#Heavy Hearted Work of Staggering Genius || Paintings

[nostomannia]

Semi-Selective, mutual-only independent RP blog for two fandomless OCs. Written by Fawn (21+, she/they) originally est. 2017. Remade 2021. 

A character study in: Manic pixie dream girls, the black swan theory and symbolism, the beauty in unpredictability, the manipulated, being your own worst enemy, trauma bonds, toxic dependency, the consequences of choice and lack thereof, never being able to return home, existential horror, the horror of immortality, paradoxes, the multiverse, death and revival, the inability to be honest even to oneself, the needs of all versus the needs of one, being unable to save someone who doesn't want to be saved, and more.

Carrd || Promo || Interest Tracker || Perma Call

Rules updated - 1/31/24 Solita updated - 2/15/24 Deity updated - 1/31/24 Verses updated - 2/07/24 Bonds updated - 7/26/23

[jellielover]

9. 32. 36. For the weird writing asks :3

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn't about writing I just wanna know

This is an interesting question for me because as much as I am a very scientific person and "logically" I don't believe in them, on some instinctual level I kinda do. If someone asked me irl I would probably say no, but in my heart I really want to.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

A lline that I always remember is actually from a 78 chapter long Star Trek fanfic about Julian Bashir in the dominion internment camp, where a Vorta says this: "And the prisoners are little better than animals. It doesn't take skill to subdue an animal. Only force."

WOW. WOW. the author is actually a genius I think. The line itself is raw on its own, but it's made more heavy hitting by the fact that this line comes from a Vorta doctor to Julian, who is also a doctor. The difference between them despite their calling is staggering, and it's made more prominent by the fact that Julian is one of the prisoners in question. The Vorta questions Julian's humanity and his personhood just as Julian does to himself. Julian's entire perspective in this fic is extremely well done: every inch of it is written with stunning medical knowledge. You can't doubt that he's a doctor, because it's his entire outlook on life.

Here, read it:

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice... what do you Know?

In a writing sense I think it's important to understand that you have to write something bad before you write something good. The first step to writing something great is to write something bad first.

In other senses I know a lot about color theory, gardening, and painting! I love to paint.

[accio-victuuri]

2017 BJYX Timeline : At First Sight.

Everything starts with a blank canvass. Oh we painted each others lives inch by inch. from black, gray and blue to colors we never thought existed. Two photos from different places, longing to be one. 

Let’s start from the beginning of this whirlwind timeline. There will be very minimal interaction between our boys, but this will also be a good time to see how they were before working together. I wanted to paint a picture of  XNINE’s Xiao Zhan and Idol Wang Yibo. Before their names got tied to the Untamed and each other.

They were doing their own thing, working hard with their careers, no clue that one chance meeting will be so important. Warning, this post is video links, image and information heavy. I am missing some stuff because this hell site refuses to save things and continues to glitch.

🡆 MARCH 2017

03242017 : The story starts when XNINE was a guest in Day Day Up. When asked, they always say that this is the first time they met. However, they did not interact at all.

But there are definitely times on this episode where they pay attention to each other and it’s so cute. You can find different videos that will highlight these moments better than any screencaps can.

1. Web Stealing a glance at GG

2. First meeting

3. Gun heart - This is the gesture GG used when he introduced himself. The hosts all imitated him and teased, that included Web who smiled too. The same love gesture will be seen in the following years as “their thing”.

4. Doing the same steps for the dance.

5. Web allowing GG to pass and did not lift up the bamboo to trap him when it’s his turn.

6. Red string of Fate

7. Love at first sight-ology

When asked about this shooting, especially the segment when they were in the fields— GG said it was too cold. There is also CPN that the bag Web was using was GG’s.

03252017:  Yin Yue V-Chart Interview with XNINE. GG talking about being scolded for not updating his video diaries and updating his fans. 😂   On the same day that this interview came out, he posted a selfie. 

🡆 APRIL 2017

04022017 : XNINE shanghai concert - BE A MAN.  blessing us with this dance from GG. The next one is the one that the Untamed Cast were watching. He also posted a selfie for this night. 

Full video of the concert 

04082017 : The Wolf starts filming. According to GG, this is the drama that made him decide to really be an actor.

04092017 : Web attends the 17th Top Chinese Music Awards and wins Best New Idol. This also blessed us with the blindfold dance. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9gM7tfyFM

04132017: Southern Metropolis Entertainment Interview - XNINE. GG sings Jay Chou’s Love confession on this one ( I died ). We also see his very shy side when people say that he is the Visual of the group. Also, LOL at Peng Chuyue’s face when GG says this.

 https://youtu.be/X8Xoax8dIHM

04162017: Posts a selfie on set of The Wolf in the blistering cold.

