End of Year Ruminations

Well, what can one say. Some regular readers here might recall that I am most certainly tapped into the ideas around Hauntology, a philosophy that maintains that, as individuals but perhaps more importantly as a society, we are haunted by the ghosts of what could have been, along with another idea that seems to me to be becoming more evident with each passing year, The Slow Cancellation of the Future, and this philosophy pretty much sums up how I feel about our current society.

In 1994 the Manic Street Preachers released their magnum opus, The Holy Bible, an album that is arguably the most powerful ever recorded, and which will, in time, if humanity remains, I maintain be viewed in a similar light to Picasso's Guernica, and which has a devastating song on it entitled 'The Intense Humming of Evil.' I am a member of a Music League competition where the contestants submit a song for a different themed round each week, and the theme for the last round of this season is to submit a song that sums up the past twelve months. Is it any wonder that 'The Intense Humming of Evil' is the song that immediately sprang into my mind. The wars and carnage and intense cruelty and callousness our species has inflicted on each other and on the non-human world has been on a scale far beyond what I expected to see in my lifetime. And not only does the whole situation break my heart, but it also reminds me of why I am so interested in and almost soothed by the music, art and ideas of Hauntology, for it at least helps me make some sense of our insane, late-Capitalist world, but it also transports me back to when I used to watch programmes like Tomorrow's World, which promised us a glittering future where there were no diseases, technology did all the shitty jobs and chores, meaning that human beings would have more time that they could devote to the worship of art and beauty, for meaningful things and for solving problems. Space travel would be as normal as flying on a plane, and there would be no more war or hunger or starvation. And these are the kinds of mesmerising, new sounds that sound-tracked it all. The future seemed like it was going to be the greatest place in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPp_xImWYRs

But how different and precarious it all seems now.

And which brings me back to the Manics...
It is now five years since I last saw them in concert (the last time I was able to was in 2019 because I had to shield for so long because of the pandemic), and I missed their 2021 Ultra Vivid Lament tour (the first one I've missed since 1997), and I also couldn't attend this year's glorious double-header with my equally beloved London Suede, as outdoor venues are also a no-go for me. Thank the stars, however, that I was able to attend a very special, one-off additional screening of Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave concert film of their 2016 Holy Bible concerts that had a Q&A afterwards with the one and only Nicky Wire.

Being in the second row for the film was truly extraordinary, and the power of the music, the words, the Manics' delivery and everything around the performance was off the radar. I have a wonderful connection with birds - we have two gorgeous seagulls (Mr and Mrs. Kehaar) who nest each year on the roof just outside our window - but this year I think all three of their chicks fledged too soon and didn't make it, which is almost too distressing to reflect on in any depth - and when James Dean Bradfield was singing the terrifying and heart-breaking refrain, "No birds!" in 'Mausoleum', I literally thought I was going to shatter. Those lines hit me so incredibly hard, and I could feel the tears streaming down my face. But Mr and Mrs. Kehaar have taught me a vital lesson, for as I am writing this, right now, in December, I can quite literally hear them pretty much every afternoon arriving to inspect their love nest ready for next year's brood. And every time they arrive to inspect and tidy up their nest it is accompanied by the most exquisite sounds (if anybody ever tells me that herring gulls can't communicate with each other I'm afraid I will have to tell them to go and give their head a wobble), of excited cries, and the most wonderful, genuinely happy little chatter that they exchange with each other. It absolutely melts my heart. It is devastatingly sweet and romantic, and to my mind it is their version of how I feel when my fine lady and I are getting ready to go out on one of our occasional dinner dates, and we have our favourite music playing (The White Lotus soundtrack, for example), and my neurons are firing off rapidly in my brain making me feel decidedly tipsy and ecstatic even before a drop of wine has passed my lips. And for the past week or so they have done this every single day, and I can actually feel their love of life and their love for each other emanating from them. They did quite obviously grieve in the summer when their chicks didn't make it as it was very subdued when the nest was suddenly empty, but my goodness, they have shown astonishing resilience and are now as bouncy and energetic as they were when I first saw and heard them in May 2023. Mr and Mrs. Kehaar, you are an inspiration and a refuge from the insanity and cruelness of human society and I salute you.

