#i. susan bones / visage.

[mrsprongs]

Ghostface (Part I)

Ghostface has come to Hogwarts

Warnings: Death/Violence, Slightly abusive relationship dynamic, dumbledore

The rusted hinges of the kitchen door creaked loudly, the sound echoing around the deserted room as a shadowy figure moved like smoke between the towers of pots and pans. The figure tentatively reached into a cupboard, feeling around between the cobwebs and cutlery until their fingers closed around a glossy bar. The moonlight, a ghostly glow that seeped through the cracked and crusted window, revealed the item to be a chocolate, picked from a secret stash. There was a crinkle as the figure, a red-haired girl with a chubby face and wide eyes, slowly unwrapped the sinful treat and took a large bite from the centre. She chewed, swallowed, and turned to leave the room when she was blocked by a swathe of black velvet. She froze, her eyes wide and uncomprehending, like a startled fawn caught in a burst of light. Her eyes flicked upwards to lay upon a bone white mask, concealing all features of what appeared to be a person standing in front of her. Its hollow eye sockets and sinister grin, seemingly both lifeless and malevolent, sent an icy tremor of terror over the girl. 

‘Hello Susan.’ A ominous and inhuman voice crackled out from behind the ghost-like visage. A tiny squeak escaped her chocolate-smeared lips as she instinctively took a small step backwards. 

‘H-hello, can I help you?’ She stuttered, her whole body trembling.

‘Do you like chocolate, Susan?’ The hooded man asked, towering over her as he got closer and closer. She nodded meekly, looking down at the melting confectionary grasped in her hand like a weapon. ‘How about we play a game, and the winner gets as much chocolate as they want?’ The voice continued, sounding almost like a recording playing from a speaker. Instantly, Susan’s pupils dilated with a rapacious craving. ‘Alright then, the rules are simple: I ask you a question and if you get it right, you win. How does that sound?’ As if in response, Susan’s stomach gurgled with excitement. ‘Who is the King of the magical world?’ Susan’s mouth dropped open and she wore an uncertain expression as she searched for words that weren’t coming. ‘What a pity, Susan. I guess you lose.’ In one fell swoop, the hooded figure picked up a glistening meat cleaver from the wooden bench beside them and slammed it between her neck and shoulder. He watched as she curmbled to the floor in agony, her scream harmonising with the sound of bone cracking and skin splitting. He calmly raised the blade again and brought it down on her other shoulder, as if he was knighting her. Chilling screams sprung from her throat as blood began to fill her throat and spill from the corners of her gluttonous mouth. He waited for a second, watching her writhe in agony before soaking the floor in crimson as he separated her head from her neck, her eyes holding the same stunned expression as before, unblinking. He dropped the bloodied meat cleaver into the sink along with the dozens of other dirty dishes piled high before disappearing into the darkness, leaving the gruesome scene. 

The Hufflepuff common room was in a state of emergency to say the least. The anguished screams that erupted from the kitchen in the dead of night alerted a few concerned houselves who stumbled upon the brutal beheading. Absolute chaos ensued, fear and hysteria palpable in the air. Professors struggled desperately to maintain some semblance of order amidst the mayhem as pyjama clad teenagers pushed and shoved to get a glimpse. Eventually, a body was carried out on a stretcher, blanketed by a white sheet yet still undeniably the corpse of a certain sixth year. 

‘She must not have had her wand on her.’

‘She could’ve, she was never very good at defensive magic.’ Hushed whispers floated throughout the school. Classes were cancelled and the flow of time seemed to fracture as seconds felt like minutes felt like hours. Parents were contacted and promises to find the culprit were made in the week that followed, doing nothing to alleviate everyone’s concern. Y/N Y/L/N was standing over Dumbledore’s left shoulder as he riffled through the mountains of paperwork and letters his desk had become buried under. 

‘Tell me, Y/N, who do you think is behind this?’ The question caught the girl off-guard as she struggled to comprehend the enormity of what he was asking.

‘Well, Susan wasn’t someone I could imagine getting on anyone’s bad side per se.’

‘So where was the motive?’

‘It’s hard to say. However, the choice of weapon suggests it was a spur of the moment decision to kill her.’

‘Perhaps they had planned to use a knife from the kitchen.’

‘Perhaps, but they wouldn’t be very smart. There’s no guarantee of a suitable knife being accessible. And if the assailant could easily grab a knife, why couldn’t Susan? It doesn’t seem well planned out from my point of view.’ Dumbledore nodded slowly, mulling over the possibilities. 

‘Are you saying we have a psychopath in our midsts? Or someone with a short temper?’

‘I’m not sure, sir. Maybe they wanted to kill just for the sake of killing, and Susan seemed an easy target. Or maybe something else happened. But for her to be killed in such a brutal way, the person must be sick in the mind.’

‘And you're sure it wouldn’t be an outside party.’

‘No, I’m not sure, but it would be particularly odd for someone to go to the trouble of sneaking into Hogwarts for the sole purpose of killing one young girl.’

Y/N Y/L/N was, potentially, Dumbledore’s most trusted advisor. Yes, she was a student, and therefore her “professional” relationship with him was strictly confidential, yet he had never met someone with sounder judgement and astuter perceptiveness than her. After she had left his office that particular evening, he thought about how she would one day make a great headmaster of Hogwarts, or a fantastic minister of magic, although at this rate the ministry seemed to be dissolving at an alarming rate. She was his eyes and ears throughout Hogwarts, helping him keep on top of everything, spying on everyone for him. Spy, he thought, would also be an appropriate profession for the young Ravenclaw. This is why Y/N felt awful at lying to his face about the murder of Susan Bones, but it was for his own good she consoled herself. If she told him what she truly suspected, Hogwarts would be thrown into turmoil. She had to be sure. 

Sometimes it felt like Y/N was friends with everyone but she didn’t have any friends. An interesting, and painful, paradox to be certain. However, the being friends with everyone part did come in handy a lot of the time. It only took a couple hours for Y/N to have gathered a slew of new evidence. According to one of Susan’s roommates, a bespectacled, five foot nothing girl, Susan was often found in the kitchen, keeping secret stashes of the candy from her aunt away from the prying fingers of her fellow students. Y/N already knew of Susan’s affiliation with Dumbledore’s army the previous year, something she had abstained from joining, and knew of her family's ties to the ministry, including how almost all of them were killed by Voldemort during the first wizarding war as a result of that. Y/N interviewed, or more correctly, interrogated the houselves who were awoken by the screams, however they insisted they neither saw nor heard anyone leaving the premises. 

‘Useless creatures.’ She mumbled to herself as she traipsed up the winding staircase of the Ravenclaw tower. 

Anthony was waiting for Y/N in her dorm, a rather unpleasant surprise for the exhausted girl. 

‘Lila let me in.’ He explained when he caught sight of her furrowed brows. ‘I thought we could have a nice evening together.’ He wiggled his own eyebrows suggestively.

‘I actually have a lot of potions work I need to catch up on.’ She replied, walking over to her desk and picking up her unfinished essay as if to prove it. “Sorry.” She watched his hands clenched into fists on his knees as stared at her, his gaze unrelenting. 

‘Nothing I ever do is good enough for you, is it?’ He said, blowing out his breath in exasperation.

‘Can we not-’

‘No.’ He said abruptly, pushing himself up so he towered above her, ‘I want to do this. Why can’t we have one nice night together, hmm?’ Y/N thought to herself about how they always do this. It’s not her fault they can’t have “one nice night”. 

‘Fine’ she relented, placing her papers back down, ‘what do you want to do?’

[redtemple-wra]

Catch... And Release

The following is a collab effort by the rest of the cultists of the Red Temple.

It was a bleak afternoon. Drab, boring. It felt pointless and without purpose. The distant sobbing of prisoners acted as background noise, a mere song to liven the spirits of the temple’s residents with its symphony.

Awh, but the Goddess of Love hadn’t the time to dilly dally in the middle of the hallway. Instantly she made her way for the Oratorium, swiftly pushing the door open in one gentle tug of the knob and shove of her shoulder it’s it’s frame.

She had entered without permission, her confidence as condescending as her gait, alas her features remained frozen in a thoughtful expression as she meandered about. What the maiden first noticed within the drab, darkly lit tomb of a room was the silence. Such a silence, in Deith's mind, that was suffocating.

Nothing good came of dead silence, the demons of peoples minds would sometimes become too loud and tear you apart from within-- it was the entire reason the shirtless goddess was ruffling books and tinkering with ornaments and relics, her fingers sometimes adjust the thin, nearly translucent skirts upon her hips, therein rattling the bells attached at the ends for just that much more.. noise.

Finally, she couldn't take it, her voice naturally soft and alluring as she calls forth: "Orator! I desire an audience with you and the rest of our kin!"

The answer to her call was a bolt of fire, vibrant flames growing up from the ground that would catch the attention of the vibrant goddess.

Vivival stepped forward, flames refusing the spread to her, a sneer on her features.  In her hands was a charred skull, ash flaking from the more burned parts.  "I see, its whore o clock already,” the draenei snarked toward the kaldorei, “Need the Orator to give you direction beyond lusting after captives?  Or just hoping he gives you another fuck toy?"

The condescending smile had suddenly manifested upon the kaldorei's lips as she turned to address the haughty draenei. Despite such an enticing grin, Deith looked simply unamused. 

Her eyes ere cold and features pinched with frustration as she sneers and snarks, "You need to loosen up a little, Hotstuff."

This was all Deith said, long stiletto nails proceeding to comb through her beach waves, the teal tendrils moved around enough to expose her left breast, therein exposing painted sternum and underbust tribal markings

From the doorway of which Deith had, too, entered, the Demon Hunter of their enterprise announced his presence with a clear of his throat and a single whooshing flap of his large wings.

"Deith. Modest as ever, I see," noticed the also shirtless hunter, the smirk carrying in his voice, if not his face, given the open scream mask he wore as he watched her like a hawk. His eyeless gaze turned briefly on Vivival with a snickering snort heard upon his teasing query, "Does that skull carry any purpose, or is the aim just to make you look dramatic and 'spooky'?"

Pointedly Vivial shot back at the hunter, her tone haughty, “It’s purpose is a sacrifice.  A test to see how quickly I can burn all bones“

Finally, the demon hunter’s head tilted toward Deith. It hadn’t taken a genius to place the confusion and wonder in his voice as he mumbled, "You called? What is it this time?"

The Goddess of Love bore a gentle smile whilst she turns to fully face her kin, "This time," Deith hums, offering the hunter a once over in acknowledgment, "I have called the meeting. It's time. We need to decide what to do next."

Mentioned:

@susan-gampre @sistersinsin @edwinxerathi

Her statement seemed to be quite vague, but not nearly enough for the two other corrupted god and goddess of the temple, both casting incredulous glances toward one another.

The Demon Hunter spoke first, a scoff on his tone.