04242017: XNINE “Say No” BTS is released.

https://youtu.be/wU_tKzK64Ns

04252017: GG posts a selfie. 

04282017 : Release of Single “Say No” - XNINE 

04292017 :  Wang Yibo X Guan Xiaoton release of the song Once Again for the Once Again OST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0TT8y7VXNk

🡆 MAY 2017

05072017: GG posts himself with that stubble. 

05292017: Another selfie in specs. 

🡆 JUNE 2017

060172017 : Both GG and Web posted selfies for Children’s Day. 

06082017: Zhelife

06222017: Another selfie. I’m side eyeing the date this was posted wtf. 622. 

06232017 : Posted alot of selfies this time. This is one of those. 

🡆 JULY 2017

072017 - Filming for GG’s “Battle through the Heavens” has ended where played the role of Lin Xiuya.

07032017 : GG posted a bare face selfie, wearing Stussy! 

07032017: Adidas NEO CF for Web

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNYqVa58mgg

07102017 : Web CF for Estee Lauder. Our boi in shorts and white shorts, using estee lauder in the morning. 

https://youtu.be/xeTT0QR_iKs

07192017: Idol Interview - XNINE @ Asian Music Gala. They won the Most Popular Group award. This is Where you can see a very quiet GG who does not speak at all. https://youtu.be/7dwA6WwD-5c

07202017: Cute selfie. 

07272017: Posted a selfie photoset which includes the photo he sent to Web, apparently, in 2018. I’m a love at first sight believer, so I don’t buy the story that this was only sent in 2018. hahahah! don’t believe me. 

🡆 AUGUST 2017

08042017: GG posted a Happy Birthday message to DDU for their anniversary. DDU weibo account responded with :

“Thank you handsome and attractive little zhan zhan! ( btw little Day Day won’t tell you that a colleague of us already became your fan. )”

08082017 : XNINE Metersbonwe photoshoot.

https://youtu.be/jM9lla6aF08

08152017: Episode 1 of Love Actually Drama aired with Web acting alongside Joe Chen. He played the role of Zhai Zhiwei who is an IT genius.

08162017 : First episode of the TV program "When we were young" airing. Web guest starred on this, for episodes 16-17 and played the role of Lin Jiayi.

08242017 : Web shoot for Once Again MV the making released.

https://youtu.be/-yn_st5vOO0

08252017: XNINE “be strong girl” campaign message. Have some encouraging words from GG.

08272017 : XNINE performs at Fresh Asia Awards.

https://youtu.be/PzGlTQ3Fga0

08302017 : “Unsurpassed Conference” ; Where we got this absolute gem of him not wanting to talk but ended up being a host on DDU.

Web : I don’t really like talking 

Host : so you went to DDU 

Web : I don’t know why I went too.. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjO5vIfD_PQ

🡆 SEPTEMBER 2017.

09052017 : Wang Yibo and Joe Chen video in an Amusement Park shooting the drama “Love Actually”. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gIWih39Is

09162017 :  Wang Yibo attended the “2017 Asian Influence Awards Ceremony.” and won Best New actor.

09222017: Web interview and photo shoot for Hey idol. This shoot is responsible for that photo where Web eats an orange like an Apple. 

https://youtu.be/wCqVxog9i18

09232017: Selfie time again 

09262017: Web and Wenhan represent UNIQ as they perform in TV Online Video Influence Ceremony

https://youtu.be/lc_cvlLtSaA

09272017: Web AD for KFC. Please watch this. He looks good in Yellow- dancing and eating chicken. I STAN THIS BOI! 

https://youtu.be/ABH3BfZf4dg

🡆 OCTOBER 2017

10102017: Posted cute selfies with him as a cat and a Pig. hmmm. pig? 

🡆 NOVEMBER 2017

11072017: Web’s Just Dance single is announced. This is the Theme song of 4th Xuan Wu Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvsyOxC6cs4

11092017 : Filming of Oh My Emperor has finished. GG plays the role of Bei Tang Moran in this drama that will be broadcast in 2018.

11092017 : Web attends the Ifeng Fashion show event where he won   Most Popular New Actor. 

11162017 : Web recording the song “just Dance”. does the clothes he’s wearing remind you of another recording session? 

11212017 : Web x Fashionable Photoshoot

11262017 : Attending and performing in Star Night of Mister Inke. His style in this one is really Joker-like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75wtl-JAjis

🡆 DECEMBER 2017

2020 : Web is cast in the science fiction drama Super Talent/ My strange friend.