As well as the Manics' incredible concert film I have also managed to connect with some very fine art this year, and going to the cinema or a theatre still seems such a novelty after four years of not being able to attend due to the pandemic, and this makes the occasional visits I can now make seem even more like a gift from the gods (which, it actually is, and always has been). 

First up were three quite incredible films that I was able to watch in our local, beautiful art deco cinema. The first one was Poor Things, and I loved every second of it. The storyline, the script, the performances, the very decadent (darlings!) Oscar Wilde inspired set, it really did tick all of my boxes. There was also The Zone of Interest, which was so immensely powerful it almost became too painful to watch, and was made all the more relevant by the horrific atrocities that are being visited upon people in far off places that seems to show absolutely no signs of abating. And then, saving me from complete misanthropy and despair, and giving me hope and belief in the species homo-sapiens when it had almost all but disappeared, there was All of us Strangers. Oh my goodness. Be calm my trembling heart. I am not going to say much more of it right now as I intend to do an in depth post on it in the near future, but what a searching, soul-shattering (and then putting it back together) film it truly is. Just extraordinary.

I have also had the immense good fortune to read some wonderful books this year, of which my favourites were Walter Pater's Sebastian Van Storck, which although only a short story, contained a wealth of meaning and symbolism, and I am still going through the very many articles and chapters that have been written about this strange and haunting story. And a sensational novella by Guiseppi de Lampedusa called The Professor and the Siren, which was utterly enchanting. If any of you faithful readers have a taste for exotic and decadent storytelling, I can recommend both of these works very highly. They have a world that you can almost disappear into, and I have found that very consoling during this year of, even by human standards, intolerably high levels of barbarity. I have also spent some quite glorious time with the poets John Milton and William Wordsworth this year, thanks to two utterly fascinating zoom classes with Peter Brennan, a splendid teacher and Shakespeare scholar whom I met through an online course in 2022, and who has become someone I consider a genuine friend. Lydia and me actually got to meet him and his lovely wife in person, in the wild and not on screen, for the first time this summer, and it was as lovely as the wine we all indulged in. I sincerely hope there will be many more meetups in the future.

When I think of this year from a cultural perspective, however, the fact that I can now attend the theatre again has led me to explore more of a type of music and performance which I have always loved, but which has never quite been central to my aesthetic radar: opera! I started the year by finally reading a book I have wanted to read for what seems like a million years, aeons and aeons, in fact; The Queen's Throat by Wayne Koestenbaum.

If I had a tenner for each time this extraordinary book has been quoted or referenced in the many, myriad readings that are contained within my musical library - especially when discussing the truly great pop/rock/torch singers that I adore such as Freddie Mercury, Billy Mackenzie, Marc Almond and Scott Walker - I would be able to stay regularly at the Cafe Royal and take afternoon tea in the Oscar Wilde bar whilst I was there. It has been on my radar for so long that it had taken on mythological status in my ever enquiring mind, and when I finally had a copy of it in my hands (a magical gift from another dear friend of mine, Phil, who also happens to be a musical maestro), I could hardly believe my eyes and senses, and hoped beyond hope that the actual book itself wouldn't be a crushing disappointment compared with how I had built it up in my imagination. Dear reader. I needn't have worried. Take a quick glance at these few quotes...

'For a diva, difference is power; she finds power in her deviance. For the non-diva, however, difference only leads to ridicule.' 

'In the auditorium, I seek refuge from the contemporary world, as I hide, immersed in opera, from life's failure to be operatic.'

'The diva's home, a stage, is a shrine to itself: it teaches the fan that home should be as grand as opera, that home is not a place in which one should tolerate diminishment.'

"Dorothy, in life that first impression is very important. So, always, at all times, exude confidence and let your bosoms lead you." (Veteran opera singer Mary Garden's advice to up and coming opera singer, Dorothy Kirsten.

These are just a few that I have chosen to share, but the book is filled with glorious, camp, moving, and hilarious passages about opera, opera divas, and the pains and joys of being an opera fan. It increased my knowledge of opera considerably, and then, to my great joy, my beautiful innamorata and myself were able to attend a live performance of Bizet's Carmen at our local theatre. I was in seventh heaven and to my eternal delight, a friend of ours who joined us at the theatre took this rather splendid picture of my fine lady and I on our way into the theatre. Not only is it one of my favourite photos of the two of us from this year, it is actually one of my favourite pictures of us altogether...

