the deepest parts of the sea we’re standing in, the trade routes that cross it, but I’ve never been in it.”

“Well, if it’s any comfort, yesterday was the first time I’ve been to sea,” Bokuto admitted. “I never thought waves could rock a boat so much. I was sick to my stomach and I almost threw up over the side of the boat.” Akaashi smiled wryly.

“Did you?”

“No,” Bokuto chuckled. “The sea was a wonderful blue, I couldn’t bear to throw up in it.”

“That’s good,” Akaashi nodded. “I’ve always wondered about how salty the sea is.” Bokuto raised his eyebrows, bent down, and cupped some water in his hands.

“Want to try it for yourself?”

“As long as you don’t tell my mother,” Akaashi snorted. He cupped his hands down under Bokuto’s and bent down, raising their hands. Bokuto felt Akaashi’s lips kiss the tips of his fingers as he sipped the saltwater. Akaashi raised his head, making a face that was half-grimace, half-look of curiosity, and spat the saltwater back into the sea. Bokuto laughed.

“How was it?”

“The saltiest thing I ever tasted,” Akaashi said. “Even saltier than bacon. But now I know how salty sea is.”

They spent the next few hours at the beach, even taking their lunch there after Kageyama delivered it in a picnic basket. Bokuto took the time to watch Akaashi as he picked up rocks and shells to inspect before returning them where he found them, attempting to memorize his unwilling client’s face. In his head, Bokuto pictured Akaashi in a fancy, green dress jacket that matched the color of his eyes, sitting with his hands folded over each other and perhaps a book on his lap. He kept that image in mind when he asked Akaashi if they could head inside. The madam, whom Bokuto was to meet the next day, called Akaashi to the library giving time for Bokuto to begin sketching drafts of the portrait.

He took his time, drawing different parts of Akaashi at first: his hands, his hair, his side profile and ears, his nose and mouth, and lastly, his eyes. Bokuto had to soap the charcoal off his fingers before joining Akaashi at supper, this time making less conversation to observe the details of his face. When he was alone in his room again, Bokuto laid the sketches out before him near the fireplace and made an attempt to draw Akaashi’s eyes again, only to give up on lie on the floor, trying to remember how the candlelight at dinnertime accentuated the planes of his face and the faraway look in Akaashi’s eyes that seemed to lead out to sea.

…

The next day, Bokuto sat in front of Akaashi Keiji’s mother, or Mikoto, as she preferred that he would address her, in the manor’s library upstairs. Out of all the rooms Bokuto had visited in the giant house, this one seemed to be the most visited by the madam and her son. Like the dining room, it had large windows that lit the entire room. The wooden floor was polished and books that have left their shelves to rest in stacks around the room showed signs of it being frequented, most likely by Akaashi himself. Other than that, there was something about the entire room that felt comforting and warm.

“So, you’ve met my son,” Mikoto said, sipping from her teacup. She looked a lot like her son: same brown hair, green eyes, and sharp features. His master told him that she had one lame leg, thanks to being infected by polio years ago, which prevented her from going around frequently. “How did you find him?” she asked, fixing him with her gaze.

“He’s, well, quite reserved,” Bokuto answered. “Yesterday when we had breakfast, I feel as if he was testing me,” he added with a nervous chuckle.

“Ah, Keiji tends to do that,” Mikoto smiled ruefully. “We used to live near a city when he was younger. But, because of his health, my husband decided to move us here for the sea air. That did Keiji’s health better but unfortunately, he’s had very little encounter with the outside world. When we told him about the marriage arrangement, he’s grown distant from me.”

“Is that the reason why nobody has ever successfully painted his portrait?” Bokuto asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Mikoto nodded. “Keiji’s strong-willed and scheming, despite everything. He knows that we need the marriage for our lands and wealth to continue remaining under our family name. He doesn’t directly transgress the marriage, but he makes it difficult for it to continue.”

“He’s probably prolonging it,” Bokuto said, suddenly feeling sad for Akaashi. Even though he was better off with a wealthy family compared to Bokuto who was taken in by his master after his parents died, Akaashi had very little freedom. And now, a marriage.

“Probably,” Mikoto set her cup down and looked at the portrait of her that hung over the fireplace. “Which is why we need you, Bokuto-san. Your master played a hand in helping seal my marriage by painting this portrait. He did well. And now, you must do the same.” Bokuto gulped. “Your master spoke very highly of you. Have you started on the portrait?”

“Yes,” Bokuto nodded. Early that morning, he had sketched a rough layout of Akaashi on one of his canvases. Without Akaashi there to pose, it took a great deal for Bokuto to visualize his position. But he wasn’t his master’s student for nothing. Bokuto was confident that he could paint Akaashi’s likeness.

“Well, I mustn’t keep you then,” Mikoto said. “Call Akaashi to come here. I’ll let you have a few hours to paint.”

“Thank you, Mikoto-san,” Bokuto bowed before leaving the library, closing the double doors behind him. He walked down the great stairs of the manor and was about to head into his room when he ran into Akaashi heading his way. “Akaashi,” Bokuto grinned, trying to make it seem as if he hadn’t just discussed Akaashi’s marriage with his mother just a while ago. “I was just about to look for you.”

“Well, you found me,” Akaashi said. He was wearing trousers, a light blue shirt, and a beige jacket.

“Your mother requests that you join her in the library,” Bokuto said. Akaashi made a face.

“I don’t feel like reading, I’d rather go outside,” he said. “Would you come join me at the beach again? It should be at low tide when we are there.”

“I-I would, but…” Bokuto stammered.

“Is there anything you’re preoccupied with?” Akaashi asked, stepping closer to Bokuto. His green eyes bored into his, searching for an answer. Bokuto relented.

“Of course not,” he shook his head and smiled. “Going to the beach sounds great.” Bokuto groaned internally, thinking about how fast he’d have to paint before sunset. And then, Akaashi smiled, excitement shining in his eyes.

“Let’s go then, Bokuto-san.” And somehow, it was all alright. The two of them made their way to the beach, walking side by side. Akaashi had the same scarf he wore yesterday tied around his chin. Bokuto walked in front of Akaashi when they made their way down the trail along the rocky side of the cliff. Every so often, Bokuto felt the urge to turn around to check how Akaashi was doing, and to memorize the look of his hands as they gripped the side of the cliff, the concentration in his furrowed brow, how his green scarf billowed behind him in the wind. As they neared the bottom of the cliff, Bokuto suddenly heard the sound of rocks falling and Akaashi crying in surprise.

“Bokuto-san!”

Quick as a flash, Bokuto turned around to catch Akaashi in his arms, holding a hand out to steady himself against the cliff with the other wrapped around Akaashi’s waist. Up close, Bokuto could smell the sea breeze already caught in Akaashi’s clothes as well as the slightest whiff of vanilla. For a moment, he wondered if he could catch that scent in the portrait he was going to paint.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Bokuto said. Akaashi stepped back, steadying himself against the rocky cliff wall. His one hand lingered on Bokuto’s shoulder before using it to pull down the scarf tied around his chin.

“Thank you, Bokuto-san,” he spoke. Without thinking, Bokuto held out a hand to him. Akaashi accepted and the two walked hand-in-hand to the beach.

Bokuto soon found out why Akaashi was excited to go down to the beach at this time. After leaving his scarf, jacket, shoes, and socks in a neat pile again on the sand, Akaashi waded out to sea and bent down in search of hermit crabs and other creatures in the tide pools. Bokuto waded with him for a while before sitting near a large rock and taking out a piece of paper folded around a small piece of drawing charcoal. He decided to focus on drawing Akaashi’s hands, folded over each other, before finding his own hand moving by itself and drawing Akaashi’s eyes, his nose, the scarf tied around his chin that covered his mouth. ‘Stupid,’ Bokuto shook his head, realizing that he didn’t need to sketch the scarf for the portrait. He folded the sketch and stuffed it in his shirt pocket, rubbing the charcoal of his fingers on his pants as Akaashi jogged towards him with something cupped in his hands.

“Bokuto-san,” he stopped, holding out his hands to Bokuto to show a hermit crab scuttling in it. Bokuto let out a chuckle.

“I see you’ve found a friend,” he reached out a finger to gently stroke the crab’s shell. Akaashi had a small smile on his face. “Thinking of bringing it home?”

“No,” Akaashi shook his head. “I read that they easily get depressed when they’re alone. And I don’t think he would want to live in a sink. I just wanted to hold one in my hands.”

“Like when you held seawater yesterday,” Bokuto said, smiling at the memory. “But I’d advice against tasting this one.” Akaashi looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Very funny, Bokuto-san,” he said dryly. Bokuto snickered. Akaashi bent down and released the hermit crab into the sand.

“Let’s head back, I’m good for today,” Akaashi said, walking back to where his things were. “I know you still have some things to work on.”

“I—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Akaashi held out a hand. “It was… rude of me to try to invade your privacy. I apologize. It’s just…” Akaashi pursed his lips and looked down.

“I get it. Kageyama isn’t the most talkative person around,” Bokuto grinned, sidling up next to him. “And I was hired to be your companion.”

“I don’t want you to think about it like that,” Akaashi said. “I know it’s not normal. It’s kind of sad that my mother would have to hire someone to be my friend here. So, can we both pretend that your salary doesn’t come from a fake friendship?”

“Well…” Bokuto shrugged. “If we’re going to that, want to add to the pretending?”

“How do you suppose we do that?” Akaashi looked at him curiously.

“If we’re going to be pretend friends, how did our ‘friendship’ begin?” Bokuto asked. “Maybe I was a boy from the nearby village who wandered here, wanting to see the Elysium Estate for myself. All the other kids say it’s an abandoned manor, a haunted one specifically. But I, a brave soul, decided to check it out.” Akaashi smiled and sat down on the sand to put on his socks and shoes.

“On that day, my mother let me read outside, just near the house of course. While reading my book, I couldn’t help but notice a noise coming from behind the house,” he continued.

“It was me, pelting pebbles at one of the windows,” Bokuto laughed, fully engaged in their imagining.

“Lucky for you, my mother was asleep and I happened to appear before you first.”

“I probably screamed like a girl in terror thinking you were a ghost.”

“And then I had to calm you down. And then tell you that there were in fact people living here.”

“And then I sense how lonely you are and invite you to play.”

“And then we play tag all morning and chase each other on the beach,” Akaashi smiled, eyes scanning the horizon again. “That’s a nice backstory. Though, it’s just a story.”

“It’s a good story,” Bokuto held out a hand and helped Akaashi to his feet. Both of them reached the manor a good three hours before the sun set, leaving Bokuto with enough time to begin mixing his paints to begin the portrait. It was probably his favorite part of painting, creating the colors to imprint a real picture on canvas. He mixed some red and white into a warm shade of brown for Akaashi’s skin, darkening the shade for his hair. Bokuto touched his brush to his paints and filled in his sketch. Then, he mixed in white and a darker brown for the highlights and contours. Next, he worked on Akaashi’s suit: dark green jacket and crisp white shirt. Clothing was harder to work on without a model but Bokuto tried to imagine where the creases and folds would be placed and ran his brush over them.

Now that he had begun, Bokuto didn’t want to stop painting, even after dinner when he had to light five candles and place them around his workstation. Eventually, the change in lighting got to him and Bokuto knew he couldn’t continue working like this. He packed away his paints, brushes, and palette, folded up his easel, and moved them to the extra storeroom connected to his bedroom. Then, he gently lifted the canvas, careful not to touch it, and placed it gently in the closet. Lastly, Bokuto blew out all the candles, taking the last one with him to take one last look at his painting before going to sleep. When he squinted, with the candle in front of him, the portrait looked as if it was on fire.

…

The next few days were like so: Bokuto would accompany Akaashi for walks on the beach or around the fields bordering the estate and the village over. Many times, Bokuto would have to rush his time to work on Akaashi’s portrait before sunset fell. In the mornings, he’d wake up early to check on errors he might have made in the dim light. Most of them were errors in shading, a color not mixed right, but there was little to fix. Before he knew it, Bokuto was almost finished with the portrait.

At the same time, he couldn’t help but feel guilty having to paint this portrait behind Akaashi’s back, knowing all the effort he put into preventing his arranged marriage as best as he could. Even seeing the excited look on Akaashi’s face, which lifted Bokuto’s spirits momentarily, had the bitter aftertaste of knowing that this excitement would all be ruined once Bokuto had to tell him about his circumstances for being at the manor. So, he spent a bit more time with Akaashi, hoping that he didn’t have to finish the portrait so early. That was until Akaashi.

“He’ll likely be in bed all day,” Mikoto said, telling Bokuto the news over breakfast when he asked why Akaashi wasn’t there. “That should give you enough time to finish the portrait by tomorrow, right?” she looked up at him over her breakfast. Bokuto swallowed.

“Yes Ma’am,” he nodded. For once, he wasn’t excited to get back to finishing a painting.

“Good. Keiji’s father has called for me to meet him in Kyushu. I set out to leave tomorrow after breakfast. If you like, I could be the one to tell Keiji about your… background,” she said, spreading butter on a slice of bread. He could tell that she was relieved, probably, knowing that she’d be rid of her sickly son. ‘No, that’s not it,’ Bokuto mentally shook his head, reminding himself that Akaashi Mikoto was simply doing her job as a mother and as someone concerned about the wealth of her family. She wasn’t a bad woman, Bokuto just somehow bitterly considered her as one.

“It’s alright, Mikoto-san,” Bokuto shook his head. “I’ll tell him myself.”

Mikoto smiled at him. Immediately, she looked years younger, just like the woman in the portrait that hung in the library. “Thank you, Bokuto-san. I trust that it hasn’t been easy, having to paint a portrait of my son without having him pose. I have no doubt that the portrait will be lovely, but I’m not looking forward to seeing the look on Keiji’s face after realizing what I’ve done.”

“Neither am I,” Bokuto smiled ruefully. “Forgive me for this but, I believe I’ve come to see him as a friend these past few weeks.”

“I know he sees you as one too,” Mikoto nodded, looking out the window. “I forbade him from going to the beach for years, fearing that something would happen to him. I couldn’t accompany him and Kageyama’s the only household staff who manages the property. These days, you can tell how excited he is in the morning. He doesn’t say it but you can see it in his eyes.”

Bokuto smiled wistfully. In his portrait, he tried to capture the small smile that would come up on Akaashi’s face whenever he was excitedly wading in the beach or showing Bokuto something new. But as successful as he was in picturing it, it didn’t translate in the portrait. The Akaashi Keiji there had a stern expression on his face, his eyes staring blankly. It was still a good portrait, but Bokuto knew that something was lacking.

After breakfast, he spent more than an hour adding the finishing touches on the portrait and looking at it from afar. He was finished with the portrait, but he didn’t want to tell Mikoto or her son yet. Instead, Bokuto ventured off into the kitchens where Kageyama was busy preparing lunch. With going to the beach with Akaashi and being locked in his room working on the portrait, Bokuto saw very little of Kageyama. Knowing that he’ll be leaving soon after giving the portrait to Mikoto, Bokuto felt that he should have at least one conversation with the butler.

“Bokuto-san,” Kageyama looked up from the pot he was stirring on the stove. “Is there anything you need?”

“Just water,” Bokuto said. “It’s alright, I can get some myself.” Kageyama nodded and Bokuto filled his cup at the tap near the stove before sitting at the long wooden table inside the kitchen. There was a bowl of potatoes, a chopping board, and a knife on the table. “Do these need peeling?” Bokuto asked, picking one up and, without waiting for an answer, picked up the knife.

“Please don’t trouble yourself with that, Bokuto-san,” Kageyama said hurriedly. “You still have the young master’s portrait to finish.”

“It’s already finished,” Bokuto smiled up at him. “And believe it or not, squinting at a canvas with a brush full of paint gets tiring after a while. I’m a pretty good assistant in the kitchen as well,” he said, peeling the potato. “But I’m a terrible cook.” A small smile flitted across Kageyama’s face. He sat at the table in front of Bokuto and cubed the peeled potatoes.

