#shards franz

[viaphni]

The Shrouded Shards memes that a) nobody will understand b) are extremely low quality c) have characters nobody has heard of d) are very real

[sarahsinferno]

I Wish for Liberation

I sit in the dark, my thoughts a storm of fragments, and I wish, not with the innocence of a child but with the bitter clarity of experience, that you would feel the weight of every wound you gave.

do you know the sharp sting of betrayal, the cruel echo of a lie, the loneliness that wraps around the heart like a shroud?

I want you to know the hollow ache of waiting, the gnawing uncertainty that burrows deep, the sleepless nights stretched out in their endless, aching expanse.

I want the weight of your own choices to press down on you, heavy and relentless, until you understand the pressure that drove me to despair, until you feel a trace of my sorrow settling like dust in your own empty spaces.

you, who sculpted misery with your hands, who wielded cruelty like a blade, are you aware of the echoes you left? do you hear them whisper in your dreams, the ache you wove so effortlessly into my days?

i could wish for storms to ravage your calm, for the sky to crack open with lightning that rends the fabric of your peace, for the tremors of regret to shake your foundation.

yet, even as I wish this, I realize that suffering does not heal, that the flames of revenge only scorch the hands that wield them.

so, instead, I let the weight of my sorrow settle, a quiet confession to the universe that sometimes I crave for the scales to tip,

for the pain to be known, but mostly,

I wish for liberation, for the shackles of my anger to fall away, and for a heart that no longer clings to the shadows of the past.

so I let the wish drift, a bitter gust of wind that fades into the void, and I turn away, searching for a release from this desire, for a way to mend the broken pieces without adding more shards to the world’s already jagged heart.

S.T. 2024

santa rosalia by roberto ferri(1978) oil on canvas

the shepherd david by elizabeth bouguereau(1895)

dancers by franz von stuck(1896)

perseus slaying medusa by laurent-honore marqueste(1903)

[lillavey]

dying for a trip to the bookstore like, GENUINELY, dying, rotting, craving, yearning, needing, collapsing, foaming at the mouth, picking at my skin, crawling on my hands and knees on glass shards, begging at the feet of whoever is willing to pity me and take me to a bookstore so i can get my franz kafka books🩶

[allmimsyweretheborogroves]

III. The Great House of the Dead

The skeleton servitor came to the empty house. Its bones clattered as it rattled up the stairs, toe-bones clicking on the broad steps worn smooth and shallow. The skeleton servitor paced down the hall, past the decomposing hangings of empires long forgotten. The great windows were now shattered and splintered—shards scattered across the soggy mouldering carpet from the rain which had, uninvited, made its way in. Conveniently, the skeleton servitor had no shoes or socks to become soaked, so it ran on mindlessly, insensate to the tapestry which lost its grip on solidity and crumbled into dust. The skeleton servitor rattled on, persistent and unknowing, through the door no longer hanging straight on its hinges and into The Room With the Bed, hung with rotting green velvet drapes where the Eternal Queen lay, white hair a spiderweb halo around her head. She lay waiting, a withered white blot in the sea of green as though all the color had been sucked out of her. The skeleton servitor clattered across the room and leant down to let her whisper to its skull, to receive and relay her voice to all the people of her realm. Unfortunately, it was too late and she was already dead.

Prompt: Write a surreal prose poem in the style of Franz Kafka.

[daedalmirage]

TRIAL 3.4 | “ EVERY WORD I SAY IS KINDLING ! ” | SIR GAWAIN | 🚒 |

"...Daisy. That looks like it hurts. At least y'listened...."

(Of course it hurts. He knows that it hurts. She hadn't offered to splash in the water with him; hadn't teased him about stepping in with him in the shower; hadn't wrapped her arms around him in their embrace -- hadn't even clung to his neck as he carried her to the trial room, like she always does.) ....

The look he ends up giving Franz is... more calmed. More level. Less sniping.

Still protective.

And he sighs, ultimately. His eyes going to Ray.

