i am destroyer, i am lover.
i've been listening to a lot of stars lately. their first album. where they start by telling me that this is their heart. i wonder what my heart would look like in album form. i wonder what my heart looks like period. i remember reading a story once about someone's experience of giving blood. after they had filled the big bag with their red stuff, the nurse asked them if they wanted to hold it. and the person was surprised by this idea but decided to do it. i remember the way the person explained the strange feeling of holding their own blood. being surprised that it was so warm. just feeling its weight on their chest. i want to experience that one day. feeling the weight and warmth of my blood on my chest.

i think i might have posted that antecdote before. meh. the idea re-entered my head.

i was attempting to do some research at the library when i got distracted by books i wish i had the time to read. there was a really interesting chapter in one of the books i was looking through... about this surge of art about surgery and mutilation in i think it was the 60s. i didnt have time to really absorb it all... but it fascinated me. it was filled with pictures of hospital surgery rooms and mutilation and bodies.

i think i'm in some weird blood mood.

you know what else has been playing through my head on repeat? the source is cheesy. i was reading some article on death from above 1979 and the interviewer asked something about the violent way they play contrasted with their attempts at love songs. something like that. and the band made the incredibly true statement that love and violence have a lot in common. there is no other time that two bodies are as close as when they make love or when they physically fight. and while i guess this is pretty obvious... and i guess i knew this already... it really made me think about it. i've been thinking about it ever since.

and then i was reading about sexuality in ancient rome. they had a really interesting concept of rape. rape was conceptualized as a paradigm for rome itself. rome was a city that assimilated so many different cultures through war... a city that created itself and its politics through strife. for rome, war created and destroyed. it was this ebb and flow between war and creation that characterized rome. in their mythology, rape is always surrounded by ideas about big political change. for romans, rape symbolized that dual destruction/creation paradigm. it destroyed the chastity of a woman but it had the potential to create new life. i probably explained that wrong, but i think you get the picture. rape for them... held so much meaning because it was the site where violence and sexuality met. where creation and destruction held hands. and so now i am fascinated with the way societies conceptualize rape.

i am destroyer, i am lover.
why love one thing and not the other?