“How long have you worked here?” Bokuto asked, hoping to initiate conversation.

“A good five years,” Kageyama answered. “The previous butler was a good friend of mine but he decided to work in a much livelier household.” Bokuto quirked his lips slightly.

“And you don’t mind having a less-lively household?”

“It’s quite ideal, actually. I only have two people to wait upon. Both of them don’t require much, except for when the young master falls ill. The pay is good and the room and board is free,” Kageyama answered. “And the beach is just outside for me to visit.”

“It makes me sad knowing that Akaashi hasn’t visited the beach at least once before I came,” Bokuto said.

“Yes,” Kageyama nodded, pausing with his work to look up at Bokuto. “He’s… a lonely man. I’ve kept wondering again and again if maybe I could have tried to befriend him but… that would be imposing of me.”

“Akaashi probably wouldn’t mind,” Bokuto said. Kageyama blinked at him in surprise before smiling.

“Seeing how lively he is now with you as company, I agree.” Again, Bokuto felt regret in the back of his throat.

“Do you… do you think he’ll hate me after I tell him that I’m painting his portrait?” Bokuto asked. Kageyama pursed his lips.

“I don’t know the answer to that. But I have a feeling he will be disappointed,” he said, scooping up the cubed potatoes and adding them into the pot on the stove. “Lunch will be ready in half an hour. Would you like me to take it to your room?”

“No need,” Bokuto shook his head and then, an idea popped into his head. “I could take Akaashi’s lunch to his room.”

“Bokuto-san, you don’t need to—”

“Trouble myself, I know,” Bokuto nodded. “But I’m finished with the portrait and there’s nothing else for me to do. Also…” he sighed. “I know it’s pretty useless but maybe I could make amends with Akaashi this way?”

“He would appreciate it,” Kageyama said.

Bokuto carefully carried the tray of Akaashi’s lunch: soup with chicken and potatoes, and a roll of bread, upstairs to his room. It just occurred to him that he had never been to Akaashi’s room before and seldom even went to the second floor. Bokuto paused in front of it before knocking once, twice, thrice.

“Akaashi?” he spoke. “I, uh, brought—”

“Come in.”

Bokuto opened the door. He didn’t know what to expect when it came to Akaashi’s room but once he was inside, the whole space undeniably felt as if it belonged to Akaashi. The number of books in his bedroom was probably a quarter of what was in the manor’s library. Bokuto felt himself smile, knowing he found the source of the gaps in the bookshelves. The curtains on the window were drawn back, letting in a good amount of light. There was a small table pushed near the window and on it was a vase full of wildflowers. Bokuto recognized them as the ones that Akaashi had picked in the fields the other day. The owner of the room himself was sitting up in bed, wearing a maroon robe, with a book on his lap.

“I brought your lunch,” Bokuto said, lifting up the tray.

“Thank you,” Akaashi said, his voice sounded hoarse and weak. Bokuto set down the tray at his nightstand and sat down on the chair near his bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sick,” Akaashi shrugged, there was a gleam in his eyes that betrayed the fact that he was teasing Bokuto.

“Care to elaborate?” he chuckled.

“I think it’s the usual flu,” Akaashi sighed. “Aches, fever, all that good stuff. Nothing new.”

“Well, you better eat to maintain your strength,” Bokuto said, gesturing to the tray. Akaashi smiled wryly and lifted it to his lap. While he ate, Bokuto looked over at the books on his nightstand. Most of them were books on philosophy and political science. Except for one with a deep, burgundy jacket and a well-worn spine. “Greek Myths and Legends,” Bokuto read aloud.

“It’s my favorite book from my collection,” Akaashi said, sipping some broth from his spoon. “My father had gifted it to me personally before we left our previous estate.”

“I didn’t take you for a fan of legends,” Bokuto said.

“They’re the best things to read,” Akaashi cocked his head. “They’ve been around longer than any scientific theory or philosophy. The very beginnings of how men and women attempted to make sense of a world they didn’t understand yet.”

“When you put it that way…” Bokuto reached out a hand. “May I?” Akaashi nodded his permission and Bokuto carefully extracted the book from the pile and thumbed through the pages. He could tell that the book was worth quite a lot. From the thick, cream-colored pages, the title that was written in perfect calligraphy, to the colored, watercolor illustrations. The fact that this book wasn’t behind a display case, well-worn from reading and placed on a nightstand said a lot about Akaashi. Bokuto flipped to a random page. “The Myth of Prometheus,” he read aloud. In front of him, Akaashi smiled and leaned back in his bed.

“’There lived a titan named Prometheus, the supreme trickster and the god of fire,’” he recited out loud. ‘Of course he remembers it word by word,’ Bokuto thought, smiling to himself as he continued where Akaashi left off.

“’He was tasked by Zeus to form man from earth and water, and he did so. But Prometheus, the titan, grew fond of his creation…’” And so, Bokuto continued reading, not stopping until he reached the end of the myth when Prometheus was sentenced to his punishment of being chained to a rock while an eagle feasted on smalleaccompanying illustration of Prometheus’s punishment.

“Zeus always was the most bloodthirsty of the three major gods,” Akaashi chuckled dryly. “It’s a good story. While it is meant to be a cautionary tale about what happens when you defy the orders of a god, it does bring to light the need for situations wherein such transgressions are necessary.” He paused and turned to look at Bokuto. “What do you think about it, Bokuto-san?”

“Well, I always thought it was about…love?” he said uncertainly. In all honesty, the only time he ever encountered the myth was when his master retold it to him. Greek myths were always the subject of many painting commissions so Bokuto was trained to be familiar with them. The hard part when it came to painting them was adding that slight variation, the artist’s interpretation of the myth.

“Love?” Akaashi echoed. “You seem to be quite the romantic, Bokuto-san.”

“I-I mean,” Bokuto stammered, thinking of a good reason. “Prometheus was in that whole predicament because he loved his own creation too much, right? And it’s almost impossible to love something you created.” It was true, he knew that much, especially among painters. Sometimes that love gets to the point that it was impossible for him to find imperfections in his work, or even fathom being separated from the painting. In the end, most of the paintings Bokuto loved would end up in the hands of the people who paid for it. “It would be cruel of him to deny his own creations that fire, and Prometheus knew the consequences for it. I bet even after being chained to that rock, he would still make that same decision again if he could.” When he finished, he found Akaashi looking at him with an amused expression on his face.

“You’re quire right,” he said. “It’s an interesting take on the myth. I never would have thought of it but then again, I’m not a creator.” The look on Akaashi’s face seemed to lay bare Bokuto’s secrets.

“D-do you have any other favorite myths?” Bokuto asked, hoping to change the subject. “I could read a couple more for you if you like.” Akaashi placed his tray back on the nightstand and folded his hands over his lap.

“That would be nice Bokuto-san. Could you turn to page three-hundred and twenty?”

“’The Twelve Labors of Heracles,”’ Bokuto read aloud.

“It’s a long one. Are you up for it?” a corner of Akaashi’s mouth was turned up in a smile.

“Of course I am,” Bokuto returned the smile. He’s never been much of a reader, especially after being taught by the older painters at his master’s studio and even then, he had been slow when it came reading and writing. At first, Bokuto winced as he stumbled over some of the words but Akaashi kindly helped him through it and didn’t seem to mind. He was quite good at making up voices for characters like Pan, the satyr or Medusa that cracked a smile on Akaashi’s face. Before he knew it, it was already dinnertime when Kageyama brought up their food. Mikoto came in once to take Akaashi’s temperature and before leaving the room, she made eye contact with Bokuto who hgave the most imperceptible of nods. ‘Yes, the painting is done,’ it meant, and Bokuto was back to contemplating how to break the news to Akaashi.

“Something the matter, Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asked. They were both still eating dinner at the table near his bedroom window. Akaashi looked visibly better than he looked earlier.

“I…” Bokuto swallowed and felt his hand curl into a fist on his lap. “Akaashi… I-I haven’t exactly been truthful to you.” Silence fell, Akaashi stopped what he was doing and looked at Bokuto, waiting patiently for him to finish. It only made Bokuto even more nervous. “You see, I’m actually—”

“Another painter that my mother hired,” Akaashi interrupted him. Bokuto’s eyes went wide.

“You… you knew?”

Akaashi pursed his lips and reached for Bokuto’s hand, the one that was still on the table. His hand was smaller and more delicate against Bokuto’s hands, his touch feather-light. “As much as you scrub your hands, you can’t quite erase all of the charcoal and paint stains completely, nor the smell of turpentine.”

“Ahaha, I should have been more careful then,” Bokuto laughed nervously and stopped when he saw the expression on Akaashi’s face: it was the picture of melancholy, and Bokuto felt his heart ache. Did he still choose the befriend him even after knowing his intentions? “I… I’m sorry,” he apologized softly.

“Why are you apologizing?” Akaashi looked up to meet his eyes.

“You didn’t need to be so civil around me since you knew what my intentions were,” Bokuto said. “Your mother told me that you constantly evaded the other painters’ and refused to pose for them to delay your wedding.”

“That is true,” Akaashi nodded, taking his hand back. Bokuto’s hand quickly felt the loss of warmth. “But shouldn’t I say the same for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have to befriend me either. All you had to do was to paint my portrait in secret. You could have quickly denied my requests to go to the beach or ask my mother to keep me occupied for as long as you wanted.” The candlestick on their table was their only light source in the room and it illuminated Akaashi’s features so clearly and Bokuto felt every word he said. “Or is it, you just did those so I would trust you and for your cover not to be blown.”

“I…” Bokuto could hardly find the words. It was just like the first time they met, when they talked over breakfast before going to the beach. Except, Bokuto knew there was something at stake, only he didn’t know precisely what that was. Akaashi Keiji was just another one of his clients. Bokuto’s job would be finished tomorrow and he would go back to his studio with his money and he would wait for his next commission and in a few years, he wouldn’t even remember Akaashi Keiji among the other paintings he would make.

And so, he decided on his reply.

“Yes. You’re right.” He steeled himself for the look of hurt on Akaashi’s face, maybe a few things he would shout. ‘Those are momentary. I would forget about them later on,’ he thought. Instead, Akaashi leaned back in his seat and turned his head to the window.

“I see,” was all he said. And for some reason, that was worse.

“Akaashi—”

“You don’t need to explain yourself,” Akaashi cut him off, he was still looking out the window. “You may retire to your rooms now, Bokuto-san. You’ll have to travel home tomorrow.”

Bokuto swallowed hard and stood up, murmuring a ‘good night’ before leaving Akaashi’s room, running down the stairs, and entering his own room. He was out of breath and livid. ‘Why am I letting that get to me?’ he thought. With every breath he inhaled, an image of Akaashi came to mind. The intense look on his face when he was trying to figure out of Bokuto was lying. The pure excitement at seeing the beach. The hesitance giving way to confidence as he waded into the water. The pucker of his lips when he tasted the sea. The pure concentration as he hunted for hermit crabs. The movement of his lips when he said Bokuto’s name.

Without even realizing it, Bokuto found himself standing in front of Akaashi’s portrait. ‘Painters have an instinct,’ he remembered his master telling him when Bokuto made his first oil painting of a landscape. ‘A lot of us can tell when something is wrong with what we’ve painted. Not when it comes to the technical skills like light or shading. But it pertains to whether we’ve successfully captured a scene that’s alive, and all scenes are, on canvas.’ With his instinct, Bokuto could instantly tell that the portrait he painted of a man with a stiff expression on his face and no light behind his eyes, was not Akaashi.

Bokuto picked up his turpentine-soaked rag that he used to clean his brushed and held it over the face in the portrait. With one swift motion, he swiped it off.

…

He barely slept that night, knowing for sure that he was going to lose his job the next morning. He was going to be one of those painters who had left the estate empty-handed and frustrated, after getting so close. Yet try as he might, Bokuto knew that he didn’t regret destroying the portrait. So maybe, he could return with his head held high.

After stealing a few hours of sleep, Bokuto woke up to wash himself as best as he could and change into a clean shirt. He did all of this without looking at the portrait. Kageyama called him for breakfast and Bokuto steeled himself to face Mikoto and Akaashi. She attempted to make conversation over breakfast and yet he’d nod once in a while and pick at his breakfast, choosing not to acknowledge Bokuto who felt a deep ache in his chest.

Finally, it was time to unveil the portrait. Bokuto knew that he could simply tell Mikoto that he chose to change it in the last minute but on the other hand, he wanted Akaashi to see what he had done. So, he covered the portrait with a cloth and met them in the library to unveil the finished product.

“Bokuto Koutarou!” Mikoto exclaimed indignantly. She was clearly frustrated and Bokuto couldn’t blame her. She has gone through this same scenario a few times over. “You said you finished the portrait.”

“I did,” Bokuto nodded stiffly. “But… it wasn’t satisfactory enough.”

“You could have left that up for me to decide,” Mikoto huffed. Bokuto glanced over at Akaashi to find that the corner of his mouth had turned up in a smile. ‘Maybe this was his plan all along,’ Bokuto wondered. But it didn’t matter now. “Clearly, you are just like all the other painters who have come here. I suggest you leave as soon as possible.”

Bokuto nodded again, taking the cloth to cover up the portrait when Akaashi spoke up, saying something that neither Bokuto nor Mikoto could have expected.

“I’ll pose for him.”

Bokuto stopped and turned to face him. Akaashi was looking directly at him with a look of mild amusement on his face.

“You will?” Mikoto asked.

“I will,” Akaashi nodded. “I think… it’s time I put off this marriage long enough,” he explained. And yet, Bokuto didn’t quite believe he was telling the truth.

“Oh, Keiji,” Mikoto’s voice softened as she held her son’s face in her hands and enveloped him into a hug. “Thank you. You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that.”

“I know, Mother,” Akaashi said stiffly.

“As much as I would like to ask ‘why now?’, I really must get going,” Mikoto straightened up and looked at Bokuto this time. “I will be gone for two weeks. I expect a fully-finished portrait by the time I return.”

“I shall not disappoint,” Bokuto bowed.

“Good,” Mikoto nodded.

“Let me walk you to the ship, Mother,” Akaashi said, offering her his arm. Before leaving the room, Akaashi glanced once at Bokuto and with an imperceptible incline of his head, gestured for him to follow. An hour later, Mikoto and her luggage, which Bokuto helped Kageyama with, were loaded in the ship waiting for her at the docks. After the ship set sail, Kageyama was the first to head back to the house. Bokuto stayed with Akaashi as they watched the ship sail into the distance. He had a million questions for him but for now, all he could feel was relief. As Bokuto watched the way the wind swept through Akaashi’s hair, he knew that he wouldn’t mind looking at him for the next two weeks.

…

They started working on the portrait the next day. Kageyama offered to push the long table from the dining room to the side since it was the most well-lit room in the estate. In the middle, they added a chair and a low table for Akaashi to pose on. Bokuto set up his easel and spare canvas at the side, grateful at being able to paint in good lighting after having to work secretly in his own room. He began painting the background of the portrait with broad strokes of a maroon color to keep busy when Akaashi walked inside.

To say that he looked stunning was an understatement. Before Bokuto began his first portrait, Mikoto had shown him the suit that Akaashi was supposed to wear: a dark emerald green with golden buttons and a crisp white shirt meant to be worn with the color turned up. Seeing Akaashi actually wearing it was a different story. The suit hugged him perfectly, accentuating the slight curves in his waist with the high collar just reaching the bottom of his chin. Akaashi had combed his hair back just slightly which showed off his forehead.

“You look…” Bokuto began to say before stopping himself quickly. “Ready.”

“Thank you, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi nodded curtly, unaware of how good he looked. “If you would…” he gestured to the chair in the center of the dining room and Bokuto hurried to pose him.

“Sit slightly forward in the chair,” he instructed. “Back straight. You can rest your elbow on the table if you want but the other hand, please keep on your lap.” Akaashi followed the instructions. “Lastly,” Bokuto reached a hand out to touch Akaashi’s shoulder to tilt him slightly towards the canvas. He was aware of how close Akaashi’s face was and that he was probably staring at Bokuto. ‘In all my years of painting, have I ever worked someone as beautiful as this?’ he wondered, before shaking the thought of his head and backing away to survey the pose. “Good, perfect,” Bokuto nodded before returning to his canvas.