"She's right. No disputin'. I went into th'water, then took a shower. Ain't no one close enough to see if it washed up blood. Leavin' that to your imagination."

A blink.

"...As another note, I'm gonna dispute th'glass theory. Just as an aside. Ray an' I looked into th'wound in Ms. Nina's stomach. There's no glass shards left in there. Glass has a tendency t'stick."

His mind is swimming -- his heart is pounding, though he retains his placid look. The sweat is pooling at his neck, and he's starting to wonder if it's the shower or himself that's keeping his hair slick.

And he had left Spade sitting, for a while. Maybe he had to. Maybe it was the only way for him to collect himself.

But still, his tone has a bite he doesn't really intend -- a scrappy kid, who cut his teeth in an underclass he doesn't easily describe. A miserable teen, holding dead children and watching the eyes of pleading mothers who wished it was them instead. A young man with the rug torn out from under him, with no defense but a desperate plea-- One that, twice now, went unanswered.

And he acts the way he knows how.

"Charles. I mean this no way. I've made my position clear from th'start of this motive. I'm willin' t'die for this. Hell. You coulda killed. Fuckin' Mr. Johann coulda killed. My position would remain consistent. I don't want th'killer t'die for this. No matter who they are. For once, this isn't me playin' stupid for a pretty face."

His voice rises. Maybe it sounds angry. But it's more likely to sound desperate.

"I think th'better question is -- why aren't you willin' to set that aside and vote for an innocent? All that happens is someone gets punished. Someone here knows th'cure that'll save all of our sorry fucking hides. It might not even be Didi. Manako-san is right -- she only admitted t'stealin'. As Manako-san said before, everythin' was blanked out t'keep us from reaping without sowin' -- th'killer only earns th'right t'know th'cure once they're out of th'trial, seems t'me. So it might even be that she is definitively not th'one we're lookin' for."

His throat is choking.

"That cure -- that cure that Ms. Nina died over -- is the only reason why we came here. We all die without a fuckin' cure -- we're all as good as dead without it. This was the only conclusion we could have gotten to. What are y'provin' by tryin' t'find the one who did it?"

And he softens. Before.... He looks to Tezuka -- then to Ray, and finally to Marigold. Before he sighs again, his voice hoarse:

"I didn't want Ms. Nina dead. I wanted the body on th'floor t'me mine. As about four' people in this room would tell you. But yes. The killer was willin' to put their own neck on the line, live with the aftermath of becomin' a murderer, an' hate themselves a little more to save themselves -- an' us. A favor. An' killin' th'killer -- whoever the fuck they are -- would be wastin' Ms. Nina's life. Would be spittin' in the face of her death. Would be damning us all for what -- ego? Some fucked up form of justice? For what?"

His eyes cast off to the side:

"This is dog eat. We were offered a solution where more than one of us can get th'cure -- can stay alive. An' you're willin' to piss that away because... why?  An' you too, Ban.  I think that's th'better question than to ask about favors."

...But ultimately, he deflates.

"But what do I know...."

[ysabellious]

hungarian rhapsody no. 2, friska — franz liszt 🦢

(performed by Simone Renzi)

(+ the 2 main stills because I think they look very Cool)

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Esper Panorama by Franz Vohwinkel

[kuwentista]

Barong Tagalog: The Traditional Filipino Men's Attire By Franz Sorilla IV, September 18, 2020

Worn up to this day on very important celebrations and formal gatherings, the barong tagalog’s ever-present magnificence that is inherently Filipino has stood the test of time. Barong tagalog, root word baro pertaining to “upper garment”, literally means “Tagalog outfit”. It was coined during the early Spanish colonial period to distinguish it as a native attire of Filipinos in contrast to the European-styled three-piece suits.Evolution in fashion throughout the centuries brought upon various modifications of the barong tagalog, and even grew in popularity nowadays on women as an alternative to the elaborate four-piece traje de mestiza known as Maria Clara. Typically, it is made of sheer lightweight woven fabric made of either piña or jusi, the former considered more precious.Piña could be an heirloom garment when properly maintained, for its tedious process and delicateness. The Aklanons of western Panay are acknowledged to be the pioneers in piña weaving. The tedious process begins with the stripping of the epidermis of the leaves of the red Visayan pineapple (ananas comosus), using a shard of Chinese porcelain. The lustrous coarse fibre called bastos is extracted by hand and reserved for use in making strings or twine. The next layer is the liniwan, which is obtained using a coconut shell. Ivory white in colour, this fibre is the finest. It undergoes degumming, which involves repeated rinsing, beating and air-drying—each step undertaken with great care. When completely dried, each strand is knotted to produce long continuous threads. The process of weaving the warp and weft takes weeks to complete, yielding just enough fabric for one barong tagalog. Some fibres are naturally dyed; most fabrics are hand embroidered. This tedious and time-consuming process of production renders the piña a most precious material

[rotdotmp3]

c!dream.

shards with diffuse light - claire schwartz // journal excerpt, july first - tumblr user twinnedpeaks // tumblr user shinyreuniclus // elm - sylvia plath // tumblr user everyteenager4free1 // portrait of the illness as nightmare - leila chatti // the blue octavo notebooks - franz kafka // tumblr user archivistbot 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.

[viaphni]

iiiiiiii love these two so much

theyre a couple of characters from The Shrouded Shards, a professor red parallel and his son

they are precious and their contributions to the plot are great

cannot wait to post more about these two

[alastairisdead]

Brick Information

More? Ok-

Brick was the one to find Shard stumbling around in shorts and a T-shirt with ice covering her limbs so everything Shard is wearing was actually given to her by Brick.

Brick is uncomfortable around Swerp [and Swerp around Brick] because of what happened in 1945.

Brick usually hangs out with Lucid if he's stressed because zombie dragon man is better then Feather's champion fighter[Swerp].

He's very protective of Snow,Especially when Swerp or Feather is nearby.

Heavy Irish accent team = Brick and Shard

Brick doesn't have any siblings; Shard was actually his wingman before she went "missing"

He's literally hot. His skin burns people who touch him it's bad. His hands don't though.

He likes to squish people he likes [Ex. Franz,Snow,Sock,Stick]

Brick burrows into the ground and lays in there if he feels threatened.

He can't drive. Ever. Neither can Swerp. Lucid can though.

He wasn't part of the cult surrounding Feather in 1945,but when his child with Swerp was murdered by Feather and Swerp himself making a deal with Feather to get her back,Brick gave up on Swerp because their daughter came back as a zombie similar to Lucid so...Brick put her down.

Brick is afraid of being a parent again and therefore will not attempt to have one.

He's actually an ash dragon; He'll turn himself into ash and float away.

[zerozeroren]

Bunny loves your OCs! Is it okay to ask random questions about them? Like, what's Nana's favorite bands? Or, would Sophie listen to podcasts? Maybe what is the best gift Sauri's ever received and from whom? Oops, that's a lot of questions! Sorry! Bunny is just curious about them!🐰💛

I’m pretty sure I’m speaking for every single person who ever had OCs when I say that random questions about said OCs are literally a blessing!

somehow, a bit of a ranty longpost underneath 

okay so

Nana and her fav bands

That’s kind of interesting but somehow Nana ended up being one of the few ocs of mine who doesn’t obsess over music. Usually, my characters are singers or musicians, they compose, write songs or at the very least they adore karaokeXD and Nana in this regard is more of a regular person who sometimes listens to music for leisure and that’s pretty much it with her. She likes indie rock, so a whole lot of Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, etc, but she mostly listens to them because she really enjoyed their music in her teens and the songs kind of stayed with her to her adulthood.

