all shall be well all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well julian of norwich

Saturday, August 25, 2007



These two photos of amy winehouse and her husband lead to some questions

1) what is the ethical realtionship an audience has to a producer when violence becomes less of an autobiographical construction? i would call this the nan goldin question, but i am unsure that winehouse has the same motives, or the same habits of narrative construction as goldin, and goldin is primally visual, while winehouse is something else (who's songs about co-dependence, drinking, addiction, pleasure, and destructive, seismic desires have been treated as pretty anthems for the summer) (like this from Just Friends "it is not safe for us, even in the evening,in the morning, it is dangerous--it is always dangerou....can we be alone, can we be alone") there is the assumption that nothing this universal could be so autobiographical, but it seems to be
2) thinking about the whole history of soul singers who were destroyed by their men, is this kind of viscousness part of a historicised process, a lifestyle accessory, like the beehive? (cf tina turner, ronnie spector) (and some of the violence does seem to be gendered, like the idea of the blood soaked ballet slippers)
3) in the previous example, both women were victims and left--winehouse speaks like one, he is the only one who loves me, he is the one who saves me, but having both of them in such a violent state suggests mutally assured destruction more than a man using a woman as a punching bag (which makes me wonder, how common is that sort of hurlyburly destruction, the sort of thing you saw in who's afraid of virginia woolf or more subversively in mr and mrs smith versus farah in burning bed, which one is she here)
4) when asked about the images/ the incident, she writes: "I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn't good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life" texted to perez hilton--one of the reasons why hilton is making millions, is his ability to construct morally heremetic, melodramatic narratives, and this one has the perils of pauline all over it), apparently winehouse texted perez first, b/c she is one of the heros, there is a gaurentee that perez will be kind to her---and as well, b/c the images are diseminated via the net first, that they might be too strange or shocking for us or people, and because the daily mail hates her, and because there is no huge english blog that is as kind as perez, etc--it suggests a presence of mind and media savvy to use him,
4) which leads me to the final question,why did she let herself be photographed like this? (doherty and moss apparently are fucking and drugging right now at claridges but no one has seen her there w. a camera, she leaves late at night, under the cover of darkness, she is public here, she is posing--like tina brown's only new peice of info in the diana bio, where she suggests that diana knew exactly what she was doing in the ritz in paris that night) (is this a question of class--i mean clardiges, the ritz, this didnt occur in any place so exciting, and can you avoid publciity, when the arguement moves from the room, to being dragged down hallways, to elevators, looking like this, with another couple present, a couple unknown to you?)

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i am a sixteen foot sasquatch.