Mulling over the facial injury
Continuing thoughts from this post: The photographer here did a poor job of "fixing" the lip. Look at the eye though and the visible scarring. I think when he was tired, his face would sag a bit.
I mean, once you see it you really can't unsee it. Lighting and shading and how brushed the picture is can change things. Sometimes the "pouch" was more apparent than others:
In the "Sing the Changes" video, he almost seems to be alluding to a facial trauma:
And sometimes, once in a while, the prosthetic/pouch/balloon, whatever it was would fail, and you'd get a sense of it, the missing cheek would become apparent and our boy would need an adjustment. A partial collapse:
Here it looks like a complete collapse... the cheek is just gone.
Still beautiful, though.
Pretty serious scarring. I love that he wasn't ashamed of them or making excuses for them. One of Mike's friends, Sam Walsh, did a wonderful portrait of Paul (it's been shown at the National Gallery). Entitled, "Mike's Brother" it seems to acknowledge some of the injuries. Note the blur at the bottom left lip, the suggestion that something happened on the left side (a prosthetic would have been attached to the nasal cartilage) and I have often wondered if Paul's left eye was not as good as his right, given the fact that it often seems less bright than the right.
Anyway, food for thought and speculation but I don't want to go overboard. The man's entitled to his private traumas, as are we all. I never meant to go full-on into this, or to do it in reblogs, but that's what's happened. Start here.
I did write a fan fic about it, here. UPDATE: Adding this pic as well. With the filter you can see both the fiddly problem with his eye and also the brace that is holding his head in one spot, possibly to prevent gravity from messing up the repaired left side of his face.
UPDATE II: Paul was a very good artist. Can we talk about this painting he is working on in Japan in 1966, and how it appears to be a figure whose left side of his face has been ripped open?
Detail:
Rotated: A lot going on in the left side of the face. Really a fascinating panting. He had technique.
It's so graphic. Like he's showing an injury that sliced his face down to the bone:
If all my speculation about him having a severe facial injury is correct... poor kid.
