Some assembly required. In this journal, my intent has been not to arouse, as in pornography, but to find a language to convey the feelings and facts of arousal and release "in the
market where willing buyers and willing sellers become one flesh." Images are not needed for this purpose, and in fact may detract from it, since—
Walter's great, and dearly bought discovery—the essential sexual organ is the mind. As radio artists have discovered, the most vivid images are those brought before the mind's eye.
So I hesitated before adding images, yet when I saw that some such images—as at right—are true objects of beauty, I became persuaded. Why indeed whore if no memories are beautiful?
So I curated pictures and added them, but cropped, vertically or horizontally, in the proportion of the golden section. In doing so, I discovered that the act of cropping was itself erotic: One cuts away, and what is left is beauty.
Thus, the pictures reinforce the journal's fragmentary form: not a consecutive series of experiences, but
"cut ups": a constantly rearranged collection of memories and essays at expression. The images become
tessarae in a mosaic, illuminated colored shards in a constantly shaken kaleidoscope.
NOTES1. "Porn" comes orginally from
porne, the sort of pictures that whores (Grk
pornae) might make available to their clients. Though I don't see why a picture would be more arousing than the actuality. I never have understood the Berlin custom of the
kino.
2. We have a "fair use" doctrine for the images of whores, but not for their bodies. How odd.
>> posted by John Psmyth
• 5/22/2004 11:03:00 AM
•
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