5/30/05 (practicing, practicing...)
Cold curt Prussian lips said small prayers while nimble nine-year-old fingers lit candles. The formality of a church, reverent as though the prayers spoken here were designed for a god, but instead of a nude figure on a cross, Marie Magdala aligned her drowsy eyes to her mantel and the carefully posed portraits of Duse and the hands whose readiness of expression she was appealing. Candles arranged around fraying post-cards from a local shop, wax dripping on a make-shift altar to a make-shift saint. Magdala hadn't the inkling that she was becoming Lily Marlene, a death to the quiet Marie Magda, too young to exactly understand how her low prayers were fashioning a magic, cloning an essence, imbuing the small, severe German girl with a genderless allure that would make her inescapable, and a certainty of purpose she could only have stolen.
At seventeen Lily Marlene discovered a certain romantic actress whose open sentimentality was the antithesis of her solid sensibilities. She sent the actress cakes filled with fresh creme, she serenaded her with her violin and sang to her suggestively in that dusky voice. The actress invited Lily into her home for breakfast, feeding the girl on eggs, toast and sausage, but the girl closed like an oyster with a pearl. Suddenly growing awkward, losing her ferocity, she ran home without saying goodbye but where Lily became sullen and withdrawn with a perceived rejection, Marlene would never allow herself to be made a fool.
From then on, she would only be sung about, never again the singer.
Through conductivity, black magic, and kleigs, she was born, cigarette in hand, tuxedo fluttering from her suitcase, she ran to catch the first day's train to Berlin, watching her small, northern town fall off the horizon. She puffed her cigarette and blew smoke at the cold home she was leaving behind.
At seventeen Lily Marlene discovered a certain romantic actress whose open sentimentality was the antithesis of her solid sensibilities. She sent the actress cakes filled with fresh creme, she serenaded her with her violin and sang to her suggestively in that dusky voice. The actress invited Lily into her home for breakfast, feeding the girl on eggs, toast and sausage, but the girl closed like an oyster with a pearl. Suddenly growing awkward, losing her ferocity, she ran home without saying goodbye but where Lily became sullen and withdrawn with a perceived rejection, Marlene would never allow herself to be made a fool.
From then on, she would only be sung about, never again the singer.
Through conductivity, black magic, and kleigs, she was born, cigarette in hand, tuxedo fluttering from her suitcase, she ran to catch the first day's train to Berlin, watching her small, northern town fall off the horizon. She puffed her cigarette and blew smoke at the cold home she was leaving behind.