Sophie and podcasts 

She does, but only those that cater to her specific interests (namely musicals). So she listens to Behind the Curtain Podcast, Broadwaysted Podcast and Musical Talk religiously, but little else. She rarely even has time to spare for these at all, so tries to listen to them while in public transport. 

right

so here i’m hitting a roadblock with Sauri

you see, i kind of lost her because of Attitudes? like, with her there was always one HUGE issue: she’s a character without a story. I made her for Princess Tutu and throughout the years in fandom i just kept having different ideas of where she comes from, what function she might have in PT universe, is she a fairytale character, is she just a regular person who stumbled across Tutu gang, is she a shard carrier, a sister to a main 4 character... My latest idea is for her to be a wagtail bird turned human through a deal with a villain (The Little Mermaid style). You see, it’s all over the place. I know her personality, her attitude, her identity, her relationship with every PT character - but no idea where to apply all these! She’s complete in my mind and i have no fucking clue what to do with her. 

As you might have guessed, Attitudes started with a bunch of my and my bff’s OCs being dumped into a modern magicless setting and just living lives there, and Sophie was once Sauri. She’s no longer. Without the magical restrictions, i felt so free, changed the age, changed a huge part of the personality, and developed the most interesting (to me at least) aspect i came up with - an idea of an artist who’s 100% confident in their art but in absolutely nothing else. And Sophie ended up being very different, much more rounded up, much more developed and complex, and she, most importantly, HAS A SOLID STORY that i have a lot of fun developing. She’s no longer even remotely Sauri. Sauri is still there, somewhere, out there, now more of a concept than a character, because she still needs a place to be put into which i really don’t have and i feel tremendous amounts of guilt because of it XD

So why the tangent: i feel like the question (the best most beloved gift for a person and by whom it was given) requires an answer that would be relevant for the story or an arc or should reveal something important about the character and their inner life. And i can’t give any of that for Sauri without a story to lean on. But i can totally do this for Sophie! And i hope you’ll forgive me for this switch, Bunny ^^’

So

Sophie and the best gift

It was given to her by her two half-brothers for her 13th birthday. You see, Sophie’s parents divorced when she was about 5, and her dad, with whom she stayed after said divorce, later remarried. And he and his new wife ended up having twin boys. Sophie was 7 by then. So she basically grew up being a full-time nanny for both of her brothers: fed them, changed diapers, took them for walks, bathed them, taught them how to read and play games and pretty much everything else (both dad and stepmom worked a lot because it’s not easy or cheap raising 3 kids). And Sophie loves her brothers to pieces. 

This gift was the first present her brothers officially gave her: they couldn’t, being 6-year-olds, afford anything, so they saved up nickels and bought her a photo frame which then painted themselves. The thing looks hideous, obviously, but Sophie holds onto it and brings it with her when she changes locations because memories goddammit! Her beloved brothers, who are forever babies to her, made it for her, and she cherishes it. 

(poor boys couldn't find a photo for the frame so they drew a picture XD Sophie still keeps it there too because it makes her laugh, though she hides it underneath a proper photo they later made together)

[angelfishreveal]

FRANKFURT UPDATE / DISORGANIZED RANT ABOUT TRUTH AND ART AND FASSBINDER

by Camille Clair

I spent the strict quarantine following my arrival in Frankfurt studying German in the mornings, and watching Fassbinder in the evenings. The time between morning and evening was spent...nervously. 

I watched so many Fassbinder films during my quarantine that I began to feel his cabinet of actors were my companions (quarpanions). We were all crying and grinning and swallowing our pills together. 

I am one of those people that believes that pain/discomfort/anxiety is necessary, important, a catalyst. That is one of the reasons I left, have left in the past, will leave again. Sometimes the next best life move involves ripping your heart out! Sometimes it isn’t quite so abrupt, and your heart will sizzle in the pan for months. You may even grow to cherish the sensation because it means you are working toward something. You may recognize your true self in that pain. And in that truth, your mission, which may, or may not be, your art. 