Which pretty much brings me to the end of this year's ruminations. 

Many thanks to all of you who have spent time reading my words this past year, and I look forward to regaling you with more thoughts and cultural ramblings next year. Here's to a more peaceful world in 2025 (as unlikely as that seems), but it's something I will never stop hoping for, and I very much hope that the year ahead will bring you much enchantment of the heart.

I remain, your Nocturnal Butterfly

xxxx

"Horse": The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

 

Warning: contains spoilers.

Having just re-watched Werner Herzog's 1971 film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, for the first time in over twenty years, I am reminded why I have always maintained such a fondness for this slow moving and strangely haunting film. Loosely based on a true story, the film centres around Kaspar Hauser, a young man who has been kept locked in a tower for his entire life, until he is suddenly taught a few words, instructed how to stand up and walk, and then released into the world by an unknown man, with only a strange letter of description in his hand that can be read by whomever he happens to come across.

It is an unsettling film, and for much of the story it is obvious that Kaspar (superbly played by Bruno. S, a travelling musician that Herzog discovered and who, as well as never having acted before, had also spent episodes of his life in mental institutions) has more in common with the animals who are also tied up and sleep on straw, than any of the human beings he comes to interact with. After Kaspar attempts to flee from performing in a circus (in order to "pay his way," you understand) he is taken up by a kindly man from the middle-class, and he and his family (staff) try very patiently to teach him the ways of society. But Kaspar finds he simply cannot find his place in this utterly odd, bizarre world.

He is questioned relentlessly by religious folk, but he has the innocent wisdom of a child, and he is scolded when he responds to their enquiries and demands.

They demand faith, but to his uncorrupted, wise mind, this is nonsensical. Later, he is drilled by a teacher on logic, but, again, Kaspar simply finds

their ways and attitudes berserk and incomprehensible. His is a supremely intuitive intelligence and knowledge, and they are as far from understanding his intuitive wisdom as he is of theirs. When he is being questioned by a rich family from England on what his imprisonment was like, he shocks everybody with his response to their questions:

Later in the film, Kaspar is assaulted, it appears by the man who had released him from the tower, possibly his own father, and then towards the end of the film, stabbed and killed by the same man. It is an unfathomable and enigmatic ending to a very strange film. There are moments of genuine beauty and sadness, but what struck me on this watching was just how comical it also is. The early scenes where Kaspar is being taught to walk and speak are very humorous. And when he is learning to speak, his lack of knowledge of language gives the dialogue a distinctly surrealistic feel, such as when Kaspar continually blurts out the word "Horse!" at completely inopportune moments, and answers in the way he does because he hasn't remotely understood what was being asked:

It brings instantly to mind the strange feeling and understanding of dream conversations.

The music in the film also emphasises the mood, and from the very first opening bars of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, we know we are in for an emotional couple of hours, as the narrator of the film, over this sweeping, dramatic music, asks the viewer:

Kaspar learns to love music, and his conversation about his failure to be able to play the piano tugs resolutely at the heart strings...

In a later scene, Kaspar also flies from church because of the resolutely unmusical noise of the congregation...

I understand Kaspar only too well in this painful scene, as that is how I feel when Oasis or The Stone Roses are within hearing distance of my sensitive ears!

The other thing that really struck me whilst viewing the film this time around was the heavy influence of the German Romantic painter, Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840). Friedrich painted extremely haunting pictures of nature, along with portraits showing humans often isolated against the sublime elements. Herzog clearly has these pictures in mind with some of the scenes in Kaspar Hauser.

