The Purple Fruit

Monday, 21 November 2011

SEIRENES/EROS/VOLUPTAS

All of art, all of creation is about Death at its core. About acceptance and our rage against inevitability and our confusion and hurt- It is about our lives being defined by something other than their finite end point- not just about what we create to leave behind, but how violently, vibrantly and beautifully we can live.

Sirens; Women with bodies of Birds, "charming perils," "monsters of the sea," in equal measures treacherous, mystifying and seductive, violent and soothing, beautiful and grotesque. The infamous, murderous Bird-Women of Greek Mythology and the subject and overarching metaphor of this work.

Thursday, 8 September 2011

SEIRENES

SEIRENES/EROS/VOLUPTAS

“So they sent their ravishing voices out across the air, and the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer”

Homer. Oddysey. Kamillon. 12.192

“Their song, though irresistibly sweet, was no less sad than sweet, and lapped both body and soul in a fatal lethargy, the forerunner of death and corruption,”

Walter Copland Perry-^ Perry, "The sirens in ancient literature and art",

"Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never”

1917, Franz Kafka; “The Silence of the Sirens”

“lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses rotting away, rags of skin shrivelling on their bones”

^ Odyssey 12.45–6, Fagles' translation

“Nesting on a pile of human bones, the sisters sang to the sun and rain; their song had the power to calm or to stoke the winds and to inflame men's loins. This music was irresistible, luring many a sailor to their shore -- where he'd pine away without food or drink, unable to break the sirens' spell.”

Terri Windling “Sirens and other Daemon lovers”