I do believe that, as an artist, you have to be a bit of a masochist. Your life is sustained via chopping yourself into bits, and, if you’re lucky, stowing those bits in the pockets of the wealthy, the devious. And though you may consider yourself an orthodox Marxist, this seems to be the only way to keep the axe swinging. I would never say aloud that I believe suffering produces great art, but I also must admit I understand the desire to drag oneself across shards of glass a la Chris Burden in Through The Night Softly. I relate to the impulse to bear it all. I want to be torn apart! For art. 

I don’t always want this, but fresh out of my Frankfurt quarantine - following a confounding summer in Los Angeles - I want this. I really, truly want to exhaust myself. 

Though Fassbinder himself may have been a bit amoral, he was, at the same time, so undeniably invested in all that is human. Many of Fassbinder’s characters seem to cave inward, unable to stand erect under the weight of the social, the political, the bureaucratic: the simultaneity, and responsibility of it all. Fassbinder’s characters give into their truth, or they parish. No time is wasted on the performance of goodness, because salvation was never in their cards to begin with. 

What I desire and revere most in art is truth. I want my “self” and my “art” to be inseparable, the same. I want my body to vanish in the company of my art. I don’t really want to exist. I repeat variations of a line from Reena Spaulings in my head all day long: Where does my (boyish, jaunty, smooth, freckle-dusted, foxy, stiff, screen-like) body end and a real event begin, for once? I do a little dance in the mirror. I have never been this alone. Some days I feel stiff with sorrow, so I remind myself that I am a character, and the director expects a performance, and then I stretch. 

Walking home in the rain, I envision Margit Carstensen waiting for me in my flat. I am her aloof lover. Or she is mine. I’ll fall through the door with a sigh, she’ll pour me a little glass of schnapps, and we’ll heartfully console one another. I sometimes play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), which starts Carstensen, in the background while I go about my tasks. I speak my favorite of Petra’s lines back to her as part of my daily Deutsche practice. Maybe by Spring, I’ll have the entirety of her central monologue memorized. I love to fantasize about the spring, it’s become one of my favorite pastimes. It is possible to imagine nearly anything happening in the spring because real life has become so severely abstracted. 

I lament…

What is real? Now? And in hindsight, what was ever real? Is it, or was it, ever recognizable or is it just whatever you put into your head on a given day? I scroll through Contemporary Art Daily on acid and feel confused about what it is I am supposed to want. My eyes linger on words that used to resonate, and it stirs some sort of longing. I want it to be physical, I want to get dirty and injured in the process. I want to be so involved it’s disgusting. But for now, nearly everything I want is impossible. Maybe it's a symptom of the current situation, but I want to be overinvolved. I generally find most performance excruciating, but now I feel I would do anything for an audience. I desire an audience. 

I envy Fassbinder’s overinvolvement. In Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), a film about making a film, Fassbinder seems to play himself. He doesn’t play the director, he plays Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Often fussing around or yelling in the background, it’s unclear exactly what his role is in the production, but as a viewer one is intensely aware of him at all times. Upon first watch, I felt envious. I want to be present in that way, shrieking for the sake of, and within, my art. The ringleader, and also, the eager participant. In the opening scene of Germany in Autumn (1978), Fassbinder, dials a call, and says “Ich bin es Fassbinder” into the receiver. We know of course, who the man on the screen is, though we aren’t immediately sure who we are meant to recognize him as. 

In a 1997 eulogy for ArtForum, Gary Indiana writes, “what can you say about a fat, ugly sadomasochist who terrorized everyone around him, drove his lovers to suicide, drank two bottles of Rémy daily, popped innumerable pills while stuffing himself like a pig and died from an overdose at 37? [Fassbinder was]  a faithful mirror of an uglier world that has grown uglier since his death”. Fassbinder knew truth, and truth is as beautiful and precious, as it is vile. 

My sister, who is 17 and only just got drunk for the first time last week, told me she could never watch The Shining (1980)  knowing how much Shelly Duval was tormented in the making of it. I felt I couldn’t argue with her but I also wanted to argue with her. “So you will never watch what is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time?” 

“No,” she said. 

“Okay,” I said. 