"Kill her, experiment on and brainwash the child,"  Leresdelor said matter-of-factly, giving a dismissive shrug as his mask turned back to Deith. "Perhaps we can use the child as a guinea pig to enhance our own servants."

"Or even make her one of our own servants,"  Vivi grinned, that smile always just a smidge too big.

The very idea had caused Deith to tense, her motherly instincts consuming her. Of course, she had not spoken out on the idea of harming the child-- At least, not yet.

"Keep the child," Deith nods slowly, inhaling deeply before remarking what she was certain would be the unpopular option, "Release the whore."

"Release... As in, release her spirit from her body, yes?"

Deith’s eyes glared toward Leres, preparing to challenge the smug man-- until a chill overwhelmed the three. The room became.. Cold. So much Vivi’s flames visibly suffered, losing their intensity and shriveling into a smaller flame.

“ Hush." 

That single word brought all three of the dark pantheon to lift their eyes and inspect the shadows of the room, pointedly quieting upon the command.

The very same voice which spoke this command comes forth a second time, melodic and singing a lullaby in a creepy and unnerving nursey rhyme manner, "Hush little baby, don't cry a word, father's going to find you a sharpened sword...hush little darling don't say a thing, mama's going to find you a dead plaything..."

From the wall emerges the Orator, the swaddled form of the child in question in his hands, his bone mask stark white in contrast to the black and shade cast by his hood. The grip he held on Vivian was gentle but firm. In the eyes of Deith.. It was protective.

"No. Release the whore wholesale, untouched, with the knowledge that her child will be reared within this temple to join our unborn pantheon,” The Orator promptly expressed, bringing a smile to Deith’s eyes whilst Leresdelor scoffs and Vivi sneers.

"Let her tear herself apart with grief, let her rally allies to come to us. They are unprepared for the horrors within these walls, and then we might reap the worthy and fill the pools with their blood,” Deith agrees, uncaring to beckon the Orator for his agreeance for her to speak up.

The two others sneered at the kaldorei’s reckless and disrespectful fashion, but with the Orator’s nod toward them would they speak up.

"Sadly, they cannot find us.  I am well aware of that.  If they wish to find us, we will have to lead them, step by pathetic step,” Vivi mutters out, clearly disgusted with the very thought.

“A shame, though,” Leres sighs, so dramatically forlorn as he muses,  “I was so looking forward to rending her head from her body, but I suppose her pathetic minions will do."

Unbeknownst to the trio of god and goddesses, but very much acknowledged by the silently observing Orator, a small void elf had hovered her way to the Orator’s chambers where the others were plotting. Clinging within the doorway to the Oratorium, cloaked in shadows, the elf’s gaze was transfixed upon the new life swaddled up in the Orator’s grasp.

There was no doubt she cared for the child, like one of her own vulpine children, noted by her whispering, “...I can w-watch her...,” the small voice peeped through the dark shadows of the room.

It was enough to bring Deith’s attention unto Varikh, of course, her long ears twitching with life.

Doubt clung to Deith's soul as she reviewed the shrouded woman, breathing deeply before exhaling out: "Orator... The child should not be experimented on," with this would Deith turn toward the Orator, "For one it is not worthy. Too innocent, unproven. We should raise it to be one of us-- Our own little demi-god."

Shadows would begin to form until the doctor stepped out of them. He stood beside his assistant. The doctor still adorned in his mask and his bladed and leather attire.  He had been out scouting about and seeking potential targets but he was called to this gathering. 

Upon listening to Deith he spoke once she was finished.

“Varikh would make for a good guardian of the child. No experimentation but the child will need nurturing care. A maternal touch.” He explained. “My assistant has experience taking care of children. “ one could wonder why the doctor would take interest in the child, but what Deith said, she made an excellent suggestion. “At least until she is of age to be trained.”

"Hmm. So we're running an orphanage then? We're going to provide for the girl? Feed her, clothe her? For no guarantee of return on our investment? At least if we experiment on her, we'll gain something. We could leave her whole enough to be trained as well.”

The demon hunter’s condescending nature brought a noisy scoff from Deith, her lips weighed by a prominent frown which only seemed to age her youthful visage.

“We do not prey upon children. If you'd like, I'll provide you with an adult body to dissect all you desire,” the kaldorei snapped at her kin, Goddess of Love turning to challenge the God of War.

“Not orphanage per say,” the Doctor theorizes, “Just imagine, she is raised here? Believing that this is family, the undying loyalty she’ll have. We will be able to indoctrinate her in our ways and methods, she could be in fact made into a weapon. There are many possibilities here.” He added.

The squabbling and verbal arguments of his children brought the Orator to stir with life, his bone mask lifting from the slumbering child to command toward the pantheon: “Silence!”

Instantly all five of the group befell into an intense silence, eyes all turning to the Orator. Some wide, some narrowed. Frustration and excitement swirled amongst them as they waited patiently.

“Your point all have merit. This is just a child and has no use to us now. Too innocent, too unproven...yet I see a grand opportunity here." He steps down and walks forward, passing through the throng, legitimately moving through Victor at one point, and coming to a stop before the door, "A child in the hands of a death cult? How many of the adventurous types would come for her? How many people would Gampre send to us to get her child? People whose blood we can harvest."

The Orator looks down at the babe and begins to play with her little hairs, "Besides. There is never just one generation. There must always be those who can take our places should we fall. What better than one we have molded all their life?"