12032027: XNINE performs “ We want what we want”.

https://youtu.be/IJNIgPl8ImI

12032017: Web performs JUST DANCE in Tencent Games Carnival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbIzvMut2CY

12092017: Photoshoot with Rayli 

12122017: Photoshoot with Cheese Fashion 

12132017:  Photoshoot with NTSnap 

12142017 : BEST TASTE releases one of it’s short films that include Wang Yibo. We see two personas in this feature and it’s really interesting.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP83-bEOEv0

This one called “耳” Ear; about sounds. [What we heard can’t take away by time 🕙 ]all the good memories when we were a child, some one them we might not be able to remember what happened, but when you hear the sound/voice of them, they trigger our memories

12152017: Volunteer Union photoshoot / campaign 

12172017 :  Attending Tencent Star Charity Night 

12202017 : Photoshoot feature with our street style AKA everyone's favorite Web flower boi spread. 

12222017: "Just Dance" single MV release

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asb8I3oqG00

12222017 : Winter solstice post from both of them. Talking about eating tangyuan. It’s of those mirroring posts, but again, could just be coincidence that they posted something similar.

12312017 : Web Participates in Hunan TV’s new year countdown as a Host. 

*** Note 01 : In 2017, XNINE was transferred from EE media to Long Danni’s Wajijiwa Ent. Company. Some initial problems that they had was that their company was more interested in promoting them as actors and not as an idol group. They were also not kept safe in public venues which will be a recurring issue to GG as we go along other timelines.

*** Note 02 : I wanted to add Web’s Rossi posts and more pictures but it won’t save (will try again at a later date, but I think Web’s awards and projects are more important to highlight here). LOL. Thankfully, GG’s selfies worked. I mainly added stuff that they did in 2017 to give a sense of where they were career-wise. 

*** Note 03 : Looking at how this timeline turned into a monster, I will probably split the 2018 timeline into two parts. Forever Summer Part I & Forever Summer Part 2. Seeing the amount of Activity these two did in 2018 alone is STAGGERING. Plus, this site is glitching with all the content when I save it so splitting it might be better. if you have suggestions, let me know. 

[ikesenhell]

The Light

GLITTER & GOLD, CHAPTER 4. You can find all other IkeSen works of mine here. NOTES: LET’S GET BACK INTO IT. Thanks to all my readers who stopped in and @velociraptor-detective for always line editing.

Once upon a time, their parents would all gather around the worn wood table. It was reserved in the town hall for two things: the traditional gatherings (which somehow survived both the fallout and the test of brutal, cruel time, the heavy hands of invaders who so desperately tried to crush every trace of her culture) and long nights spent piecing together matters of state.

Tonight was neither. Instead, they gathered to solve the mystery.

“What do you think the easiest way is?” Ieyasu mused, prying apart stacks of eyewitness reports and missings persons documents.

“Perhaps,” Mitsuhide suggested calmly, “We begin with the locations of missing persons.”

Masamune shook his head and set his boots on the table. Ieyasu smacked them back down. “That won’t show all that much if they all came from the town, would it?”

“Perhaps they are abducted from specific parts of town--the perimeters, or such.”

Mitsunari pulled out his chipped glasses, nearly fumbled them, and somehow settled them on his nose without incident. No one commented. “What if we positioned the sightings?”

Ieyasu wrinkled his nose. “Why?”

“Let’s consider the possibility that these abductions are concurrent with ship sightings as a smokescreen.” He folded his fingers together, purple eyes flickering with thought. “If that is the case, then perhaps plotting its path would provide us valuable insight into where the perpetrators may strike next.”

Mitsuhide allowed a ghostly smile. “And if that path is variable?”

“Then we can plot your idea. It’s simply a matter of starting.”

Masamune nodded decisively. “Alright. How long do you think this will take?”

Ieyasu sighed in tandem with Mitsuhide’s laugh. Mitsunari just blinked and smiled. “Only a day or so.”

“If we left the computer here to his own devices,” Ieyasu scowled. “So I guess we’re forced to help him out. He’d mess it up otherwise. And what are you doing, exactly, while we’re up to this?”

He took too long to say, and he knew it. The moment his eyes wandered from them, Ieyasu sputtered a simple, “Don’t.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You don’t have to. They tried to kidnap her, and you think going out there to meet them is going to do anything?”

“Meet them? I think you’ve got the wrong idea of what I’m doing.” Masamune smiled and waved at them, dipping back out the door. “I’m not doing anything that foolish.”

---

The motorcycle would be too loud normally. Fortunately, he had the means to silence it, even if it meant taking a few minutes to exchange the mufflers.

Unfortunately for him, that meant she found him.

“What are you doing?”

