Ilya would be obsessed with this pajama set and leave a comment and erling would send him and shane matching sets (which shane refuses to wear) but ilya posts a bunch of pics lounging in them, looking rich and bitchy and absolutely feeling himself, thanking Erling and asking when they can do a photo shoot together. later, Ilya posts a pic of shane passed out on his chest, wearing the pajama top, while ilya wears the bottoms.
macbeth really is such a fascinating guy because when he's thinking about doing the murder he actually sits with himself for a second and goes "if i do this, i'm signing over my immortal soul, and i'm probably going to be miserable with guilt" and then he does it and is miserable with guilt. and it makes him very very interesting! because it's not an impulse thing! he knows! so what makes a person make that choice? what amount of personal ambition, what lust for glory, what amount of wifely-pressure-fueled conception-of-masculinity-as-violence can get someone to do that?
because it isn't idiocy. he knows damn well. and none of his asides, none of his elaborate visually-fantastical speeches or deft metaphors, are the words of a blundering dumbass. personally, i think the core of macbeth is exactly what we find out before he ever steps on stage: he's a soldier, and more than that, he;s a killer. and he's extremely good at it. fuck diplomacy--basically every single problem he faces in the play is one he tries to kill his way out of, because it's the only strategy he knows. at some point, i don't even think it's just manhood-as-violence for him; it's personhood-as-violence. in 3.1 he threatens to get into the lists against fate, against the price of his own defiled soul; at the end, he resolves to go down fighting no matter what. as much as people love to joke about macbeth being foolhardy and easily-pressured and not looking more than five minutes into the future--the guy knows. but all he's ever done, all he can do, is fight. he's not a fool. he's a machine.
but also, fascination aside, what the fuck is wrong with him lmfao my guy you KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
Ok it's 12 am for me pretty pretty please let me chime in here this whole post is yes and awesome and "he is a machine" will echo in my head for the next week and if I may add my slight addition- my personal interpretation, one obviously slathered in my own bias and personal view of this text that means a lot to me is that- underlying his ambition, his familiarity within violence this society he exists in and only knows how to exist in as a perpetuator of violence- is just, an attempt at being anything. I know he is our central character but it feels compelling to me how differently Macbeth talks than his peers from scene ONE and it's not that his peers are stupid or that he's like a misunderstood woe-is-me genius because I think that is NOT what the text is getting at but rather, hm, rather Macbeth strikes me as someone who doesn't know how to be. Like how to be a human. His relationship dynamic is unconventional to the time period he is insecure about masculinity he seems to stumble about trying to find out what it is and then when he decides he found it tries to fit everything he does into that box. ( Specifically referencing "are you a man" talk smash cutting to his weird speech to Banquos murders about how there are a bunch of types of men and they gotta be MURDER MEN because uhm uhhh ) the way he talks differently from his peers?? Like on a very textual level don't even let me get into how two central figures in the play use alliteration HIM and the WITCHES, the witches are obvious they're alliterating in half of their speeches but Macbeth does too and it's ONLY HIM. ( Two truths are told + the swift the slow the subtle ) HE KINDA TALKS LIKE THE WITCHES IN MANY SUBTLE WAYS. ACTUALLY. DON'T GET ME STARTEDDD ( I am started ) on act one scene one witches going "fair is foul and foul is fair" only for Macbeth to say "so foul and fair a day I have not scene" AS HIS FIRST FUCKING LINE. GOD. DO YOU GET IT. Macbeth is different he's separate something deep within him is of the unnatural of the wicked and I think he knows it deep deep down I think it's why he is so controlled by others at every stage of his life I think it's why he can not ever ever escape guilt because he is determined by others and to take the lives of those determiners is for the miner in the cave to kill his own canary. He is so human and yet so other. I think. I think it is a distant unfixed awareness that he is in a text, he cannot place it, he will never place it but Macbeth ( as a play not a guy for a moment ) frequently references the audiences role in the story the role of a text to its characters. The witches do a forth wall break at one point referencing the trumpets that the other characters cannot here but the audience can when Macbeth and Banquo walk in. If we are to see Macbeth as tied uncannily and horribly to the witches unnaturalness in some way by extension he too carries this burden. But no one told him. He will never know that he is the foul player in the tragedy of being known most intimately by an audience you can never know or meet. I think that's why he does it. All of it. Because he's trying to become something- king, violent, real, a person. I think he can feel the slight invisible border between him and everyone else and he lets it control him, guide him, he lets ambition overtake him because to be ambitious would make him tangibly present in this space, it would mean it all means something very real. I think he knows something he's not supposed to. I think he is scared.
Or maybe I'm just a freak projecting feelings onto a play about how murder is bad because you will feel bad I dunno guys don't let me talk about Macbeth I do this.
Georgia O’Keeffe, from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz featured in My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933