Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

“Back at the office that night before we went to print, I taught a little something called nabhi kriya. As the class broke down at the end, sinking into savasana, I contemplated these different paths to the perfect BLAU story. As long as you put the work in, it really doesn’t matter if it’s your navel or your arcline doing the job.”

The radiance of the “city of lights” can be blinding even for tourists: the clash with the real city, so different from the one depicted in films and books, results in some of them developing the so-called “Paris syndrome.”

“The emotional bond between owner and pet is often, perhaps to some degree always, bound up in anthropomorphic projections.”

“Growth is often associated with moving on. It’s a commonly posed question, for example, whether one should ever vacation in the same place twice. If travel broadens the mind, the argument goes, then a travel itinerary should be as broad as the horizon. There’s such a lot of the world to see: Why go back again?”

“Without ugliness, without imperfection, beauty spins frictionless; it gains no purchase on the world. Real, unabashed ugliness should be celebrated. One aspires to be beautiful, and one desires lovely things. But ugliness is the stuff of life.”

“That day, we started the conversation that eventually led to the very personal essay Meyer has contributed to this issue of BLAU International. Recounting a brief history of a phenomenon he’s coined the ‘Gay Man’s Castle,’ Meyer insists on the transformative power of personal taste. He shows us how the homes of creatives, how their collections, how even the ceilings above their deathbeds can narrate histories of repression and liberation alike. And how paying tribute to the men who build those ‘castles’ far too often means remembering those we’ve lost. If you ever meet Meyer, you might thank him for this. But never, ever bring up Wuppertal. It will surely harsh his vibe.”

“Both the Parthenon and Cinderella Castle try to physicalise myths, a means of building legacy that manifests as a fairytale and influences our perspectives of reality. It’s rare to find these kinds of wild optical manipulations employed in contemporary buildings, but it’s all too easy to see a similar desire to push a narrative through colossal and eye-catching buildings.”

“Tackiness may require unabashed love, but it also rewards those who get the references—and the current mood. As Karl Lagerfeld once proclaimed, ‘Trendy is the last stage before tacky.’ The tack-o-meter is constantly adjusting. It moves with the times, chewing up the past to recalibrate our present tastes.”

“Recently, the New York Times published a story about BLAU International’s headquarters in Berlin. We only realized how much it must have struck a chord with the readers when the Times subsequently posted one image from the story on their Instagram account. ‘Is it a magazine—or is it a cult?’ was one of the more frequently asked questions the readers seemed to have, the most probable answer being: both.”

“I made it a point to greet it every morning, to be sure it was still doing its thing. For as long as it is waving, it gives me a sense of assurance that all is well. An unexpected, yet very real relationship had been unwittingly established, and it taught me that value of things is not determined by price, but through time and meaning.”