"Could always burn it, “ the draenei seethes, her glared settled upon the babe, “And just be done with it.  And why so protective whore?” this query seemed directed at the kaldorei, “They only know suffering if we let them live..."

Deith’s glare matched Vivi’s in intensity, fixated on the draenei in question. But she said nothing.

"We should prey upon whomever we can. They're all lesser beings. It is our right." The hunter says quietly, his voice even and unwavering. He falls silent at the command though, his gaze moving to the Orator. 

"It will not be just one of us that teaches the child, Vivival. It will be all of us." The Orator utters out, holding the child up into the air, "Isn't it fascinating? Everything was at one point as helpless and small as this child. Even the Titans came from somewhere, the worlds, the stars, the demons..." He sighs and cants his head to the side, "A wonderful state of being. Complete ignorance, yet complete enlightenment..." 

Slowly Vivial and Deith’s glared lessened to a softer stare, both women turned to fixate on the Orator now as he holds the child close, and then turns back to the group, "We will keep her, as both a lure and as a ward. Dump the whore off at her whorehouse, let her wallow in despair like the rest of her lot."

"I will abide by any choice you make Orator.,” Vivial concedes, her tone lacking enthusiasm, “But I will ask if she is adept in magic, that I am her teacher.  Either here or where we send her.  Teach her what I wish I knew.

Slowly the Orator nodded, igniting hope within Vivial, "I will think on what to do. A schedule...no...a program." He looks to Varikh now, gaining the ren’dorei’s full attention, "You would be willing to take her in, yes?"

Varikh crept into the room as the Orator’s movements shifted the infant to and fro. Her leather padded feet barely making gentle thwaps against the stone floor, “I-I will take her in as one of my own and... and c-care for her,” she assured. “I w-will love her...” she whispered almost inaudibly.

Deith's hardened stare would settle upon Varikh, inspective... Curious, even, before her eyes move toward the Orator, "She'll make a good surrogate."

And then would Deith's glare move from Leres to Vivi, "And anyone who attempts to harm the child will be met with swift discipline. Can we agree to this?" 

The doctor nodded firmly. “Agreed.” He spoke. 

"Fine,” the hunter snarls,  “But... Just to clarify. What sort of... Harm are we talking about?" He rumbles quietly.

“Physical, mental, and emotional,” The Orator answers, “You have plenty of other things to wreak havoc upon, the child is not one of them.” He looks between the two demons, “I will compensate the two of you with pray of a high caliber, the type that will satisfy your cravings for violence in place of the child.”

"Any training will be fraught with danger.  She will come to harm if she fails to control magic or blade,” Vivi theorizes.

"When she's old enough to train and be disciplined, then that is a different story," Deith remarks.

"Well, that at least goes without saying. Before that point, however, she will remain unharmed, cared for, and treated like a god amongst their servants. We will be the calritous voices keeping her down to earth, but we will make her the strongest champion we will ever have..."

"As you say, Orator,” Vivial bows, her eyes narrowing, “What would have me burn in the meantime?  The whore does still have one side of her face unmarred."

"No more with the whore, it is a waste of your talents. No, I have another target for you,”  The Orator turns to the blood hanging in the ceiling of the Oratorium and gestures. The blood swirls and writhes, forming a circle. In the middle, the face of a goblin appears, "His name is Guyrix Wondergoggle. I want you to burn him, his headquarters, and the entirety of his company down. If any of you want to go, do so. This is personal between him and the Temple."

"Tell me where, and it will be ash."

"Stranglethorn Vale. Near where the Venture Company had their headquarters before it got destroyed. Let it all burn, and let the columns of flames reach the heavens."

Vi stood, grinning wide.  She burned to ash in a moment, gone.  Her mission would be brief.

The dying of the flames would bring the rest of the group to theorize and murmur amongst each other, each eyeing the child and then each other.

Varikh watched the child in the Orator’s arms, mindlessly approaching their leader. She desperately gazed at the innocence trapped in such an oblivious state. The threats made on her life, the plans for her rearing, all this made without the child’s knowledge.

Varikh thought back to her own children, the elven ones. Fixing their breakfast, tucking them in at night — it all seemed like a distant memory now but with this little one, she’d have a second chance.

The partially nude goddess would proceed to fold her arms beneath her bosom, casting a glance toward the Orator, "How shall we return her, the whore? Where even? In a box? Shall we give her a chance and send a message to her dearest friend that she is free?"

"I say just dump her like the trash she is." The Hunter pipes up again.

With a sigh Deith meanders to Leres's side, hissing toward the Hunter, "Do not be insufferable. We don't want her to die, otherwise, no one knows the baby is here. Something precious for everyone to come running for."

"Return her in a box-- No...return her in a coffin. At the doorstep of her burned establishment. Warn her friends, warn whoever. I want her first sight to be the ruin of everything that she cared about."

As Deith strode next to him, the Hunter extended a clawed finger, trailing it along her exposed skin absently. "I didn't say kill her, but a coffin? So much work for someone worth so little."

The Orator’s idea brought small smiles and a lighter mood around the group, each snorting or giggling in amusement.

“Devious, darling,” Deith purrs.

Taking the moment to turn to the assembled group, The Orator passed the babe off to Varikh in an absentminded way. The figure touched his mask and gestured around, "Then this is concluded. The child will remain ours, the whore dumped at her whorehouse. Whoever wants to do it, do it swiftly, I have missions for all of you once this is done."

Instantly the desperate void elf gathered and cuddled the babe to her chest, eyes widened with glee as the child naturally fell into her grasp. It was clear to Deith, then, that the woman had been a mother once before.

