Kingdom of Delight

I was watching Memoirs of a Geisha, yet again, and a particular phrase stuck in my mind. The US Army colonel says to Sayuri "But here you make everything a ritual don't you?" and she replies "That is the art of turning habit into pleasure, Colonel."

When I wrote in a previous blog that the "right woman" for me would be a geisha or courtesan type I had many elements of those roles in mind, but all of them have the concept of pleasure in common. When people think of geishas and courtesans they usually think of sex. Fair dues, but sex is but one aspect of pleasure. Geisha does after all mean artist, and likewise the courtesans were well versed in music, poetry, literature, conversation, and countless other arts. All with the intention of making life pleasurable.

In Victorian society, the man's domain was the world of work, commerce, business, and production, while the women ruled over the domestic realm bringing beauty, pleasure, culture, and art to their living environment. Is it any wonder that the Woman lies at the heart of Romance? The Romantic is all about the pursuit of pleasure.

One of my fascinations is semiotics, the study of signs. By reading the signs of our civilisation we can peek into the subconscious of our society. Go to a major street in your city and watch the people. See how they dress. Look at how they present themselves to the world. Peek into their value system through the choices they made.

Yesterday, I saw something very funny. A young man and woman walking up the street and he was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Kill the Rich". The thought suddenly occurred to me in regards to his female companion. "This man has no prospects". If that is his attitude towards the acquisition of wealth, then she had best get use to penury, and perhaps even the idea of supporting him.

Jeans, denim, and T-shirts are among my favourite pet hates because of the uniform ubiquitousness of them. If we look at the history of these garments we find their origins lie in the working class. Jeans, for example, were originally created for miners in the 19th century American frontier. It wasn't long before the cowboys adopted the trousers for their ranch work. During the 1950's, costume designers for James Dean, the Rebel Without a Cause, chose to put the character in jeans to demonstrate his rugged individualism, qualities associated with the cowboys who wore them, and thus inspired America's latest contribution to human culture – the teenager. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's jeans typified the rebellion of an entire generation, but from the late 70's throughout the 80's jeans became sexy, thanks to Brooke Shields' backside. Today everyone owns jeans, except me and two other people I know. They have become a global uniform for humanity whose growth in popularity seems to perfectly coincide with the gradual decline of the Romantic values I hold dear. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Time for the personal anecdotes. For the most part, I stopped wearing jeans when I was thirteen. I kept an eye towards fashion, but generally my developing self saw personal image as a tool to convey my sense of self. This was my Indiana Jones phase where I copied 1930's fashions. However, this sense did not really extend too far beyond myself.

My domain was the realm of the mind and spirit and I devalued the physical world as a passing necessity to simply get through. This was compounded by a lifestyle on the move. I never kept more stuff than I could fit into the back of my car, mostly because I moved every three years. Then I made the great move to Scotland. This proved such a disaster that the last thing I wanted was to move. I wanted permanence and stability. I was tired of furnishing my apartment or flat with whatever I was lucky enough to get my hands on. I wanted a home.

I had long envied the homes of others, but it was always a great mystery to me. It was like looking at a blank page. It was for me to fill my home, but how and with what? Such activities force you to go inside yourself and find your personal aesthetic. In essence to discover who you are represented in physical form through these manifestations of your soul.

Then I met a girl who transformed the way I thought about the physical world. She had a talent for taking the conceptual values in her mind and making them a reality. She was a creator of worlds within worlds. As she had a natural talent for such things, she never valued the skill, but to me she created paradise with no more than a few touches. The time I spent in her world ranks as among the happiest times in my life. Now upon me is the burden of doing the same for myself. I must learn from her example and create the universe in which I want to dwell.

I have come a long way from the person who rejected physicality for the spiritual. The pleasures of existence that I once snubbed in favour of the safer domains of my consciousness I now fully embrace. Those things I once admired from a distance are now those things I seek to become.

The world that we create for ourselves is the gift of delight given to ourselves and to our loved ones. The clothes and decor we choose, the food we eat, the lifestyle we embody are all celebrations of self. In the film Kate and Leopold, Leopold says, "Where I come from the meal is the result of reflection and study. Menus are prepared in advance timed to perfection. It is said, without the culinary arts the crudeness of reality would be unbearable." The same may be said of the other simpler arts of hearth and home. But all this is abandoned in our age of denim, ready meals, strip malls, and Ikea. We have lost the Art of Living.

So here I am a gentleman pushing forty reading decorating books and watching fashion shows trying to learn all the things I once ignored. My ideal is to find a woman with the power to bring pleasure, beauty, and ritual into my life so that I might savour the fullness of this existence and enjoy every bite. Someone to create a refuge for us against the vulgarity of a denim world that pronounces mediocrity or camp self-expression as virtues. However, that not being available at present, I must learn to create my own kingdom of delight.