A week of Europe, neo-romantics and Bobbie Gentry toped with a little bit of Feminism please!

It is Thursday night and I have done all my work for the week. Finished by making my Philosophy Presentation which went... as good as it could go, let us put it this way. Satisfaction with yourself is sometimes better than black chocolate.

I got some of that in my fridge as well. Just in case.

There is so much I want to talk about. This week went from sillly to confident. There were so many things I needed to sort out within myself. Problems that do not make sense outside of my surrealistic distorted little world. Anyhow, those were getting on the way of allowing myself to be a very happy person. That is when good movies, music and loads of work come in and wash over me like the purest holiest water. I feel reborn, not by a mystical experience, but by a very normal week, a very engaging full week. Sometimes routine is better than a glimpse of heaven.

On Europe and Kinky stuff

I love it. It is by far my favourite stereotype about Europeans around here: EUROPE IS JUST PLAIN KINKY. And no, they don't mean just Amsterdam. In the minds of many Canadians even Southern (Catholic, Conservative) European countries are places where sensuality grows on trees. Somehow, Montreal is the most liberal place because people just "go crazy and are so free, liberated, sexy..." WHY? "... They are more European I guess". I love it. It is hilarious at times.

Pass by a store of lacy lingerie . "That European lingerie shop?"

Enter a classroom with a red mini skirt, overhear ongoing conversation. "I would wear those shorts if I was going to .. I don't know ..Europe! Here it would just be too crazy."

Oh the wonders of suddenly having been born in the sexiest place on Earth....

(plus, I am writing this to Bardot's " Je t'aime"... Ah Europeans, always singing about sex and all derivated senosry impressions....)

The Neo-romantic Feminist Approach


After sex, love... how apppropriate of me. Realy, I am just following the rational list of priorities here!

Anyhow, getting serious. We live in a neo-romantic age. The "emo" boys, with their fragile eyes and "brushed-by-the-wind hair". The romance with wizards, vampires and other mythical creatures (specially helpless ones, that need to be rescued).

Here is a pop song verse that I found particularly demonstrative:

I want a girl with lips like morphine,
Knock me out every time they touch me.
Knock me out (knock me out),
Knock me out (knock me out).
Cause I’ve waited for all my life,
To be here with you tonight.

Don't tell me we are not madly, uncontrolably in love here. (not meant with sarcasm)

Not being completely alienated from this universe, I subscribe to many preferences that are part of this cultural set. I like things (movies, songs, pieces of material culture) that are very neo-romantic. Some of them could be deemed ultra-romantic.

No I maintain: I am not a romantic. (Being a romantic = publicly acting like a romantic in adition to private beliefs)

Because I simply think these are my little private affairs. Things that I am more than happy to keep in my closet. Because that is where they have more meaning. And I know, I am not alone. Many young women and men, today, have such hidden tastes.

The problem is then one of conscience for me, when I read feminist critiques of some of these pieces of cultural meaning. They are deemed by many a symptom of young girls' want for a "white knight" to "come and rescue them" from their role as working independent women. It is a denial of all that feminism stands for. It is a reeinteration of traditional gender roles. I am a traitor to my own goals by watching that! My ultra romantic private views are imcompatbile with my public active life.

This is what I contest. I do it first on the basis of a simple fact. My participation in the romantic idealism of the time, as many other people's, is not a blind on. And I don't just cut bits and pieces out of it. I shape it, I interpret it and I give it a framework that could be very well called feminist. Why do romantic heroes have to be seen as oppresive dominant males. I see them precisely as the opposite. As very vulnerable human beings, of unexplicable beauty and charm. They are not there to take over my life, because they actually admire it! And no, sex being treated as dangerously problematic is not about abstinence and sexual negativism. Death and sexual attraction have been major issues in many literary traditions. They are symbolically linked and do not automatically convey a "NO SEX" message. The romantic does not trivialize sexual intimacy but tends instead to connect it with mysticism and culminating points of the process of higher counsciousness that is love. Death is linked to it in that context. Which is, more than a fair one, one that free from sexual inequality and abstinence stupidity. Because sex is just that good does not mean you should not be getting any! In fact, the logical person would (without trivializing) think very much the opposite.