“What expression should I have on my face?” Akaashi asked.

“A neutral expression would be ideal,” Bokuto answered, quickly painting an outline on the canvas. “If you get uncomfortable in your position please don’t hesitate to let me know.”

“Alright, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi said. “Am I… allowed to speak?”

Bokuto glanced up at him and back to the painting. “Of course,” he swallowed before continuing. “I have you to thank for my job.”

“I didn’t do it for your job,” he heard Akaashi speak. Bokuto bit his lip. This wasn’t an ideal position for them to have this conversation.

“Then… why?” Bokuto asked.

“I should ask why you decided to destroy the portrait of me.”

“That… That’s because the person I painted wasn’t you,” Bokuto answered. “I didn’t want it to be the work I submitted.”

“I see…” Akaashi said. He had the same amused expression on his face as he had when he saw the portrait unveiled to him. “It’s just the opposite of what Prometheus did.” Bokuto paused his work to listen. “In your disgust at your creation, you opted to destroy it. Such is the mind of a creator.” There was a wry smile playing on Akaashi’s lips.

“It wasn’t disgust,” Bokuto contradicted him. “It was… a lack of attachment more like.”

“How come?” Akaashi cocked his head ever so slightly, his pose still undisturbed.

“Because my subject wasn’t aware of being painted,” Bokuto smiled, finally deciding to meet Akaashi’s gaze. Surprise flickered there, and then mirth.

“That better be a good portrait then.”

“It will be.”

They were able to finish a good amount of the portrait in that afternoon before Akaashi grew tired of posing. Bokuto was about to offer to go to the beach again but stopped when Akaashi headed straight for his room. ‘Maybe he doesn’t forgive me quite yet,’ Bokuto thought with a sigh, only for those thoughts to end when Akaashi asked him to have dinner in his room, especially since the dining table was out of use. It was a relief to see Akaashi engaged with him in conversation. The book of “Greek Legends and Myths” were still on the nightstand where Bokuto had left it. And somehow, with Mikoto out for two weeks, Bokuto felt as if he wanted to stay in that manor forever.

Before going straight to his room, he decided to pass by the dining room to look at the portrait again. He had worked fast, completing a few days’ work in just one day. The sensation of not wanting to leave was even stronger and Bokuto felt a hard lump in his throat. He walked briskly past the dining room when a small voice whispered in the back of his head: ‘Turn around.’

Bokuto spun around and caught sight of Akaashi standing in the far end of the room. Only, he was pale and almost transparent, and wearing an elaborate suit. Bokuto blinked once and then the vision was gone.

#across the sea #bokuaka #bokuto koutarou #akaashi keiji #portrait of a lady on fire!au #haikyuu!!#haikyuu!! fanfiction #haikyuu!! oneshot #across the sea: act I #bokuaka fanfic

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letsbenditlikebennett · 4 years

Text

Beyond the Veil || Solo Scene

TIMING: Current SUMMARY: Ariana digs into Lydia’s subreddit as she tries to figure out how she’s going to save Ace (aka Sammy aka Lydia’s human)

It’d been three nights since she had last seen Ace. She’d gone back to their spot every night since, hoping against all reason that he’d be there again. Ariana had been so weary in letting him leave in the first place, but she knew there was no stopping him. Whatever hold Lydia had on him was strong and there was no saving him until she could figure out how to break that. It left her heart aching no matter how busy she tried to keep herself. Nothing could take away the lingering feeling of worry that she simply couldn’t shake. Well, nothing outside of seeing and holding him in her arms again. Some sort of tangible proof that he was alive and healthy for the moment. That she hadn’t waited too long.

She paced around their spot for a few hours before she let out a defeated sigh and made her way back to the trailer. Night after night of little to no sleep was catching up with her, but her mind couldn’t relax. Now was as good a time as any to dive into that subreddit that Ace had mentioned. Hopefully it would be more enlightening than the books she read. As she paused her steps to tiredly rub her eyes, she knew a whole pot of coffee would be necessary to get through all the digging she’d likely need to do. After all, she promised him she’d save him. She promised him everything would be okay. These were promises that she was determined to keep because the alternative was far too grim to even think of.

Once she quietly let herself back inside the trailer, she brewed some coffee and set herself up with her laptop at the table. A glance at the clock told her it was one in the morning as she dove headfirst into Lydia’s section on subreddit. Prior to learning that Lydia had Ace, she hadn’t really cared to learn all that much about her. She was cordial enough when she joined that soccer game with Simon, but she seemed a little uppity for Ariana’s taste. Now every bone in her body felt rage just thinking of what she may be doing to Ace. As far as Ariana was concerned, it didn’t matter what Lydia was. Ace deserved better.

She found herself in an endless loop of scrolling. The photos from the 1970s caught her attention. She only looked a few years younger than she did now and that was nearly 50 years ago. That definitely took human out of the equation, though she’d been sure she was fae for a while now. The article showing that photo said her name was Vicky Andrews and she was on the set of some old Hollywood film that Ariana had never heard of. She squinted, looking it over as closely as possible. The photo was blurry, but that was definitely Lydia. The thread went into a debate that quickly shut down, but she found that hardly mattered. This subreddit was mostly humans who wouldn’t even be able to understand how that was possible. She scribbled down the name Vicky Andrews. If that other book was right, finding her true name could give Ari a huge advantage.

Several other names were thrown around from Allison Jacobs and Sarah Baker. Both were connected to other forms of art. Allison being a renowned poet and Sarah being a skilled painter. She remembered some of the books referring to the Leanan-sidhe as some sort of muse that usually drained artists somehow. Ace being an artist would check out. He always vaguely smelled of clay. The small smile on her face remembering his comforting scent quickly faded when she realized what that could mean. No, it had to be something else. No one could possibly be doing that to Ace. Not Ace. How could anyone look at him and want to hurt him? All she had ever seen from him was kindness and laughter. Even when he was upset with her, he was never cruel. The idea of him slowly just fading away made her stomach turn. “Fuck,” she whispered under her breath.

As she continued scrolling through the subreddit, she occasionally jotted down new discoveries about Lydia and when she released certain books. Any other aliases were also written down, she’d try them all to see if it gave her any sort of power over Lydia. She glanced back at the clock and saw it read three in the morning. She grumbled. She was definitely going to be in rough shape at soccer camp tomorrow and opted to just pull an all nighter. This time she searched displays at current galleries. She didn’t find anything pottery related as much as she hoped she would. He’d never explicitly told her he did pottery, but she could figure out as much based on the way he always smelled of clay. Part of her longed to see some of his work. See something more personal to him. See some of the parts of himself he wasn’t free to share. She’d found some that were sold to local businesses that Lydia’s name seem to be very vaguely connected with. The one that spoke to her most had vaguely moon-like designs across it. Thinking it could possibly be something Ace made only stung.

She was a leanan-sidhe. She had to be. He was an artist and she was his “amazing” muse. The thought of the word amazing describing Lydia as amazing only caused her to dramatically roll her heavy eyes. She poured herself another mug of coffee and cupped it carefully. What exactly did that mean for Sammy? She had only the vaguest of notions what being a leanan-sidhe meant. Some books called them some type of succubus. Others called them muses. The more disturbing ones said they kept the bodies of their victims to keep them looking young. She slammed the lid to her laptop down. No. No no no. Absolutely not. Ace wouldn’t become a body. She’d go to a real source. She’d figure this out and he’d be free to live his life.

Maybe he’d even stay. She’d be lying if sometimes her mind didn’t drift to a daydream of them working side by side on their crafts every time she smelled him. Her mind could so easily smell the clay and sawdust filling the air. It was a good dream and the only way it could come true was if she managed to somehow break him free from Lydia. Her heart was thudding quickly in her chest, worry filling her, but the click of a door open broke her away from her thoughts. She quickly wiped her eyes, unsure of when tears even began to fill them, and flipped the pages in her notebook. No need to get Layla or Ulf involved in this. Not yet, anyhow.

#wickedswriting #sammy #ace #lydia #beyond the veil

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

Text

Faith, Hope, Love (Rated PG)

Summary: On Christmas Eve, centuries ago, Crowley catches Aziraphale performing numerous acts of breaking-and-entering. The reality? A bit more heart-wrenching. The outcome? Mildly humorous. So he decides to lend a hand. (2669 words)

Notes: Written for @potterheadandsherlocked . I used a real German painter from the approximate time period as inspiration, and points to the possible origins of a certain Christmas legend. XD

Read on AO3.

A small village in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, 16th Century

A silent night.

No clouds, but a howling wind.

A full silver moon, throwing shadows on the ground.

Between them, a figure glides, moving about the houses in the square, keeping to the walls and peeking in the windows.

He opens the doors a crack and sneaks inside, a pack on his bag so laden with packages it should slow him down.

But it doesn’t.

It doesn’t so much as press his feet into the snow so he leaves no prints behind.

Cloaked in red and white, covered in feathers like an upright standing dove, the figure flies from house to house, dipping in and out so quickly he appears as only a blur between blinks.

An ephemeral streak against the dreary landscape.

The figure reaches the final house – the smallest of the lot, leaning with every breeze that blows. His hand reaches for the knob, ready to give it a turn, when a secondary figure creeps up behind him – one without his gift for secrecy.

“Hello, Aziraphale!”

Aziraphale’s hand jerks away from the door in surprise. “Do you have to keep doing that every time you see me?” He peeks behind him, glares into poison yellow eyes.

“Yes. Yes, I do. Well, well, well, isn’t this a sight.” Crowley smirks, arms crossed over his chest, though that’s hard to tell in the outfit he’s wearing. “Breaking into houses on the holiest night of the year? Tsk tsk, Aziraphale. If you wanted to fall so badly, you could have just come talk to me.” I would have talked you out of it, he thinks bitterly.

“That’s not what I’m doing!” Aziraphale hisses.

“You could have fooled me. I’ve been watching you – running in and out of these houses with that pack on your back, full of ill-gotten goods. And …” Crowley leans back, his smirk growing, eyeing up and down the blood-red cloak the angel has on, shielded by his wings curled around his body. “What on Earth are you wearing?”

Aziraphale’s right eyebrow shoots up on his forehead. “You should talk. What poor creature did you mutilate to make your get-up?” He snickers as he looks down the demon’s body at the shaggy jacket and trousers he’s wearing, reminiscent of a muskox, horns included, fixed to the hood, and … Aziraphale’s brows draw together. “Are there … hooves on your shoes?”

“There are indeed,” Crowley says, overly proud since he knows he��s being made fun of. “They’re quite useful for walking through all this ice and snow.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to the door. “I’ll bet. Now, if you don’t mind …” He gives the door a shove, ready to resume his work, but it’s stuck. He pushes again. It seems to push back, actively resisting. That’s when he realizes …

“Crowley! Stop holding the door shut!”

“Nope. Not until you tell me what you’re doing.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t. But it’s been a long night. I’m bored.” The demon sniffs. “Amuse me.”

Aziraphale sighs. He doesn’t have the time nor the patience for this. But it has been a long night. Aziraphale could retaliate – blow the door off its hinges, knock Crowley down the mountain to boot. But neither is worth the effort in the long run.

Plus, he runs the risk of waking someone up.

“If you must know,” he starts haughtily, “I’m not stealing anything. I’m giving.”

“And what are you giving, angel?” Crowley’s voice becomes softer – not just in volume, but in tone. It makes Aziraphale want to mirror it.

“Hope. In the form of food, warm clothes, a few toys for the kids.”

“Ah, I see,” Crowley says, his soft tone turning sour, and Aziraphale is sorry he let his guard down. “Church attendance low in this town or something?”

Aziraphale sighs again. “Something like that.” He’s not necessarily offended that Crowley would boil everything down to that. God doesn’t happen to be one among his favorites. But for Aziraphale, it goes farther than humans occupying the pews in the rundown shack of a church outside town. It was put there by the same people who force these people to work from sun up to sun down with little to no compensation so why should they attend? And since that’s been happening, keeps happening generation after generation, why should they have faith at all that the Almighty is going to fix that for them?

No, Aziraphale doesn’t care that only three people here still attend church every Sunday, or that they’re the only ones here who pray. He cares that very few people in this town want to go on living, that more and more men risk the dangers of the ice and cold knowing that they won’t return.

Betting on it, in some case.

That’s what concerns Aziraphale more than anything.

He wants these people to have something to believe in.

He needs them to see that there’s a brighter future ahead.

“How many houses have you been to tonight?” Crowley asks.

“I … I don’t know. About two hundred? Maybe three? I started at the bottom of the mountain after sunset …”

Crowley tuts. “Why don’t you use a miracle? Do all the houses at once? Unless …” He tilts his head, eyes Aziraphale dubiously “… you don’t want Heaven to know what you’re doing? Do you?”

“This doesn’t happen to be one of my official assignments, no, so I thought it best not to bother Heaven.”

“But why not? They’d give you a commendation, right? Or don’t they think giving food and toys to poor people is worth a miracle?”

“Whether they do or not isn’t the point,” Aziraphale says, hoisting the sagging pack on his back, hoping Crowley will take the hint and leave him to it. “Sometimes it’s nice to do things without someone else looking over your shoulder.”

Crowley nods. Then his eye widen. “Oh. Should I … should I leave then? Do you want to be alone?”

Aziraphale stares at the bizarrely shaggy demon, balanced expertly on two hooves, a bit too much on the nose for Aziraphale’s taste, and smiles. “No,” he says with a muted chuckle. “That’s all right. Stay, if you’d like. I’d appreciate the company.”

“All right-y then.” Crowley beams, all too pleased, and Aziraphale begins to wonder if he made the right decision inviting him along.

Oh, well. Too late now.

Aziraphale turns back to the door. The warm comfort of Crowley’s body presses against him as the demon prepares to follow him inside. Aziraphale’s smile, which had been absent most of the night, blooms. What a comical duo they must make to outside eyes, he thinks. But what on Earth will he tell people if they get caught? Aziraphale can pass himself off as Saint Nicholas, of course, but Crowley? Will the mortals believe that he’s Aziraphale’s tall, gangly pet? Some kind of malformed reindeer, perhaps?

They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

He opens the door slowly, thanking God when the wood doesn’t creak, the hinges don’t whine. There hasn’t been any rain since the snows set in and the doors have been dry as bone. With not a single soul awake, the square is still full of conversation, the houses spreading gossip that can be heard for miles with every wind that blows.

Crowley steps into the house behind him, catching the door when Aziraphale lets it go and closing it, careful not to make a sound. With the door shut, they should be plunged into darkness, but there are so many cracks and holes and uneven corners, pricks of blue moonlight shine through. Inside the house feels more like an ice box than a home, the coals in the stove having long since given up the fight at keeping the place warm.

“This poor family,” Aziraphale mutters as he puts down his pack and sets to work. “A mom and two children, one crippled, father gone. How they manage to keep food on the table, I can’t understand.”

“Sounds like a miracle.” Crowley strolls the small living area, examining the nothing this family owns but this two-room hovel, the lot of them huddled together in the next room, fast asleep.

“I wish it was,” Aziraphale says, unpacking a box of oranges, another of walnuts, sacks of sugar and flour, small pouches of molasses and peppermint, and a brown burlap wrapped side of bacon. Then he sets out some brightly painted wooden blocks, a toy train, a set of eight water colors, a soft doll with real yarn hair wearing a pretty blue dress. Crowley watches the angel pull more and more items out – a few warm blankets, trousers, shirts, and shoes, marveling at its capacity.

“That’s some bag.”

“Made it myself.”

“Any alcohol in there.”

“A bottle or two. Mostly for use as medicine, for good moms and dads.”

“Party pooper,” Crowley grouses. “Probably the shite stuff anyway, ain’t it? Knowing angels ...”

“Hell---hello?”

