Musikalische Würfelspiele
I have been silent for too long. Nothing, I'm sorry to say, has changed, L has not fallen as deeply for me as I have for her; we do not now live blissfully together.
But time presses; until I have the leisure to post something more considered, I offer an aleatoric build-your-own-Lovelorn-Swain-post-to-LIAC kit. Simply roll dice to determine the order of the following elements, and then connect them with verbs, conjunctions, participles and particles.
1. A comparison of L and goddesses of antiquity
2. A splenetic reference to her boyfriend
3. Generalised reflections on the loutishness of the modern young man
4. Unfounded jealousy of the innocent
5. Pretentious phrases in French, German, Latin and Greek, ad libitum
6. Reference to sexually-transmitted diseases, the rarer and more alarming in their symptoms the better.
7. Yearning for repetition of long-past physical contact between Swain and L.
8. Bitter acknowledgement that such contact unlikely ever to happen again.
9. Physical and emotional collapse
It helps to be drunk; I advise the finer wines, those that, if entertaining so-called friends and visiting the cellar for another bottle, one might, even in one's cups, say, "bugger, I"m not giving those bastards this, far too good for them". Or good brandy.
But time presses; until I have the leisure to post something more considered, I offer an aleatoric build-your-own-Lovelorn-Swain-post-to-LIAC kit. Simply roll dice to determine the order of the following elements, and then connect them with verbs, conjunctions, participles and particles.
1. A comparison of L and goddesses of antiquity
2. A splenetic reference to her boyfriend
3. Generalised reflections on the loutishness of the modern young man
4. Unfounded jealousy of the innocent
5. Pretentious phrases in French, German, Latin and Greek, ad libitum
6. Reference to sexually-transmitted diseases, the rarer and more alarming in their symptoms the better.
7. Yearning for repetition of long-past physical contact between Swain and L.
8. Bitter acknowledgement that such contact unlikely ever to happen again.
9. Physical and emotional collapse
It helps to be drunk; I advise the finer wines, those that, if entertaining so-called friends and visiting the cellar for another bottle, one might, even in one's cups, say, "bugger, I"m not giving those bastards this, far too good for them". Or good brandy.
posted by Lovelorn Swain | 8:13 am
Lovelorn, I had to try this. I began with drinking copious amounts of wine as suggested. Then, I pulled random phrases from your blog (one for each type listed) shuffled them up, and here's the result:
Her face has a refined beauty that seems to me to have something medieval about it, like a portrait of a Madonna from a Book of Hours. Her absence is palpable, something real and solid; or, at another time, there seems to me to be a perfume to her non-presence.
I found a photograph of her boyfriend on the web the other day. I've seen him a few times, but never had the opportunity to study him, to see why she finds him attractive. I wish I could say I looked at it and thought what an ill-favoured bastard. But he looks young, handsome, sensitive and sensual (but he's not tall, the camera hides that). Yes there's an element of loutishness, but that's to be expected.
Awake, I wonder about her and the boyfriend. She's gone away, I think without him, and I have a sense that there's been some sort of crisis.
True she may merely think me silly, and that is an unlikely prelude to falling in love with me; but I would rather that she thought me silly than a bore, or worse still, thought of me not at all.
If grey-eyed Athene at La Douleur Exquise, whose insights into the work of Catullus are far deeper than mine, will allow me, I say Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire.
Last night the BM returned and I drank and drank and drank.
Okay...so there wasn't one for every item listed...but the wine and vicarious despair were more than I could bear and I had to stop.
Thanks: I'm sure the multiple languages thing is easily achieved: all you need is that intellectual arrogance that comes to every Englishman at birth. And on the Internet, no one can hear our execrable accents.
Tree, I think your efforts create something rich and strange out of what is after all rather unpromising material.
I went mad in a bookshop yesterday, while considerably but decorously drunk and have bought some obscure Georges Bataille. We shall see how this affects my style.