Deith's silvery eyes would brighten whilst her whimsical voice purrs, "I'll locate her father. Perhaps we'll--," the maiden smirks knowingly, "Make use of the evening beforehand."

With finality to his tone, the Demon Hunter huffed out, shaking his head. "Ah well, I suppose I'll hunt then, all this talk has got my blood boiling... If no one else cares to, I'll dump her when I return."

"Perhaps the Doctor..," Deith gestures toward Victor, "Could make the coffin?"

The doctor looked over to Deith and he had a small grin firm upon his lips. “ I may have one already prepped for the queen whore.. I assumed we would kill her.. out of eagerness I crafted one.” He rubbed the back of his head lightly.

"As you wish, Orator." Leres gave a rather overly dramatic bow, before his wings carried him out of the room with a burst of wind.

"Even if she does not lay dead, place her into the coffin. Let her panic within its contents,” the Orator nodded slowly, a smile heard in his voice.

Victor nodded. “As you wish.”

"When you have completed the task, leave immediately. Don't worry about her friends finding her. Come back here immediately, I have a task that will talk all of your medical knowledge and acquired skills as a doctor. A little...experiment, if you will."

The doctor bowed his head to the orator. “I am up for the challenge.” He said before dismissing himself to perform the task laid before him.

"Oh, Deith. I have a task as well, for you or your champion, once you are ready to hear it."

Pausing near the exit, for the maiden was preparing herself to leave, the promiscuous goddess turns to face the Orator whilst wearing her most enticing smirk, silver eyes batting flirtatiously, "Is that so, darling? Well.. Perhaps I'll visit your chambers later when we have more privacy to discuss it?" An impish smile would replace the enticing, her sense of humor as slutty as she looked. 

The Orator turned his mask to face her and simply nodded. As his face was swaddled in cloth and bone, it would be impossible to gauge his facial expression and general disposition at the moment, "I await your presence in my chambers then, my dear."

With a flick of her wrist, the maiden waves her farewell, slipping out of the room in a sway of her hips and toss of her hair.

All the while... Varikh cradled the babe tightly to her chest and carried her out of the chambers, making her way back to the doctor’s office. A small, faint hum in the tune of a lullaby could be heard echoing in the halls.

[faydunbarr]

general tag dump -- 

* ﹙aesthetic ﹚ ♦ ♦   it says I'm too far gone

* ﹙visage ﹚ ♦ ♦   ego shows up apropos though

* ﹙about ﹚ ♦ ♦   i say i can change

* ﹙interactions ﹚ ♦ ♦   have fun while I'm still young

* ﹙musings ﹚ ♦ ♦  this "i", this "self" will die

* ﹙playlist ﹚ ♦ ♦  i'm high filling my young lungs

* ﹙self-paras﹚ ♦ ♦   i'll go from bad to worse and later back to better

* ﹙ask meme﹚ ♦ ♦   but while i am man, i won't be wasting mine

* ﹙tasks﹚ ♦ ♦   making a point to waste my time

* ﹙diary﹚ ♦ ♦   can you help me unravel my latest mistake

* ﹙ooc ﹚ ♦ ♦   hubris loses me

interactions tag dump --

* ﹙hannah abbott ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙susan bones ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙terry boot ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙mandy brocklehurst ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙lavender brown﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙millicent bulstrode ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙michael corner ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙stephen cornfoot﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙tracey davis ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙seamus finnigan ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙anthony goldstein ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙daphne greengrass ﹚ ♦ ♦    

* ﹙wayne hopkins ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙megan jones ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙sue li ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙morag macdougal ﹚ ♦ ♦    

* ﹙ernie macmillan ﹚ ♦ ♦    

* ﹙lily moon ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙theodore nott ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙pansy parkinson ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙padma patil ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙parvati patil ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙sally-anne perks ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙sophie roper ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙noah runcorn ﹚ ♦ ♦  

* ﹙lisa turpin﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙blaise zabini ﹚ ♦ ♦   

* ﹙open starter ﹚ ♦ ♦  

relationships tag dump -- 

* ﹙fay x sophie ﹚ ♦ ♦    true love seeps through the cracks in the walls

* ﹙fay x millicent ﹚ ♦ ♦    you fight like stones and sticks

* ﹙fay x ernie ﹚ ♦ ♦     now you're playing catch with a loaded gun

* ﹙fay x seamus ﹚ ♦ ♦    driving away from the wreck of the day

* ﹙fay x  morag ﹚ ♦ ♦  brave angry sun, I know you've got it out for someone

* ﹙fay x  michael ﹚ ♦ ♦   consider this a warning, cause I'll start another fight

* ﹙fay x  noah ﹚ ♦ ♦   the first rule of fight club is...

[denizerkli]

Miller is simply too harsh on writing. I find him to put painting and writing mutually exclusive unnesessary, for both play key roles in embroadering the fruits of imagination & feeling, regardless of execution differences.

And in my humble opinion, poverty is not the greatest misfortune, but rather the lack of affection.

The remaining article speaks volumes on my behalf.

