Sorrow and Lament in the Erlking's Wake

Today’s Meursault is: In the backrooms (again)

Ok. Starting with the actual art/design. HOLE IN THE MAN!!!!!!!DOUBLED DOWN ON HOLE IN THE MAN!!!!YIPPIE!!!!

The theming seems to revolve around cameras, black holes, and bullets! Specifically, The black hole sun in the background is a sort of camera lens when you think about it. BUT! more importantly. I believe that is a bullet hole going through meursault's chest and out the back. It's harder to see in the promo they just posted but. thats definitelt a bullet hole through him. WHICH! is very interesting! because! it appears that there's a clever juxtaposition of bullet holes and pinhole cameras going on here.

The title of the canto, Studium Punctum, is a reference to the themes of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida: The Essence of Photograpy? It's both another french philosophy book heavily themed around the reason of photography and the reflection of the matter on the self, but it's ALSO seen as a Eulogy for Barthes' mother, who passed a few years prior to it's publishing, and Barthes himself, who died shortly after it was published. Very very VERY interesting. A philosophy on how you view the world, with the objective studium, and devolves into the punctum, the sentimental wound left on you? a eulogy to the dead? hmmm????

As a note, because theres a lot of photography theming leading up to the canto, a Camera Lucida is a little mirror and lens that's up on a stick that that kinda acts like a projector that projects a ghost-like image of your subject matter onto paper!

A pinhole camera acts similarly, is in a box usually instead of free-standing. It uses a teeny tiny hole in a box, which projects a reversed image onto the back of the box because of the light. That's called the camera obscura phenomenon :] And is kinda the same way your eyes process the world around you :]

AND! the black hole is kind of a mix of a viewfinder, the shutter, the sun, and something so blinding and unpleasant to look directly at in it's beauty? Homemade eclipse viewers also rely on the camera obscura effect to be able to see the event without damaging your eyes.

I havr a lot of thoughts about Mr. Angel With A Shotgun but I do believe the revolver in his hand is an american one, meaning there are six chambers instead of 5 like the french, but i havent found a spot where you see it very well. The spikes in his other hand look like a sword cane or rapier of some kind. yanno for fencing. i rlly like the sun on the back of his outfit...very him....hes dressed very french.