Masamune glanced up, screwdriver clenched between his teeth, and tried his best to look unassuming--while doing mechanic work at one in the morning on his muffler, of course. She brushed back a lock of her hair. Hell, but the moonlight did some magic on her, didn't it? In the daylight she was beautiful. In the nighttime, cast against the stars and her black hair reflecting silver, she was a creature of the sky. “Nuffing.”

“Sure looks like something.” She crossed her arms. “Going out for a ride?”

“Aww, naw essact--” Finally he spit out the tool. “Not exactly.”

Her dark eyes roved over the small kit he’d prepared: the machete, a bottle of water, a can of ancient mace, a flare gun, and some chalk. “You’re going to scope them out.”

“Maybe,” he hedged. “We need to at least track down where your would-be kidnappers are, don’t’cha think?”

She didn't answer that. Instead, she headed back towards Ieyasu’s house and disappeared inside, the screen door fluttering shut behind her. Masamune shrugged and went back to the screws, only to startle when it flew open again a couple minutes later. Rather than her work clothes, she’d thrown on a black jacket and a pair of thick boots.

“No.” Masamune zipped up his tools and chucked them closer to the house. “You’re not coming.”

Boldly, she straddled his motorcycle anyway, snatching up a helmet. “Make me.”

“Listen here--”

“I’m listening.”

“I just got you away from them, d’y’think I really want to put you right back where they can take you again?”

“And they could take you.” She flipped down the visor and patted the seat. “Let’s go, big guy.”

Masamune gripped his hair. “They don’t want me as bad as they want you!”

“So you’re going to have me sit here and play the pretty damsel in distress while you work it out? I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “We’re going to have each other’s backs. I want this solved as much as you do. Come on. Do you have a map?”

“A map?” He echoed. “Why?”

“To mark anything suspicious. Easier than trying to memorize it in the dark.”

She had a point. Defeated, Masamune slumped back into the house, stole one from a rolltop desk and slipped back out, remembered he didn't have anything to write with, ran back inside and gathered a fistful of pens, and returned once more. “You ready?”

“Ready as I can be.”

As much as he wanted to deny it, Masamune was a bundle of nerves as he kicked his legs over the side of the motorcycle. Her hands knotted tight against his stomach, head pressed into his shoulder blades.

Here went nothing--or everything.

The engine was kitten-purr quiet as they pulled away from Waŋblí Hoȟpi. Out into the plains they rolled. Stars winked and spiraled overhead. The moon shuttered away behind the clouds. Off in the distance, lightning shivered over the mountains, but it was too far for thunder to roll. Grasses turned to corn and wheat. Deathly quiet rippled through the stalks, only the crush of a gravel road under their tires.

Suddenly she rapped her knuckles against his chest.

Masamune didn't need the ‘why’. He shut off the lights and the engine, and they sat in the quiet, wind gusting between them. She shivered and pressed closer. There--there in the neat rows, a small green light was flickering.

Bingo.

He kicked off his motorcycle and dragged it into a ditch while she marked their location on the map. Into the field they crept. Thank god for the wind--every crack and snap underfoot threatened to give them away. What if they were discovered? He had no idea what awaited them on the other side. Was it a dozen of the maniacs? Was it just one? Was it a simple light? Who knew. His heart pounded in his mouth.

At last, they reached a clearing, a small house sitting in the center. On the porch was spray painted a simple message: THE GODS COME FOR FAITHFUL

“I bet you a whole jar of honey this place is involved,” Masamune muttered. “Mark it down on the map.”

The screen door on the porch swung open, shattering the silence. Too late. They broke into a run, desperately diving back into the corn. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Shots ripped through the stalks behind them, dirt spraying into their eyes. She screamed. Masamune wrenched her forward by the wrist.

“Go! Gogogo!”

Ahead of them, the green light winked. Shouts echoed behind them. Desperately they plunged deeper and deeper into the field, pressing on through the alarm and gunshots and crash of corn, and then--

“Shit,” she hissed.

“Fuck,” Masamune assented. They both staggered into the new clearing, a high wall separating them from freedom and only an ancient silo well to the right of them. It was the thing winking green, a faint light from some unknowable technology filtering through the water from deep, deep below. A dead end. “Get behind me.”

“Masa, a machete isn’t going to do anything against a shotgun--”

He knew that. Still, he pulled her back and drew the blade. There was only one good chance at this, and if he was lucky, they wouldn’t fire blindly into the clearing and risk destroying a perfectly good wall. God, he knew he shouldn’t have brought her. Too late. Readying himself, he ground his heels into the dirt and lifted his sword arm.

“Wait--” She gasped, wrenching at his backpack. “Wait, wait--”

“What are you doing? You’re throwing me off--!”