In sum. Being a romantic is not wanting red roses and a nice cottage with 6 kids. That is the issue: it is going beyond social expectations, beyond common standards and appreciating the state of mind that is being in love as something else entirely.

Music from the American South

I discovered a realy good collection on my laptop. A friend copied it from me a year ago almost. It is a couple of Cd's by Bobbie Gentry. And, I admit it, I can't stop thinking about her. HEr music is amazing, her songs are the best Southern Gothic folk-tales and my soul thirsts for more melodies like hers...

Just to mention, she is of portuguese descent, raised by her Portuguese grand-parents in the Mississipi Delta. Her real name is in fact Roberta. Even with such a name she is one of the most beautiful cover - art pictures that I have seen. I included the album cover original photo. It think she is remarkable in it. In adition, she was a Philosophy major at UCLA! Somehow, I like her a lot. She stopped singing in the 1970's, but the material she left behind made it through till today.

One of my favourites : Fancy by Bobbie Gentry

"Well, I remember it all very well lookin' back
It was the summer that I turned eighteen.
We lived in a one-room, run down shack
on the outskirts of New Orleans.

We didn't have money for food or rent
to say the least we was hard-pressed
when Momma spent every last penny we had
to buy me a dancin' dress.

Well, Momma washed and combed and curled my hair,
then she painted my eyes and lips.
Then I stepped into the satin dancin' dress.
It had a split in the side clean up to my hips.

It was red, velvet-trimmed, and it fit me good
and standin' back from the lookin' glass
was a woman
where a half grown kid had stood.

She said, "Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down!
Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it's up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin' uptown."

Momma dabbed a little bit of perfume
on my neck and she kissed my cheek
Then I saw the tears welling up
in her troubled eyes as she started to speak

She looked at our pitiful shack and then
she looked at me and took a ragged breath
She said, Your Pa's runned off, and I'm real sick
and the baby's gonna starve to death.

She handed me a heart-shaped locket that said
"To thine own self be true"
and I shivered as I watched a roach crawl across
the toe of my high-healed shoe

It sounded like somebody else was talkin'
askin', "Momma what do I do?"
She said, "Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy.
They'll be nice to you."

She said, "Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down!
Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
But if you want out girl it's up to you
Now don't let me down,
now get on out, you better start sleepin' uptown."

That was the last time I saw my momma
when I left that rickety shack
The welfare people came and took the baby.
Momma died and I ain't been back.

But the wheels of fate had started to turn
and for me there was no other way out.
It wasn't very long after that I knew exactly
what my momma was talkin' 'bout.

I knew what I had to do.
Then I made myself this solemn vow:
I's gonna to be a lady someday
though I didn't know when or how.

But I couldn't see spendin' the rest of my life
with my head hung down in shame.
You know I mighta been born just plain white trash.
but Fancy was my name.

She said, "Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down!
Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it's up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin' uptown."

Wasn't long after that a benevolent man
took me in off the streets
One week later I was pourin' his tea
in a five roomed penthouse suite.

Since then I've charmed a king, a congressman
and an occasional aristocrat
and I got me an elegant Georgia mansion
and a New York townhouse flat.

Now I ain't done bad

Now in this world there's a lot of self-righteous
hypocrites who call me bad.
They criticize Momma for turning me out
No matter how little we had.

But I haven't had to worry 'bout nothin'
now for nigh on fifteen years
But I can still hear the desperation
in my poor mommas voice ringin' in my ears.

"Here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down!
Oh, here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down.
God forgive me for what I do,
but if you want out girl it's up to you.
Now get on out, you better start sleepin' uptown."