The final section of this song features sentences taken from Emile Zola's Nana.
lyrics
The Marquess of Queensberry did not accuse
Oscar Wilde of sodomy
But, rather, of the much more specific fault of “posing as a sodomite”
Or, as the illiterate belligerent actually wrote,
POSING AS SOMDOMITE
And perhaps the muttonchopped maniac, whispers still on London lips about his eldest son’s so-called accidental death, was closer to the truth than he ever could have known.
The crime is always the pose.
Didn’t make eye contact with the audience,
Didn’t make eye contact with the audience,
Didn’t make eye contact with the audience
Didn’t make eye contact
Mumbled and spoke in a voice much too quiet for
people at the back
The pose is always the crime.
Felons and artists conceal their identity;
Scrap queers his face in the late nineteenth-century.
Limited eye contact the audience
Somewhat projected their voice to the audience
The mask will tell you all you need to know.
We are a costume, not a culture
Don’t be trivial about your make-up
Superior eye contact with the audience
Commence the carousel
Cancel and recommence
History turns as a pageant before your burning eyes
What you call you flickers at random intervals.
The mists on the river, the brown fogs shaping shadows,
Shading the monstrous faces you recognize in night-time constellations.
There is distance between the world and me
And a quivering, always quivering in between.
Petals
Reflected in a shallow pool
Petals
Fallen in a shallow pool
The mask is perfumed
It vibrates between me and objects
Like air on a hot afternoon
Let me live in your world of lavender-water and sweat.
Wearing an outfit of clothes borrowed from your lover’s lover
She was applying the white grease-paint with the corner of a towel. She had picked up the hare’s paw and was lightly stroking it over her skin with great concentration.
She went on covering herself with rice-powder, taking care not to put any on her cheek-bones. Holding her face close to the mirror, she began dipping her finger in a jar and rubbing on the rouge under her eyes, spreading it gently along to her temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence. She had dipped her brush in a jar of mascara and, with her nose pressed hard against the mirror, closing her left eye, she stroked it delicately between her lashes. With her finger she now added two broad strokes of rouge on her lips.
credits
from Sweeping Tendrils,
released July 29, 2019
Voice: Lieke van der Voort
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