If you can imagine anything more beautiful than a swan with a broken neck, please tell me while you are awake. Behind every classic image of beauty lies something sinister. Yes, you know it well: monotony.
How long can a rainbow or sunset remain beautiful when it is by-the-book? Any common metaphor for beauty is not beautiful. Too familiar.
But all is not lost! Simply take the classic object of beauty and mutilate it. Send the smoke of crucifixion into the rainbow's arch. Bloom the sunset waters with destructive red algae. Break the swan's neck.
There now: modern beauty. Nature can be too predictable. We rise above by saying, "I saw this yesterday. What do you have for me today?" When nature fails, we must make our own art.
Count your fingers. Eight, now? Of course, the thumbs are not fingers. You must know that. So it must be?--yes, six.
I hope you see why. Understand, you were not really beautiful before. Your silken hair, your smooth skin, your shapely limbs...could be found on any magazine page or monitor by the thousands. But this -- ah, the tears as well -- the way the blood pours, it has stained your clothes -- you are scintillating.
Sh. Sh. We'll bandage them. There, it isn't so bad, is it? Let's take a break. Every great work of art takes time. Besides, I want to admire you like this for a while. Until it becomes common again.
Why this? Why always, the young woman as victim? From Genji to Bluebeard to Polly, a universal fixation. Dear, because a fawn or rose cannot speak. And you may wonder, then, why are you always so silent? Why is it we who speak?
That's another trick. Let me teach you. Let's squeeze for a moment, the ring finger -- yes, just so, and if I tuck this into your mouth -- listen to the muffled sounds you make. Ironically, beauty is silence, but earned silence is more beautiful still. The greater capacity you have to speak, share, scream, and laugh, the more satisfaction can be found in your silence. We choose you over the fawn because that velvet beast gives us little to restrain.
Please ignore that. A failing on my part. Yes, the situation is undeniably sexual, beauty is sexual: flowers in full bloom are tremendously sexual. But that is not my interest. Let's go further. Why does it feel sensual, do you imagine? Why does this red liquid against soft flesh titillate?
Another universal. Most people like to look at it peripherally. They won't openly admit to liking it, but they watch the crime drama with a faint stirring in these moments. A fixation completely exposed in the melodramatic BDSM subculture. Where does it come from, and how can something so blatantly true remain just outside of common acceptance? Expressed in every fashion but the everyday personal.
Luckily for you, I do have the answer. Birth is pain. Life is pain. Death is pain. We despise and embrace this, like the child who defiantly exposes themselves to the switch. The blood drawn from you is my scream.
Most of them are afraid to act, but quietly revel when they encounter it. I am not afraid. You are the crystallization of human glory and suffering. You are my swan.