Gluttonous Plaisir - Catherine Deneuve

Marie (Catherine Deneuve), a philosophy professor, falls for her young student Juliette (Laurence Côte)

The Body

Feast your eyes on Ludivine Sagnier, in Swimming Pool. Yet feast in a detached, critcal way - to feast without reserve would be crass.




Does the Dandy let the Body or the Mind rule?

"The Mind, to be sure!" You shout with conviction.

Consider the wonderful paradox of allowing one's Mind to rule: one's body becomes beautiful. It becomes svelte, airy, smouldering, elegant - through studied neglect. This 'neglect' is not slothful inactivity, nor crass, excessive eating, but a conscious decision to rise above the nagging regularity of such base insticts as hunger.

My 'high' vision is to let my Mind reign and, in studiously ignoring my Body, my Body will smack of sexy neglect. I yearn to escape the suburban consumption prison.

A quoi sert de vivre libre? (Quand on vit sans amour)

J'adore Fanny Ardant (8 Femmes).

To Fall Or Not?

It's puerile but watch it.



Darling readers, should I eat with abandon and end up like Heather? She's jolly isn't she? She's happy. (Why is happiness the presumptive goal for all humanity?) - Felix, stop it with those cynical, pseudo-intellectual asides, of course happiness is what we all (the heaving masses) must strive for - ...

(I do love how the two hideous 'men' in above clip speciously assume to be better than Heather, those pasty, overweight creeps. Don't misinterpret me, Heather is shocking but at least she does common properly. If one is to fall one may as well hit the ground with a vengeance, not stop half-way like Tony and Wayne (make that three quarters of the way).

Vertigo

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

I ought to have put quotation marks around that. It comes from ma bible, 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being' (bible is too strong a word, but it's a sexy book nonetheless), written by Milan Kundera. 

I'm conceited enough to consider my aspirations 'high', but perhaps I'm nothing more than an affected provincial (according to dandyism.net's utterly unreliable test). But sometimes I'm overcome with a vertiginous desire to fall, to let my body rule, to eat like a slob, to watch rubbish on television, to obsess over money, to watch and be swayed by advertisements, to worship the celebrity, to read those abominable 'newspapers' that come out every evening at train stations... The list is interminable. Luckily I stop myself before the condition becomes terminal and I claw my way up to a mental and spiritual superiority. 

To fall from the dandy's height (and I am not yet a dandy, and may never be one) is scarily attractive - sometimes the desire to drop it all and fall is strong. 

Hallo, Hullo, Hello?

Hello is rather too vulgar, no? Hallo, on the other hand, has a sprightly ring to it, and Hullo is so irregular as to be  quite charming. So Hallo, public. Hallo!

Enchanté.

My name is Felix Euphemia-Croix and I am at a critical juncture. Things, my virginal readers, hang in the balance, and this is a last-ditch attempt at Euphoria. (Not an all out, explosive Euphoria, but a tempered, restrained, splenetic one.)

I simply can't elaborate at this moment, but please take a plunge into the the 'electroclash' pleasure Miss Kitten proposes, below.