Aziraphale and Crowley look at one another, both of them wide eyes and rigid spines. The first to his senses, Aziraphale spins around quickly, curling his wings around himself, hiding his face behind long, white feathers that make him appear to have grown a beard.

“Hello, little boy,” he says in a huskier version of his voice, one that makes Crowley choke on his tongue. “What’s your name?”

“H---hans,” the boy stutters, creeping out further into the moonlight. “Hans von Aachen.”

“Hello, Hans. And what are you doing awake at this hour?”

“I heard voices. I’m the man of the house, so I came to investigate.”

“Are you now?” Aziraphale says fondly, sadly, since this man of the house can’t be older than ten.

His lack of nourishment makes him look eight.

“A-ha.” The thin boy looks up at the angel in awe. “Are you … Saint Nicholas!?”

“Why, yes,” Aziraphale lies confidently since he’d intended on going with that explanation all along. “Yes, I am.”

Hans gasps. “I was hoping you’d come! My momma, she says that she would pray and pray and pray for you when she was my age, but you never came! But here you are! Oh!” His hands flutter in excitement. “I should go get her! Tell her the good news!”

“Oh!” Aziraphale glances over his shoulder at Crowley, subconsciously asking for help. Crowley is better with children than Aziraphale, after all. Luckily, Aziraphale hadn’t encountered one till now. “That wouldn’t be …”

“Don’t do that,” Crowley steps in. “No need to bother her. She needs her rest.”

Crowley’s voice attracts Hans’s attention. When he lays eyes on the demon towering above him in his shaggy suit with hooved feet and a hood of horns on his head, the boy’s paper thin skin goes pale.

“Who … who are you?” Hans asks in a shaky voice, pointing a fearful finger at Crowley’s face.

Crowley looks to Aziraphale for an appropriate response. But since the angel doesn’t seem to have one, Crowley decides on one for himself.

It gives him a wicked giggle, too.

“I’m a demon!” Crowley growls before Aziraphale can stop him.

Hans’s breath catches in his throat. “B-but … why would Father Christmas be traveling with a demon?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, unamused, “why would Father Christmas be traveling with a demon?”

“I’m …” Crowley hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead, but he recovers quickly “… I’m here to punish all the bad boys and girls! Stuff them into baskets and take them down to Hell for an eternity of punishment!”

Hans gasps again, stumbling backward, literally shaking with fear.

“Good Lord,” Aziraphale mutters.

“You’re not a bad little boy?” Crowley asks, slinking towards Hans, tilting his head left and right in jarring ways. “Are you?”

“Oh! Oh, n-no! I’m not … I’m not bad! I pr-promise! I swear!”

“Leave him be,” Aziraphale says, taking a snarling Crowley by the shoulder and pulling him back behind him. “Don’t worry, dear Hans. My traveling companion won’t hurt you.”

Hans nods, but he continues to look unsure. He takes a step towards Saint Nicholas, but the hissing, spitting demon keeps him away.

“Wh---what can I do to make him leave?” Hans asks timidly, but in Aziraphale’s eyes, with great courage.

Crowley stands up straight, gazing thoughtfully at the little boy worrying his lower lip with gapped teeth, the two up front too big for his mouth. “Does your mum keep any alcohol in the place?”

Aziraphale puts a hand to Crowley’s chest and pushes him towards the door. “Just run along to bed, Hans, and go back to sleep. And for being such a good boy, such a responsible young man, I’ve brought presents for you and your family. You may open them in the morning.”

“Oh thank you, Saint Nicholas!” Hans cries, jumping up and down with a joy that overwhelms his fear. “Thank you so much!”

“And remember!” Crowley calls after him. “Don’t tell a soul you saw us! Or I’ll be back next year with the basket!”

“You’re a horrible demon!” Aziraphale says when the boy has squirreled himself away, back onto a straw-stuffed mattress with his mother and brother, a touch of angelic magic seeing him off to his best ever dreams, and a new thick wool blanket covering the three of them.

“Well, duh.” Crowley grabs Aziraphale’s sack, ties it at the top, and tosses it over his shoulder. “Shall we?”

***

Soho, Christmas 2019

“How do you like your present?” Crowley asks, pouring himself a glass of the rare red vintage Aziraphale acquired for him through less than angelic means.

The acquisition is an integral part of the gift.

Buying Crowley a bottle of his favorite wine isn’t any fun. He can do that for himself. Hiring an ex-member of a cartel to steal it from a local mob boss, just to have both gentlemen cornered in a dark alley and arrested seconds before they’re about to take one another out however?

That’s another story.

One that Crowley reads over and over with every glass he pours, every sip he savors.

“It’s lovely,” Aziraphale says, pushing wrapping paper aside and opening the book Crowley gave him. He flips through the pages, focusing mostly on the plates and not the words just this once. He stops on one page that Crowley had bookmarked with a red satin ribbon. The plate on this page features a lesser known painting by a famous 16th century artist, of Saint Nicholas and the demon Krampus, huddled by the dusty grey hearth of a creaky, hole-infested matchbox of a house, laughing over something the viewer may only speculate about. But unlike similar paintings of this stolen moment, it’s the demon that looks fondly on and the saint that seems to have a glint of mischief in his blue eyes. The painting is so finely rendered, so intricately detailed, it could be mistaken for a photograph if not for the handful of visible strokes signifying otherwise.

Aziraphale searches for the signature, his suspicions confirmed when he sees the name etched along the bottom in gold - Hans von Aachen.

“Absolutely gorgeous.” Aziraphale hovers delicate fingertips above the image – the first painting Hans ever sold. It rescued him, his mother, and his brother from that ragged shack, brought his whole town out of poverty. “But please, tell me one thing?”

“Anything.”

Aziraphale lifts the book, displaying the painting for Crowley to see. “How did that whole Don’t tell a soul you saw us or else! thing work out for you?”

“I’d say it worked out rather well …” Crowley slides onto the arm of the sofa, bumping his husband’s shoulder with his hip “… if it gives people hope. Faith. Something, anything, to believe in. Don’t you?”

Crowley leans down, lips puckered, fishing for a kiss, and Aziraphale, chuckling at his ridiculous, shaggy demon, lifts his chin to give it. “I guess I can’t disagree.”

#Good Omens #ineffable husbands #Potterheadandsherlocked #goodomenssecretsanta #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley

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somethingpoeticiguess · 5 years

Text

Ohshc Au Idea

- Ohshc Au where they all go to art school (both performing and drawing and stuff y’know (is it called visual??))

- Sort of like the same vibe as that show on Netflix called Backstage

- The school would be one of those super prestigious art schools like the Juilliard of their universe

- Tamaki would obviously be there to study piano

- he’d spend hours in the practice rooms and all of the other pianists hate him because he’s got some sort of superhuman power when it comes to booking practice rooms before anyone else

- Kyoya would be vocal performance with a minor in Broadway type acting (help I don’t know the actual terms)

- here I go again rambling about my Kyoya can sing headcanon that I will go down with

-Babey boy would probably be known as one of those people who can sing anything throughout the school

- Everyone from school can tell his voice apart from everyone else’s

- like if they walk past a practice room and hear him singing inside they can tell instantly that it’s him

- like picture this: a senior is giving a freshman a tour of the college and they walk past the practice rooms and inside practice room 3 the Freshman can hear someone singing in the best voice that they have ever heard. The freshman says to the senior with starstruck eyes “Who’s that??” “Ahh” the senior says “That’s Kyoya Ootori, he’s kind of a legend around here”

- Hikaru would be a Shakespearean type actor

- Like he has whole ass monologues on the tip of his tongue at any given moment

- He’s a super good actor however he can’t sing for shit so he could never be in a musical

- He’s secretly jealous because Kyoya can sing so well

- They’re secretly jealous of each other

-Kyoya wishes he could act as well as Hikaru and Hikaru wishes he could sing as well as Kyoya

- Kaoru would be the one to take over their mother’s business and would study fashion and clothing design

- Even though Hikaru is the eldest he had no interest in the family business and decided to pursue acting instead

- Luckily for the Hitachiin family Kaoru took to clothing design from a very early age

- He makes clothes for the rest of the hosts on a regular basis

-He makes all of the clothes that the hosts wear for their performances and art galleries and whatnot

- The drama department loves him because he makes all of their costumes

- Mori would be a sketch artist, a painter, and a sculptor

- He’d basically do everything in the art department from drawing to welding metal figures

- he doesn’t talk much so he communicates through his art as cheesy as that sounds

- He constantly has either paint on his clothes, clay under his nails, or both at the same time

- People in the general public are slightly concerned when he opens his bag and they see a blowtorch inside

- His metal sculptures are littered all across campus

- Some of these sculptures include but are not limited to: A giant replica of Mary Poppins, Patti Lupone (Kyoya legit cried when he saw this one), and a giant metal spider that the students have so aptly named Kenneth

- Kenneth lives on top of the Art building

- Despite the fact that he’s an art student he really loves showtunes and gets really excited to see/hear Kyoya sing them

- Honey is a culinary arts student

- His specialty is (obviously) desserts

- He makes the prettiest cakes and the most delicious meals

- He has to stand on a step ladder to make those giant wedding type cakes

- He constantly smells like a bakery... like constantly

- Haruhi is a violinist

- she treats her violin like a baby. She even keeps it in the child seat part of the cart when she goes to the grocery store

- She goes to the school on a violin scholarship

- She plays a cheap violin she got from a small music store when she was ten with her birthday/Christmas money that she had been saving for years

- The way she plays that cheap little violin you’d think it was a super nice expensive one

- She’s mostly self taught

- When she was young she couldn’t afford lessons so she taught herself to play

- She only began to take lessons when she got to high school

- I imagine when she isn’t playing classical for school her playing sounds a lot like Ada Pasternak

- Ada Pasternak Video: https://youtu.be/YQSzk44hBmk

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- when they don’t live in the dorms they rent a fairly large house that they all live in together (like that house that Sam Golbach, Colby Brock, Corey Scherer, Aaron Doh, Devyn Lundy, Jake Webber, and Elton Castee lived in together)

- Tamaki has a whole ass grand piano in his room

- Nobody’s really sure how he got it in there

- He also has a keyboard that he brings around the house for jam sessions with the other hosts

- They have jam sessions in the living room

- Tamaki brings down his keyboard or he plays the little theatre piano that sits in their living room

- Haruhi brings down her little violin that she loves with all of her heart Kyoya would sing with them

- They’d do stuff like that Ada Pasternak video I put earlier in this post except instead of Haruhi singing it would be Kyoya

- Mori’s room legitimately would not be a bedroom

- It would be an art studio with a Mori sized bed in the corner and a theatre style clothing rack next to it

- he has like four easels all around the room and a desk covered in drawing pads, pencils, ink markers, colored pencils, oil paint, and random multicolored stains

- In the middle of the room he has a raised platform with whatever sculpture he’s currently working on sitting on top of it

- He has a shelf with all sorts of supplies in it

- He has like three different blowtorches, a huge array of paint brushes, different sharp things for his clay sculptures, hammers, a bunch of books on the history of art, and a dirty paint and clay covered apron with random burn holes in it

- Kyoya has like a whole arsenal of throat coat teas and herbal things in his room as well as a kettle and a hot plate

- In the corner he built a small room that only has room for one average sized person to go inside and coated the inside with sound proof padding and that’s where he practices belting and other different vocal techniques

- Kyoya absolutely loves their giant bathroom

- The acoustic qualities make him really excited he loves to sing in there

- Kyoya, Tamaki, and Haruhi sometimes jam in their fantastically acoustic bathroom because they are attracted to good acoustics the same way a moth is attracted to a bright light

- Hikaru has a whole library of scripts in his room

- like his bookshelves are just overflowing with scripts from all the plays he’s been in

- Some books on Shakespeare and the ins and outs of acting are scattered around the bookshelf too but it’s mostly scripts

- On his desk he keeps the script from the show that he’s currently in right in the middle of his desk with a pencil cup in the corner full of pens and highlighters

- He has a huge bulletin board in his room filled with pictures from different shows and different print outs of his favorite monologues and whatnot

- Kaoru’s room is similar to Mori’s in the sense that it’s barely a bedroom at all

- He has a small bed and a small dresser and the rest of the space is filled with his work

- He has a huge desk that is covered in scraps of fabric, scissors, and measuring tape

- He has a HUGE pin cushion in the corner that would be an absolute hazard if it fell to the ground

- Above his desk is a giant bulletin board similar to Hikaru’s except his is less of a collage and more of an idea board

- It’s full of sketches for new designs and has the occasional magazine clipping or inspirational quote

- Honey basically lives in the kitchen

- His room only has a bed and a dresser and a few ginormous bookshelves

- on these bookshelves are countless numbers of cookbooks

- 90% of what’s on these bookshelves is actually just regular notebooks and journal type things full of recipes that Honey has come up with himself

- The kitchen is HIS domain none of the other hosts ever use it other than to get the occasional glass of water or snack here and there

- They basically eat gourmet every night

- He cooks all of their meals and uses them as his guinea pigs

- Luckily for them 99% of the time his food is absolutely delicious

- Their house is full of just bits and pieces of what they do

- Mori’s artwork decorates the entire place

- The centerpiece for their table is a bouquet of metal flowers that Mori made

- His paintings decorate the walls and some of his sculptures sit as decorations in some of the different rooms

- There is sheet music literally all over the house

- nobody bats an eye when hey find the crescendo piece of a classical violin song on the kitchen table

- or when they find the lyrics to a classical opera song jammed in between the couch cushions

- Kaoru will often use Haruhi as his model for his dresses

- he’ll have her put on a tank top and bike shorts and literally build a dress onto her body and by the end she’s walking around the house in a whole ass Victorian style ballgown

- God help their house if Kyoya gets sick before a performance

- The amount of throat coat tea he consumes is absolutely unreal

- He has a little table with shelves behind it in his room with a tea kettle and a hot plate on it

- on the shelves behind it are boxes upon boxes of throat coat and herbal tea and a whole arsenal of mugs

- The house always smells like cooking food because Honey lives in the kitchen and is always cooking something or other

-When it doesn’t smell like food it smells like burning metal because Mori is always working on some sort of metal sculpture with one of his countless blowtorches

- This boy legit keeps a fire extinguisher in his bedroom in case he sets something on fire with said blowtorch

- Christmas season is absolutely wonderful in their house

- Tamaki and Haruhi are playing Christmas songs

- Kyoya is singing them

- Honey is making all sorts of festive dishes (You should see him on Thanksgiving he goes absolutely ham (pun intended))

- Kaoru is making festive outfits

- Mori makes each and every one of their Christmas decorations

- and Hikaru is practicing his lines for the production of A Christmas Carol that he’s in every year (This is his fourth time playing Scrooge!)

- But all in all this is a house where creativity flourishes and they all boost each other’s creativity to the max

- and of course they all graduate and become extremely successful and stay close knit forever

BONUS:

- Renge is also a vocalist she performs with Kyoya very often

- Kasanoda is a ballet student

- People are surprised he does something so graceful and elegant because he looks scary but when you really think about it it fits his personality

- Nekozawa is a poet (Edgar Allan Poe 2.0)

#ouran high school host club #ouran headcanons #kyoya ootori #tamaki suoh #hikaru hitachiin #kaoru hitachiin #takashi morinozuka #mitsukuni haninozuka #ohshc au #art school au #renge houshakuji #ritsu kasanoda #umehito nekozawa #haruhi fujioka

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momo-de-avis · 5 years

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Do you have any recommendations of female artists (sculptors and painters)? (I went to a museum and now im salty lmao)

Off the top of my mind, I might remember someone else some time soon:

Sonia Delaunay. My girl LIVED and BREATHED art. She was the type to literally, and I mean wholly, surround herself with art to the point of living inside art. She sewed, made costumes for the theater, she made puppets, dolls, quilts, even furniture. She was an incredible, outstanding painter. She is at the centre of Orphism more so than Robert, her husband, who was more of a cubism guy. Now, from what I gather, a lot of what people say about Sonia in other countries is coupled with her husband, as if you can't talk about her without mentioning him. To a degree, that's correct because the two had a really secure partnership. They were both creators, and they pushed each other. It was incredibly inspiring tbh. But Sonia has her own merit, and in Portugal she is actually way more relevant than Robert bc of the influence she had on our modernist circle.