Perhaps we are reaching an age in which you really cannot separate the art from the artist. Maybe it’s never actually been possible. But then again, there are so many things that seem to be art by mistake, and so many artists who die without recognition.

In the eulogy, Indiana goes on to say, “there is nothing you can say about Fassbinder that he hasn’t already said about himself”. This line again brings to mind Fassbinder in Beware of a Holy Whore, berating everyone in the vicinity, utterly repulsed by a multitude of things never made explicitly clear. Fassbinder lying dead in the train station after an overdose in Fox and his Friends (1975). Fassbinder lying dead, with a cigarette between his lips and notes for an upcoming film lying next to him, from an actual overdose. A parallel that reveals art is just as intertwined with death, as it is with life.

I realized this year that many of the artists I respect care a great deal about film, about drama. I have found solace in films, because I am alone nearly all of the time, and I don't know when I will see any of my cherished ones again. I am living vicariously through characters, beginning to think of myself as a character, which is admittedly therapeutic. I am the director. And I chose myself from a lineup of nervous red haired girls. I recognised myself at once, and thus, here I am. 

Some artists, or people!, are overly concerned with their own narrative. It can be irritating, indulgent, abject, but it’s convenient, and it may save your life. Though you’re never really alone you may feel really alone. Allein. Alleine... Sometimes there is nowhere to turn but toward yourself. And, once you begin to think of yourself as a character, you no longer bear the full responsibility of your being. You have been put in place to carry out the artistic vision. So, in a sense, all characters are artists, just as they are products of art. It’s reflexive, and Frankensteinian, in that way. 

Maybe as an experiment, try referring to your dismal flat as “the set”. 

Are you at home? 

I’m on set. 

Complain aloud, but to no one, about the uninspired refreshments. 

Stare longingly at everything. 

There is a misanthropic edge to many of Fassbinder’s films. A bleakness. It is often said that his work is about the fascism at play in interpersonal relationships. The fascism that blooms in all of our hearts.There are instances across Fassbinder’s filmography of, not only an awareness, but a patience, for all that is despicable. Human beings are weak, impressionable, they want to be liked but if it doesn’t work out, they’ll settle for being hated or feared. Often, Fassbinder will have a character do or say something that completely skews, if not, obliterates your previous impression of them. For example, in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Emmi who is, up until this point, mostly redeemable, chooses Hitler’s favorite restaurant to celebrate her and Ali’s wedding, stating upon entry that she has “always wanted to go”.  In the scene that follows, she mispronounces the names of menu items, the server scoffs, and one can't help but feel a bit bad for her. Is her desire to eat at Hitler’s favorite spot purely aspirational, a misguided highbrow charade? Or is she a sympathetic fascist? This is another fault of the character, any character, their world view is often contrived, never holistic. 

Fassbinder is the Postwar German filmmaker - generally considered the “catalyst of the New German Cinema movement”. In his films, World War II is often alluded to / background / partial context / a shadow, but it is never the subject, or the main event. A character’s idiosyncrasies, or disturbances, could be attributed to the wartimes, but often, their faults seem too deeply intertwined with their truths. But of course they’ve always had a tremor, a temper. Many of Fassbinder’s characters have a hard edge, or have suffered immense loss. They are either in, or narrowly escaping, crisis. 

In Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Franz Bieberkopf, a rampant dilettante, oscillates between political affiliations. When we first meet Bieberkopf, fresh out of prison, he is a bit of an anarchist, sympathizing with soldiers and workers above all. As the series progresses, Bieberkopf is revealed to be immensely impressionable, confused, vindictive. He exhibits symptoms of several political philosophies, albeit meekly. Bieberkopf even briefly wears a Nazi armband, which, when questioned about, he is unable to defend, and from thereon, is never seen wearing it again. Franz Bieberkopf is similar to Tony Soprano in that way. Selfish, gruff, deeply flawed, indubitably human. Tony Soprano bites into a meatball sub and sauce dribbles onto his shirt and you forget, momentarily, that he's a bigot, because he’s the protagonist. And it is the job of the protagonist to represent a spectrum of human strength, and fallibility. It is arguably better, or more redeemable, to be overtly, rather than covertly, self-serving because then at least one is operating in defense of their own truth.