The intruders crashed through the last line of corn separating them--three men, guns in hand and at the ready. Masamune braced himself for the inevitable. If they were lucky, she’d still get away--

“Think fast, fuckers!” She shouted.

FOOM!

The explosion of flame almost blinded his good eye. One of the assailants screamed; part of the field went up, the fire rendering them in perfect clarity. She, still clutching tight to the flare gun, yanked at Masamune’s arm.

“Let’s go!”

“You’re a fucking genius!”

“Iknowlet’sgo!”

He couldn’t help himself. As they tore back into the field, leaving the flailing attackers behind them, Masamune released a whoop.

“Shut up!” But she was laughing too; that anxious, giddy laugh of being alive. “Run faster!”

“I could beat you in a running contest, don’t get at me!”

“You aren’t right now! Consider it one!”

Somehow they made it back to the road and scrabbled onto the motorcycle, peeling off as fast as they dared toward Waŋblí Hoȟpi. The sky rumbled threateningly. Masamune just leaned back his head and bellowed another laugh.

“I completely forgot about the flare gun!”

“You’re welcome!” She huffed unconvincingly, shoving the helmet on. “I saved our skins!”

“You did! Hell, Kitten, you were a mean aim with it too!”

The wind picked up. Masamune leaned into the comforting handlebars and exhaled for the first time in what felt like forever. Her head pressed into his back and--not for the first time--he wondered what it would feel like if it were her soft cheek, not the hard plastic helmet. Prairie air thick with impending rain swelled in his chest.

And so did questions.

“So,” he pondered aloud, turning into the main street. “Think I learned something to question.”

She stirred against him. “What’s that?”

They pulled up alongside Ieyasu’s house and staggered off the motorcycle, discarding their helmets. Masamune ruffled his hair to bring life back into it. “That light in the well.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s the same color as the ship, isn’t it?”

Her pause went on long enough that the sky interrupted them. The first droplet pinged off the metal frame, the second hitting him square in the nose. As they raced inside, the patter turned to a wall of water, drowning out everything except the cacophony of rain. She wrung out her hair over the sink and stared out the window.

“You might be into something,” she agreed at last. “But what, exactly? How would a light from some pre-War tech have anything to do with a ghost ship? They’re just the same color. Is that a coincidence?”

“Maybe,” Masamune agreed, carding his hand through her hair to detangle it. “I’m a dumbass. But I couldn’t help but notice it. It makes me think.”

“Mmm. Think what?”

His mind was already elsewhere. She rested her hip into the cabinetry and let him braid her hair the way he’d learned so long ago from her father, show her love in one of the ways he could let himself. There was no telling where he’d be in a year. He had to take his pleasures where he could, and she--she deserved something more stable than him.

But god. He wanted it so badly he could almost taste her.

“That maybe,” he allowed at last, never clarifying what he was talking about, “there’s a chance.”

[discogs]

the permanent shivers down your spine,

a look at an underrated classic.

There is no right configuration of words that can express the weight of a song like ‘Shivers,’ although I set out to persuade you into believing this is a masterpiece I really cannot do such a thing if you do not believe from the first few seconds that it is. If it does not create a dwelling within you upon its start, this may prove a fruitless venture. At the risk of sounding exclusionary, some art is made to matter only to a set few. It is because of this that I will not try to force your head under water to understand how it feels to drown. All I can do is paint you a picture of the bottom of the ocean to explain the way the current feels.

Shivers, in short, is a approximation of everything one should aspire to conquer in an artistic career. The biggest horror of humankind is to be forgotten. The thought which wracks at the collective soul of mankind is to be a stranger to the history books, the common goal of creators and the everyday man alike is to be eternal. Every name which leaves our lips in a list of legends is a name which carries with it some kind of resounding cultural wealth.   Every song you hear repeatedly on the radio leaves something within you every time it is played, no matter the love or hate you may feel for it, you will remember it, and you will continue to hear it. These songs, often albatrosses to the musicians associated with it, stab their flag into the world to shine for the rest of time. This is the common denominator in all of history. A need to be remembered. It’s at this point that you’re probably realising you have either never heard this song or at least hadn’t heard it until you were much older than you were when you first became aware of music. The specific memory of this song is lost to most, but to me what matters is not the the song itself as a singular entity, but instead its power as an encapsulating phenomena. It is the wide plains within the song, the feelings this song conjures up that are universal and eternal to the human condition.

