The Lovely Kiddo

Suzanne, I love this photo of you.

You photograph beautifully (which is a way to say you possess physical beauty without sounding superficial). ;-)

I like the way you manage to look slightly beheaded but without creeping me out.

Normally, being beheaded would creep me out.

Your funny deflection of self-consciousness engages the viewer.

I am going to try to go see if I can "Bridget Riley" you.

I only think the beheading thing occurs to me because it's been an artistic convention to represent severed heads with the gaze directed in the upper left quadrantish area.

I don't know if that was based upon observation by artists, say during the French Revolution or one of the other historical periods in which this horrible thing was practiced.

And now you can drink in that one bar in Paris where Monsieur Guillotine (one of the actual real ones used!) is present, I believe.

The French.

Sigh.

I know it was supposed to have been an advancement and a humanitarian method of execution (certainly much better than the chopping block where the axe man might have to have a second go at you! Remember Anne Boleyn practicing laying down her head?) but I think there was a strain of Dantean thought going on in its employment during the French Revolution.

I think they wanted to accentuate the divorce between reason (the head) and selfish corporeal desire (the gluttony and carnality of the body) to make a point about Enlightenment values having teeth in them.

But I could be wrong.

Maybe everything was just heading towards mass production and speed.

Maybe Monseiur Guillotine was just another part of the Industrial Revolution.

I like to think of a musical or a children's book in which Mr. Peanut and Monsieur Guillotine meet and fall in love.

Wouldn't that be pretty?

But not as pretty as you, Suzanne.

I hope I can do that BR thing.

I'll be chuffed if I can.

But what's a good pretentious English word for it if I don't.

Knackered won't work, will it?