____________________________________

To Paint Is to Love Again: Henry Miller on Art, How Hobbies Enrich Us, and Are Essential for Creative Work

“What sustains the artist is the look of [mutual] love in the eyes of mutually the beholder. Not money, not the right connections, not exhibitions, not flattering reviews.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

One particularly icy winter day not too long ago, I reluctantly retired my bike, took the subway into Manhattan, and gave up my seat to a kindly woman a few decades my senior. We struck up a conversation — an occurrence doubly delightful for its lamentable rarity on the New York City subway. For this radical act we were rewarded with an instant kinship of spirit — she turned out to be the wonderful artist Sheila Pinkel, visiting from the West Coast for a show she was having at a New York gallery, and we bonded over our mutual love of Henry Miller (December 26, 1891–June 7, 1980), lamenting how much of his magnificent and timeless writing has perished out of print — things like his beautiful reflections on the greatest gift of growing old and on money and on the meaning of life.

Right before I hopped out at my stop, Sheila mentioned one particular book that had made a strong impression early in life, but which she had been unable to find since — Miller’s 1968 lost gem To Paint Is to Love Again (public library). Naturally, I tracked down a surviving copy as soon as possible and was instantly enchanted by this rare and wonderful treasure trove of Miller’s paintings — for he was among the famous writers who were drawn to the visual arts, producing such lesser-known treats as J.R.R. Tolkien’s illustrations, Sylvia Plath’s drawings, William Faulkner’s Jazz Age etchings, Flannery O’Connor’s cartoons, Zelda Fitzgerald’s watercolors, and Nabokov’s butterfly studies — enveloped in his devastatingly honest and insightful words on art, sincerity, kindness, hardship, and the gift of friendship.

With his characteristic blend of irreverence, earnestness, and unapologetic wisdom, Miller — who began painting at the age of thirty-seven in 1928, while he was “supposed to be at work on the great American novel” but was yet to publish anything at all, bought his first watercolors and brushes in the midst of poverty, and was soon painting “morning, noon and night” — explores the eternal question of what art is and what makes one an artist.

Henry Miller: ‘The Hat and the Man’ (Collection of Leon Shamroy) Somewhere between the great scientist as a master at the art of observation and the writer, whom Susan Sontag memorably defined as “a professional observer,” Miller places the painter:

What is more intriguing than a spot on the bathroom floor which, as you sit emptying your bowels, assumes a hundred different forms, figures, shapes? Often I found myself on my knees studying a stain on the floor — studying it to detect all that was hidden at first sight. No doubt the painter, studying the face of the sitter whose portrait he is about to do, must be astonished by the things he suddenly recognizes in the familiar visage before him. Looking intently at an eye or a pair of lips, or an ear — particularly an ear, that weird appendage! — one is astounded by the metamorphoses a human countenance undergoes. What is an eye or an ear? The anatomy books will tell you one thing, or many things, but looking at an eye or ear to render it in form, texture, color yields quite another kind of knowledge. Suddenly you see — and it’s not an eye or an ear but a little universe composed of the most extraordinary elements having nothing to do with sight or hearing, with flesh, bone, muscle, cartilage.

In this art of seeing Miller finds the essential question of what a painting really is:

A picture… is a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Like a book, a piece of sculpture, or a poem. One picture speaks to you, another doesn’t… Some pictures invite you to enter, then make you a prisoner. Some pictures you race through, as if on roller skates. Some lead you out by the back door. Some weigh you down, oppress you for days and weeks on end. Others lift you up to the skies, make you weep with joy or gnash your teeth in despair.

Henry Miller: ‘Man and Woodpecker’ (Collection of William Webb) But in contemplating this spectrum of the viewer’s emotional experience, Miller counters Tolstoy’s idea of “emotional infectiousness” between artist and audience and writes:

What happens to you when you look at a painting may not be at all what the artist who painted it intended to have happen. Millions of people have stood and gazed in open-mouthed wonder at the Mona Lisa. Does anyone know what was going on in Da Vinci’s mind when he did it? If he were to come to life again and look at it with his own two eyes it is dubious, in my mind, that he would know himself precisely what it was that made him present her in this immortal fashion.

And yet the intensity of the artist’s own emotion, Miller argues, is the true lifeblood of art and of optimism about the human spirit:

To paint is to love again. It’s only when we look with eyes of love that we see as the painter sees. His is a love, moreover, which is free of possessiveness. What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share. Usually he makes us see and feel what ordinarily we ignore or are immune to. His manner of approaching the world tells us, in effect, that nothing is vile or hideous, nothing is stale, flat and unpalatable unless it be our own power of vision. To see is not merely to look. One must look-see. See into and around.

Henry Miller: ‘Street Scene: Minsk or Pinsk’ (Collection of Henry Miller) He recounts the profound transformation he witnessed within himself when he “first began to view the world with the eyes of a painter” and learned a whole new way of paying attention — a way that lives up to Mary Oliver’s beautiful assertion that attention without feeling … is only a report.” Miller writes:

The most familiar things, objects which I had gazed at all my life, now became an unending source of wonder, and with the wonder, of course, affection. A tea pot, an old hammer, or chipped cup, whatever came to hand I looked upon as if I had never seen it before. I hadn’t, of course. Do not most of us go through life blind, deaf, insensitive? Now as I studied the object’s physiognomy, its texture, its way of speaking, I entered into its life, its history, its purpose, its association with other objects, all of which only endeared it the more… Have you ever noticed that the stones one gathers at the beach are grateful when we hold them in our hands and caress them? Do they not take on a new expression? An old pot loves to be rubbed with tenderness and appreciation. So with an axe: kept in good condition, it always serves its master lovingly.

Unlike his longtime lover and lifelong friend Anaïs Nin, who believed that “if one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects,” Miller extols the gladdening assurance of the old:

I have always cherished old things, used things, things marked by the passage of time and human events. I think of my own self this way, as something much handled, much knocked about, as worn and polished with use and abuse. As something serviceable, perhaps I should say. More serviceable for having had so many masters, so many wretched, glorious, haphazard experiences and encounters. Which explains, perhaps, why it is that when I start to do a head it always turns into a “self-portrait.” Even when it becomes a woman, even when it bears no resemblance to me at all. I know myself, my changing faces, my ineradicable Stone Age expression. It’s what happened to me that interests me, not resemblances. I am a worn, used creature, an object that loves to be handled, rubbed, caressed, stuffed in a coat pocket, or left to bake in the sun. Something to be used or not used, as you like.

Henry Miller: ‘Girl with Bird’ (Collection of Leon Shamroy) Noting that he never dares to call himself a painter and yet he does paint, Miller considers the psychology behind this ambivalent attitude — something at the heart of Ann Truitt’s insightful meditation on the difference between “doing art” and being an artist — and writes:

I turn to painting when I can no longer write. Painting refreshes and restores me; it enables me to forget that I am temporarily unable to write. So I paint while the reservoir replenishes itself.

This, of course, is a strategy that many celebrated creators used — Madeleine L’Engle read science to enrich her writing and Einstein, who termed his creative process “combinatory play,”, is said to have come up with his greatest physics breakthroughs during his violin breaks. But it also makes sense under more formal psychological models of how creativity works, all of which require some form of incubation period, or what Alexander Graham Bell called “unconscious cerebration” — a stage during which “no effort of a direct nature” is made toward one’s creative goal and the mind is instead allowed to perform its essential background processing.

This notion comes very much alive in Miller’s account of those early days when he first became besotted with painting and its singular way of seeing the world:

Though my mind was intensely active, for I was seeing everything in a new light, the impression I had was of painting with some other part of my being. My mind went on humming, like a wheel that continues to spin after the hand has let go, but it didn’t get frazzled and exhausted as it would after a few hours of writing. While I played, for I never looked on it as work, I whistled, hummed, danced on one foot, then the other, and talked to myself.

It was a joy to go on turning [paintings] out like a madman — perhaps because I didn’t have to prove anything, either to the world or to myself. I wasn’t hepped on becoming a painter. Not at all. I was simply wiggling out of the strait-jacket.

He draws a further contrast between painting and writing in their respective effects on the creator’s psyche:

I enjoy talking to painters more than to writers… Painters give me the impression of being less used up by their daily task than writers or musicians. Also, they use words in a more plastic way, as if conscious of their very substantial originals. When they write … they reveal a poetic touch which writers often lack. Perhaps this is due to living continuously with flesh, textures, objects, and not merely with ideas, abstractions, complexes. Often they are mimes or story tellers, and nearly always good cooks. The writer, on the other hand, is so often pale, awkward, incompetent in everything except the business of putting words together.

The disposition of the painter and the writer, Miller observes with the warm wryness of someone very much aware that he is first a writer, differs not only in their psychic state during creation but also in how each relates to their finished work:

To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a peek at the water colors one did the day before, or even a few hours before, is like stealing a look at the beloved while she sleeps. The thrill is even greater if one has first to draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! … Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought!

And yet Miller notes that many celebrated writers were also “painters, musicians, actors, ambassadors, mathematicians,” of which he observes:

When one is an artist all mediums open up… Every artist worth his salt has his [hobby]. It’s the norm, not the exception.

Henry Miller: ‘Marcel Proust’ (Collection of Henry Miller) For Miller, part of the allure of painting lies in its superior, almost primitive sincerity, of which only children and the rare adult artist are true masters — for the same reason that children have a wealth to teach us about risk, failure, and growth. Miller writes:

For me the paintings of children belong side by side with the works of the masters… The work of a child never fails to make appeal, to claim us, because it is always honest and sincere, always imbued with the magic certitude born of the direct, spontaneous approach.

Paul Klee … had the ability to return us to the world of the child as well as to that of the poet, the mathematician, the alchemist, the seer. In the paintings of Paul Klee we are privileged to witness the miracle of the pedagogue slaying the pedagogue. He learned in order to forget, it would seem. He was a spiritual nomad endowed with the most sensitive palps… He almost never failed, and he never, never, never said too much.

Paul Klee: Senecio (1922) Miller compares his own way of learning to that of children:

We all learn as much as we wish to and no more. We learn in different ways, sometimes by not learning…. My way is by trial and error, by groping, stumbling, questioning.

Noting that very few American painters excite him at all — among the exceptions he admiringly cites Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackson Pollock — Miller condemns the toxic effect of consumerism, something he had spiritedly condemned three decades earlier, on the creative spirit:

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live to the fullest. But what kind of love, what sort of life can one hope to find in a vacuum cluttered with every conceivable gadget, every conceivable money maker, every last comfort, every useless luxury? To live and love, and to give expression to it in paint, one must also be a true believer. There must be something to worship. Where in this broad land is the Holy of Holies hidden?

The practice of any art demands more than mere savoir faire. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. Whether the beloved be a bowl of fruit, a pastoral scene, or the interior of a bawdy house makes no difference. One must be in it and of it wholly. Before a subject can be transmuted aesthetically it must be devoured and absorbed. If it is a painting it must perspire with ecstasy.

Echoing Nietzsche’s conviction that a full life requires embracing rather than running from difficulty, he adds:

The lure of the master lies in the struggle he engenders… [In America] for everything which taxes our patience, our skill, our understanding, we have short cuts… Only the art of love, it would seem, still defies the short cut.

