Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Body, limp.

“The Body, and its language, which is of course, all language.... But that male body, how IT dominates the culture, the environment, the language. Since 3000 B.C. in Sumeria, Tiamat’s monsters again and again, and every myth an effort to keep the sun rising. Save the sun... will it rise again will it will it rise again? The language of criticism: ‘lean, dry, terse, powerful, strong, spare, linear, focused, explosive’—god forbid it should be ‘limp’!! But—‘soft, moist, blurred, padded, irregular, going around in circles,’ and other descriptions of our bodies—the very abyss of aesthetic judgment, danger, the wasteland for artists! That limp dick—an entire civilization based on it, help the sun rise, watch out for the dark underground, focus focus focus, keep it high, let it soar, let it transcend, let it aspire to Godhead——————”
--Frances Jaffer, as quoted by Susan L. Stoops in More than Minimal.

I'm not sure much needs to be said about this. I may bring it into my paper on musical aesthetics and feminism.

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