The blood-letting (bathers)

The blood-letting 2

The blood-letting

All the ghosts came to that party ...

From Derek Jarman's Kicking the Pricks:

AND THE SHIP SAILED ON

Adam and Eve (that's you),

And Pinch-Me-Not (that's us),

Went down to the sea to bathe,

Adam and Eve were drowned,

Who do you think was saved?

PINCH-ME-NOT.

What was Pinch-Me-Not up to? Well, years ago he danced to a wind-up gramophone on the deck of HMS Invincible with his mates. Afterwards the lads went below decks, stripped off, and fucked so hard they forgot the war. The ship sailed on and on, and reached a desert island. Was it the Isle of the Dead? I'm not certain.  It could have been Easter Island with its giant statues, or Stromboli, where in the sulphurous smoke of the volcano, he discovered a wild flower growing 'essence'. He picked it, and pressed it, and sent it home, to the neat little back-tobacks which he had left far behind.  His mates were pirates now, deserters, they fucked each other all night; no one came less than eight times; in the dawn they were like a clean room, minds opened.  The fucking burnt away the cobwebs, and broke their manacles.

One day, as the sun came up, they reached the very edge of the horizon. They lay in the dawn, crushed in each other's arms, satiated, but still erect. Who made love to whom that night? All the ghosts came to that party: Alexander the Great threw himself to the battalions that died for him, Socrates pronounced a blessing. Many were there secretly, but I'll not give them away. There was Richard Coeur de Lion with Lord Kitchener, who pointed at us and said 'Your country needs YOU'; Gaveston had his cock up Edward's arse; they had minstrels-Tchaikovsky was blowing Britten-and painters to record them: Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio.  The guest-list was endless and they built their own world far away from yours, with doctors and dentists, bricklayers and ploughmen. The authorities never caught up with them because they were wizards and witches and faeries.  It was a queer old world; you can stamp on a fairy ring, but it will bring you terrible luck, and neither you, or your children, who know how sweet the faeries are, will sleep soundly ever again.

Hey Hey Caravaggio

Trespass & Guidance

Queer Color Theory

I enjoyed reading this in Derek Jarman's Chroma:

[Leonardo] liked rude boys who stole, rough diamonds, like Salai who came as an assistant at fifteen and stayed for life.

And especially this:

In the 1430s a fourteen-year-old boy could be burnt at the stake for an act of sodomy - this would not happen in Florence again. Platonism confirmed that it was right and proper to love someone of your own sex - a more practical way of viewing sexuality than the church's blueprint of DON'Ts. The modern world received the message with open arms and Botticelli, Pontormo, Rosso, Michelangelo and Leonardo stepped from the shadows.

I know this is a long way from light and colour ... but is it? For Leonardo took the first step into light, and Newton, a notorious bachelor, followed him with Opticks. In this century Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his Remarks on Colour. Colour seems to have a Queer bent!