Lee Krasner. If only people sort of forgot she was Pollock's wife. Her method of creating is fascinating to me cause this girl just destroyed her past work completely, but instead of throwing it in the trash, she reused it to create new works. Art historians in the post modernist era weren't too kind to her, but she's being avenged. She's methodical and clearly puts so much thought into her composition her creative process is fascinating.

Julia Margaret Cameron. This woman is one of my favourite artists in the world. Cameron began taking photographs at 42 years old after she moved to the isle of Wight in England. She was gifted a camera by her daughter who just wanted her mother to be a bit less bored, and Cameron went on to create over 3000 astonishing photographs that are at the core of the pictorialist movement. She was also INCREDIBLY well acquainted of her society. I mean, literally every famous victorian person you can think of, she met them. The majority of famous photographs you can think of? She took them. She was very honest about her work too. Its really endearing because Cameron was so concerned about her own honesty in capturing beauty she didn't give a fuck about the actual mechanics, which resulted in a lot of photographers at the time labelling her "an amateur". She also refused to photograph high society folk that weren't her friends, and mostly photographed her maids. It must be said that Alfred Lord Tennyson absolutely DESPISED every single illustration made for his Idylls of the King, so much artists knew they were in for hell if they were commissioned the book's illustrations. Cameron was the only person Tennyson personally asked to illustrated, and he absolutely adored her work.

Hannah Hoch. I love Dada so it couldn't miss. Hannah Hoch was married to uhhhhh... Huesekbeck I think? I keep forgetting. Either way, she was part of the Berlin Dada group, and they gave her hell for being a woman. Yes, it's nothing short of that: they didn't want her to belong because she was a woman. Especially her husband, who she supported throughout his life and then he died and she was like "lmao maybe you should have made good art, my bitch". Hannah Hoch mostly makes collages, and it's incredible. Its a very poignant work about being a woman in post-Weimar Germany and the societal issues Germany faced after World War I.

Claude Cahun. There's a post I made about her going around so I wont prolong myself but essentially, though she used female pronouns throughout her life, she identified herself as androgynous and created an INCREDIBLE set of photographs. She was a surrealist who became the inspiration for Davie Bowie and Andre Breton lauded this woman breathless. She was also arrested for taking part in the resistance against the Nazis and lived her whole life with another woman who was her partner. Her work focuses tremendously on issues of gender and our perception of our own bodies.

Camille Claudel. Infamously, she is known as Rodin's lover. Camille's story is a very tragic one. She was a tremendously talented sculptor who accumulated patrons throughout her life, and though she had an a rough affair with Rodin (and he was a bit of a dick), he did praise her work and tried very hard to preserve her artwork. The issue was Camille's family, who scorned her and shamed her for being an artist and her life choices, and destroyed a lot of her art after sticking her in a mental institution where she died at like, 70. But Camille's work is... Well, it's beautiful. Its the kind of work you can see that conflict between being a woman in her society while desperate to liberate herself. Though she incorporates Rodin's language, she has her own mark, her own hand, and her own language.

Janet Sobel. She is actually the first person to coin, use and employ the technique of dripping. You know, the one Pollock gets all the praise for? Essentially, Janet Sobel was a grandmother by the time she picked up a paintbrush. She was also a ukranian emigrant with little to no english, and she engaged in art at her son's insistence. When her son Sol Sobel brought his mom's artwork to the major New York circles (she lived in New Jersey), she immediately caught the eye of Peggy Guggenheim, who put together a collective exhibition about female abstract expressionist painters. That exhibition was in 1946. Pollock was there, he msde a remark wbout Sobel's work, and in 1947 you have the first Pollock dripping painting. Do with that information what you will (and also, check for photos of how Sobel painted, it's so adorable and it just explains SO MUCH MORE THE CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING THAN POLLOCK). Eventualyl, Sobel stopped painting and disappeared, and there are several factors as to why we forgot her: Pollock was the CIA's bad boy, so yeah; she spoke little english (she befriended Marc Chagall and Mark Rothko bc they both spoke russian and they claimed that being with Sobel felt like being back home) and she developed an allergy to oil painting.

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. We're moving to the french circle here, and yes she is portuguese but she belongs to the french post modernist circle. She's an abstract painter who draws a lot from cityscapes, and I think it's worth taking a look at her work.

Niki de Saint Phalle. Now Niki is incredible. She's mostly known for her Nanas, which are immense outdoors sculptures of women with thick bodies, defying the notion of slenderness imposed by fashion magazines that prevailed in the 50s. She also engages with her own trauma of sexual abuse and explores the notion of sexuality a lot, as well as women's bodies outside the realm of sexuality. At a given point, she collaborated with Jean Tingely a lot so she made a series of kinetic sculptures too.

Martha Rosler. I know you said painting and sculpture and I've already talked about collage lmao but Martha Rosler belongs to the first wave of feminist art and those mostly concern video art, though Rosler is very well known for her collages Bringing the War Home in which she literally brings the Vietnam war home. It's worth looking at her work.

Ana Mendieta. Another tragic story. Ana Mendieta was incredibly worried about the notion of the female body as perceived outside the realm of something sexual and nature. She works a lot with perishable material, works of art that are organic, that is, that will disappear with time. One of her most well known methods is leaving an imprint of her own body on natural surfaces, like a beach, or a field of grass, and then photographing it. Ironically, that was exactly how she died: she fell off I believe it was a 10th floor and onto the hood if a car. There is still speculation about it and everything points towards there having been a fight between her and her partner at the time, Carl Andre, who neighbours believe pushed her out the window. Carl Andre never saw justice and Ana Mendieta died at like 25 years old and at the prime of her career.

Kara Walker. She's a pretty young artist who's creating artworks as we speak and she confronts the notion of blackness with US history so blatantly it becomes monumental. She also makes large scale works to defy this message. If you ask me, she's one of the best artists living today.

Hilma af Klimt. She was a Swedish abstractionist and surrealist who was really focused on the occult, and made monumental paintings that engaged with things like the human psyche.

Lizzie Siddal. Now, Lizzie is better known as the Pre-Raphaelite muse, immortalised in Millais' famous Ophelia, but she was an artist of her own. And not just any artist. John Ruskin tutored her and praised her. In fact, he considered her biggest flaw being her love affair with Rossetti lmao she is very naive and honest about her work, and I would also recommend taking a look at her poetry.

Eleonor Fortescue-Brickdale. I know very little about her, but she was a post pre-raphaelite illustrator who, and this is just me, follows the trend of Julia Margaret Cameron. Her paintings are beautiful and seriously, look at both their work and try to see the similarities hah

Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, two abstract expressionists who developed their own mode of painting and who border the Colour Field Painting (think Rothko).

Tamara de Lempicka. She's the glamour gal. She makes paintings about the glamorous life of high society and is very interesting because she depicts female nudes in a very intimate way. If I am not mistaken, Tamara de Lempicka had relationships with women, so that tells you a lot. She's very cubist in technique, more so than style.

Faith Ringgold. Oh my God, Faith Ringgold is fantastic. She is a black american woman who paints about the experience of being a black woman, but not just paint. She's best known for her Tar Beaches series, which as quilts she stitches while telling the story of a little girl who dreams about a world while spending time on her tar beach, which is the rooftops of the buildings in Harlem. Please do check her work, she is fantastic.

I'll leave well known names out because they are easy to search like Frida Kahlo, Artemisa Gentilleschi, Josefa d'Obidos, Sofonisba Anguissola (these three are located in the late renaissance period, so there's a lot of portraits, religious themes and still life), Mary Cassat, Berthe Morisot (both impressionists who focus on private female themes), Rosa Bonheur (naturalist who makes landscapes mostly), Evelyn de Morgan (post pre-raphaelite). Also check Zinaida Serebriakova, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lavinia Fontana, Louise Bourgeois, Angelika Kauffmann, Elisabetta Sirani, Romaine Brooks, Sophie Tauber-Arp, Varvara Stepanova, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Leonora Carrington, Vigée le Brun, Yayoi Kusama, Francesca Woodman. Etc. These are like .. top of my head with a quick google search to make sure I wrote the names right haha

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fixaidea · 6 years

Text

Paris, 1840

It was in the early days of the year 1840 when Monsieur Nicolas Barré, a young, moderately successful novelist fell in with Augustin Perrault and his group of friends. Perrault, done with University, was pursuing a career in journalism and met M. Barré for work related reasons. The working relationship quickly turned into friendship (a quick and easy thing with the young journalist), and soon enough, over a shared glass of wine, Perrault invited him to meet up with the rest of his closest friends.

‘I must say’ Nicolas huffed, clinking his glass against Perrault’s ‘Whatever you told your friends about me, they better lower their expectations. Sure I’m a delight, a true treat to have around’ he winked ‘But political I am not. Not nearly as much as you are.’

Perrault waved his hand in airy dismissal.

‘Never fear. You are no monarchist, and that is all they need. Clavier is more hands-on when it comes to politics but the rest like to hold such issues at arm’s length. No one will begrudge you for not keeping a pet guillotine in your backyard.’

Nicolas chuckled and refilled their glasses.

‘So you’re telling me buying a closetful of red caps to impress them was a waste? Ah well. Now, we are men of the pen, you and I, even if we employ our words quite differently. How about the rest? All writers?’

‘Alain Clavier certainly is, he’s a playwright. Well, in theory at least. In reality he’s a true Renaissance man, doing all things Theatre. Manager, designer, stand-in actor, all of it. René Giraud is an engineer, or rather, currently an assistant to one, Yves Belarbre is a painter. A portraitist, but he has some novel ideas about painting dreams, you’ll see.’

After a couple of more glasses Perrault announced that he still had some obligations to attend to. Just as they were about to part, he turned to Nicolas.

‘I must warn you about one of my friends though, Giraud. He has some peculiar habits, but the one that most concerns you is that he’s rather picky about who gets to touch him. He’s going to allow a handshake, but do not attempt anything more. If he takes a shine to you, he will come to you in his own time.’

Nicolas smiled and nodded, although he did not understand why he needed such a warning – certainly he was affectionate, but nowhere near as much as Perrault, pawning at random strangers was usually not the first thing on his mind. Surely keeping his hands off of one would not be much of a hardship. His nonchalance regarding the matter lasted exactly until the moment of meeting the man in question. René Giraud was on the shorter end of average height, thin and tired looking and, at least in Nicolas’ humble opinion, utterly adorable. He had fluffy, white-blond hair and big, pensive blue eyes.

They did not get to talk too much that first day – as Nicolas later learned this was not simply because Perrault and his friend Alain Clavier dominated every single conversation they took part in, but also because of Giraud’s own quiet nature. Still, all through the evening Nicolas kept sneaking glances at the man and, to his immense satisfaction, found himself being watched in turn. Just before the company disbanded for the night, Giraud sidled up to him. He cocked his head to the side and spoke, eyes fixed on the floor:

‘What do you call a medical-minded dog?’

Caught off guard, Nicolas scratched his beard.

‘I have no idea. What indeed?’

‘Un physi-chien*’

Nicolas blinked. For a moment he was not sure if he truly heard what he did, but René was watching him expectantly out of the corner of his eye. Nicolas’ big body began to shake and soon he was howling with laughter. Giraud, proud of his work, bounced on his heels and smiled, blushing with joy. Nicolas raised his hand to clap him on the back, but caught himself in time and hastily showed his fist into his pocket.

He wiped off his tears. That was it. He needed to win his René-touching privileges as soon as possible.

***

It was the end of May, but the weather resembled the worst of August and Nicolas was painfully stuck. Again. His serialised novel was running out of pre-written chapters at an alarming rate, he needed to catch up with it and soon. He could practically feel his editor breathing down his neck. He was sating at a blank page. In fact, he had been doing just that for the last half an hour, but the words stubbornly refused to manifest. With a deep sigh of defeat he donned his lightest coat and hat. If inspiration would not come on its own, the best he could do was to try and seek it out. After a brief consideration he headed to the Louvre.

He regretted his decision to leave the flat the moment he stepped out of his building. The streets were scorching hot, vibrating above the cobblestones. Dust filled the air and the sun was so blinding, that without the straw hat to protect his eyes, Nicolas doubted he would be able to see a thing. Still, he steeled himself and faced the inferno of the city.

He was richly rewarded for his effort – the inside of the museum was shady and blessedly cool. Few people took the effort or had the time to drag themselves here at his hour, so it was also mostly deserted. He sighed again, this time in relief, and was about to zone out and let himself get lost in the centuries of art surrounding him, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar mop of blond hair. René Giraud was sitting on a bench, an open notebook in his hands, though when Nicolas stepped closer he noticed he was staring at his feet rather than at the pages. He started when Nicolas greeted him.

‘Ah, hello there, Monsieur Barré! I mean. Nicolas.’

Nicolas smiled and plopped down beside him. He was pleased René was finally gave up on the formal ‘you’ with him, even if he still called him by his surname sometimes.

‘You must be quite the patron of arts to cross the city on such a wretched day just to look at pictures! Or are you, like me, in need of inspiration for something?’

‘Neither, I’m afraid’ René answered. He kept his gaze on his notebook. When they first met Nicolas wondered if he did this because he did not like him or was especially flustered in his presence, but had since come to learn that this was simply something he did with everyone. Avert his eyes or, remembering that you ought to look people in the eye, fix his unblinking gaze upon you.

‘I am here exactly because the day is wretched’ René went on ‘My quarters are unbearable and so are the streets. Everything seems to be so much more intense in this horrible weather. The people are loud and irritable and they stink. I stink, the horses stink, I can barely see, everything is bleached white by the sun, even the sky. It’s either white or that unsettling shade of lilac.’

‘Lilac? I never noticed that.’

‘It is though. A pale lilac. I find it deeply disturbing. Here though…’ he looked up ‘Here it’s cool and quiet and the smells are subdued. I like this place.’

‘Still, it must be boring to just sit here. Walk with me?’

Nicolas thought of offering his hand as they got up, but René was on his feet before him. They wandered the halls in silence for a while. Nicolas knew his friend was not exactly loquacious, but he wondered if this silence was stretching too far. Testing the waters, next time he spotted a particularly interesting painting he stopped before it and quietly started to explain what he knew about it. With others, he tried to guess what the artist might have meant, making up stories on the spot, one wilder and more colourful than the rest. René mostly kept quiet, but seemed to be enjoying himself none the less. Every now and then he inserted his own small remarks or chuckled lightly at Nicolas’ jokes. Encouraged by this, Nicolas was gaining momentum, spinning one astounding, ridiculous tale after the other, compensating for the low voice he kept with sweeping gestures and exaggerated expressions. Soon René was pressing his hand against his mouth, his whole body shaking with the laughter he desperately fought to hold in.

And then he froze.

His smile faltered and slowly disappeared as something behind Nicolas caught his eyes. Nicolas turned, following his gaze.

They were standing in front of a large painting. The canvas was populated by a crowd of figures, faces and bodies contorted by the pain of grief. In the centre, a male figure, a warrior, cradling the body of his fallen companion, face twisted into a mask of anguish.

‘Achilles and Patroclus.’ René whispered.

Nicolas nodded. He waited for his friend to turn away and move on, but he seemed to be hypnotised by the painting. They stood there in silence for a long while, before René finally spoke again.

‘I envy him, in a way.’

‘Who? I cannot for the life of me think of a single enviable character in that story.’

‘Patroclus. How much Achilles loved him, unashamed. He was no dirty little secret.’

It took the both of them a moment to fully realise what he just said. René, scrambling to save face, blushing so fiercely it was visible even in the dim light of the museum, and rushed to continue:

‘I-I mean it’s a touching story no matter how you look at it, I mean, anyone would be grateful for such loyalty from a friend…’

Nicolas took a deep breath and, momentarily forgetting himself, laid a hand on René’s arm. The little engineer froze. Nicolas quickly released him.

