Notes on Frida Kahlo's diary

• Frida is going to a concert: she arrives late and the sound of her sumptuous jewelry covers the orchestra and everyone is looking at her box, the concert doesn’t count anymore. An Aztec goddess, Coatlicue, a deity wrapped in her skirts of serpents, exhibiting her lacerated hands, like trophies. Or maybe Tlazolteotl, the vulture that has to devour filth to keep the universe clean. Earrings are as big as cartwheels; her rings transform her hands into claws.always hiding her tortured body, shriveled leg, broken foot, orthopedic corsets

• always hiding her tortured body, shriveled leg, broken foot, orthopedic corsets
• under the spectacular finery of the peasant Mexican woman, who kept jealously the ancient jewelry hidden away, protected from poverty, only to be shown at the great fiestas.

• Laces, ribbons, long skirts, rustling petticoats, braids, flowery peasant blouses, garnet-coloured shawls, moonlike headdresses[1] - form of humour, great disguise, theatrical, self-fascinated form of auto-eroticism, a call to imagine the suffering naked body underneath and discover its secrets[2]
• Her clothes were a manner of dressing for paradise, of preparing for death.
• “Kahlo, disguised in many clothes, a Saint Joan of the liberating culture of the Revolution”[3] : dressing and undressing, wearing her clothes were ceremonial acts, laborious, regal, ritualistic
• “I am not sick, I am broken.”
• Fooling death, fooling around with death, in her language, death was: La Mera Dientona [old buck teeth], La Tostada [The Toasted One], La Chingada [the Fucked One], La Catrina [The Belle of the Ball], La Pelona [The Hairless Bitch], La Tia de las Muchachas [The Girls’ Aunt]
• Nietzsche: Whoever has built a new heaven has found the strength for it only in his own hell[4]
• proud and defiant in her denim cloths and proletarian, urchin-like cloth caps, together with Las Cachuchas [The Caps]
• internal darkness under midday light, fantasy within realism – influences on the art of Frida
• Defenderse de los Cabrones – lifetime slogan
• Broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, left shoulder forever out of joint, one feet crushed, handrail crashed into her back and came out through her vagina
• Naked and bloodied, covered with gold dust
• Pain destroys language, pain is indescribable (Virginia Woolf)
• Nietzche decided to call his pain Dog
• Frida as a speaker for pain[1]
• 32 operations
• from 1944 she wore eight corsets
• in 1953 – her leg is amputated
• her wounded back “smelling like a dead dog”
• loses her fetuses in pools of blood
• forever surrounded by clots, chloroform, bandages, needles, scalpels
• personal suffering transformed into art, an art that is shared, not impersonal
• a ribbon around a bombshell – Andre Breton about her art
• she loved Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers
• beauty as truth and knowledge: Frida’s legacy to the marginal, invisible, faceless men and women, when only photogenic and shocking images merit a vision
• I am writing to you with my eyes
• sexual and political Mexican art- censored in US, in order to preserve their fake innocence, forget their dirty history: genocide of native Indians, rape and robbery of their land, Black slavery, wars against weaker nations, territorial annexations, robber barons, capitalist exploitation, urban violence – American culture is left without appropriate, lasting beautiful images of its own violence.
• The internal oneiric change is inseparable from external, political, material, liberating change: marriage of Freud and Marx. In Frida’s subversiveness that would be the marriage between Woody Allen and Groucho Marx.
• The more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. (Diego Rivera)
• I cannot, I cannot! [F on socialist realism]
• Deep down, you understand me, you know I adore you. You are not only something that is mine, you are me myself. [love letter to Alejandro Gomez Arias]
• Her voice was deep, rebellious, punctuated by caracajades [belly laughs] and leperadas [four-letter words].
• Theatrical persona – practical and linguistic jokes
• Love for carpas and cantinas, joy in singing and enjoying Mexican music
• She could sing couplets like La Malaguena with a perfect falsetto.
• Friend with carpenters, bartenders, shoemakers, anarchists, servants
• She was using a lot of diminutives, charming the words – form of defense against arrogance and oppression, a form of anesthesia.
• F vocabulary: Chaparitta – small women, chulito – male friends, doctorcito, herself: Chiquita, chicuita, Friducha
• Like Diego, she was baffled by gringo faces and could not paint them, they looked like "half-baked rolls". On her American female imitators: they look like “cabbages”.
• Mr Ford, are you jewish? [F. to renowned anti-semite Henry Ford]

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[1] Carlos Fuentes, p.12

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[1] Carlos Fuentes, “Introduction” in The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995, p. 7

[2] p.22-23

[3] Carlos Fuentes, p.11

[4] p. 24

an other Rich

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthly

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.


