peepingMonster

“The tragic hero, who is the favorite of ethics, is the purely human; him I can understand, and all his undertakings are out in the open.”
Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling, Problema III)

Alright, beware of the monsters then! …and let us claim our true vocation, loudly, with fanfare. If we act heroically that must be because silence is definitely not one of our choices. We are all in the open. In the wilderness there is no place to hide, there are no lies, everything comes out naturally. Yes, we are the monsters! Understanding this sudden development has always come late to us. To everyone else that sees us, it is clear from the very start, and when their gaze prey upon our spectacle we’ll be convinced, at last, of our few original choices.

Since this monster, the one that speaks (it cannot keep secrets), the one that is always on display (monster comes from the latin monstrare, to show), must acquire some attributes, it chooses what it has always preferred, namely, a wild gait. Or should I say, the wildest of gaits? Among its choices, this monster has always preferred a softer contact with the world, an added lifting, almost a departure. That is, it has always preferred to place only a smaller portion of its feet on the ground, ankles like hocks up in the air. That has been ultimately its only moment of modesty, of circumspection, of concealment, of retreat. It has always known that much. It has always known how to move away gracefully. According to modernity, it has learned how to raise itself tall and slender, how to raise a hairy eyebrow, how to reach and scrape the near by sky…This monster still enjoys to tip-toe its movements on the world, “aux aguets” (lurking), as Deleuze said when trying to find words for a fair description of animal existence, also his preferred existence.

“Oxford Platform Wingtip Heel” Marc by Marc Jacobs, Fall 2007.

This economy of support, believe me, is a question of style, to go no further, but one that has always taken this monster far from other forms of high-heeled folklore. You’ll see. My careful steps seemed to have accomplished more than I thought at first when I naturally abandoned myself to this reaching up. I’ve always believed that this type of posturing appealed to some kind of hidden savagery, to some kind of exalted lifestyle, to hairy legs and hoofs. I felt tuned to the animal form. I’ll tell you why…

“Two Toned Buckle Boot” Marc by Marc Jacobs, Fall 2007.

Of course, our vocation is not the first one to be so interested on this kind of departure, this kind of lift off, this air birth. In the Fifth Century A. D. a famed Simeon from Syria made fashionable a lifestyle known later as the Stylite. His fame was so spread out in the Western world that a constant flock of pilgrims was at his side interrupting his ascetic practice. The sight of him, in most cases, was sufficient enough to reward everyone’s fascination; but, on leaving him, the agony of not being able to keep with oneself his presence, his example, his clear vision, compelled everyone to grab a souvenir from his meager him. But what could be taken from him? A few strands of hair? Pieces of his leather garment? Secretions from his body? His excrement? Could a demand for a continued supply of relics threaten him perhaps with his complete physical annihilation? In any case, he was clearly everybody’s darling.

Nothing could be more iconographic than his wish to incarnate the static. On that he was unmoved. Above all, Simeon was a picture, all eyes fixed upon him. Indeed, his aim had always been the pursuit of the motionless. Stopping a wandering body would stop a wandering mind, and free his devotion from distractions. He succeeded in restricting his movements to a small portion of space, always less and less, forcing his body to remain standing for days, and tying himself to a pole to keep vertically for even longer. His body, a figurant of himself, obeyed only the rigorous orders of a mortis commandment, an everlasting standstill. He became a living stiff…For that, again, he was even more everybody’s darling.

Landlocked, bounded to this motionless minimum, and overwhelmed by the presence of his followers, he had no other choice than to insure, at least, a vertical escape. Style was to become, from then on, synonymous to living aloof, on a higher register, a higher echelon. Indeed, Simeon chose to live on top of a column (styloi in Greek) eighteen meters high. He spent there the last thirty-seven years of his life.

“Simón del desierto” Luis Buñuel, 1965.

The stiletto is a god-like animal choice. I should better say, Goat-god-like, Panic, monstrous, partly animal, partly human, but wholly divine in its double choice. Wearing it, one is always rampant. With it, one is always posturing a clear detachment from the world, always threatening to begin a lift off. Only partly, though. In Luis Buñuel’s “Simón del desierto” we hear the penitent say to a sheperd: “Believe me brother, I eat and drink as it fits to my necessity…on that other necessity, that to evacuate, I say my excrement is like the one of your goats…” A relationship to the divine is always tempered by necessity. The fetish, the symbolic charge of the relic, is also tempered by necessity. We have not forgotten Freud’s words: “…substances that are expelled from the body [are] doomed by their strong smells to share the fate which overtook olfactory stimuli after man adopted the erect posture.” And a bit earlier “…Their role was taken over by visual excitations, which, in contrast to the intermittent olfactory stimuli, were able to maintain a permanent effect.” Rampant is indeed our posturing, visual our ultimate hallucination.

“Compared Anatomy”