selective memory

This is gravely embarrassing but I'm going to post 3 (horrible) images. They're all attempts at drawing a person, a real living one that I've seen quite frequently the last couple of years (although never in real life).
The first is entirely from memory. Been at least 24 hours since I saw a picture or video or whatever of him. It's also without "warming up" my drawing hand which might explain a shard of its suckiness.
The second image is an attempt at redraming that image while looking at reference pictures (Google). This was done rather quick and dirty, if I'd put my mind to it I could have adjusted it much more, and I'm not really satisfied, but it's there to provide a middle step.
The third is an "overlay", meaning I copypasted a photo beneath the drawing and redrew the lines that needed to change. It's not a "copy" exactly because it's still black-and-white linework, and since I started the drawing without a specific photo in mind I had to find a photo that had approximately the same angle and posture so a tiny bit of adjustment was required.

So why am I doing this? (Broadcasting my drawing failiures to the world, I mean :P) Because it's a fascinating. When I look at a familiar face I don't actually *look* at it. Neither do I really *see* it when I think of that person. When I was done with the first drawing I was rather sure it was at least decent. By the time the second drawing was done I was aware of that it lacked greatly but didn't quite know how to fix it. And then with the overlay, I can kinda see that it's him, but it looks terrible. (Although that's also because of my low drawing skills and the simplicity of the image.) The way he looks in my mind is probably somewhere between the second and third. How he really looks... I think I'm unable to see anymore. Maybe if someone knocked me on the head so I lost all memory of him. I remember clearly that I saw pictures of him long ago and paid him no attention, but over time he's grown to be the most handsome man on the planet. Clearly that doesn't have all that much to do with how the actually looks, because now when I studied him more as a visual composition - he didn't look at all like I know he does.
Is it me "filling in the blanks" with what I want to be there? I know I get the same feeling when I look at a friend or family member and really only look without seeing their face. I can think, Wow, she's really pretty or Was that how he looked?. Thinking of a person really only calls up some rough markers in my head. Hair, general body shape, general face shape, and for some people eyes. Then everyone have behavioral markers that aren't strictly looks but are effectively inseparable from their visual impact; their movement patterns, signature nervous habits, eye movements.

So beauty truly must lie in the eye of the beholder. Can a face be objectively, unemotionally beautiful? It can be structurally perfected I suppose. Symmetry and golden ratio and all that. But does that really make something we love? Beauty comes from the inside, to pull up another cliché - maybe it does in the sense that what you do creates behavioral markers that fill in the blank spaces with exactly what your watchers want to see?

If he really looked like how I see him in my head, would he even look human? Would I, if I saw him outside my head in the real world, even like what I saw? Actually, I think no. When I look closer at photos I always think it doesn't quite look like him. I think what makes him so beautiful, is all that he is that I know of, overlayed with the linework of my mind. We're all little artists like that :)

If you wanna know what he looks like on photo, just Google Jaejoong. Bother linking and shit.

The Actress

I wanna paint a picture of life and health
in pale pink and black and red;
if I stare in a mirror long enough
I'll see the picture there instead.
I wanna dance on the rooftops and float on clouds
and weigh like a feather of grace;
and if the scales show heavy numbers then
there's someone else there in my place.
I wanna be the ghost that everyone sees,
an invisible object of love;
if unattainable is the most wanted of all
then I'll be the star above.
I wanna craft my eggshell so perfectly
that even I can't see the lie;
and how empty it is inside won't be known
until it shatters - until I die.

What I Wish I Could Say Right

Hi.

Ignore whatever I've written earlier today, I was bored. But there's something I want to say. I've rewritten this post half a dozen times now over several days, trying to find a way to say things right, but I'm giving up. It will never be right. Some things cannot be expressed or shared. I will just state, because it's time to go public:

His name is Kim Jaejoong of Dong Bang Shin Ki, and he has it all. The shoulders, the jaw, the voice, the sense of humor, the eyes, the moves, the style. I will never meet him, probably never see him live considering where I live. That is of no consequence. He exists, somewhere, and for that simple fact I am forever and always grateful.

