Old places tease stories.
These stories can be full of yearning.
Places with an old soul can have this fascination. It is easy to glorify the past, although there never were the good old days. They were just full of different problems that were either luckily solved or forgotten. And still, an old staircase barely visible in the hills asks the question for all the tales that might have been happening there. Framework houses look so natural, as if they had been growing out of the forest all on their own. One of my favourite quotes when being confronted with thoughts like this is that of Socrates complaining about the bad qualities in the youth of his time (in the good old days of ancient Greece).
By painting something I did not want to live through as an oil painting in my head, I fell for a romanticizing view on the past in my own way.
Although it may just be a thing in my head that went wrong. But I feel as if we all perceive tragedies as so much more romantic as soon as they wear costumes from the past. We read and listen to and watch those stories about deeds of desperation and heartbreak all over again that would today end up us a part of the news that everyone gives a sigh and a head shake, only to then try and move on. When I was in my late teens and read classic after classic (and worked myself through Shakespeare, Schiller, Kleist and whatever else seems intellectual here in Germany), a story seemed not worth looking at without this ungood feeling in the end when everything was lost and everyone had finally died! Please, break my heart once more!
My mother often misses the days when she knew how the world worked, because she was young and felt included for a little while, and she misses the mid or late 1980s, a time in which masses protested against a potential nuclear war, the world faced a nuclear disaster, and a climate collapse was already predicted.
To be fair though, she does not seem to be alone. I read so many tweets about the 1990s having been our prime, and in certain places in the world it may have felt like this. I myself used to relax with the music of early 90s Tori Amos and while watching „Friends“ … Although, in my case these two things also wake up early childhood memories, and those always feel kind of magical.
While looking at these old places, I had to think of a general tendency to glorify the past.
Pain seems far away, once it has been survived, and we like to imagine the people who managed to as wiser than before, and who doesn’t we like the thought of finding people wiser than us that we can turn to?
When continuing to draft my witching novel, I will work hard on this illusion to let go of me.
I want to paint her and everyone within my novel just as annoying, as sarcastic and snappy, laughing about stupid things, too tired to get out of bed in the morning and in general very human, with scars and stains all over them.
(…And that still doesn‘t keep me from wearing my longest skirt when trying to cope, for the picture in my head look more like my witch yearning and dreaming and sighing next to an old window and old house in a cursed forest 300 years ago!)
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Mistress witch writes 