By Emma C. Johnson
Written: Oct 2019 – Apr 2020
Recorded: Apr 23-25, 2020
LYRICS:
Alone with your aesthetics.
Alone with your aesthetics.
You aren't here but it feels like you're near
in a room with our aesthetics.
in a room with our aesthetics.
Void except for things.
A girl at a piano
purses her lips
cracked by centuries of drying.
Her blue satin sash
catches the light
in a room with my aesthetics.
in a room with my aesthetics.
Ballerinas
grasp bouquets
of perfectly positioned flowers.
The sun is pouring
in through the glass
in a room with my aesthetics.
in a room with my aesthetics.
Ceilings painted
with history.
Gold-leafed trim on white walls.
Crystal chandeliers line the hall.
The mirrors go on forever and ever and ever
in a room with my aesthetics.
in a room with my aesthetics.
Alone with my aesthetics.
Alone with my aesthetics.
Alone with my aesthetics.
Alone with my aesthetics.
You aren't here but it feels like you're near
in a room with my aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
My aesthetics.
Images videorecorded for B-roll from:
The Musée d'Orsay, Barnes & Noble Books
your visit to Versailles, art lys
Degas: A strange new beauty, MoMA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.org
Images include:
0:14 Henri Fantin-Latour, Flowers and Fruit, 1865
0:18 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Daughters of Catulle Mendès Huguette (1871-1964), Claudine (1876-1937), 1888
0:23 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Two Young Girls at the Piano 1892
0:27 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Woman at the Piano, 1875-6
0:32 Edgar Degas, The Dance Foyer at the Opéra at the rue Le Peletier, 1872
0:35 Edgar Degas, Fin d'arabesque, c. 1877
0:39 Edgar Degas, Dance Class, 1873-6
0:44 Edgar Degas, Ballet Scene, c. 1879
0:48 Louis Le Vau, et al./Versailles, The War Drawing-Room
0:52 Le Vau, et al./Versailles, The Hall of Mirrors
0:57 Edgar Degas, The Orchestra of the Opéra, c. 1870s
Poses include:
0:10 Mary Cassatt, Young Woman in the Garden, c. 1883-6
5:14 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Source, 1856
5:15 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Virgin of the Host, 1854
5:16 Edgar Degas, Little Dancer at Age Fourteen, 1880-1
5:19 Gustave Courbet, The Spring, 1868
5:20 Théodore Chassériau, The Tepidarium, 1853
5:21 Édouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863
FRENCH and GERMAN lyrics translation below:
