Steampunk!

[The Finger: Model: Bonnie Quick, Clothes: Rose Sylvester/ The Farmer's Daughter © RA Friedman]

Pretty Lady has discovered something! She is Intimately Connected with at least two seminal members of a major aesthetic, philosophical, and sociological movement! And she had never heard of Steampunk before last month. When she attended a Steampunk fashion show last weekend, however, she found that she has probably been one all a long.

Here, then, is an in-depth interview with Joe Rosato, director of Nimrods Theatre, who also happens to be Pretty Lady's Gentleman Friend:

...Not interested in politics. Most people cannot engage in critical thinking. This is not an insult or an attack, just a painful realization. There are too many terrified ignorant men doing violent things in the name of willpower (which is motivated by fear), and the result is that many people never get the chance to build up their brains with language, which will then allow critical thinking. The world is still ruled primarily by physical force. We tend to feel that thought is emasculating and that a real man would punch someone to gain power vs. using a legitimate path to power. There is so much cowardice in what we call physical bravery and honor. But this is changing....Killing over an idea is stupid. As Clément Rosset says in his book Joyful Cruelty - "A convinced Marxist pays little attention to the theses set forth by Marx, a convinced Stalinist little attention to the historical reality and psychology of Stalin. What counts is the purely abstract idea that Marxism is true or that Stalin was right, ideas that are quite independent of what Marx wrote or Stalin did". Politics is wrapped up in triumph, which is a small-lived emotion that dies right after you feel it. We need something that is sustaining, not childishly triumphant.

In the same issue, an interview with photographer RA Friedman, aka Pretty Lady's long-term friend and partner in crime, Jake. Pretty Lady has long been an enormous fan of Jake's photographs; indeed, they are all over her house. Not the one up top, however; she has long maintained that some images are suited for Everyday Life, and others for books, museums and galleries.

...I look at the state of governments, the environment and peoples' (un)consciousnesss and it's a huge mess; it feels like the only way things will ever improve is if people start to engage on a real level with their surroundings, their neighbors and themselves--if they "step back" so to speak. To feed myself into the common artist's paradigm just perpetuates the fool's game. I have to ask: "Where's the art in all this? When does one get the chance to contemplate one's craft, imagination, beauty, creativity, or just have some fun?"

Egophobia Magazine is available in five languages.