Snobinard

Posted an egregious self-portrait, me nekkid with a slaughtered pig. And this egregious epigraph:

L’avant-garde d’avant-guerre
Snobinarde de fils en pere
Toujours prete à faire le con –
Lucullus? Non, Trimalchion.

Olga complained about my “condescending attitude ( the excessive use of french ) ...leslie seems to use french, latin, esperanto, whatever to boost his photos. basically they boomerang from pretty to morbid and i have given up trying to find them aesthetically meaningful. there is a certain shock jock mentality that just doesn’t work for me.”

Olga,

Many folks have remarked that it’s easier to confess in a foreign language. People with a pathological stutter can put it to sleep temporarily by speaking with a foreign accent or by singing their words. It’s a way of tricking the little man inside, the one who turns out the light when you shut your mouth.

If I were condescending I’d explain everything. If I explained everything I’d be condescending.

Self-loathing begets self-mockery. I did say snobinard.

I agree entirely – my photos aren’t meaningful. As for shock tactics, since Volta hooked frogs up to a battery it’s become more and more obvious that animal locomotion, and no doubt animal spirits and human morality and esthetics and epistemology, are just a series of low-voltage shocks.

Seen the way I see them (a ghastly thought, not a suggestion), most of my flowers and many landscapes are scarier than photos of raw meat, which is, after all, good food.

Hil’s first reaction is the only one appropriate to appreciation of photography or any other visual art: speechlessness.

If life had meaning it would be truly intolerable.