So upon considering why I had first been pulled under the poetry of the PreRaphaelites, the tragic loss I’d suffered, I could never fully embrace Dante Gabriel Rossetti —even as he was the driving force of the brotherhood I was disturbed by his sense of ethics. Especially as it felt to me hypocritical of what he claimed for their vision as artists, but deep down —a poet who digs up his wife’s grave to retrieve his poetry which he claimed he wrote for her….coupled with stealing William Morris’ wife around this time just is not garden variety immorality but something near a supreme sense of self importance and it comes across in his art
while I love his use of red and his earliest drawings of Elizabeth Siddal, I find his inability to get his perspective right (Ecce Ancilla Domini to name one instance) gives me motion sickness —but his peer John Everett Millais was a most brilliant member; his work has always been among my favorites, especially ‘the Order of Release’ which I had framed and always hung everywhere I lived but got lost somewhere in the ruins I long left
….and so, it is a long time that I stare at the wall. I sit down on the floor and look up
and I think about his words how does he do this to me? just when I think ….no, I was just dreaming…. he proves himself ….and another one of his—some kind of mind blower moments and, me, like a moth to a flame …. like a magnetic pull to him his strange innate proclivities are at the exact polar place of all mine that in the middle it is like some exact balance
I almost fall off the earth and it seems there is …. I stare at the wall and think I think about all the paintings he has put there…. and his quiet …. silent …. way ….of reading me —memorizing my in between the lines that I only attest to as poetry but still my utmost ethically true ….but there he follows ….behind the doorways and I guess if it is worth the tedious but intended misdirections to him then I am more than glad to entertain whatever ideas he has in mind
So I sit on the floor and think— they are all elan …. the same story…. I look at the celves and think about the fossil I found that day After awhile I get up
I had an art professor at school who forbid short handled paint brushes
He made us stand several feet away from our work. And squint to obscure our eyes.
But then, he only allowed primary color paint as we had to create every nuance of hue from this
The point was, well, a painter is not an illustrator so the long handle is old school meant to not fall under the photographer syndrome of duplication
I never write about Pete. As it is still too horrible even now.
I mean, I still strain to— still struggle to — find the words. but I still can’t.
The shift that spring loaded me out — the final departure through and the trail of breadcrumbs where I trod past that elfin grot down the hallways of mirrors and rhyme ….
It was the boy on the motor bike who got killed. No, I never say; never write if it, never speak of it, never could—not ever but he is a love story I never told anyone because it only happened the night before he died but it didn’t happen; he wanted it to but —I was with the captain of the rugby team who was an egoist. There was jealousy. They raced across the busy road instead of using the underpass meant for bikes; it was a dare ….one did not make it
I relived that scene a million times …. I know I was on suicide watch there by the faculty as some kind of Ophelia but ….they saved me ….i walked through that doorway and never looked back
When I’d first read the Keats poem my thoughts veered into another direction. Because I really thought—personally I really thought ….the ‘knight’ was a metaphor
so I thought ….Keats was using this as a way to describe himself as a fallen knight not as an actual knight —but one held up by armor. As though he battled in that great Arthur code of love as an honorable knight and was pierced in the battle. some hint as to where and when I first put on the armor and how the concept arrived to me (and indication of what an impact this poem had on me and remains)