‘I understand.’

René peered up at him from under his curls.

‘Do you? Truly?’

Blood was rushing into Nicolas’ face and he suddenly felt very light and somehow detached from his body, as if he was watching the conversation from afar. Still, his friend laid his soul bare before him, if only on accident, he had to know he was not alone.

‘I do. I understand what you meant.’

René kept his big eyes fixed on him for a moment then slowly, so slowly, reached out and laid his hand on his arm. Nicolas’ heart leapt to his throat – carefully he raised his own had and covered René’s with it. They held the connection for a second before René stepped back. He cleared his throat.

‘I must be going now, I have some plans I need to double check. Thank you for this afternoon.’

‘My pleasure’ said Nicolas, eyes fixed on his toes ‘See you back at our café?’

‘Yes. Yes, certainly.’

***

Nicolas wondered if things will change between them and indeed, there was a small but noticable shift in their interactions. Nothing dramatic – unlike Augustin, Nicolas still was not allowed to just walk up to René and cuddle him. Though of course he never tried. Still, at least René would now touch him every now and then. Nothing too personal or overly familiar, rather he simply did not go out of his way anymore to avoid contact. Nicolas tried a little bit of flirting but as the engineer did not respond – or even seemed to notice his attempts – he soon ceased.

It was now July, and Nicolas was in the middle of revising his latest chapter (or more precisely re-arranging the bookshelves while thinking very hard about how he should be revising said chapter) when the knock came. He left the bookshelf somewhat begrudgingly – he was hard at work, creating, how dare people hinder his genius! – and went to answer it, grumbling all the way. He schooled his features into what he hoped was a polite but slightly haughty expression and he opened the door.

The corridor was empty.

Nicolas rolled his eyes – was the half a minute it took him to get to the door truly too long a wait for his visitor? He was about to retreat when he noticed a sheet of paper at his feet. A message then? A prank? A strongly worded appeal from his editor? It turned out to be neither. It was a poem. It was not written in pen, but in letters carefully cut out from a newspaper and glued to a sheet.

TO THE LOVE I DARE NOT NAME

FROM THE SHADOWS I SING YOUR PRAISES SCRAMBLING IN VAIN FOR THE RIGHT PHRASES YOU ARE ROUND AND WARM LIKE THE SUN IN JUNE THE COPPER OF YOUR HAIR IS THE CAUSE OF MY DESPAIRE

HAVE MERCY ON ME, O MUSE

He read it – and read it again. And again. It seemed to be a sincere if terrible love poem. Nicolas tugged at his beard. Was this dedicated to him? The mention of the subject’s bodily proportions and hair colour suggested so, but he was still uncertain. Humming lightly, he folded up the paper and got back to work. He resolved to show the strange little letter to his friends and thought nothing of it for the rest of the day.

When he did in fact pull the sheet out on their next get-together, the reaction of the group was, in the mildest possible terms, explosive. Alain ripped the letter out of his hand and studied it for several minutes, muttering to himself all the way through, before he was forced to relinquish it to a nagging Augustin, and then to Yves. René, reserved as ever, did not attempt to grab for the page, but followed the proceedings with eager eyes.

‘Well then’ Nicolas said ‘What do you gentlemen make of it?’

‘Why, my dear fellow’ said Augustin, leaning back in his seat ‘It is quite obvious. You have a secret admirer!’

Nicolas propped his chin on his hand and laughed.

‘Well, there’s no debating I’m a right catch, any lady would agree I’m sure, but don’t you think it more likely that this would be a nervous amateur trying to show his work off? Maybe try and get a foot in the door of publishing through me?’

Yves waved a hand with a little huff of dismissal.

‘Quite unlikely. If this were a poet interested in getting his name known, surely he would have included just that: his name! No my dear, this is quite obviously a love-stricken if unusually daring and forward lady!’

‘A true little firebrand!’ Alain exclaimed.

René remained quiet. Nicolas searched his face with a slight flicker of hope for any sign that he might be the one behind it, but then dismissed the idea. He could not picture him resigning himself to such bold a move.

‘All right then’ he said, folding up the sheet ‘I suppose my best bet now is to wait and see.’

And see he did. The very next day, about the same time, the knock sounded again. Nicolas, hard at work on his novel (he was cleaning his windows), took some time to answer, so the mysterious visitor was long gone by the time he got to the door. In her – his? wake he left an elegant box of high-end pralines. Nicolas inspected the gift for a message, but found none.

Well then. This certainly seemed to underline the ‘secret admirer’ theory, opposed to the ‘hopeful amateur poet’. Smiling to himself, Nicolas plopped a piece into his mouth and retreated. Excitement was starting to bubble up in his belly – who could this be? Sure, he had his secret hopes for a certain engineer, but with all his loveable qualities, René just did not look like the type for grand romantic gestures. Who else then? Nicolas made a list of all the ladies and gentlemen he knew, but found it entirely unhelpful. He had half a mind to drop everything and go seek out Augustin, even though they were not meant to meet up that day, but decided against it. The group regularly met on Tuesday and Friday nights, sometimes on weekends, and it was only Wednesday. Let’s not rush anything, let’s wait and see what happens next!

Thursday brought him a nice set of steel-tipped pens, complete with ink, all tied up with a bow. Now Nicolas was all but crawling out of his skin with excitement and resolved to catch the person responsible in the act.

On Friday he was fully expecting the knock, but he made a fatal mistake. The weather turned damp and cold, so Nicolas decided to make himself a cup of tea as he waited. The problem was only that his visitor was a full hour early compared to the previous days, so he had a kettle full of boiling water in his hands when the knock came, and by the time he managed to carefully put it down without spilling any of it on himself, his mysterious suitor was gone again. In their wake they left a bouquet.

Nicolas snatched it up and inspected it excitedly. It was a nicely arranged collection of reds, blues and yellows. On a whim, Nicolas quickly averted his eyes. He was keen to find out what message might be coded in there in the flirty language of flowers, but he wanted to decipher it in the presence of his friends. He placed the bouquet in a vase and resolved not to look at it for the rest of the day.

It was an excruciating exercise in temperance and patience and he came close to failing several times, sneaking glances at it every now and then, but miraculously he persisted. Still, it felt like the longest day of his life. He tried to proceed with his writing, but his thought kept floating back to the mysterious gifts and the sound of footsteps fading in the hallway.

When the clock finally struck five he practically flew out the door and did not stop until he reached their café, the Poule Rouge. René was already there, nursing a cup of coffee at his usual seat. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Nicolas flung himself down beside him. He looked up – only be greeted by a mass of flowers shown in his face.

‘From your admirer?’ he asked around the clump of vegetation.

‘I’m assuming yes!’ said Nicolas, leaning in close ‘What do you think?’

René regarded him solemnly for a long moment, then looked down.

‘I think it’s pretty. It has happy colours. I think whoever gave it to you wanted you to be happy.’

Nicolas could feel his lips stretch into a grin. He was about to answer but Alain’s booming voice cut him off. The man entered with Yves on one arm, Augustin on the other. Nicolas held up the bouquet like a trophy.

‘Well, well, well’ said Alain as he slid into the seat across Nicolas and pressed a cup of wine into his hands ‘What have we here?’

The three newcomers – all experts in courtship and all the delicacies it involved – pulled the bouquet into the middle of the table and began to pour over it. Nicolas watched in excitement, but his enthusiasm began to falter as their faces fell. After a couple of minutes they sat back and exchanged some deeply confused glances.

Yves scratched the back of his head.

‘Well this… All right, let’s see. The good news is the cornflower, which means wealth and fortune, the yellow rose, which stands for joy and friendship and the blue iris for faith and hope. But we also have marigold for jealousy and yellow carnation for disappointment and rejection. Also red poppies which mean consolation. So. There’s that.’

Alain propped his chin on his hand.

‘It might not mean anything at all.’

‘No no no, let’s not give up on this so quickly’ said Augustin ‘The lady went out of her way to play this intricate game, surely there must be some sort of message in there. So what do we have? Wealth, friendship or joy, consolation, hope or faith but also jealousy and either disappointment or rejection. This to me speaks of someone who was for some reason disappointed in you, but who values your friendship more than her pride and has hope in repairing your relations. It’s simple!’

‘I don’t think that’s it, not at all’ Yves objected ‘Look at this closely! The poppies and the yellow carnations out-weight the rest – to me, that says the sender has been disappointed to the degree she wants to now part ways. She includes the rose, the iris and the cornflower as a reminder to why she started this game to begin with, but does not wish to continue.’

A heavy lump settled into Nicolas’ throat. Still, he tried to hide his disappointment, so he arranged his features into a smile and laughed.

‘Well, I suppose we shall see about that. We’ll find out if she truly wishes to quit before long – tomorrow at the latest. If the gifts cease I can assume the lady truly meant it and lost interest.’

Soon the topic was changed as Augustin brought up a play he was interested in seeing and the rest of the evening was spent with amicable chatter, though René excused himself early. He had not spoken a single word all evening and after a quick round of goodbyes he hurried away without explanation. As he retreated Nicolas could have sworn he had seen him rubbing at his face.

Nicolas for his part was crestfallen. The presence and chatter of his friends took away the edge of the blow but he was sad to see this interesting affaire come to an end. Not to mention he had no idea what he did wrong to put off his secret admirer this much. With one last sigh he downed his wine. Ah, well. It was nice while it lasted.

The next day he all but managed to put his disappointment out of his mind, though a shard of it was still lodged in his heart like a persistent thorn. He tried to concentrate on his work, failed, tried again, failed, gave up and went for a walk. He went all the way to the Jardin de Luxembourg in hopes of clearing his mind. He was in great need of that – he wrote himself into a corner and had no idea how to rescue his own heroine. Sadly the fragrant air of the park failed to deliver any flashes of inspiration, so with a heavy heart he returned to his flat.

He was almost through the door when a flash of red caught his eye.

A red rose was lying on his threshold. Nicolas carefully picked it up and turned it over in his hand. There was a note attached to it, composed in the same manner the very first poem was, of letters and words cut out from a newspaper.

I HAD NO IDEA FLOWERS MEANT THINGS. THIS IS WHAT I MEANT.

Nicolas stood there, rooted to the threshold for a long time, grinning.

Now he was almost certain of his mysterious admirer’s identity, but still, he was curious about the reactions of his friends. When he entered the tavern the company gathered that night he held aloft the flower like a banner of victory.

‘Confess, gentlemen’ he said ‘Which one of you tattled?’

The rest looked back at him with wide, all-too innocent eyes.

‘What makes you accuse us so?’ Alain asked in the high-pitched, affronted voice of a man who had carried the gossip over half of Paris already. Nicolas showed him the rose and the letter attached.

‘That doesn’t prove anything’ Yves muttered, though he too was reluctant to meet his eyes ‘Your lady may have learned of her mistake independent of our conversation yesterday.’

‘But in such short a notice? Gentlemen, if not someone you passed the news on to, I’m forced to believe it might be one of you!’

Yves and Alain protested loudly, Augustin did not comment, merely shook his head with an amused grin. René, Nicolas noted with some cautious hope, was beet red and refused to move his gaze from his drink.

***

The next week went by without further communication from his suitor. Nicolas was beginning to fear he might have scared him (…or maybe her) away. He was close to despair when finally, on a rather wet, gloomy Saturday the tell-tale knock sounded again. Nicolas raced to catch him, but as usual, his visitor was quicker. He left a letter behind, this time written in ink but in all capital letters so Nicolas still could not recognise the handwriting.

DEAREST,

MEET ME AT THE PÈRE-LACHAISE, AT THÉODORE GÉRICAULT’S TOMB, ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON.

This time he did not wait for the agree-upon get-together, he flagged down a coach and raced all the way to Augustin’s lodgings. Luckily he found the man at home and, upon being let in, quickly pushed the letter into his hands.

‘Look at this!’

Contrary to his exuberant enthusiasm so far, Augustin frowned and scratched his head.

‘This could be very good or very bad news. All through this little adventure I had a feeling that all this is way too daring, shameless even, for a lady.’

Nicolas did not wish to draw unneeded attention to the fact that he was quite all right with the mysterious suitor being a man, so he merely hummed his agreement.

‘Still’ he said ‘What’s the worst that might happen?’

Augustin raised an eyebrow.

‘You could be ridiculed at best, robbed or even killed at worst. You will be in the middle of a graveyard. Secluded, with plenty of places for the members of a gang to hide.’

This gave Nicolas a pause.

‘None the less’ he finally said ‘I want to know who is behind this.’

‘At least permit me to go with you!’

Now it was Nicolas’ turn to frown and tug at his bear.

‘A kind offer, but I must decline. Actually…‘ he took a deep breath ‘I have a good idea who this might be, and in case I’m right, I do not want to compromise this person.’

Augustin chuckled lightly and swatted his arm.

‘A true gentleman! Very well then, but promise to be careful!’

Nicolas smiled and pressed his hand.

‘I promise!’

***

The graveyard was all but deserted – Nicolas came across a couple of elderly ladies, the sort that is a permanent fixture of cemeteries all over the world, but none of them paid any attention to him. Though he did ask for directions at the gate it still took him a long time to find Géricault’s grave in the dense labyrinth of tombs. When he finally did he found the scene deserted. Not a single sound, except for the distant murmur of the city beyond the graveyard’s walls. His stomach fell. Was all this an elaborate prank? All this for nothing? And the culprit would not even stick around to witness his humiliation?

He dejectedly kicked a pebble and was about to leave when there – just there behind the edge of the massive block of the monument – he spotter the rim of a top hat. In two quick strides he rounded the tomb.

René Giraud was standing there hunched over, dressed in his best dress coat and shiniest shoes. When Nicolas came to stand in front of him he made an attempt to raise his head and look him in the eye but the task proved too much for him. The rose clenched in his hand was trembling. He wordlessly held it out.

Warm fondness bubbled up in Nicolas’ chest. He yearned to pull René into a hug and never let him go again, but he knew better than to grab him without his consent. He took the professed rose and opened his arms. René shuffled closer, fisted Nicolas’ vest and hid his face in his chest. Slowly, carefully Nicolas completed the embrace. He took off his friend’s hat, set it and the rose aside and gently ran his fingers through his hair. René was trembling from head to toe – Nicolas could only imagine how much courage it must have taken him to go through with this plan. This courage evidently carried him to this point and no further. He looked ready to collapse on the spot. Nicolas held him tighter and began to rock him slowly, continuing to pet his hair.

They stood there for a long while, locked together in an embrace, gently swaying from side to side. Nicolas nuzzled René’s hair. The heart fluttering against his chest started to calm down a bit. Eventually René snuggled against him and spoke up.

‘I’m sorry about the first bouquet.’

‘Don’t be. I think it was beautiful, artificially assigned meanings be damned.’

René giggled and pulled back just enough to be able to rub the back of his neck. Not daring to initiate any other contact just yet, Nicolas quickly nuzzled his nose. René took a deep, shaky breath, latched on to Nicolas’ lapels and pecked him on the lips. Before Nicolas could react he ducked his head again.

Still carefully, as to not scare him away, Nicolas slid a finger under his chin. René allowed this and obediently tilted his head up at Nicolas’ gentle push. Emboldened, Nicolas cupped his cheeks and pressed their foreheads together. After a small pause he tilted his head to the side and kissed him. René’s lips were velvety soft and a little wet – he was clumsily pushing back against Nicolas, evidently unsure of what he was supposed to do. Nicolas slid his hands down onto his shoulders and moved on to kiss a line along his smooth cheeks and jaw. They broke apart, stepped back a bit – and dissolved in a fit of nervous giggles. Nicolas tried to stop but the laughter only intensified, relieved and yet slightly hysterical. Face burning, stomach flipping, Nicolas wiped at his wet eyes and swept René back into a tight embrace. René flung himself into his arms without hesitation. Nicolas smacked one more big, sloppy kiss on his cheek.