Shockingly, the song’s origins do not lie in the winding milky way, orchestrated by some celestial fiend looking to stir the whole of the earth. Instead it has its roots inside a sixteen year old’s harsh cynicism, remarking one day in 1977 that the infatuation of teenage love is beyond childish. The chronically sarcastic Rowland  S. Howard was then fronting Melbourne band The Young Charlatans with fellow bandmate, Ollie Olsen. I would be remiss to imply that Howard was unaware of his destiny to become a towering figure in rock, it is evident in early video recordings seen in the 2011 documentary, Autoluminescent that Howard has always carried himself with the unmistakable power of an established rock’n’roll star. This trait carries on into the original 1978 recording of “Shivers” with the Young Charlatans where Howard scowls over rough instrumentals about a ‘love’ which sees none other than herself, making hollow statements about the fragility of his heart and the poker face he holds to mask the non-substantial pain he feels for the woman at hand. In this version we can clearly make out the jaded tone of the song and understand it more as a vision of dead, perhaps never lifeless desire, mistaken as heartbreak by an idle teenager. This idea is resoundingly lost in the more popularised version of the song, recorded just a year later with bad-seed-to-be Nick Cave on lead vocals, backed by another Melbourne band which Howard joined forces with just a few months after the original recording of ‘Shivers.’

Despite the sarcastic intent by the ghostly Howard, the version recorded by the Boys Next Door in 1979 has cast a romantic shadow over the work. The blasé attitude of the first cut is thrown aside entirely for a more genuine, harrowing ballad echoing the likes of Roxy Music. The song created here is one of true heartbreak and disbelief with the cruelty of humanity’s heart. The track  is introduced by a stinging guitar and tumbling drums, expanding a wide open space within your mind shrouded in cigarette smoke from which arises the devastated Cave, who’s shaking vocals shoot a hole straight through your rib cage leaving you fatally wounded. This is a boy torn to pieces by vicious indifference, shot down from Cupid’s grasps by the worst feeling known to his teenage heart: unrequited love. Cave’s dominating voice are rivaled only by the staggering presence of Howard’s signature weeping guitar, piercing the lush, heavy song with razor blade precision, as is custom for Howard’s style - which seems to aim to kill more than it aims to please. There is no better adversary to Cave’s crooning than Howard’s sting, the two of which do not meet harmoniously until the chorus, which delivers a gutteral kick to the chest sending you spiraling through the darkest of emotions back to your most sorrowful nights. One cannot help but imagine a pouring champagne bottle hurtling through a dusty velvet clad and lonely lounge when embarking upon the expanse of this track. It solidifies for the listener a dark and terrorising thought of love into a barbed wire wrapped sacred heart bleeding crimson.

Though the premise of the song is essentially warped, the ability to create an entirely new entity out of unchanged source material proves the unstoppable malleability of the lyrics themselves. The most remarkable thing about this song is it’s unbelievable capacity for interpretation, artists have twisted and turned the music and melodies of this song into innumerable different sensations, all having only one thing in common - the undeniable genius of the lyrical framework. Seldom ever are the words altered, they stay put like the metal frame of a skyscraper unable to move, it is simply the world around them which changes. The distinct adaptability of the track is what digs its nails into the field of unforgettable classics, for the best of things that we can make are those which can mean platitudes to hundreds of different people. It is this kaleidoscope of expression that renders it deserving of its place in music history, for there are very few things which can mean so much without ever changing, and continue to do so for every listener and artist who decide to take it on.  I had mentioned the sheer scope of the song at the beginning of this article, touching upon the plains that rest within this track. Though one may find it useless to be remembered for something that your face is not directly associated with, I find the opposite far more poetic and substantial. What it is that Howard has managed to do here is to strip this monolith of an art piece from all it’s corporal ties, allowing it to become a free form, endlessly traveling thing which falls into the possession of a select few to be toyed with and thought of before escaping back into the ether to be discovered once more.

[nottruebutwellfounded]

From Nabokov to Woolf to Coetzee, novelist Jonathan Gibbs selects the best imaginary lives presented as the real thing.

Fictionalised biographies – novels based on the life of a famous person – are ten-a-penny. And why not? They’re easy enough to turn out. Other people – the actual biographers – have done the hard work. All the novelist has to do is to twist the “facts” to suit their own interpretation of the life in question, and away they go.

In writing a novel based on the Young British Artists, I decided I wanted to do something different: write the biography of a made-up person as if they were real. The trick would not be to fool the reader into thinking they had actually existed (see William Boyd’s Nat Tate, below) but to access that special kind of reading we slip into when reading something we assume is factual – by which I mean, basically: gullibility. Where a reader might ask, of character in a novel, “Now, would they really do that?” of a character in a biography the question would be, “Wow, why on earth did they do that?”

Here then are 10 “fictitious biographies” (Nabokov’s term) that I’ve found particularly inspiring.

1. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann This slow, stodgy, quite wonderful novel gave me the template for my own fake memoir. Mann’s book is the story of the modernist composer Adrian Leverkühn, as told by his childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom. The pathos of the book comes from dull, plodding Zeitblom’s realisation that he can never hope to catch the mercurial personality of his genius friend, but that he must try nonetheless.

2. Orlando by Virginia Woolf Woolf’s light-hearted “escapade” is a satirical romp through the very idea of a biography, with its portrait of a nobleman who lives from the Elizabethan era right through to the 1920s, somehow changing gender along the way. Its sentence-by-sentence delight in evoking past times offers a model that few “proper” historical accounts can hope to follow – not least because it’s skipped on a decade before they’ve tied their bootlaces.

3. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov It’s no surprise that many “fictitious biographies” include a fair bit of the biographer in their narrative. The model for this is surely AJA Symons’s The Quest for Corvo, with its detective story premise, which came out shortly before Nabokov started writing this, his first English language book. It is the tale of celebrated writer Sebastian Knight, told by his half-brother, V, though as you’d expect with this author the elusive quarry retreats even as the befuddled hunter advances, and by the end we’re as uncertain about the one as we are about the other.

4. Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle This almost uncategorisable book takes the form of a critical biography of the fictional German Romantic philosopher Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, who saw clothing as the governing metaphor of human existence. If that makes him sound rather like Roland Barthes avant la lettre, then the comparison ends there. It’s a tough read, not least for the difficulty in getting a handle on the tone. Carlyle’s style is a heavy-handed parody of academic prose, yet he’s using the figure of Teufelsdröckh to give us a disguised autobiography.

5. Nat Tate by William Boyd Boyd’s benign art-world hoax presented itself on publication as a serious monograph on a real but little-known American abstract expressionist painter, who supposedly threw himself off the Staten Island Ferry at the age of 31, after destroying nearly all his paintings. The book is far more than a prank, however – it’s a melancholy treatise on the limits of biography. We know scarcely more about Tate at the end than at the beginning. The gaps and absences are all.

6. Kiss and Tell by Alain de Botton This early novel by the pop philosopher turns the central idea of biography on its head by taking as its subject not just a non-celebrity but someone wholly unremarkable: one Isabel Jane Rogers. De Botton has great fun with the paraphernalia of the genre, including an index, and various photographs of quite staggering banality: you could swap about the shots of Rogers’ boyfriends, and the book would be changed not one jot.

7. An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay Fictitious biographies, left to their own devices, will tend to drift towards the novelistic (fictitious autobiographies, from Robinson Crusoe onwards, are too common to be of use here). That’s something that happens with Kay’s book, though at least she covers her back by having the biography of abstract painter Jennet Mallow written by a poet (and family member) who is quite open about imagining his subject’s thoughts and feelings “when I could not have known them”.

8. The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn This is more “fictitious memoir” than “fictitious biography”, but is far too interesting to omit. Gunn plays the Carlyle trick of acting as supposed editor for a set of “found papers”, detailing the history of Scottish bagpipe player and composer John Sutherland. The “papers” read like fiction, yet come with notes and appendices. Gunn is not playing the parody game, though: it’s the music she’s after, and it’s the music she gets. A seriously good book.

9. DooDaaa: The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge by Ralph Steadman Authors, composers, artists: it’s no surprise that writers like picking other creators for their fictitious biographies – no politicians, footballers or royals here. As you’d expect, Ralph Steadman’s biography (“by” Ralphael Steed) of Doodaaaist Gavin Twinge is a full-throttle, rambunctious satire that writes an alternative history of British and international art, with plenty of original art and illustration to liven up its pages.

10. Summertime by JM Coetzee Another anomaly: after two volumes of semi-fictional autobiography (Boyhood, and Youth) Coetzee’s third entry in the genre produced this, which could perhaps be best described as: a memoir in the form of a novel in the form of notes towards a fictitious biography of an invented character modelled on the author. It is largely made up of transcripts of interviews conducted by Coetzee’s surrogate author with people who knew “John Coetzee”, though they repeatedly fail to give the biographer what he is after. Point taken, John.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/27/top-10-fictitious-biographis-jonathan-gibbs-nabokov

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Shanghai’s Cultural Scene: Jing’an Sculpture Park Underground Museum

Jing’an Sculpture Park is always good for a surprise. Up until now, the best of these surprises had been the discovery last fall of a new underground museum integrated into Jing’an Sculpture Park, at the heart of Puxi, Shanghai. I didn’t even know this bunker-like subterranean space existed, although I had passed it’s entrance many times. It’s not clear to me what the initial purpose of this concrete, grey cavity was. To put it mildly, it is a “difficult space.” How to turn a sinkhole into a vibrant space for art!? Well, the curators have clearly met this challenge! Last fall, they filled the space with luminous glass art by the renowned American artist Steve Tobin. The centerpiece was a translucent hut illuminated from inside, made from antique glass slides fused together.

