Category Archives: Delusional Grandeur Tour

“You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don’t need to do that anymore.”  – Alexander McQueen

The final bend of The Delusional Grandeur Tour Book is at hand, and it will hopefully be a breath of fresh air for those who got bogged down by all the darkness and bad bunny behavior of what came before. On this last leg of our journey, we head into a more spiritual, yet realistic realm. The notions of pain, hurt, retribution, fantasy, glamour and excess are beginning to be reconciled, and there will soon be a dismantling of a past lived almost entirely behind a stage curtain.

This is the start of the awakening.

An open door.

A portal to a world where the past peacefully cohabitates with the present, and the future lurks temptingly around corners.

Locked cabinets, hidden drawers, and the sheen of a thickly-lacquered veneer – so many shields, so many defenses, all coated in glossy shine.

This is the beginning of learning to let secrets slumber.

Certain silks are better left undisturbed.

Not all dust is bad.

In stone and wood, a certain wisdom resides.

The wisdom of nature, of an order pre-destined and established beyond our sense of time.

It is stalwart, steady and true.

There is clarity in leaving some things obscured.

If you can wrap your head around that and let the need for all-knowing absolute certainty go, you will find that clarity.

Then you will find serenity, and perhaps even a purpose.

We seek to defy chaos.

We wish to restore order.

We want it all to make sense.

There is a time to be like stone, a time to be sturdy like wood.

And then there is a time to be like water – fluid and flexible, able to freeze, able to flow, and able to evaporate.

In beauty there is peace.

In my palm, I hold a prayer.

There are different delusions that see us through the day.

They need not be dark or destructive to effect change.

They need not be disturbing or devastating to make a mark.

Some delusions are grand in other ways – in their prettiness, silliness, or frivolity.

Some delusions exist only for the moment.

Some delusions are merely…fashion.

That doesn’t make them any less powerful.

Quite the contrary…

Can a shoe change the world?

Can a piece of pretty silk make a difference in a life?

Depends on the shoe.

Depends on the life.

When the world goes dark, and the shit gets real, the only thing to do is go delusional.

These pretty things, these gorgeous scents, these flights of olfactory fantasy – they help me escape. They help us all escape.

The devil lurks in the scarlet details, in the blood moon and the blood-shot eye. He tempts with strange fruit and awaits his prey. Red as the pomegranate seed and metallic as the rust, the air is acrid and thick with smoke.

There are ways to hide, such as in a disguise – the prettier the better – of an orange coat, a fuchsia scarf and a plaid wool bag woven in shades of rose fire.

There are ways to blend in – a smoky match to the heavy air, in amber and musk – where you can envelop yourself in a fragrance that mirrors the autumn and burns into the air its own beauty.

Reclining on tufted velvet, in sensuous delight, he raises a starfruit onto his tongue while more forbidden fruit, sweet and soothing to the mouth, waits in tempting anticipation.

Pulling silk around his neck, he feels like dying a little, but the fragrance of the Amalfi shore reminds him of the beauty in this world, bringing him to a place that he’s never even been.

Maybe that’s the point of these silly scented trinkets.

Maybe they mask the sad futility of it all.

Maybe they are Absolutely Vital.

“If it’s going to stress you out to have a sense of style, don’t do it. The important thing is to be comfortable so you can get on with your life. But I do feel people miss a lot, if that’s how they approach style. They miss out on this whole creative experience.” ~ Iris Apfel

We have arrived at the start of the long, final bend of the tour book. The demons have been vanquished, but vestiges linger. Memories haunt the mind and litter the mental landscape in ways that last beyond their actual existence. Altered and changed, the world is clearer but dimmer. While the imagery is lighter and more seemingly frivolous, the message cuts a little deeper. Without the metaphoric hyperbole of such extremes, things feel more real. More sad, too, because the honest and true look at how things really are can’t help but be imbued with melancholy. Only simpletons maintain happiness in the face of fact.

Some of us – myself included – indulge in merriment and material highs to get us through this world’s darker moments. I splurge on fragrances from Tom Ford, Hermès, Prada and Diana Vreeland to act as a buffer against the deadening sprawl of mundaneness.

Decadent delights, and treats so delicate and sweet they melt in your mouth – these pass the time and cheer the mind. It is impossible to trudge in shoes this pretty – and so we float. It may merely be fantasy, but more exists solely in our heads than could ever be conjured in our sordid air.

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

01)  Intro/Curtain – Part One, Part Two, Part Three

02)  Sunset Pool – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

03)  On The Road Hotel – Part One, Part Two, Part Three

04)  Rock Star Addict – Part One, Part Two, Part Three

05)  Animal Demons – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

06)  Steam Punk Birdcage – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

07) Red Riding Wood - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

08) Winter Top Hat - Part One, Part Two

09) Warrior Retribution - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight

“Together they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.” ~ Markus Zusak

 

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

When the metallic scent of blood is in the air, and your hands are sticky with iron, there is always the temptation to flee. When the saw blade screams its shrill warning and the atmosphere is thick with dread, there is the desire to shriek.

Do not run. Do not yell. Simply submit.

It is easier that way.

There are some things from which you cannot escape.

Your blood is but one of them.

The stains of your sins are another.

Some scars can never be washed away.

As for what you have done…

And everything you are about to do…

There will be retribution – even for the grandest of warriors.

The heart sends every one of us to battle.

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

“The Warrior of the Light is a believer. Because he believes in miracles, miracles begin to happen. Because he is sure that his thoughts can change his life, his life begins to change. Because he is certain that he will find love, love appears.” ~ Paulo Coelho

The sad thing about many lives – my own included – is that we are always on the defensive. Always ready to fight. Always ready to counterattack. So we do it.

We fight.

We go to battle.

We go to war.

We move through it and if we’re lucky we survive.

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength.” – Frances de Sales

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

The Warrior, then, in his armor and skin, a juxtaposition of defense and vulnerability in one puzzling form. Some battles are begun before we even know what and why we’re fighting. The list for carnage is not solely limited to the animal realm. Certain humans have it too. Never the ones who reluctantly put on their armor and charge into the world to defend something worthy of risk, but those who gleefully gain the submission of others. The bloodthirsty who rarely realize such a want can never be satiated. They will try, though, and the battle to safeguard the world from them falls to the warriors who only fight when absolutely necessary.

Which side is this warrior on? Ahh, that is the question. Many a noble-seeming soldier has turned in the end, many a righteous warrior has fallen victim to glory. That’s the real danger, isn’t it? Who can stay steadfast to the marrow…

“A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature – of what we call a capacious mind, which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.” ~ Inazo Nitobe

“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” – Sun Tzu

“The dance of battle is always played to the same impatient rhythm. What begins in a surge of violent motion is always reduced to the perfectly still.” – Sun Tzu

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

“The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one’s guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms.” ~ Maxine Hong Kingston, ‘The Woman Warrior’

“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.”
~ Maxine Hong Kingston, ‘The Woman Warrior’

“Then I said something I’ve always known.

I don’t know where it came from.

I didn’t get it from you, shall we say

And I didn’t make it up,

But I’ve known it for all my life.

‘Elegance,’ I said, ‘is refusal.'” Diana Vreeland

“We’re all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we’re alive together during the same moment.”
~ Maxine Hong Kingston, ‘The Woman Warrior’

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

The snow was silent. It fell in the night. The soft coos of an owl disappeared into the thick blanket of white. During this, I slept, and the forest was dark to me. Unaware of what flew above and what scurried below, I drifted in a dreamland, lost in hazy focus and soft edges. I slept to escape. I thought I slept to find oblivion. It turns out that I slept to restore, to rejoin, and to reload.

Dreams of magic, of top-hatted magicians, filled the night. Wands of quicksilver slipped solid from their fingers to drip onto mine. All the while, more and more snow fell until I couldn’t see anything but white. In the deep winter, our deepest slumber brings a peaceful respite. There is magic in the passing of a season.

Magic in the night…

Magic in the hat…

Magic in the hoot of an owl…

Who – the head-spinning wise bird asks in the darkness – who, who?

All of my delusions spill into the night, from the lofty branches of a tree to the second floor vantage point of our pied-a-terre.

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

Upcoming Stops: New York, NY; Washington, DC; Boston, MA; Cape Cod, MA…