A Subtler Harlequin

See

Allegories jostling for space in cramped four-square panels; Our Maroon Mountebank, bereft of conundrums, shimmying through the parade to murder inane imagery. Whisked out of existence, toiling in a no less brimful bountiful void, mourning not so much their lack of being as their loss of place in the cavalcade: figures pictures metaphors meaning non-meaning.

Arlecchino serves Comedy and Faith and Reason. In a flurry of red black and steel he absolves lustrates disinfects (like pages from the diaries of absent friends). Skill and grace over coarse vulgar erudition, beautiful beautiful improvisation and sublime craft over bland base brutish art: his blade butchers and then subsumes its unfortunate draftees, swift furious arctrails tinged with crimson and disobedient arclings refusing their parents' love disregarding their sacrifice running away from home slashing air.

So hear

The swish of ungrateful arclings fleeing from burdens and baggage refusing life, the Empyrean ur-sound of a creased costume and bent Angelic limbs, the Diabolical un-sound of allegories non-existing, the drip drip drip of adrenaline and ink and perforated-pimple juice. The colours coalesce to achieve auditory sublimity, the sounds are important still secondary to the craft of picture-cleansing picture-making.

Arlecchino twirls and waltzs and slashes in glorious euphoric non-conformity so that red and black are no longer just combatants in a Punch and Judy World, or statements of uncreation, but heralds of a new simpler subtler experience-in-extension. Hamelin tunes seducing eyes appraising innamorata.

Thus feel

The wholeness of the madrigal: the Hamelin tunes, the ur- and un-sounds. The Creation of an Equal yet Greater Music. The death and defiance of Our Other Players. And then, yes, the break in Arlecchino's step accorded by yes the neverattainment of Columbine Harsh Columbine catalyst trigerring transformation into all-too-familiar Pierrot (staring with terrified eyes at soap and consumerism) destroying sync symphony causing image-survivors to rebel regroup escape and turn the tide.

Pierrot who is Arlecchino suffering epiphany, the near-orgasm of Space-end. Seeking recourse in the vulgarity of art, seeking subtlety in coarseness, until Arlecchino loosens himself into the throes of a demented phoenix-resurgence: having broken his waltz he fixes his trot and twirls slashes twirls yet again in indiscriminate Arcadian autonomy and in his ascension dancing himself into and further from: and all the while seeking seeking seeking a finer sense a swifter hand a subtler Harlequin.