The effect was quite magical to behold. And the quirky glass and ceramic sculptures by the same artist on display on the two floors really brought the space to life with polychrome accents, colorful shadows, and soft reflections, like a hidden treasure.  

I remember thinking at the time that It would be hard to top this. Well, it turns out a new exhibit managed to up the ante...

The museum had been empty during the winter months, but I began to have an inkling that something was afoot during an outing in late February when I saw some bustling activity around the entrance. Also, there was a strange structure gradually taking shape  on its roof. 

What looked at first like a giant snowflake, gradually transformed into something more like a cirrus cloud that had gotten itself wedged at the corner of the roof. Every time I returned to the park to check on the progress of the blossoms, I noticed that the structure had grown a little more. 

But I did not give much thought to it, and only realized with hindsight that this was an artist’s silent invitation to come and behold the wonder that was waiting inside the museum. 

So, I was not prepared for the amazing sight that greeted me after I descended down into the subterranean portion of the museum. There, an enormous cathedral-esque, spider-webby creation suddenly appeared before my eyes, taking my breath away. From every angle, it looked different, exuding an ethereal quality that created an otherworldly impression. This is cellophane elevated to the level of sublime beauty. The giant installation invites all kinds of comparisons. One may imagine that this is some alien place of worship.

Or one may fancy having entered the lair of a gigantic extraterrestrial silk worm or associate it with a frozen water fountain. The interpretive possibilities are unlimited, as there is something both organic and crystalline about this art, crossing and re-crossing spatial and conceptual boundaries.

The fact that we were almost entirely alone with this sculpture and that we could move freely among it’s tethering cables only heightened its strangely intimate and almost transcendental effect. Let me ask you: how many times have you come into the presence of a contemporary work of art and burst into involuntary expressions of awe? I guess that’s the true meaning of “awesome”! 

Of course, the setting is also important. And in both ways, the exhibit struck gold. There is the sheer surprise when the underground cavity reveals its unexpected secret. Nothing had prepared me for this; there was no picture on the ticket to give away the secret, no image on the advertising poster outside. There was only this strange cirrus cloud resting on the roof of the museum, which on hindsight turns out to be a silent visitor’s card by the artist, Ludwika Ogorzelec.

What further heightened the almost transcendental experience of this exhibit was the way the ethereally white sculpture was paired with mysterious landscape paintings by Feng Xiao-Min.

These large canvasses feature abstract scenery rendered in vibrant, deep colors. 

Together, these two artists made this severe space come alive and transform it with a synergy that was truly special.

While posting pictures of this sculpture on facebook, I followed a link to Jing’an Park’s own facebook page, and there left a comment on Ludwika’s astonishing artwork. Soon, the artist herself reached out to me via facebook, and that’s how I learned more about the structure. It is called “Invisible Tension” and is part of her global series of her ephemeral installations aptly called “Space Crystallization.” The installation in the Jing’an Sculpture Park is made of a staggering 24 kilometers of cellophane strip, and it took three weeks to complete.

Here is how Ludwika envisons her art: 

“I want my sculpture to be like a passing phenomenon springing out of the world of biology, machines and instruments. From an understanding of sculpture as solid and heavy, viewed from the outside and made from lasting materials, I have left myself line expressing itself with the properties of its material and the space which that line encloses.... I analyze the problem of sense and the absurd, and I search for the moment of balance. The results of my searching are light, delicate structures - the objects join those meanings in a new whole on the basis of harmony. Thus I began the cycle of sculpture entitled ‘Instruments of equilibrium’ which I continue today.”

Those interested in seeing more instances of Ludwika’s amazing art can follow this link.

Whoever had the vision to bring about this pairing of two wholly different and yet synergistic visual artists deserves a lot of credit. But the ultimate kudos, of course, go to the artists themselves, whose genius is giving visitors an occasion to experience genuine wonder. And although I am trying my best to render the experience descriptively, one really has to see this with one’s own eyes to gauge the full artistic impact.

There is something to be said for art that is NOT topical. I’ve seen a lot of art here that ironizes the Chinese communist propaganda posters, that reflects on the building boom in this country, or that makes a comment on relevant social transformations. This is all good and necessary. But occasionally, it is heartening to come across art that transcends everything, including the particular moment and place of its own creation.