Ich bin Kalbfleish.

Posted on by under No Robots at all.

My name is Esther Phase, and I am a Robotic Aesthete.

My name is Esther Phase, and I am a compulsive and manipulative liar.

My name is Esther Phase, and I am ill.

My name is Esther Phase and I am currently trapped within a melancholy of mind that I cannot shake. Part of me doesn’t want to shake it. I can feel the heaviness of my eyes and the sloth of my mind. My name isn’t really Esther Phase, it is —- —–, and I am not a Robotic Aesthete, I am an Art student living in Edinburgh. A tired and penniless art student.

For so many years I hid behind my ambition, and I am not really sure how I managed it when I look back, but it worked and I achieved so much, and I was so very young, so very unhappy. But in those days my solitude encouraged me. Today I sit alone and I feel the room echo around me, and I have to get out, be with and around people. This leads me mostly to the cinema. I can be with countless people, and not know them or have to speak to them. It is a distressing comfort. I see the friends laughing and falling out, the lovers touching and the partners acknowledging one another with a quiet agony. I went to the cinema last night and saw Wim Wenders tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch. It was a rather drawn out film, with too much idealism for my tastes. The dances, in some cases were beautiful, and so very abstract. One, performed by an olive skinned and beautiful lady enthralled me. This woman walked onto the screen, she was in an industrial park, with metal crates and pipes behind her, she had a plate of meat, and she shouted out in a shrill voice “DAS IST KALBFLEISCH!” she duly placed the veal in her ballet shoes and then danced. She had an enormous amount of hair, and she threw her body wildly, her arms constantly framing her face, her hands contorted and shaped. I thought it would inspire me, but it just upset me. That I was alone, that I had lost that drive, and that confidence.

I am not entirely sure what is happening with my life. I am graduating in June and I do not know what I am doing. I am just spending time. Not progressing, but I fear I may be regressing into my adolescent state of solitude, but the fear is born from the fact that I am not creating and I am not progressing artistically. I can no longer create without my self questioning denying my ability any freedom to design as it sees fit. I am always waiting for other people these days, it appears. Without explaining it all, I lost a small part of me, again for reasons I will not elaborate upon, and it is so very difficult to carry on. It is genuinely as if a small component is missing, I can feel it, I couldn’t place it, or locate it, but I can feel the wound. Even others have spotted it. A close friend, Eddie, a genuine man, who I owe the world, emailed me the other day and asked if I were okay. He said that there was something missing in my countenance, a spark from my eye. This upset me a little as I knew that now others were beginning to see between the seams. But I figure that this is a recognition I wanted. Eddie is a sweet heart, and I mean that with all sincerity, he has such hopes for me, and tries to encourage me as best he can. And I really appreciate this, but at times I drown in the flattery.

I am rambling now. But I wanted to get it out. Needed to.

I am Esther Phase, and I am lost and without purpose.

Self-Murder

Posted on by under Victoriana

Madness, Suicide and the Victorian Asylum: Attempted Self-Murder in the Age of Non-Restraint

“During 1881, twenty-three patients had committed suicide in licensed institutions for the insane. Of these, most patients contrived to hang themselves with bed sheets, handkerchiefs tied together with bootlaces, or by “roller towels”. Some patients fatally threw themselves down stairs, whilst others cut their throats with knives smuggled out of the sculery. Three of the twenty-three patients were out of the asylum when the self-murder had occurred. One patient escaped from Whittingham Asylum and lay down on the London and North Western Railway line, where he was found decapitated the next day. Two patients had been discharged on probation, seemingly recovered, only for one man to shoot himself in the head and the other to take an overdose of “chloral”. Suicide, and suicide attempts, it would seem, were a reality of the Victorian mental hospital.”

When I think that I have it bad, and that my search for comfort in medication is bed, I look to the Victorians to calm my nerves. I am so very lucky I am born into an age that believes in alleviating mental illness with discussion and therapy, and also polite (scoff) medication without the need for intrusive or restrictive practices. Wipes sweat from brow.

As for “roller towels”… Had to do a little research on this one. But I think, after a small addition in my mind, that inmates were using roller towels – a towel connected at both ends intended to be hung from a wooden pole for drying hands, with the towel being turned from wet to dry – as a means of strangulation or hanging because of the design and the ease of placing ones head inside and attaching it to something for the purpose of hanging. Desperate times. It is chilling, the objective perspective we can have over such actions. Suicide is no joke. Nor is it an exhibit. But, I suppose, much like the Victorians, we still have a morbid interest.

Just a small interest of mine, and change of tone. Some reading while I up loaded some new music.

— Also, to those who found my blog by typing “Kayla Jo Holland email address” if you find it… you know who wants it just as much as you.

–Esther.

The misappropriation of Esther Phase.

Posted on by under Robot loving.

Is it wrong to misappropriate images or concepts linked to my own name? Or am I just hiding? I don’t have Facebook, I am free from social ties and WordPress is my haven for nonsense. I can elaborate or hush up, I can post what I want, images that look pretty, thoughts which scare me. It is a barbed honesty machine. As though telling the truth is always a subjective process, posting here means that I can be brutally, perhaps belittling-ly honest, and make the largest of concerns appear trivial. Perhaps this is a realisation of Bentham’s Panopticon, our shadows cast against the inner tower, knowing people are watching, just not knowing whom, and when. It is a wicked game. But I am coming to enjoy it. I don’t feel tied to posting here, but do it on the odd occasion. Just a vent. I follow some blogs, and rarely comment. But perhaps I should.

Anyway, here is the first of many misappropriations. An image I have created of Esther Herself, the Queen of Robots. Enjoy!

Now, to write an essay, which I am too tired to do, on Medieval Perspective (in art and manuscript illuminations) in application to 20th Century cinema, namely Dreyers The Passion of Joan of Arc. Hurrah!. Nah, I love it really. Smiley face.

Uncanny in the Valley.

Posted on by under Robot hating.

I don’t know… It could be the awful Canary Yellow hospital gowns, or the cumbersome hands, or perhaps the musical pain… I take my hat off to those at AIST (Advance Industrial Science and Technology) Tokyo, and proffer my assistance with the wardrobe next time. Smiley face.

Clickedy Click!

Actually genuinely interesting stuff! I am too much like Susan Calvin. I am Susan Calvin, but “Satisfaction Guaranteed” Susan Calvin, and not creepy damn-Asimov-for-being-an-assuming-sexist-pig “Lenny” Susan Calvin.

Will have to get a post written about the Uncanny Valley at some point, it is fascinating stuff, well… for me.