Latest Posts by vrgl - Page 4
art museum dates are so underrated. I want to take dumb pictures in front of Roman statues and watch her stare in awe of the little ways the sculptor made the stone look as soft as skin. maybe she would pull me over to a painting that reminded her of me and I would get to listen to the way her voice twinkles as she explains her argument, and a glowing smile as I reluctantly agree with her. maybe we could pretend to have a museum heist and almost get kicked out, ending with the both of us in heaps of laughter, falling just a little bit deeper in love. and when I'm asked about which piece of art was my favorite today? darling, you already know the answer.
“You ruin your life by desensitizing yourself. We are all afraid to say too much, to feel too deeply, to let people know what they mean to us. Caring is not synonymous with crazy. Expressing to someone how special they are to you will make you vulnerable. There is no denying that. However, that is nothing to be ashamed of. There is something breathtakingly beautiful in the moments of smaller magic that occur when you strip down and are honest with those who are important to you. Let that girl know that she inspires you. Tell your mother you love her in front of your friends. Express, express, express. Open yourself up, do not harden yourself to the world, and be bold in who, and how you love. There is courage in that.”
— Bianca Sparacino How To Ruin Your Life (Without Even Noticing That You Are)
i just want to work in a small museum in italy where i translate latin manuscripts and talk to college kids about the ancient world before walking to my little apartment by the sea to drink tea and watch the sunset while chopin plays in the background. is that too much to ask?
let these dark academia valentines do the talking for you
this is the actual best picture, there is simply not a better image
The Bolshoi dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze being rehearsed by the 87-year old Galina Ulanova captured by photographer Mikhail Logvinov
my playlists (+ descriptions)
asparagus is in season: character playlist for francis abernathy from the secret history
dark academia but it’s girls: imagine the secret history, dead poets society, and if we were villains but all the male characters are replaced with female counterparts
donna tartt’s walkman: some music donna tartt probably listened to from her bennington days into her secret history days; also evokative of a sexually ambiguous classics student from a homoerotic dark academia novel
the holy trinity: florence, mitski, and hozier
prep school nostalgia: best of my effy stonem phase
scary girl fall: inspired by the gory girls from suspiria, midsommar, the vvitch, the moth diaries, and ginger snaps
turtleneck season: 'tis the season to become the pretentious protagonist of a modern greek tragedy (dark academia but it’s girls pt. 2)
slavic androgynous bette davis and the incongruous meathead: playlist for the goldfinch starring russian vampire and erudite sad boy
ode to the 2010s: music that shaped me in my formative years
Some stunning classical pieces that highlight the violin:
Camille Saint-Saëns, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28
Dmitri Shostakovich, Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77
Tomaso Antonio Vitali, Chaconne in G minor
Maurice Ravel, Tzigane
Giuseppe Tartini, Violin Sonata in G minor (Devil’s Trill Sonata)
Jean Sibelius, Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47
William Walton, Violin Concerto
Pablo de Sarasate, Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20
Johannes Brahms, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Max Bruch, Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Johann Sebastian Bach, Partita No. 2
Clara Schumann, Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22
Ludwig van Beethoven, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Aram Khachaturian, Violin Concerto in D minor
Fritz Kreisler, Praeludium and Allegro in the style of Pugnani
Jules Massenet, Méditation
Sergei Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19
Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending
“I am too young and I’ve loved you too much.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky / The Brothers Karamazov
hi just a reminder this was the decade that lemony snicket wrote ‘I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong’ and I think it is the greatest love poem in existence
me: *wailing dramatically in a long Victorian dress with a lit candelabra down one of the many dimly lit corridors of my gothic mansion at midnight*
my spouse: *turning on the hall light* we fucking talked about this
Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, all dark, all romantic. When I say “romantic,” I mean a sensibility that sees everything, and has to express everything, and still doesn’t know what the fuck it is, it hurts that bad. It just madly tries to speak whatever it feels, that can mean vast things. That mentality can turn a sun-kissed orange into a flaming meteorite, and make it sound like that in a song. -
Jeff Buckley
what does your bio mean? "the sea was never blue" ?
Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.
— The Sea Was Never Blue, Maria Michela Sassi
What, from a cursory glance, appears blue generally has more to say. You lift a precious stone to the sunlight and it lights up, it refracts, but there’s always a side you can’t see. If you think you’ve thought of it all, think a little longer. There’s always more to consider.
connections between the humane, the monstrous, and the divine:
1. “Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable–your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers–and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.” (richard siken, from editor’s pages: black telephone)
2. “Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?” (clarice lispector, the hour of the star)
3. “This beast, this angel is both you and I.” (adrienne rich, from the complete poems: this beast, this angel)
4. “Frankenstein not only gives form to the dialetic of monstrosity itself and raises questions about the pleasures and dangers of textual production, it also demands a rethinking of the entire Gothic genre in terms of who rather than what is the object of terror. By focusing upon the body as the locus of fear, Shelley’s novel suggests that it is people (or at least bodies) who terrify people, not ghosts or gods, devils or monks, windswept castles or labyrinthine monasteries.” (j. halberstam, skin shows: gothic horror and the technology of monsters)
5. “Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed.” (umberto eco, the name of the rose)
6. “But girls contain multitudes. We are made up of so many odd parts. The reason that the monster in Frankenstein is so memorable is that, when it opens its mouth, out comes the voice of an alienated teenage girl.” (heather o’neill, portrait of the artist as a young corpse)
7. “God should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men.” (elisabeth hewer, wishing for birds)
8. “I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.” (fyodor dostoevsky, the brothers karamazov)
Not to sound Romantic or anything, but I too have a striking fascination with the irrational, the demonic and the grotesque.
Don’t fret, my little one. Fly! Everything’s going to be all right. Fly, my Heart.
– John Berger, Into Their Labours: Lilac and Flag
i made a quiz: which iconic fairytale lady are you?
there are 20 possible results, with characters both familiar and obscure: beauty from beauty and the beast, princess kaguya, snegurochka, cinderella, the nightingale from death and the nightingale, the little mermaid, sleeping beauty, baba yaga, the fairy godmother, the snow queen, thumbelina, the evil queen, little red riding hood, goldilocks, the goose girl, bluebeard’s bride, vasilisa the beautiful, rapunzel, and janet from tam lin.
please do reblog + tag with your results; thanks so much if you take it!
rawest fucking hozier lyrics in no particular order:
i’d suffer hell if you’d tell me what you’d do to me tonight
heat of her breath in my mouth; im alive
i’d be the choiceless hope in grief that drove him underground
idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword
and when the earth is trembling on some new beginning with the same sweet shock of when adam first came
every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside
the stench of the sea and the absence of green are the death of all things that are seen and unseen
if I was born as a blackthorn tree i’d wanna be felled by you, held by you, fuel the pyre of your enemies
some like to imagine the dark caress of someone else, I guess any thrill will do
before the wave hits, marveling at god; before he feels alone one final time and marries the sea
betray the moon as acolyte on first and fierce affirming sight
i have never known peace like the damp grass that yields to me, I have never known hunger like these insects that feast on me
screaming the name of a foreigner’s god; the purest expression of grief
sweet and right and merciful, i’m all but washed in the tide of her breathing
but you don’t know the hell you put me through; to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you
so i try to talk refined for fear that you find out how i’m imagining you
my head was war, my skin was soaked, I called your name ‘til the fever broke
be still, my indelible friend, you are unbreaking
remember me, love, when i’m reborn as a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn
