“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.” â€• F. Scott Fitzgerald

Before any downfall, be it of a person or a civilization, there is a glorious heyday – a stretch of glory and fun and decadent celebration when the world feels at its fullest. These are the days when the only thing one worries about is where the next font of fun will be found – at the end of a meal, at the bottom of a bottle, or at the edge of the next project.

We doll ourselves up because what else is there to do? Idleness has started more wars than we realize. The human spirit no longer finds contentment in being still and silent. Maybe it never did.

Still, we aim to sparkle. We aim to astound. We aim to be more than the bodies and shells we inhabit.

Decked out in lace, bound by strands of silk, and corseted by grommeted brocade, we spin and twirl and tread across a land that will soon be barren.

We do not know this then.

We do not want to know.

We want only to want…

PVRTD

The New Project

November 2018

ALANILAGAN.com

From ‘The Pink Triangle’ by Richard Plant: “Perhaps the Nazi Party’s most explicit statement on homosexuality is the one it published on May 14, 1928, in response to a query about its stance toward reform of Paragraph 175. It is worth quoting in full:

It is not necessary that you and I live, but it is necessary that the German people live. And it can only live if it can fight, for life means fighting. And it can only fight if it maintains its masculinity. It can only maintain its masculinity if it exercises discipline, especially in matters of love. Free love and deviance are undisciplined, therefore, we reject you, as we reject anything that hurts our nation.

Anyone who thinks of homosexual love is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is a fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally. Natural history teaches us the opposite. Might makes right. The strong will always win over the weak. Let us see to it that we once again become the strong! But this we can achieve only in one way – the German people must once again learn how to exercise discipline. We therefore reject any form of lewdness, especially homosexuality, because it robs us of our last chance to free our people from the bondage which now enslaves us.”

On this bed all the pleasures of the world in a single strand of silk!

All the tease, all the want, all the carnal desire running through the thinnest silken cord, wound round and round, tighter and tighter…

All your fantasies laid bare but for a bit of lace…

Rip it off.

Rip it all off.

Like a second skin, scant shell…

Be savage as you ravage

this body, this bed…

Seduction carries an inherent danger when an imbalance of power exists.

But you like the danger too.

The redness of the skin

The bruising of the body

The trickle of blood and its metallic taste on the tongue.

Like tasting winter…

“Among the homosexuals were exceptional people whose deviance could be called tragic; on the other hand [there were] also cheap hustlers and blackmailers. The prisoners with the pink triangle never lived long. They were exterminated by the SS quickly and systemically.” – Raimund Schnabel

PVRTD

November 2018

The Projects Page

www.ALANILAGAN.com

“Such degenerates have no right to existence in a well-regulated bourgeois society, and they have no gift for doing so. They endanger society to a high degree and they do so as long as they live. Medical science has found no way to cure these victims of an organic disturbance. They should be put away for life…” ~ Richard von Krafft-Ebing, ‘The Deviant Sexual Male Before the Court of Justice’ 

Black and white photographic decadence, captured from a bit in the boudoir, teases and hints at the upcoming ‘PVRTD’ project. Grainy images from a faded television, a glimpse of the past through a present lens, flickering lights, wavering shadows… they each play a part. Darkness descends with the arrival of night.

The strange inherent contradiction of lace – the way it is both cool and warm at once – and the morbid, mourning, passion-filled color of black – the color that contains all colors – and the juxtaposition of sex and death, implored or implied, bleeds into these pre-proceedings.

What the eye detects, what the web of lace conceals, what the fuck is so jarring about the luxury of a night? A rumble in the distance – clap of thunder, dropped bomb, rolling truck – static and fuzz and tension.

An invitation. A hesitancy. A furtive look.

Coquettish innocence armed with a poisoned prick.

Peek-a-boo.

Defiant and compliant, with promises of pleasure and perhaps the palpitation of pain in the face of what is to come. Who will make it through the night?

“These efforts are nothing but vulgar, perverted crimes and we will punish them by banishment or hanging…”

PVRTD

November 2018

The Projects Page

www.ALANILAGAN.com

There is far too much anger and sorrow on the internet these days. I count myself among those who may not always help the situation, particularly on my Twitter feed in which I do my best to counter all the awfulness and fact-skewing nonsense out there. This blog has largely steered clear of such stuff, unless something really egregious happens. (If certain bigots would stop fucking with marriage equality then everything would be fine.)

Thankfully there are spaces of warmth and safety, places we can visit without the constant barrage of bad news, hateful comments and miserable trolls. I’m still trying to make this one of those destinations. To that end, here’s a pretty sunset from upstate New York.

Lightly rubbing a crayon over the sheet of construction paper, I concentrate on picking up only the faintest outline of the leaf’s veins. The stronger ones show through, revealing the shadowy image of the inner-workings of this remnant of oak. I don’t know which I like better – the pointy-edged leaves or the rounder ones. Each is beautiful in its own way. The rounded ones have better veining though, giving them the edge.

The school art tasks of fall were the respite I found when feeling homesick or riddled with social anxiety. They were silent activities for the most part, and carried out on solitude – the best kind of task for my frame of mind. The teacher would give instruction, then we’d separate into smaller groups and fend for ourselves with the materials at hand. I liked those moments almost as much as silent reading time (easily my favorite part of elementary school), not only for the creative artistic aspect of the work, but for the safety of being alone. Maybe it’s strange that a boy would feel safer when alone than with a school mate; such was my favored lot in childhood. How close self-possession is to self-obsession. As a child, I was no more obsessed with myself than any other kid was, but I suppose that’s the lot of youth too – thinking only of ourselves to ensure our survival.

Fall saw all the animals scrambling for similar self-preservation. The squirrels and chipmunks have been rounding up their winter stash for weeks. The geese have been making motions of heading south. There is a frantic excitement in the air now that the days have turned over to reveal the full chill of the season. The push and pull of time and tense lends friction to our motion. We have begun the hustle to winter.

Little-known fact: I’ve had a YouTube channel for a few years now. 

I just never really did anything with it. 

A requisite whale watching video. (Yawn.)

A Madonna video from her Rebel Heart Tour stop in Boston (and one featuring her son David’s birthday).

A gratuitous Speedo swim.

A flowing summer caftan.

A pair of boisterous twins.

A cherry tree shedding its blossoms. 

A hint of a new project. 

For some reason, YouTube was, and largely remains, just a frivolous afterthought. As much as it trounces all other social media sites, dwarfing even FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram, I just never liked it much. That was my typical Thoreau-like aversion to present day trends and technology. My niece and nephew, however, shamed me into stepping up my YouTube game when they poked fun at the fact that I only had 40 subscribers. If you have to get schooled by a pair of eight-year-olds, you’re already lagging behind. So, let this be my game attempt at posting more videos and shedding another veil. Now please go and Subscribe to my channel to show my niece and nephew that I did make something out of my life! 

The camera catches things the mirror can’t.

The way we hide.

The way we avert our eyes.

We can trick the mirror because we are the one on the other side.

You can’t trick the camera.

It has its own tricks, to be sure, but its gaze is more penetrating than the mirror.

We have control over what the mirror will reflect.

The camera will see us as it sees fit.

We don’t always like what it sees.

Sometimes, we want the lies that only the mirror can tell.

Because yes, it has two sides.

We can believe the lies.

We want to believe in them.

Life is easier when cradled in a cocoon of untruths.

Laura Argiri once wrote in her magnificent book ‘The God in Flight’, “Growing up is the slow process of learning to tell oneself the truth.”

Forty-three years into this life, I find it may be time to grow the fuck up.

PVRTD

The New Project

NOVEMBER 2018