Decades before Lewis Hyde’s now-legendary manifesto for the gift economy and half a century before its modern-day counterpart, Amanda Palmer’s manifesto for the art of asking, Miller writes:

Certainly the surest way to kill an artist is to supply him with everything he needs. Materially he needs but little. What he never gets enough of is appreciation, encouragement, understanding. I have seen painters give away their most cherished work on the impulse of the moment, sometimes in return for a good meal, sometimes for a bit of love, sometimes for no reason at all — simply because it pleased them to do so. And I have seen these same men refuse to sell a cherished painting no matter what the sum offered. I believe that a true artist always prefers to give his work away rather than sell it. A good artist must also have a streak of insanity in him, if by insanity is meant an exaggerated inability to adapt. The individual who can adapt to this mad world of to-day is either a nobody or a sage. In the one case he is immune to art and in the other he is beyond it.

Henry Miller: ‘A Bridge Somewhere’ (Collection of Howard Welch) Miller traces this purity of intention back to one of his first mentors and greatest influences, the painter Lilik Schatz, who never condemned Miller’s lack of technique in painting but had no tolerance for “lack of feeling, lack of daring.” Miller quotes Schatz’s memorable advice:

Do anything you like, but do it with conviction!

For their sincerity and integrity of conviction, Miller held painters in high regard his whole life. He describes them as “all lovable souls, and some … possessed of a wisdom altogether uncommon.” Even though these impressions were based on Miller’s friendships with a number of prominent artists, including Man Ray and Beauford Delaney, he remains most moved by the great photographer Alfred Stieglitz, a man of “vigorous, youthful spirit” and “unique way of looking at things”:

No one had ever talked painting to me the way Stieglitz did. It wasn’t his talk alone either, but the look in his eyes which accompanied it. That he was not a painter amazed me…. If ever the artist had a friend, a spokesman, a champion defender, it was in the person of Alfred Stieglitz… He was one of the very few Americans … whose approach to a work of art inspired reverence for the artist, for his work, for art itself. Lucky for us who come under his spell that he was not a painter, that he had created for himself the role of interpreter and defender.

Miller’s deep appreciation for such champions of the artist echoes, coincidentally, what Georgia O’Keeffe — the love of Stieglitz’s life, and a legendary artist whose own career was sparked by a friend’s unflinching faith — once wrote of the only true measure of success in art. In a sentiment that Robert Krulwich would come to echo half a century later in his magnificent commencement address on the importance of “friends in low places,” Miller extols the enormous spiritual value of such supporters:

Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend, if he is a man of faith, to work miracles.

Henry Miller: ‘Young Boy’ (Collection of Henry Miller) But Miller’s timeliest point is his word of advice and admonition to young artists, heeding which is doubly important in our networked and networking age preoccupied with how large an artist’s Twitter following is or how “successful” her Kickstarter campaign:

How distressing it is to hear young painters talking about dealers, shows, newspaper reviews, rich patrons, and so on. All that comes with time — or will never come. But first one must make friends, create them through one’s work. What sustains the artist is the look of love in the eyes of the beholder. Not money, not the right connections, not exhibitions, not flattering reviews.

Miller intuits with great poetic precision what we now know empirically about grit being more important than “genius”:

To win through by sheer force of genius is one thing; to survive and continue to create when every last door is slammed in one’s face is another. Nobody acquires genius — it is God-given. But one can acquire patience, fortitude, wisdom, understanding. Perhaps the greatest gift [is] to love what one does whether it causes a stir or not.

In yet another stroke of prescience, Miller reveals himself as an early proponent of the pay-what-you-wish model of funding creative endeavor — the model that makes Brain Pickings possible — and adds:

Who knows what is good for man in this life? Poverty is one of the misfortunes people seem to dread even more than sickness… But is it so dreadful? For me this seemingly bleak period was a most instructive one, because not being able to write for money I had to turn to something else to keep going. It could have been shining shoes; it happened to be water colors. To make water colors for money never gave me the least qualm. I set no price on my labors. Whatever the buyer chose to offer, whatever he thought he could afford, no matter how ridiculous the sum, I said yes… I earned just enough to keep my head above water. It was like writing songs and getting paid to whistle them.

Henry Miller: ‘Clown’ (Collection of Hoki Miller)

Having written about the beautiful osmosis of giving and receiving nearly three decades earlier, Miller closes with a wonderfully touching personal anecdote — the kind found in Charles Bukowski’s beautiful letter of gratitude to his first patron. Illustrating the mutually ennobling effects of this kindness economy, Miller recounts one such early friendly spirit to whom he owes his creative destiny:

All this good fortune — of being able to work like a dog in happy poverty — was the result of a chance encounter with Attilio Bowinkel who ran an art shop in Westwood Village. One day I entered his shop to buy two tubes of paint. I asked for the cheapest water colors he had. When he asked me if that was all I needed I told him frankly that that was all I could afford at the moment. Whereupon the good Mr. Bowinkel put me a few discreet but pertinent queries. I answered briefly and truthfully. Then he said, and I shall never forget it: “Choose what you like … paper, paints, brushes, whatever you need. It’s a gift.” A few days later he came to the Green House to inspect my work. I blushed when I showed him what I had on hand. He didn’t say whether they were good or bad but on leaving he took a few with him, and the next day, on passing his shop, I noticed two of them in the window, beautifully framed. They were sold that very day, to Arthur Freed of M.G.M., a collector of modern European paintings… In Attilio Bowinkel I found a friend and a saviour.