Always keep the faith.

Deeper

Without darkness there would be no light.

I paint my walls black, I pull down the blinds. Speak to the demons inside my head, but I see no light, I find no light. Maybe there is no light. I never wanted it anyway, I forget why I was looking for it in the first place. I let the darkness gulp me down and I slide down its throat, spreading my palms and my fingers against its silky flesh. I wish I could keep my eyes open and let it crawl in through my pupils and settle against the back of my eye sockets, but I can't. And when I let myself relax, when my eyelids fall, then I see it.

Darkness, light. Like seeing two sides of the same coin at the same time through some twisted trick of fate, it only flickers by an instant but that instant is enough for darkness to cough me back up and I break the surface gasping for air. My blood and bones shiver with fear, having stared into the abyss and let the light shoot up through them, into them. Let us never do that again, they conspire around me, let us let up the blinds and never speak of this again. I do, but I know the story. My blood and my bones both have only patience that lasts until their cells have been exchanged and a new bustling generation perk up at my simple nudge. The old are gone, but I remain. I have the most exciting thing, I tell them, that I want to show you. If you only paint the walls black and pull down the blinds. And off we go again, for me to catch another glimpse of night eternal and get another chance at letting it gauge my eyes out and replace them with its own. For blood and bones to once again be pierced by light and live another generation fearing that which lives beyond darkness. Both asking ourselves the last and vital question;

like that which we fear and seek, would we survive without each other?

What I've Done

I wrote some shit last night. Might put it up later once I've eyed through it for spelling and stuff. I'm just telling you this because a) I've felt so goddamned uninspired the last week (although I have written some more on Kirya, it just hasn't felt very exciting) and b) I have a lot of things I want to write on this blog and most of all drawings I have in my head that I want to do and put up, but since my computer is faaaar away back home and I'm stuck with crappy touch-pads (sorry, friends' computers, but you suck) I'm here rambling about nothing again.

Through some roleplaying my thoughts were led onto the subject of beauty again. That's what I've written about, basically. And although what I wrote should scare me, and should say to me I need to change my attitude to stay a human being, it doesn't. Some things in life are worth dying for, just like some are worth killing for. Not many would agree with that beauty is one of those things, at least not at first thought. But it would be kind of boring if everyone in the world were the same, no? I'm just adding variety to life :) and maybe to death.

Cheers.

Le Gasp

Okay, so I wrote a long segment about how silly I am to care about this, but really, what I want to say is:

That guy Tobias from Swedish Let's Dance, I rambled about him long ago, and how handsome and awesome he is and all that, well this year he's dancing with the blonde bitch from the Idol jury. Does anyone understand what I'm saying here? Gah!

Ah. Felt good to vent that with you guys. Gah! There, done.

Beauty is really the thing that can wipe away all those ideas about being calm, cool and sensible that I otherwise harbor.

Twirks

Speaking of stupid fascinating impulses, I just had the strongest one to seduce my teacher. If God had given me a little more shrewdness, the Devil would've had a lot more fun.

On a different, yet the same, note:
It's a lot easier to do something for someone else than for yourself, at least if it's something you don't want to do. I thought about my fear of failing at school (caused, make no mistake, by my own character in combination with the unforgiving IB) and of how I could be made to make an effort - how to motivate me so to speak. I think the most important is a teacher I personally respect, not just professionally, but also like as a person. This attraction I've told you about before, this obsession with people and beauty (not just conventional beauty; I use the word in lack of others to point to that specific something some people have) may play a large role here. But once again, my observations about how to create a pefrect surrounding for my living and learning is thwarted by reality; I have no control over what teacher I get. Just like I'll never get that house in Gibraltar with all of my friends inside.

Hey, I suddenly remember, the only teacher I really respected in primary school was this young woman with curly brown hair who I was totally crushing on and who played football on weekends. Can't remember her name, but I remember her. I loved her voice.