1962

An Unsaid Word

She who has power to call her man
From that enstranged intensity
Where his mind forages alone,
Yet keeps her peace and leaves him free,
And when his thoughts to her return
Stands where he left her, still his own,
Knows this the hardest thing to learn.


by Adrienne Rich

Magnetic Ladies

Diamanda's performance was one of the most powerful ones that i saw in a long time. The flows of energy were almost unbearable, a need for muscle relaxants was so intense. Breathless for two hours. and her last encore was the obsessing "Gloomy Sunday". Her diamond mask belt is one of the fetishist objects that are marking the culture of a becoming goddess.

Diamanda Galas' concert in an Austrian 13th century Gothic church follows the line of Misha Katz conducting Fantastic Symphony, Roberta Carrera acting Judith, Robert Smith playing his third encore, Silviu Purcarete's Lucky giving the speech, disappearing of an old clown in Fellini's "Clowns".

On a different note, Alexis O'Hara was a glitchy-noisy surprise, all those weird sounds were made on stage by her body and were mixed only by her hands. My crystal clear image of PoMo Feminsim. As she told me after the show: Don't worry! It's quite simple: just use two microphones.

darling i hope that my dreams never haunted you

Sunday is gloomy,
My hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless
Little white flowers
Will never awaken you
Not where the black coaches
Sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thoughts
Of ever returning you
Wouldnt they be angry
If I thought of joining you?

Gloomy is sunday,
With shadows I spend it all
My heart and i
Have decided to end it all
Soon therell be candles
And prayers that are said I know
But let them not weep
Let them know that Im glad to go
Death is no dream
For in death Im caressin you
With the last breath of my soul
Ill be blessin you

Dreaming, I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep
In the deep of my heart here
Darling I hope
That my dream never haunted you
My heart is tellin you
How much I wanted you
Gloomy sunday

Glume

Gigi Becali a fost sambata, 22 septembrie 2007, la Arad. Printre altele, s-a trezit sa declare că în cazul în care va ajunge preşedintele României va desfiinţa cluburile pentru gay, iar pe homosexuali îi va izola la marginea oraşelor, în cartiere speciale. Stirea este puternic difuzata.

„Sex-shop-urile nu au ce căuta în centrul oraşului, să le vadă toată lumea, copiii şi cei care nu vor să le vadă. Cluburile pentru gay le voi desfiinţa. Dacă aceşti oameni păcătuiesc, nu au decât să o facă la ei acasă. Îi sfătuiesc să meargă la preot dacă au probleme cu capul, pentru că eu voi desfiinţa cluburile de homosexuali şi lesbiene“

„O să le fac cartiere speciale, să stea acolo şi să ne lase pe noi în pace“

Ceea ce este interesant aici este lipsa de reactie, cel putin pana acum. probabil vor urma zilele urmatoare cateva pozitii sau cineva isi va aduce aminte de chestiunea asta prin campania electorala. Ziarele online s-au limitat la a transmite "faptele asa cum sunt". Vorbim aici nu de un personaj marginal, de un individ total lipsit de putere politca: Becali este cotat în sondajele de opinie pe locul al doilea, la categoria încrederii în politicieni, cu circa 30%, imediat dupa Băsescu. Partidul condus de Becali este situat pe locul al patrulea, după PD, PSD şi PNL, cu şanse clare de a intra în Parlament.

Vara trecuta Becali era prezent pe majoritatea posturilor TV in emisiuni sportive, talk-showuri politice, lifestyle etc. popularitatea sa este remarcabila. Faptul ca este considerat in multe cazuri un bufon inofensiv si simpatic, greu de crezut si pe care nu poti sa te superi, nu poate scuza luarile sale de pozitie deosebit de violente. Numarul 1 in sondaje recidiva acum cateva saptamani cu remarcile sale discriminatorii: de data asta nu era vorba de tigani, ci de armenii cei rai. Doctorul sau era un caz rar de "armean bun". Comisia impotriva discriminarii a reactionat. Oamenii lui Basescu au raspuns dezinvolt ca era doar o gluma, in stilul caracteristic al presedintelui. Si asa a ramas.

Si Becali probabil glumeste pe seama gaylor, femeilor, tiganilor etc. Treptat, stilul sau a devenit unul caracteristic, un produs mediatic foarte bine vandut si usor de reprodus. De unde si succesul sau. Usor usor, cu asemenea reprezentari, puternic sustinute de viitori alegatori, Romania ramane o gluma si inca una proasta de tot.

images of jehanne after 2000

as usual, when i have a major theme and i try to see how young people see it nowadays i search it on deviant art. "Joan of arc" returned over 1500 images. still popular, the well known character is presented in a fetishistic manner: the androgynous young woman becomes a voluptuous blond medieval princess with a big sword. I am surprised by the unity of vision and imagination on this mysterios historical character.

here are some relevant examples:


the idealized fairy story princess is a recurrent symbol:

one exception: Jehanne as a punk junky, her voices are creating the world that we live.


i must say that for me, Jehanne, at this moment, in exploring her as a possible theme for a performance, resemblance Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry". Search continues.