‘Sweet René’ he murmured ‘My sweet René.’

*un chien = a dog

#writers on tumblr #mm romance #writeblr #lgbt fiction #historical fiction #fixa writes #rené giraud #nicolas barré

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hahowyouliketha · 4 years

Text

ESSAY: Reading the Image

ArtAp 10 K

Sining Kalayaan by Edgar Talusan Fernandez

July 16, 2020

Edgar “Egai” Talusan Fernandez, born in 1954, took Bachelor of Fine Arts in Philippine Women’s University. His early art style was influenced by his mentors Lee Aguinaldo and Justin Nuyda who were renowned Filipino abstractionists. Being active in the Philippine art industry since the 1970s, he is most recognized as a social realist painter and through his artworks, a staunch critic of the former Philippine president and dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. In the mid ‘70s, he founded the Kaisahan group along with some members from the Nagkakaisang Progressibong Artista at Arkitekto (NPAA), the visual arm of Kabataang Makabayan, a militant leftist organization. They created advertisements such as murals, calendars, and posters for leftist non-government organizations. He also spearheaded the visual art section of the Concerned Artist of the Philippines (CAP), an alliance of visual artists, film makers, and writers. Fernandez is commonly known for the iconography in his social realist paintings that showcases the problems and evils rooted within the Philippine society.

Fernandez’s mother forbade him to enter the University of the Philippines as the educational institution was the breeding ground of many activists at that time. Still, apart from studying in PWU, he was involved with a lot of civic work that planted the seeds of his activism. Every summer time from 1974 to 1976, he did volunteer work as a documentary photographer for medical missions in the provinces with no immediate access to doctors. He would then show the photos he took to nursing and medical students from various schools such as UP. He had this vision wherein one can have their vacation while also doing something for the Filipino community. Like him, his peers in the volunteer work were generally young and had a strong desire to solve the problems of the country. He shared the frightening experience of being red-tagged since the military followed them to the provinces and labelled them as rebels. Moreover, he recalled in an interview the times he and his peers made murals for demonstrations. He said they had to do it very quickly since it was done in a public space and that the police and military would have immediately detained a group of more than five people without permit. The belief that one could change society by doing protest art did not convince him at first. But only after learning about his friends being tortured and put to jail did he become more politically aware and a full-fledged activist.

Sining Kalayaan (1987-1997) made by Edgar Fernandez is a two-dimensional artwork using oil and acrylic on canvas, having dimensions 122 cm by 183 cm. It was gifted by Sergio Naranjilla, Jr. to the Ateneo Art Gallery. Judging by its canvas size, it is a large painting with a portrait orientation. It was created after martial law in the Philippines was eradicated which goes in concordance with its title, Sining Kalayaan. This title literally translates to “freedom art” in english, a concept that I think is representative of the image shown by the painting. Looking at the painting for the first time, my eyes went straight to the subject at the center who appears to be female. She had this fierce, domineering look on her face which was highlighted by the bright sun behind her. Two two subjects were at some arched doorway, the woman on the outer part and the vile-looking creature inside. Above the doorway were baybayin letters that translate to “sining kalayaan.” Inside the structure were a discarded blade, a skull, and stone fragments from the torn walls and stairs, implying that a war has ensued and is at its final, deciding moment.

Evaluating the artwork’s formal elements, I see two major implied lines: first is the vertical line, with the woman standing erect, and second is the horizontal line with the creature lying down, showing a contrast of power between the two, the woman leading the duel. The slanted lines formed from the woman’s arm all the way to the tip of her sword indicate a movement. This scene seems to capture the moment where she is about to strike the creature, shoved down by her shield, looking petrified and helpless as the woman glared at it. On the woman’s clothing were various organic shapes that remind me of the Philippine terrain. The cross, the stars, and flora resembling lines particularly caught my eyes since they are symbolic to Filipino culture. The colors used to fill in those organic shapes made it look like there was a sky at the top part with the blue-white gradient and dark blue mountains below it. Flowing from beneath the mountains was a light green body of water and on each side were dark blue and red riverbanks. These colors on the woman’s clothing surrounded by the yellow sun with eight magnificent rays made me think of the Philippine flag, while the brown pigment used on the woman’s skin characterizes the average Filipino. Such choices of color by the artist suggest that the woman is the embodiment of the Philippines herself. The woman is the “Inang Bayan,” a term commonly uttered by us Filipinos when referring to the motherland. Obviously being the antithesis of the woman, the blue creature with horns, wings, and one large tail account for the ills of the Philippine society.

The painting is chromatic, using different values of yellows, reds, blues, and greens. Moreover, the hues that were used were mostly bright, easily capturing the audience and intensifying the scene that was depicted. The use of complementary colors such as the reds, greens, and blues enhanced the aesthetics of the painting. Furthermore, the artist made expert use of chiaroscuro— the shadows formed as shown within the enclosed structure and on the subjects facing away and towards the light source in contrast with the brightness emanating through the doorway added a sharp flair of drama to the scene, intensifying it even more. Positive space comprised the painting overall, showing emphasis on the scene at the center of the painting rather than its surroundings. However the negative space provided support in highlighting the scene by effectively having dark and dim colors. It can be insinuated that the reasoning behind such colors for the structure may be due to the horrors and chaos that have transpired within. The presence of the skull, blade, and property wreckage on the steps substantiates this idea. The texture of the woman and the creature seems smooth, their colors were well-blended. However, everything else was gritty, the light from the sun was most especially hard-edged. This dampened the softness found in the center, producing a more chaotic and frenzied feel, swaying its audience to the epic battle scene.

Faithful to the conviction of Fernandez after suffering under the Marcos regime, Sining ng Kalayaan is a form of protest art that depicts how any oppressive power will eventually be overthrown or overcome by the people. While still applicable to the milieu, the use of a horrific but nonetheless vague (i.e. an immediate association with the Marcos regime icons doesn’t necessarily come to mind) creature suggests that this artwork can transcend through the time when it was created and still remain meaningful and relevant. The creature can very well be represented by various oppressive powers that had been, have been, and are currently threatening the freedom and sovereignty of the Philippines. The artist is successful in portraying a socialist painting as it evoked a sense of nationalism within me and stirred my emotions to the point of me recalling the many plays and films I have watched about Martial Law in the past. Although I do not have firsthand experience of the Marcos dictatorship, its consequences and repercussions are still unmistakably felt by us until today. Filipinos still have to pay the debt incurred by the Marcoses and hundreds of people slain by Marcos and his cronies have yet to be given justice. Applying the message of this artwork, based on my humble understanding, in our current setting gives me hope as we shall one day get the better of things in spite of the just-as-horrible D*t*rt* administration.

References

Fernandez, E. (1987-1997). Sining ng Kalayaan [Painting]. Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines. Retrieved July 16, 2020, from https://ateneoartgallery.com/collections/sining-kalayaan

Hirano, M. (2013, September 23). Interview with Edgar "Egai" Talusan Fernandez. Retrieved July 16, 2020, from http://2050artandwriting.blogspot.com/2013/09/interview-with-edgar-egai-talusan.html?m=1

Artwork details

TITLE: Sining ng Kalayaan

ARTIST: Edgar Talusan Fernandez

MEDIUM: Painting

YEAR: 1987-1997

PROVENANCE: Gift from Sergio Naranjilla, Jr.

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kootenaygoon · 5 years

Photo

So,

At the Star, there were always lots of stories about animals.

In the early summer months of summer 2014 press releases about bear sightings began appearing routinely in our inboxes. One of them sauntered right into a woman’s open kitchen and munched through a countertop full of cookies. We declined to run the pictures of the bloody carcass being hauled off by conservation officers, though it inspired newsroom debate, and we published story after story about bear-proof garbage containers. Nelson was deeper immersed in nature than I was used to back on the coast, and the population was full of fervent conservationists. People from the Kootenays were passionate about wildlife, even getting worked up over local pests like skunks and Canadian geese, and it seemed like nearly every second person had a giant panting dog to run alongside them while they went hiking or mountain biking. One of the hot button topics was a wolf cull that was underway to protect an elk herd, a government operation that activists decried as wasteful and wrong-minded.

Nowhere was the local love for animals more apparent than on Helen Jameson’s Blewett farm, where the grizzled owner had been rehabilitating injured wildlife for decades. Every year the community did a milk fundraiser to help feed whichever animals had ended up in her care. Calvin sent me out to interview her one afternoon, on her secluded acreage a half hour away, so I took Paisley with me to meet the baby deer that was the latest beneficiary of her kindness. Helen had been doing this work since 1966, and had successfully re-introduced thousands of animals back into the wild. As she marched over to greet me a miniature sheep daintily bobbed along at her heels, like a little dog, curious about the newcomers. Helen took us over to the deer’s pen, and bottle-fed it while we gawked. I took a flurry of photos.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t give them names. They’re animals, not people.”

“But don’t you ever feel tempted to give them a name, living with them for so long?”

She shrugged. “I’ve loved every single animal that’s come to my farm, and not a single one of them needed a name. That would’ve gotten me too attached. Because eventually they all need to go back out there.”

Helen was brusque, and no-nonsense, though I could tell she knew my presence would mean support for her milk drive. She was definitely more comfortable with the animals than with other humans. She toured Paisley and I around the property, where we found miniatures horses, a profoundly ugly emu and a variety of bird enclosures.

“This is exactly what I want, to live on a little farm like this one day,” Paisley whispered to me, when Helen was out of earshot. “Surrounded by animals, out in the woods. Can you imagine? Just me and you?”

“I don’t think you would need me,” I said. “You can just take over for Helen one day.”

“I should.”

Paisley had gotten a job with the local grocery store, Kootenay Co-op, and had taken the move as an opportunity to create her own raw and vegan dessert company. In all the years of our relationship, it was these summer months that felt most idyllic and full of promise — like we’d fled Vancouver Island for a multi-year honeymoon in the mountains. We painted our deck a vivid pink with baby blue finishes, while our inside walls became bright pastel yellow and light purple. Every week meant more plants, more vintage decorations from the shops on Baker. I made sure to prominently display a painting of a purple hippo meant to be my spirit animal. We were smoking a lot of pot, listening to a lot of Hozier, and night after night sleeping on our deck like it was a treehouse.

When I think about this time, I see those first waking moments when I was overwhelmed by white light, pressed up against Paisley’s slumbering body and running my fingers through the soft tufts of Muppet’s fur. Eventually we decided that she needed a sibling, so one weekend we drove out to Kelowna to pick up a tiny yorkie chihuahua named Buster — a purchase I could just barely swing on my Star salary, but one I considered an investment in my growing little family. Paisley and I had become that cute couple, the one other people envy, and I took any opportunity I could to name-drop her in the newspaper or post photos of her on Facebook. I wrote a column about her called “Introducing my favourite human being of all time”, and became a regular at two local businesses: Bella Flora, the flower shop, and Sanderella’s, the cupcake place.

I lived to spoil her.

During work hours I was hiding in the arts pages. Greg and Tamara were reliably producing enough content to fill the news section at the front-end of the paper, so I was focusing on the back half. My very first assignment was to chat with a young white rapper named Emnity, and pretty soon I was writing about giant puppets, bronze sculptors and music festivals. I started to make sense of the local arts community, and the players keeping it alive, and used my contacts to fill page after page. I was introduced to an award-winning youth choir called Corazón, the visual work of an elderly vagrant named Wayne King, and a newly released novel by Padma Viswanathan called The Ever After of Ashwin Rao. The artistic vibe was contagious.

“You stand on Baker Street and you feel like the rest of the world’s on the other side of those hills doing their crazy things and they can go ahead,” painter George Binns told me, during an interview about his exhibition at the library.

“The first day I walked down the street I knew this is where the spirit wanted me.”

Binns told me that Nelson was tricky when it came to newcomers — some people she embraced whole-heartedly, keeping them long-term, while others she forcefully ejected. I desperately wanted to be in the first camp, to have found my refuge among the mystics, weirdos and visionaries all around me. My Kootenay Goon blog was catching on, and I wanted to embody this new persona I was inventing for myself. Paisley and I belonged there, and I wanted to prove it.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting along well with upper management. As publisher, Sharon had raised a few concerns about my professionalism and conduct around the newsroom, pointing out my habit of being MIA for editorial meetings and how frequently I left the office early in the afternoons. Things came to a head one day when she announced that a story of mine, a musician profile I’d already finished, was being shit-canned for having the wrong venue — the owner of that venue also ran a small online newsletter, which she considered a Black Press competitor. (Greg and I would later call all stories killed by management “The Black List”.) Mostly annoyed that my time had been wasted, but also embarrassed because I didn’t know how I was going to explain it to the guy I’d interviewed, I blew up in front of everybody on staff. My face went red, I shook, I swore a bunch of times. I accused her of letting advertising priorities interfere with editorial integrity, all self-righteous, and ended up storming out seething. Eventually Calvin took me aside, apologetic. He put his hand on my shoulder and took a long moment to blink before speaking.

“This just isn’t one of those hills that’s worth dying on,” he told me. “But believe me, I know exactly how you feel."

The Kootenay Goon

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riting · 6 years

Text

Dynasty Handbag: Shell of a Woman by Jibz Cameron

Other Animals on Shell of a Woman

“Is this a painting?,” Jackson Pollock once asked the painter Lee Krasner, of a canvas still wet with drips. Krasner and Pollock were married, standing in a studio in Long Island. Her response is never included in the story. But recent research by Dynasty Handbag has illuminated more of this historical moment. We can now see, from beneath a pile of old potatoes and rotting wool jackets and crusty brushes, a Professor Bags lurching forward, screaming, “NO!!!!”

Here, now, stands Professor Bags, limbs akimbo, searing holes in the audience with her stare, her massive brocade trench coat partially eclipsing the PowerPoint projected on a screen behind her. In this LA premiere of Handbag’s latest show, Shell of a Woman, she concerns herself with the 10 Greatest Works of Art ever, according to the Internet. Those in the audience consider her first on that list. PeeWee Herman is here, sitting demurely in the third row, in bifocals. Hannah Gadsby is here, with a handsome fade. The comic illustrator Nicole Georges perches next to Gadsby

, as attentive as a disciple. We would all trade next to anything to watch this lesbian Venus emerge from her scallop shell on loop, the gay world’s most sacred gif.

While Dynasty Handbag’s work doesn’t appear on the Internet’s greatest hits list, here onstage at Dynasty Typewriter (no relation), she crouches atop it, a gargoyle in shoulder pads, lipstick freshly smeared from her kill. It’s fun to watch her woopsy daisy destroy the greats like she’s knocking down a Jenga tower. Irreverent is too golf-clappy a word; Professor Bags is out for blood, even if just to smear an F in front of the word Art with her own tampon. It’s deeply satisfying to fumble along with her Braille for Beginners description of revered works of art – a sort of way-finding around a painting that dispenses with assessment or valuation. Here, a blob, there, a long sandwich or maybe a yellow finger. And here, a large rock with one breast. Thank you, next.

In an alternate dimension, where The Guerrilla Girls never aped around in front of MoMA and La Barbe was just a Parisian secretary, Professor Bags lectures for her undergrads – PeeWee, Hannah and Nicole – with what little is left of art history in the aftermath of broadband patriarchal apocalypse, the ruins reeking of turpentine and strewn with legendary dismembered ears. Bags née Handbag panics, revels and screeches her way through the lowest brows of Art, flashing her teeth at acres of beige male flesh and rote recitations of time-worn accolades, collapsing the soufflé of every Famous Art Man one by one, execution style.

Because she can, she sings, intermittently changing costume on stage, struggling with the projector remote, and draping herself over a stool or lectern to finish a long, howling crescendo. Ending on a seasonal note, Handbag takes the mic from Professor Bags to deliver the world’s most disturbing, slinky, elf-pitched rendition of Santa Baby.

I wish this was the Internet. Would like to feed every Wikipedia page and Bing.com search result through this filter. Want to stay here and watch forever. Only the Bags dynasty can make sense of it all.

