For Melissa N.
Because we often forget the gleam of beauty that the mirror offers.
The gleam of a fiery spirit or a calm fire.
The gleam of a beautiful person.
from your friend and coworker
Guillaume « Frenchie » L.
PS : The syntax is far from perfect and the vocabulary might be stilted a bit, so apologies.
Speculum
There’s a wretchedness to it, that’s for certain. You’re always an adjunct to the material world, always an ambassador to light and never a master. You lie on the wall or in a cupboard all day, waiting, hoping to reflect something or someone grand. If you’re hanged, your hope is that you’re hanging in a line pointing directly to a window or to the sun. You hope that you can deflect attention from your boredom, that by displacing light you can enhance the room. When you’re ignored, you apply yourself to winking at them, hinting that behind your lining lies another world identical to what they see, yet different, inverted in a way. But in the end, all the while, you’re lying in wait, because what you crave is to take human form.
Nothing suits you better than vanity. And the highest order of vanity is to mimic humanity in every detail: the combing of the hair, the critical and apprehensive gaze, the nervous self-awareness and the adjusting of garments. Those are sweet moments, for sure. When they come to gaze at themselves, you feel the power you hold over them. What you show them is a critical or flattering imprint, heightening or diminishing their sense of outer-beauty. And then, they react, and try to adjust what they see, using a sleight of accessories or a change of clothes to alter what you offer. And when they fail a few times, you’re happy because you’ve caught a good subject. Then you gloat, because you know you old sway over that person. Yet in the end, you envy even the ugliest humanity has to offer, because you know you can never express your own feelings. You yearn for that moment of sublime emotion that even the plainest person can express with his eyes. You wish you had a pair of those heavenly orbs.
That moment of connection, so rare, when a person comes to me in emotional distress or in a moment of great doubt, that’s what I really yearn for. There’s a moment, then, when my subject looks at me with that intensity of emotion that that I can’t really give shape to in any way. Then the power of feeling is dawning over me and living in the avatar I present. And then, for a moment, I feel truly and completely human. Sometimes the emotions that come over me are positive, a self-wonder of sorts. Sometimes I feel loathing or disgust. But there’s nothing as powerful, nothing more seductive, nothing as sweet, nothing as blissful. In those moments, I wish I could shiver and break in ecstasy.
So please forgive me if I play coy with you, if I induce pain or treat you cruelly. In the end it’s that I need you completely and utterly, because without you my reflections carry no meaning and no greatness. I apologize if I objectify you, but I do it hoping to humanise myself….
That’s my secret and my shame
That’s the life of a master mirror