And, finally, what a brilliant and emotional watch The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is. It shows us just how artificial and absurd many human beliefs and interactions actually are, as the innocent and naïve Kaspar illustrates in his failure to comprehend some of the very basic religious and philosophical ideologies and beliefs that our society has agreed to rely on and accept as truth. Kaspar is suspiciously viewed as the animal or barbarian by the townsfolk he engages with, but he is gentle and kind, while they are the ones who tease him and try to make him perform mental gymnastics so they can instil their way of seeing the world onto him. Kaspar Hauser could almost be read as a symbol of all outsiders who can't find a place in this world and who see through the lies and machinations that are the oil that turns the wheel of our hypocritical, late-capitalist society. In this regard, he also put me in mind of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, another naïve character who finds himself thrust into the everyday theatre of human affairs, and who ends badly. Indeed, Kaspar has more connection with, and is closer to, the poor animals who are tied up, housed in stables of straw, and generally reduced to the status of non-sentient things, which is how humanity treats the vast majority of non-human life forms it interacts with. There is a beautiful moment in the film that captures Kaspar's close affinity to the animal world in a scene where he is attempting to feed a small chick, and is delighted when it finally takes some of the food he is offering from a stick. Kaspar makes a childlike sound of genuine delight when this happens, and this treasured moment highlights Kaspar's humanity with genuine poignancy. 

A beautiful, haunting and thought-provoking film.

Until next time, I remain,

Your Nocturnal Butterfly.

xxxx

Antony & Cleopatra (A Photo Essay)

 

"Antony and Cleopatra can be read as the fall of a great general, lured away by a treacherous strumpet, or else it can be viewed  as a true celebration of transcendental love."
- A. P. Rierner


"Here you shall make acquaintance with Cleopatra, 
that Being of Flame whose 

passion-breathing beauty 
shaped the destinies of whole Empires."

- H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra

"Since Antony clearly does not understand her, 
are we likely to do any better?"
- Harold Bloom


"Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra must needs be
 intolerable to the true Puritan."
- G.B. Shaw

Whilst studying some astonishing works of literature and art for my dissertation in 2012/13, which explored the question of whether the image of the femme fatale in mid to late 19th century literature and art was empowering or repressive to women, there was one historical and fictional character that began to emerge with increasing regularity in my research, and this person/persona soon began to take on mythological status in my ever enquiring mind: Cleopatra. And then, to my eternal delight, about seven or eight years ago, I was able to undertake a mesmeric in-depth study of Shakespeare's magisterial play, Antony & Cleopatra, and truly inspired, got the idea to do a set of pictures that I could use for my Artist of the Month series that I'd been invited to do at our wonderful, local vegan cafe. My exhibition piece was a great success, and, due to the huge enthusiasm with which it was received, I thought it would be more than appropriate to write an accompanying blog post to describe the relevance of  the pictures that I took, and discuss the extraordinary amount of criticism that has been penned, not only about Shakespeare's magnificent play, which will never diminish in power, but also the magnificent character/persona of Cleopatra herself. Dear reader, if you are unaware of this play, I can confidently assure you it is a mesmerising, glamorous, romantic, and utterly devastating piece of literature.

Shakespeare's version of Antony and Cleopatra (their story has been written by many other writers, too), tells, in principle, the story of the fiery, passionate relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, approximately dated as being around 30 BCE, with the backdrop being the unstable, tumultuous relationship between Egypt and Rome. Over different periods of history, Shakespeare's Cleopatra has been viewed in many different ways. In former times, she has been described as a gypsy, a strumpet, a slave, a royal wench, a boggler, and, my absolute favourite, "a lass unparalleled," which makes her sound like a Disco Queen from Dewsbury, swigging pints of Boddingtons bitter whilst driving all the boys (and ladies!) wild with her flashing, kohl-lined eyes, low-cut sparkling mini-dresses, and flirty dancing. But, over time, and especially in more recent years, Cleopatra has become something of a feminist icon. Instead of seeing her through some of those insecure, sometimes misogynistic spectacles I have just described, she is now often viewed through a different lens. Actors and artists now portray Cleopatra as a thoroughly modern woman, one who is sharp of mind and wit, resilient rather than soft, and one who is in possession of immense intelligence, and who is a skilled diplomatic communicator, rather than the one previously viewed as being little more than a creature dominated by uncontrollable and overwhelming passions. The more modern view also sees her as an exploration of sensuality as power, and I'm pretty sure James Brown would count her among those who he celebrates in his song 'Hot Pants', i.e., one of those fabulous ladies who are courageous and sassy enough, especially in a patriarchal society where the odds are already stacked against them, and who, just like our enchanting queen, "use what she got to get what she wants." Amen to that! This more favourable, contemporary view of Cleopatra also places her as a key player in challenging the notion of strict gender roles and of playing with identity. And, I would suggest, Shakespeare actually did even more than this. For in his play, what he is really demanding of the reader/viewer is that they take sides in what is primarily a struggle between two very different approaches to life.

