Era of the Blonde

“But time is like a river… and history repeats…”
– Secret of Mana

The blonde is an absent-minded creature. For her, the running waters of the river Time flow not downstream to a future sea, but lap endlessly on the sandy shores of the beach she makes her habitat.

It is so for all blondes, whether they know it or not. Few know their own history. We are forgetful animals. From the horde of doll-babies borne of viking rapists, to the Lepiska Saçlı Çerkes praised by Turkish poets for their beauty, to the curly-haired angels dark as Africa born on their Solomon Islands paradise—we don’t even remember being one people, let alone our most ancient traditions.

The natural philosopher spackles us with pedant spit and lies about the universe forming from aether precipitations, accretions of stratified mana, and the spontaneous generation and transmutation of vitalistic alchemies, but we who are wise fools speak the truth without knowing it—absent-minded as we are. The mythology of the fair-haired is rich in automatic traditions.

Allow me to introduce a clarifying tenant of modern science. I refer not to such nonsense as Einstein’s relativity—why would I, based as it is on such nonsense as the math of imaginary numbers, instead of the oneiric numbers of the one true math as you will remember it from your dreams?—I speak of angels.

The heavenly host is less a host than an indolent harem out of Europe’s finest Orientalist tradition—but here the concubines have no other master than each other—for you see, the angels alone created the universe, and they have assured me, there is no God. They should know. Androgynous boys in long white dresses is all there is, strumming harps to lend an atmosphere of serenity to their opium den.

Did I say they created the universe? Forgive my brain-fog, I had a blonde moment. The angels never finish anything. They started the universe, got a bit frazzled, laid it aside to dabble with side-projects, then became so transfixed their dalliances became the main thing of creation. Their attention faltering again and again, they hop project to project with nothing in their portfolio but endless rough drafts of what the universe might one day look like.

What else could explain lives such as ours, so full of meaningless digressions, plot holes, overwrought detail, and a total ignorance of what parts are worth attention? To say nothing of the pacing! Perhaps ours is a fanfic universe derived from a much more interesting draft left unfinished by a great but undisciplined talent—a universe whose nature is discovered chiefly by scientists and mathematics seems rather like the product of an inhuman fanboy nerd. Perhaps, with a little effort, we may read the enchantments still faintly legible in the palimpsest’s background.

So—the history of the universe as it appears in a properly artistic draft—it begins not with the chaos and darkness of myth, nor the orgasmic release of energy ascribed to the big bang, but purity. Upon the off-white linen of an unbleached canvas taught upon the stretcher bars globs of gesso were poured, the starkness of the absorbent chalk and gypsum bound by acrylic resin polymer. The pristine substance is spread to the ends of the universe (in alternating vertical and horizontal coats, to prevent lapping) knowing itself to be but a primer for the pigments that are to follow.

Only then will darkness intrude upon the universe as Carbon Black (PBk7) assaults the pristine gesso at its moment of greatest vulnerability! To the aid of the defenseless gesso goes pure Titanium White (PW6). Though innocence is lost (the plain, though protected, will never again be quite as absorbent) the battle against light and dark proceeds less as conflict and destruction, than a value study revealing shades of gray. The universe takes shape as a grisaille rather than a verdaccio because the people to be really aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

Life is brought to the universe as the primary colors begin to balance—Aapthole Red (PR112), Nickel Azomethine yellow (PY150), and Pthalo Blue (PB15:3)—for although the red-yellow-blue tripartite color model is a Newtonian dogma leftover from an ignorant era the dinosaurs of the art world refuse to let be superseded by a reasonable acknowledgment of saturation costs and the improvement in gamut afforded by a wide range of bright synthetics—it’s the values that matter, anyway.

And yet, the dark lord, Dioxazine purple (PV23) appears on the palette, darker than the darkest carbon black! She—if indeed it is a she—seduces anything she touches with a rich gay hue that blackens all it touches–the gothic magic working its way through the pallet till the colors are reduced to crimson, amber, and navy—wait, it’s too dark to see anything! God damnit, I’ve got to start over. But now the texture of the canvas is all fucked up, what a pain in the ass…

Forget it. The angels got tired of painting.

So, when a mommy universe and a daddy universe love each other very much, they get together and oppose the marriage rights of the queer universes to mask the insecurity they feel at their own relationship instability in the face of disaster capitalism—and so with no time to fuck, they act like little baby universes and throw a political tantrum, failing in their role as agents of social reproduction.

Nah, too close to home.

The universe began as a nice yeasty bread. It was a sour dough. Or rather, a particular attempt at a sour dough. The lump’s been in the freezer a while, hopefully it’ll be fine. We have to bake the universe. Oh, no! Forget about this stupid universe, let’s brew it into a beer! Just be careful, last time a cider was attempted, grandpa went blind drinking it.

Ever seen that anime, Angel’s Egg? So, that was a thing.