Truth is constructed daily and could easily be mistaken for anything but. Truth is nearly impossible to represent, and harder still to recognize. Truth is a fallacy, and thus, very lonely. Still, it must be guarded, I have been listening to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as I walk around Frankfurt which, in all honesty, fertilizes the melodrama blooming in my heart. Werther is bitterly alone, consoling himself via drawn out descriptions of his loneliness. “I am proud of my heart alone”, he says, “it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”. 

I am alone in Frankfurt, but I have my heart.  

[breitzbachbea]

Drabble #66

Leo’s affection for Hugo and the way they deal with it is probably the embodiement of the German saying “The opposite of well is well-intentioned”.

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God, they felt terrible as they watched him. Not that the wounds that had begun to close were their fault. Only that when he was already covered in bruises, Leo couldn't let him have nice things. They felt terrible for throwing away a simple card and some chocolates. Granted, they had looked like very expensive and non-industrial chocolates, so it had been a waste indeed.

And with what had they showed up? A Lindt goldbear with a cheesy message on it. Not only as apology, but to spoil him. Now that Hugo had gotten hurt to protect them and smiled through his entire recovery, they felt obliged to ... but as it was so often, with duty came privileges. Power.

The power to finally keep Hugo from bad influence without telling him what to do. Hell, without him even knowing. All just because chance had let them be the one to be around when the package from Paris had arrived. They hadn't even wasted one thought on giving it to Hugo but, with a slight but more than self-pleased smile, dropped the chocolate and card into the trash. To save Hugo from himself.

Or to keep a little joy in such grim times from him. Both interpretations were valid when the truth came to light and Hugo's mind had run wild with what had been in the card. Yes, he had been even sadder about the card than about the chocolate and his imagination ran wild with what could have been in it. So he was overjoyed when Franz said that he had saved the card from the trash, since he thought an unopened card was a tad too suspicious for him.

Leo had not rolled their eyes and had bitten back a comment about how Arielle would never send him something like a lipsticked love letter.

Leo had watched the excitement in his face, his fingers, his entire body when he had opened the card. They had watched all of it drain when Hugo didn't find what he had envisioned in it. Disillusionment was even harder to watch than disappointment and both would have been heart-breaking either way in Hugo's face, full of bruises and plasters that couldn't hide behind masks so well for the time being.

Wasn't this the best example of why they had to save Hugo from himself? Keep him away from hopes and dreams for French affection that could never be fulfilled. No interaction fuelling Hugo's unrealistic daydreams that no matter how often reality tried to shatter them, he held onto the shards and build them back together.

But was an innocent crush the end of the world? Arielle had made it clear that she had no serious interest - or any romantic interest, to be frank - in him at all. Nobody was at fault for Hugo not listening. And François ... well, as long as nobody used Hugo for political or financial gain, there was no real harm done in flirting. If at all, François shot himself in the foot, since he had lovers to lose over his reckless romantic behaviour, not Hugo.

Hugo didn't need to be saved. Not from himself, a task that Leo couldn't manage either way.

Hugo looked at them and blinked while Leo was slowly emerging from their thoughts.

“Mhm?” he asked them, spoon still in his mouth. He took it out. “What's wrong?”

Leo looked straight at him. They hated loss of control and this man made them lose all of it. All by just sitting in a cozy red FC Vaduz blanket – which they had brought – and demolishing a cup of Ben & Jerry's – which Lilli had left earlier – and smiling at them.

“Nothing is wrong,” Leo said and sighed. “Nothing's wrong.”

Sadly. They swallowed the word.

Nothing wrong but me. They bit their tongue.

[cemeterygrotesque]

I am canon’ing that franz is standing there with half a christmas tree ornament stuck in shards in his hair.