 On the one hand there is the way of Imperial Rome. This is a male world, governed by strict rules, centred around the conquest of the natural world, waging war and invading other territories, and with an emphasis on individual discipline and duty. On the opposite side is the world of Cleopatra and Egypt: a soft, feminine space dedicated to the senses, the emotional and the playful. And unlike Rome, a space that is also closer to nature. This is a realm dedicated to euphoric pleasure, role play, and is a place (inner and outer) where life is oceanic and performative, and where performance is celebrated as eagerly as songbirds embrace with ecstasy their instinctive desire to sing.

"There's not a minute of our lives should stretch without 

some pleasure now. What sport tonight?"

- Antony to Cleopatra

Into this situation Shakespeare places Antony, a Roman soldier who has fallen deeply in love with Cleopatra and the lifestyle that she and Egypt offers, in opposition to the stern, conquer and rule business world of Caesar and Rome. He is torn between his duties as a Roman general and his wish to live his life with Cleopatra, and the glorious pleasures that Egypt has to offer. And it's not only Antony who is faced with this, for the play seems to demand an answer in the mind of the reader/viewer as well. For as the play unfolds, Shakespeare suggests that there can be no middle ground here, as the two value systems are simply too incompatible with each other to melt into one. You, as reader or viewer, must choose which one you side with. And Antony, despite his fierce inner struggles, already knows, beyond question, that his heart belongs completely to Cleopatra and Egypt:




I am actually of the opinion that Shakespeare, for all his gallant attempts at neutrality, without doubt sides with Cleopatra and Egypt. It is a thoroughly modern play, and many of the descriptions about Cleopatra are spoken by Roman soldiers and generals, who are quite obviously wracked with bitter resentment (Nietzsche's ressentiment in full flow), and soul crushing jealousy of Cleopatra, Antony, and Egypt, and spend much of their down time bitching for all their worth like Twitter/X or Facebook trolls on heat. In this famous description of the voluptuous magnificence of Cleopatra, however, Shakespeare has Antony's best friend, Enobarbus, evoke this extraordinary Egyptian Queen, to Maecenas and a gaggle of soldiers who are quite literally begging him to describe what she is really like. It is a passage that both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Oscar Wilde declared as being their favourite in the whole of Shakespeare's writings, and, dearest reader and companion in the search for beauty, it is truly sublime:

Maecenas: Now Antony must leave her utterly?

Enobarbus: Never; He will not: 
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy 

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 

Where most she satisfies...

Enobarbus: "As for her own person... 
It beggar'd all description: she did sit 
In her pavilion..., 
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see 
The fancy outwork nature."

And as Antony travels back and forth to Rome from Egypt, pulled this way and that, both inwardly and outwardly, Cleopatra almost drives her messengers crazy as they too race back and forth as she constantly demands fresh updates on what he's doing. When he is away from Egypt during his travels to Rome she showers them with questions and it is obvious that this is no queen who is simply desired by others. She imagines what Antony might be doing at that very moment:

"Where is he now?

 Does he walk? Or is he on his horse?

Oh, lucky horse, to bear the weight of Antony!"

As the play unfolds, it is clear that Cleopatra certainly knows which of Antony's buttons to press, and she teases him mercilessly, egging him on continually to greater heights, and encouraging him to surrender to the true greatness in his soul, showing how playfulness can have profound affects as he experiences life in a different way than had seemed possible:

"You can do better!"

- Cleopatra to Antony

The sultry, luxuriating atmosphere that Antony finds himself in changes him imperceptibly. He embraces androgyny, and Cleopatra continually challenges him to understand life from her and Egypt's perspective, something to which he surrenders with relish. The gossips in Rome chatter and twitter, but, in Egypt, the serious fact of the matter is that Cleopatra is proving to Antony that she is every bit as powerful in her way as he is. And, of course, Antony proves a more than willing leading man, revelling in the gender fluidity and role play that Cleopatra teases out of him:

Cleopatra: "That time? O times!
I laughed him out of patience, and that night
I laughed him into patience, and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan."

