#museenkuss

2. You know the Faerie Queen is holding her ball at dawn. What dress do you wear to seduce her? (Description or photo)

obviously i’m ready to seduce her with this enticing, macabre fit like an unseelie high lady with gauzy cape ready to envelop her in my arms

8. What poem would a kind-hearted mortal have to recite to entice you intorevealing yourself to them?

show me your face / i crave / flowers and gardens / open your lips / i crave / the taste of honey 

— Rumi

10.  A horrific beast has locked you in their castle. What character trait oftheirs would sway you to look beyond that gruesome face and, eventually, makeyou fall in love?

i’m already quite taken that they’d comply to national health regulations and implore me to #StayAtHome but! if they’re earnest in their declarations of devotion and are infinitely kind to me, then a bitch might be swayed

13. You’re a dragon. What do you hoard?

There’s a segment where I say “it’s day 53 and I’m really struggling… I can’t even write a sonnet. I don’t see any improvement in myself. Is this even worth it?!” The stakes are rising. I’m shown ripping up pages of rhymes in calligraphy. I swear as I rush around the kitchen, trying to prepare my oysters. I sit at my desk and sigh, head in hands, my desk covered in stacks of notes, huge volumes on art history and printed out articles. The dramatic moment comes when I for the nth time try to walk and gesture with sprezzatura while balancing books on my head for better posture. I fall. The books topple to the floor. I’ve reached rock bottom.

Black screen. Voice over: “It was really hard. I felt like Dante, in the dark forest, having lost my way. And then, I realised what I needed: I had to go on a grand tour.”

Music swells again, there’s a montage of me packing and travelling in busses and trains. Landscape rushes past. I read Goethe’s Italienische Reise on the journey. Finally, there are snippets of me in Munich, in Vienna. I take a selfie in front of Parmigianino’s self portrait in a convex mirror, showing off my own elegantly contorted hand. I’m in Florence, breathing heavily with excitement as I walk along the outside walls of the Galleria degli Uffizi. “Oh my god, there he is—“ I film the Petrarch statue, the phone visibly shaking. “I can’t believe I get to meet him…” I whisper with awe. Cut. I’m blowing a kiss at the right Grace in Botticelli’s Spring (I have a crush on her). I’m in the Loggia di Psiche in Rome, I’m kneeling on a bridge in Venice to touch it, “Tintoretto walked on these very stones..”, I’m filming the ceiling of the Camera Degli Sposi in Mantua. I’m in the streets of Grasse showing off a bottle of Fragonard perfume I bought, I’m teary eyed in front of the Concerto Campestre in the Louvre. Cut.

I’m back home. “It’s now day…79. Those were the most unrealistic two weeks of my life. And the most expensive. But now I’m back on track. I feel like I can really do this.” With newfound vigour I get back to my battered Reclam German/Latin edition of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Day 81, 85, 89. Emotional/hopeful music. I show a Shakespeare sonnet written in beautiful calligraphy. I’m in the museum sketching the composition of an annunciation and taking notes on a Venus by Cranach. I practice a speech I’ve written following Cicero’s rules on rhetoric. I’m back on horseback. I present a cake of some sort.

pops of colour (umbrella, tights, scarves, coloured pencils...)

wool, cashmere, cotton, leather

notebook

skincare products with a specific scent to remember this time by (limited edition hand lotion, a body butter I haven't tried before...)

on that note: a specific project to focus on and finish.

barbour or a proper coat

a perfectly useless trinket with sentimental value to keep in one's bag

calendar (full of dates and notes, preferably)

a book of fairy tales

a handkerchief (cotton) for wind-tears or a dripping nose on brisk walks

Guerlain perfumes

rooibos tea and hot chocolate

overdue library books

ballet discipline, ballet grace

I. torn silk stockings

II. moon’s shadow

III. what’s in her bag: the woman who visits after midnight

IV. the rustling behind the curtain

V. an unexpected gift

VI. the woman who collects dolls

VII. the voice in the back of the car

VIII. silky furs, sharp teeth

IX. the sugar bowl

They did tell me upon arrival that the room I’d booked wasn’t available due to an unfortunate and quite unexpected haunting. Terribly sorry, they said, we upgraded you.

Which is how I found myself, not in a small room with a small bed tucked against the wall, but rather in a grande suite with a balcony and tall windows. It was terribly inconvenient, of course, since I’d asked for a room with as little morning sun as possible. It’s bad for my health, you see. But at least there was a canopy bed, with red drapes that promised muted, rose-tinted darkness.