Other Animals is Valentine Freeman who writes and overestimates herself from Los Angeles, California.

vimeo

From E.S.P. TV Presents: Merry Christmas, Mary Boom! Taped live to VHS at Clemente Soto Velez, Flamboyan Theater, NYC, Dec. 15, 2012 by Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie.

Amanda Horowitz on Shell of a Woman

Dynasty Handbag is the shell that performer Jibz Cameron constantly slips into, providing discombobulated and hilarious slip-ups for her devoted audience. I’ve seen Dynasty Handbag perform a lot, mostly as a host in her monthly Weirdo Night! variety shows, but also in these smorgasbord theater pieces in which she trolls the formal qualities of comedy, cabaret, and solo-performance art. Dynasty Handbag has absorbed the horror and embarrassment of performance into a method of her own. I love the moments when she stops “performing” and putters out, totally exhausted or mortified by what she is doing. She meanders into anxious self-reflection, descends into wordless baby-talk-babble, and makes herself laugh at the depths of her own character’s absurdity. In these moments, there is an experience of second-hand embarrassment, and I realize just how weird it is to watch someone perform. Entertainment flips inside out, like the banana peel she alludes to at the top of “Shell of a Woman”: it no longer looks like the comedy, song, and dance she was giving us, but instead becomes the excessive, anxious, shedding of an entertainer. This shedding is latent in most performance, and for a reason, it is deeply uncomfortable to know just how desperate our performer/actor is. Dynasty Handbag prods just how far she can go down with the shame-train, teetering between a campy intensification of character and a cringey self-awareness. This is why it’s so hard to accurately describe exactly who/what Dynasty Handbag is; at times she’s abject and revolting, absurdly solipsistic, but her shell-like persona defies internalization of these things. Shame is less a tenant of her character and more a transient force within any performance.

When camp becomes cringey, it creates what my collaborator and I, in our own theater projects, have termed as “cramp.” We began using the term to speak about a particular tone of camp inadvertently performed in viral videos. In cramp, all the inward shivers of vicarious humiliation are brought on by the deep embarrassment of watching someone commit to artifice with total unawareness. Cramp combines camp’s (as noted by Susan Sontag) “glorification of character” with all the shades of othering that is platformed online. Campy performance, with its roots in cabaret, drag, and experimental theater, has long been a way for outsiders to perform their subjectivity to a simpatico audience. But, when these tenants go viral, everyone takes up performance as a way to declaim and defend their otherness. Schools of the unaware perform for each other in vacuums of jingoism, and in the end, no matter what camp you’ve come to represent there’s a cringey moment somewhere for you to watch or to be a part of.

Throughout “Shell of a Woman,” Dynasty Handbag lectures her creative adjacent audience on the ten best artworks in history. She parodies a bourgeois art historian who, with cramp in hand, infantilizes the male-centric history of art through a performed innocence, making observations such as “Jackson Pollock's painting is a picture of spaghetti and beans,” and pronouncing Picasso as “Pick-A-Sew.” A particularly crampy moment in Dynasty Handbag’s performance occurred during the encore rendition of Santa Baby. She came back on stage in a tight red bodysuit and over-sized furry slippers to sing the Christmas carol as an adult baby. She whines and screams the Crampus number, humiliating and perverting the camp of Christmas cheer. Dynasty Handbag’s cramp also turns up monthly at her Weirdo Night! comedy shows. She’s become a routine nasty pain in the Los Angeles performance-art scene’s core, the lesbian cousin to the belly laugh.

Early on in the show, Dynasty Handbag claimed that “Shell of a Woman” is a lesbian show with nothing inside. It was one of my favorite ongoing jokes. Her continual claiming of the show’s “lesbian content” is entirely uncool. A more fashionable contemporary performer would have traded in the term for queer by now. But Dynasty Handbag claims her lesbian content hard, and with folly. As a shell of a woman she can talk back to herself and be entirely uncool and uncouth, as there is no inside to return to. Thus, she is able to reflect our own cringe worthy fears of being the incorrect thing, or claiming the wrong way to express otherness, which just creates yet another subcategory of alienation and ignominy.

Theater is inherently an embarrassing medium. It can be awfully excruciating to watch live bodies grab for emotions, especially those of campy and melodramatic size. And what’s more, you are stuck there, and the possibility of leaving, while available, would be public, you might trip over your neighbors’ feet, it could be a worst-case-social-situation. So, as a platform for cramp performance, theater seems far more risky and effective than that of the computer or television. In cramp theater, the audience has to confront embarrassment, and they are not cushioned by the safety and distancing of the screen. The inward shiver it produces could be a sort of collective erotics, a place to experience disgrace as a group feeling, rather than one of individual or virtual perjury. In a culture in which shame is used to control one’s body and one’s experiences as good or bad, diving further into the inward shiver could be a good place to start in detangling the anxieties that keep us separated and in fear of each other.

Amanda Horowitz’s work exists between written language and live address, sculpture and getting dressed, personal soliloquy and satirical declamations from fictional characters.

Shell of a Woman happened at Dynasty Typewriter on December 16, 2018.

Jibz Cameron is a performance/video artist and actor living in Los Angeles. Her multi-media performance work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag has spanned 15 years. In addition to her work as Dynasty Handbag she has also been seen acting in films, theater and television. She works as a professor of performance and comedy related subjects as well as lecturing and teaching workshops. Jibz also produces and hosts Weirdo Night!, a monthly comedy and performance event in Los Angeles.

Photos by Charlie Gross.

#dynasty typewriter #Long Riting

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biofunmy · 5 years

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The Sudanese Graffiti Artist Assil Diab Is Bringing #BlueForSudan To The Streets

Andrew Renneisen for BuzzFeed News

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Peering out of a tinted window from the backseat of the car as it crawled down an empty side street, the young graffiti artist’s eyes darted back and forth. She had to be sure the authorities weren’t already following her, that she would have enough time to jump out and paint the wall she’d chosen, and be back in the car before anyone alerted the armed soldiers stationed on every other corner. It’s a high-wire act.

But Assil Diab isn’t easily deterred. The 30-year-old street artist has a message she wants to get out. Diab’s graffiti, along with the work of several other local artists, has been screaming from walls and telephone poles all over the Sudanese capital of Khartoum for months now, ever since demonstrators staged a sit-in demanding civilian rule after the military ousted former president Omar al-Bashir.

When Diab took a phone call from a friend in the US, she reassured her that, despite the state’s violent crackdown on protests, she wasn’t scared. “I know everyone’s concerned, but it just got to the point where I decided I’m going to do what I came here to do,” Diab said after she hung up.

After all, she had a wall to paint.

When the protests began in April, Diab mostly painted portraits of people who had been killed by state security forces in the protests leading up to Bashir’s removal. Now, she is covering the city in blue, the color that has come to symbolize the Sudanese uprising and has been popularized by the #BlueForSudan hashtag, which has gone viral around the world. But in Sudan, repeated internet shut downs over the last month have left most people with no idea of its meaning. Diab has resolved to change that, one wall at a time.

“They don’t know what’s happening, and I’m not connected to the internet [when I’m here],” said Diab, who grew up in Khartoum but travels back and forth between the capital and her home in Doha, Qatar. “But that’s why I need to paint.”

Diab is part of a group of artists behind the creative renaissance that’s emerged in Sudan since the sit-in began. The peaceful demonstration became known for the vibrant street art that took over walls and overpasses, and old revolutionary songs and poems sung by protesters of all ages.

But that ended suddenly on June 3 when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s paramilitary troops, killed more than 100 people and injured at least 600 more. The government ordered an internet shutdown the same day. At least 40 dead bodies were recovered from the Nile River, and Sudanese medical staff have reported that dozens of men, women, and children were raped, all in a single week. The Transitional Military Council, established to lead the country during its three-year period between Bashir’s rule and the country’s next elections, has since admitted that it had ordered troops to break up the protest, which dealt a serious blow to the pro-democracy movement’s momentum. The country’s military leadership and the civilian opposition coalition agreed to a power-sharing deal on Friday, after months of negotiation, but some celebrating in the streets remain wary after the still recent violence.

Andrew Renneisen for BuzzFeed News

Faces of those killed in anti-government protests in Khartoum.

Online, the Sudanese diaspora mobilized to bring the rest of the world’s attention to the uprising taking place at home, especially after 26-year-old Mohamed Hashim Mattar, a British Sudanese engineer, was killed during the violent breakup of the sit-in. Mattar’s social media profile photo had been a solid shade of deep turquoise blue when he died, so to honor his life — and the lives of other people killed during the uprising — his friends changed their profile photos blue, too, and encouraged the rest of the world to do the same.

Within a few days, celebrities like Rihanna, Cardi B, Bas, and Sophia Bush followed suit. People outside the country changed their social feeds to a massive sea of blue, accompanied by the hashtags #BlueForMattar and #BlueForSudan, though there has been criticism of people exploiting the hashtag in order to increase their follower count.

Diab said she had met Mattar briefly at the airport in Khartoum after realizing they’d been on the same flight from Doha. She remembered him being so excited to join the sit-in that he went straight there after landing.

As a Sudanese diasporan who has the privilege of traveling between Khartoum and Doha with relative ease, Diab feels obliged to help bridge the gaps she’s seen inside and outside Sudan: both between Sudanese people and the rest of the world, and between online and offline activism. “It’s a revolution, and we all need to stay connected,” she said. “So we took the idea of painting the walls blue from the internet, and are bringing it into the real world.”

Her project adds another phase to the typical real-life-to-hashtag cycle: Mattar’s death inspired the viral #BlueForSudan, and now the massive online movement — which was created both to honor his life and to draw the world’s attention to the anti-government protests — is being explained to the very people it is meant to support.

Andrew Renneisen for BuzzFeed News

A portrait of Mohamed Hashim Mattar by Assil Diab. Mattar was killed during anti-government protests.

After Diab inspected the wall to make sure the surface was smooth and wouldn’t cause the paint to peel, the driver popped the trunk, revealing buckets of blue paint and some brushes. Using the car’s headlights to guide them, they dipped the roller brushes in paint and started covering the wall. A few of the kids joined in, offering to fill in the cracks with smaller brushes. As she painted, Diab glanced behind her at the sound of every sputtering tuk-tuk motor. Her art and activism have put her in danger with the RSF — which grew out of the Janjaweed militias accused of committing war crimes in Darfur — before, and she wanted to avoid them at all costs.

“They came to my house before, about 10 days ago,” she said with a laugh common to activists who’ve been repeatedly harassed by the authorities.

“They were banging on the door and ringing the doorbell at the same time, which is freaky, you know?” she said. “When I looked out, they had their guns aimed at the door and they were using terror tactics to intimidate me.”

Diab said that for her and the small group she works with, “safety is number one, especially now. If we’re out on a main street, it’s a bit hard for me to feel comfortable painting. My back is facing everything else, and these guys…” she said, trailing off.

“All they have to do is raise their gun and shoot you. They’re not gonna ask who I am, or why I’m doing all of this.”

Tamerra Griffin / BuzzFeed News

It meant that Diab couldn’t just stroll up to any random wall and start painting — she had to create a special process to ensure everyone’s safety.

Before painting martyrs’ portraits, either Diab or someone working with her reaches out to the family for permission. But if they’re painting a #BlueForSudan wall, she said, someone from her team “drives to the area an hour earlier and makes sure we have people from the community standing around, pretending to drink coffee, just looking out.” Everyone involved shares their phone numbers, so that if anyone sees the RSF approach, they can alert each other.

But painting the sides of houses, abandoned walls, and telephone poles in Mattar’s blue is only part of the mission. For Diab, the project means nothing if the communities don’t understand its significance, or how much those outside the country are supporting them. That’s why she and her small team of volunteers have also been talking to those who live in the areas they paint, telling them about the meaning of the particular shade (which Diab had custom-made by a painter in Khartoum to make sure it matched the blue that went viral) and what the hashtag means.

“As soon as you start explaining it … people say things like, ‘Oh, my cousin has some internet. Maybe I should go there and check out this hashtag,’” Diab said. “Someone [from an older generation] actually wrote it down yesterday.”

The first wall of the night belonged to the home of Ha’zaa Hassan, who was 18 years old when he was killed on June 3. She had previously painted Hassan’s portrait, and as soon as his mother, Ahlam, saw her approach, she quickly folded her into a tight hug. The greeting drew a small crowd of children and teens hanging out nearby. Then, with the urgency and precision of a surgeon performing an emergency procedure, Diab got to work.

Andrew Renneisen for BuzzFeed News

A portrait of Ha’zaa Hassan by Diab.

Diab’s first foray into graffiti art could not have been more different. In 2011, she was on a photography internship in Brooklyn when she saw graffiti for the first time, and quickly fell in love with it. When she returned to Doha, she took a position assisting eL Seed, a famous Tunisian graffiti artist.

“I picked up the know-how of spray painting really quickly,” she said, “to the point where [eL Seed] was like, ‘You know, you’re going somewhere with this.’ He really pushed me into it.”

When she wasn’t working on the project with him, Diab studied YouTube videos to learn new graffiti styles. “Now I know how to use spray paint better than I do a brush,” she said.

In 2013, she started a new job as a creative designer at Al Jazeera, but decided to take a risk and quit after eight months to pursue graffiti full-time. She hasn’t looked back since.

But the joy of painting at home in Khartoum and making a living doing what she’s most passionate about still isn’t enough to protect Diab from the stereotypes faced by women who defy society’s expectations of them.

“Yesterday when we were painting, I could hear the kids nearby saying, ‘Look at how she’s dressed,’” said Diab, who was wearing a pair of fitted sweatpants and a long-sleeved button-down shirt. “That’s always a comment I hear. I’m not a hijabi, my hair is out, I’m wearing jeans.” Sometimes, she said, the kids will call her a prostitute, because they typically see her walking around at night.

And while those comments sting, especially because they come from children — “Maybe their dad is saying that about their sisters,” she wondered — Diab sees them as an opportunity to show that women are more than the clothes they wear. It doesn’t stop her from inviting those same kids to help her paint, either.

“I want people to get used to this, because it’s not [about] how I’m dressed, right? It’s what I’m doing, and if people could just focus on what I’m trying to do here, I can be put into use.”

Other times, the sexism is more subtle and comes from within the activist community. Diab recalled a time when a man asked her if he could join her crew and help spread her graffiti around Khartoum. When she brought him on, she emphasized the importance of following through on the tasks he was given, because they all depended on each other and one person’s mistake could compromise everyone’s safety.

But the new volunteer was unreliable, regularly missing phone calls and showing up late to meetings. Assil was frustrated. “If someone’s not doing what they should be doing and we all get in trouble, you basically just fucked us all up,” she said.

When she confronted him about it, though, he pushed back, saying that what they were doing wasn’t a business and that he was only there to support her, so how could she be so demanding?

“I was like, ‘This is not about me. This is about Sudan. And you came asking me to join,’” she remembered telling the man.

But it was more than that.

“I felt, deep down inside, that he had an issue with a woman telling him what to do,” she said. “I mean, if you’re a revolutionary, and you’re going out in the street protesting against the government who thinks the same way you’re thinking right now? That makes you a hypocrite, because what is it that you want to change about Sudan if you don’t want that change to be a woman also having equal rights as you?”

Andrew Renneisen for BuzzFeed News

Diab at her family’s home in Khartoum.

Within 15 minutes, Diab has finished the blue wall near Hazzah’s house. She’d spray-painted “#BlueForSudan” in black-and-white letters that gave the text a three-dimensional effect and framed it with a prayer to Hazzah in Arabic, which gained a huge round of applause from the kids who’d gathered to watch her. (They didn’t quite understand the English hashtag, until she broke it down for them in Arabic.) The final touches to her #BlueForSudan wall were splatters of red paint around the lettering, to symbolize the blood of those who were killed on June 3.

Some of the kids rushed to bring cold bottles of water to Diab and her friends before they left. She had returned the paint buckets to the trunk just as quickly as she’d brought them out, and was already scheming with her team about the next wall to paint.

And then, they were off into the night.

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