I maintain that it is primarily in this area that Shakespeare's play has become a truly modern mouthpiece for our own times. For Antony and Cleopatra challenge traditional notions of masculinity and femininity to its roots. They show that these aspects of our lives are, in reality, performative, and not set in stone, and perhaps this can challenge our culture to explore and embrace what these notions actually are, and to be more open to the idea that a greater richness and variety of life, and a shedding of the ego and the personality, can be achieved by doing so:

"Cleopatra is voluptuously female and also robustly half-masculine. And both she and Antony appropriate the powers and prerogatives of both sexes more lavishly than any other characters in literature."

- Camille Paglia

"Caesar and his retinue call Antony effeminate, 
yet Antony is more masculine in the usual sense. 
Caesar and his Roman world view believers are essentially
 a bland, businessman type, who, 
compared to Antony, are sexually neutered."

- Camille Paglia

As can be already surmised, Antony and Cleopatra is a wonderful, hypnotising play. Cleopatra, as Shakespeare has written her, has become a feminist icon, a modern character who kept the Romans at bay by using both her quick intelligence and her sacred sensuality. For centuries, Cleopatra had been principally read as a scheming femme fatale, an example of why women on the whole could never be trusted: i.e., they are obsessed with passion, short on intelligence, inconstant, natural, mysterious and untrustworthy. But modern criticism has now, thankfully, moved beyond this, and she is now viewed as somebody who celebrates and personifies the feminine values of the land over which she reigns. Her passion and ardour, her "infinite variety", as Shakespeare gloriously describes it, becomes not just an opposite of Rome, but rather, reveals how limiting (and dull!) that masculine, Roman approach to life is. The Roman world of discipline, conquest and rules has no place within her and Antony's oceanic imagination, and, as the play unfolds, it is up to the viewer to decide which approach to life they are on the side of. Antony himself has been decried as a great general who lost his masculinity and gave up his duties for sensuous pleasures as the plaything of an enchanting queen. But, as with Cleopatra herself, Antony is also a modern character, caught in a ceaseless struggle between duty and pleasure, only too aware that Egypt offers a rich alternative to the limiting values of Imperial Rome. He is strong enough to let Cleopatra lead where necessary, and, as humanity faces up to perhaps its greatest ever struggle to date - the terrible threat and crisis of species extinction due to Climate Change - we may need to consider Egypt's approach to how we live rather than Rome, as this could well be a species and world saving matter. Antony proves that this can be achieved as he is able to blend the masculine and feminine within himself to a point where he becomes a far richer and life-affirming person than he was before, and which had personified the Roman ideal. And both Cleopatra and Antony emphasise just how performative the whole notion of gender actually is. Biologically male and female they both may be, but as they show, the rest, in terms of gender, is far less rigid.

I am severely reluctant to spoiler the outcome of this extraordinary play, so I'm going to finish my write up of it whilst allowing you, dear reader, if it is a play you have not read/watched, to follow it up yourself, should you desire to do so. But please enjoy and savour the remaining images and texts below, and, until next time, I remain, as always,

Your Nocturnal Butterfly. xx

"The personalities of Antony and Cleopatra

 constitute a great poem."

- Harold Bloom

"Cleopatra regularly and brilliantly bewilders readers and theatregoers alike, and Antony too, and herself. But to be more human in love is, in our time, to imitate Cleopatra, whose variety and playfulness makes staleness impossible."

- Harold Bloom

"Many unpleasant things can be said about Cleopatra,

 and the more that are said, 

the more wonderful she becomes."

 - A. C. Bradley

"But even then I knew that it was not in physical charms alone

 that the might and wonder of Cleopatra truly lay. 
It was rather in a glory and radiance

 that shone from the fierce soul within."

- H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra

"Antony and Cleopatra blur time, 
in the eternal now of the imagination."

- Camille Paglia

"Better to be Antony and lose

than to be Caesar and win."

- David Bevington

And a huge thank you to my wonderful models:

Cleopatra: Lady Lilith

Antony: Aaron Lowney

"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… 

they are made with the eye, heart and head.”

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

"We're all looking for a love, that's as strong as death,
That's equally heart, and equally head.

We're all looking for a love that takes away our breath,
That's equally heart, and equally head."
- Brett Anderson