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                     Arthur Tress, San Francisco. 1964.

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              Portrait of Sabine Weiss, Photographer. 1954.

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A Carefully Calculated Delusion

MYRA. (Warily) An author?

DAVID. A disinclined idealist.

MYRA. You don’t enjoy it?

DAVID. Oh no, I do, it’s just—

MYRA. Is it an issue of seeming pretentious? Saying you write? I mean, I guess there’s a sort of carefully calculated delusion that goes into the whole process, it’s like any art in that sense.

DAVID. I’m not sure I get what you mean.

MYRA. Well, writers need synonyms to describe their synopses and satire to dissect sadness and hyperbole to hide their happiness. It’s not at all natural—it lacks the imperfections of a life lived. And then there’s the whole image; the reclusive, nihilistic, manic-depressive—

DAVID. I’m not a good enough writer—the whole tortured genius pigeonhole, that’s not me.

MYRA. Pity. Would have been nice to be stuck with a Fitzgerald or a Foster-Wallace. To say that I once had the pleasure of meeting you at the Marriot before you went and blew your brains out.

DAVID. Romantic.

MYRA. I like to think so. There’s just a sort of morbid masochism about the whole thing, the disenfranchised white guy trope, you know? I live for transient moments like this.

DAVID. (Warily) God, you sound like my ex-wife.

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"...to write a straight biography of Vali Myers would be not only impossible, but something I would find almost profane, as following the events of her life is like following the footsteps of a fox or getting lost in a labyrinth".

— Gianni Manichetti

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“13084. Tonight I came back to the hotel alone; the other has decided to return later on. The anxieties are already here, like the poison already prepared (jealousy, abandonment, restlessness); they merely wait for a little time to pass in order to be able to declare themselves with some propriety. I pick up a book and take a sleeping pill, "calmly." The silence of this huge hotel is echoing, indifferent, idiotic (the faint murmur of draining bathtubs); the furniture and the lamps are stupid; nothing friendly that might warm ("I'm cold, let's go back to Paris). Anxiety mounts; I observe its progress, like Socrates chatting (as I am reading) and feeling the cold of the hemlock rising in his body; I hear it identify itself moving up, like an inexorable figure, against the background of the things that are here.”

― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

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“The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.” 

  ―    Virginia Woolf, The Waves    

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, ca. 1872-1887. Collodion silver glass wet plate negative, Brooklyn Museum.

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“I reached the rail and clambered over it, on to the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered, in great patches, with grey masses, some of them rising into nodules several feet in height;  but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship. I shouted; but none answered. Then I went to the door below the aft deck. I opened it, and peered in. There was a great smell of staleness, so that I knew in a moment that nothing living was within, and with the knowledge, I shut the door quickly; for I felt suddenly lonely.”

— William Hope Hodgeson, The Voice in the Night (1907)

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                                                               Spelunking — Laura Veirs

                                                               The tiny midnight caravan                                                         Made its way across the black hills                                                              As I watched from a distance                                                                    The slow-going glow                                                               Their wandering you know                                                                         Made me pine                                                                      For the lamplight                                                                        Where you lie                                                                    If I took you darling                                                              To the caverns of my heart                                                           Would you light the lamp dear?                                                           Would you light the lamp dear?                                                               And see fish without eyes                                                                  Bats with their heads                                                       Hanging down towards the ground                                                            Would you still come around                                                                       Come around?                                                                       I believe in you                                                          In your honesty and your eyes                                                               Even when I'm sloshing                                                             In the muck of my demise                                                                   A large part of me                                                             Is always and forever tied                                                                    To the lamplight                                                            Of your eyes, of your eyes

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               “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!                 The world forgetting, by the world forgot.                 Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!                 Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”                       ― Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard