A red [pen] entry in my new new new diary. The third day of reflection. Lucky number three. Pretty soon I might start ascribing meanings to my pens, even if sticking to my rigid patterns. Alternating red ink for wanderings (left, mysticism, heart, tails) or jet-black for devotion (right, astuteness, double heads). I am only ever phrasing the prayer or dictating scripture, never in between.

“I’m not allowed to write fiction” I said in my daydream. What I meant is: I am only allowed to feel. And what I feel right now is that writing is something I love like a tired dog, always in search of adoration. The scraps never suffice and the hunt is paltry. Behold the spoils of war with the self; unending artificial scarcity. The leather of the collar tightens around my throat. (Author’s note: no erotic connotation yet… Give me enough flame and open enough windows and it might yet appear.)

In truth I love a lot of things like that: love that is a wanting, a saying, or rather, an asking. Pleading eyes / Please perceive my efforts. They are not just stitched inside of me, but outside too!

((( Intrusive thought: should have never posted that one untrue picture, will withdraw it now, actually. Sanctify the record. I looked asleep in my white gown with eyes wide open, blank-slate-faced in a bad way. Must expurgate what little of me is out there that falls on my unflattering side. )))

Tonight I want to love love love and leave behind this infantile awkwardness I’ve uncovered: I used to be much sparklier in my teens. I had reason to perform for my dinner then. Lit up at ruins, and napkins, and raindrop days. Chasing hotel guest gratuities, something to both bite into and believe in. Euro-pa-bills with shining canines to match. Coins are the closest thing to a god in a country of lingering protestantism and cobblestones; they make all the major decisions. Sometimes I feel that they never stopped spinning, up in the grey air. Maybe I can’t heads-or-tails my youth like I was taught to.

Suppose I should be writing my ninety-five statements. Instead, I am hiding out in my attic (soon-to-be-lost), cocooning. Spitting out owl pellets of verbose prose, are you proud of me yet?

Come winter-time I always yearn for smaller spaces, a smaller home. Easier to heat than the chambers of the heart. On the unending bright screen, a stranger confesses to being unable to explore suffering in their writing. That’s the delicious kind of voyeurism. I greedily assume admitting defeat would be easier if I was not so intent on feeling the sting of it. Watching the red-burn of the lash, the way the edges are soft, and the colour pastel pretty. I can’t help making my own inadequacy my biggest secret, tangling it up in self-mythology.

Another confession, then. Forgive me, my dear friend, I dropped out of your writing group as grasp for pure self-soothing. I am a masochist who cannot tolerate ego wounds when related to my practice; it contains too much of myself. My methods were so unexciting and my results so unembellished, I couldn’t have been more vulnerable if I tried. No, solitude is my preferred chaser to self-flagellation. My burnt offerings go straight to the mirror. In my mistaken oracle it is always neater to retreat than to unfold clasped hands. The doctrine of my country believes in building oneself up, even if it costs you the skin off of your back and your feet, and the nightmares still won’t end. Public displays of suffering are second only to ascension. Best to be held out on until the Inevitable arrives.

Anyway, I aimed the question of writing at my grandfather clock just now. Its answer sounded like ticking, like wheels turning, like the metal of currency re-forged into a tool, ultimately, devoid of meaning. “Entanglement” Desire responded, stared at me, and asked why the scraps can’t make the meal.

“I wasn’t always laced with skepticism” I defended. Somewhere in my aging, I sewed it into me. I weave this story of my own hardship in hopes of it shaping a prologue someday. Genesis like a shrug, like casting off the chains of foreign language, like inspiration in its infancy. Second only to my own ability to numb the wound, to pretend it away with circles of people, and clumsy religious metaphors fit for a girl raised in atheism. Writer’s stigmata. Glassy eyes. At the end of three red-soaked pages now. If my heart had a sound it would be the hushed caress of journal ribbons tying, shut.

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism’s tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society page dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

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Today, on my birthday, I would like to re-introduce myself as your humble curator and/or cult leader once more, using the Proust questionnaire. Incense-dazed and keyboard-weary, my name is Sabrina Angelina, nice to meet you. I am her, she is me. I am a character, I am a prophecy, and I am the little sleep paralysis demon at the foot of your bed. Worry not. Tell me a fairytale and I will be on my merry way. Driven by the urge to consume candlelight, no doubt. I am the great worshipper of a run-on sentence, and [most of] the White Lily Society has weaselled its ways out of the dusty crevices of my mind. Allow me to shed some light through recreational narcissism.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Multiple options: (1) Locking myself in my attic to write and research and read. Preferably by candlelight. (2) London when it is grey out and the weather is on the colder side, and the rain weaves in and out throughout the hours. (3) A successful night with friends; feeling seen; acknowledgement. The inspiration that comes from closeness. The identity euphoria of a new thing clicking into an old place.

2. What is your greatest fear?

I have a minor phobia of hearing my own heartbeat. Also, for about half a decade I battled severe emetophobia, which I’m glad to say I’ve mostly conquered. I’m also quite anxious about death; the loss of sensation which is completely beyond my comprehension. It terrified me greatly as a child. Which is probably why I snuggle up to death more and more in my work. Consider it some sort of twisted, perverse exposure therapy. Helpful and masochistically indulgent.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Residual crudeness and/or speaking before thinking. Not articulating myself well enough as a result. [In the past it was envy, but I’ve come a long way in quelling any lack in my life that could stoke jealousy.]

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Having a closed, iron-gated mind; habitual inconsiderateness; a destitute lack of passion.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

Dita von Teese! I have a great weakness for anybody who has, through sheer force of will, moulded both themselves and their life to their desire. It’s a very seductive mix of ambition, yearning, and type-A devotion that is endlessly enticing.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Perfectionism; needing my surroundings to be aesthetically pleasing in order to feel relaxing; ritualistic dramatics.

7. What is your current state of mind?

I’m always in a state of perpetual residual daydream, a grasp for a little bit more, or consequentially a devil on my shoulder urging me to chase productivity above anything and everything else. The daydreams are potent; growing up the way I did, I really did believe my life would be like “the Vampire Diaries” (2009-2017) or “Twilight” (2008) and I would gather with friends for cozy research, wander around candle-lit castles, or fall in love with vampires. I never really stopped mourning that (unreal) life, or reaching into fantasies to get it— when the sky is grey and rainy, and the weather temperate, like it is now, it seems a lot more within reach. The dreariness is intoxicating.

And the life I am creating for myself through the White Lily Society, where I lock myself in my attic to write or do research, where I live and breathe Gothicism, and I volunteer at a cemetery— that life is exactly the one I’ve been dreaming up for myself for decades now.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Puritanism, or completely strait-laced moral rigidity projected onto everything from books to lifestyles. The most illuminating bits of life [often] happen in the grey.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

I had a really silly habit of lying to over-exaggerate as a child, just inflating numbers at large for dramatic effect, which I am still trying to kick for the most part. Just don’t trust me with spoken dates, numbers, or values. Ever. It’s all guesswork. I’m better with outlines, but prefer to double-check if speaking on the record (as I am doing now).

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

I am not photogenic enough to be attending as many events as I do, my dear. Though I’ve long made peace with my appearance (and my body, especially), I would much prefer the option of crossing out all bad pictures of myself on a physical negative, à la Marilyn Monroe. Or simply let go of the foolish notion of ever letting one’s guard down within twenty feet of a camera.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Please don’t make me think of them!

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

I tend to be interested in men that have opposite interests from me, but are very openminded, non-judgemental, and kind. I’m also particularly attracted to skill, knowledge, or people unapologetically geeking out over their own things— that goes for both genders, though by observation I do gravitate more to women artists, and STEM men.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

In women, I often look to be inspired. People who have embraced outlandishness really intrigue me. With both genders I consider a good match in a balanced “Venn diagram” so to speak; a shared basis, usually attitude-wise, as well as a foundation of shared interests, and then each our own things as well.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

I tend to speak without much thought (bad habit), so most over-used are all those short affirming phrases I tend to spit out while mentally formulating a long-form response. See: “same”, “felt”, “real”, or any other variation of these.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

London, the Big Smoke.

16. When and where were you happiest?

Right now, baby!

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Gracefulness.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d very much like to be more verbally eloquent and well-spoken. I manage well on paper, where I have time to mull things over and adjust them, but my speech still has ways to go, in my opinion.

If I’m allowed a few more requests I’d also like instantly better posture and eternally perfectly-styled hair.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

The thesis I created for my MSc in Strategic Fashion Management at UAL:LCF; “How Not to Disappear: the Impact of High- and Low-Aesthetic Advertising on Easing the Effects of Luxury Fashion Brand Fatigue in UK Gen-Z and Millennial Consumers”. It’s a 140 pages long, 16k word document of my own research and statistical analysis: I got 600 people to take part in my experiment! And I loved the feeling- despite all the pain- of locking myself in my attic and just writing, researching, studying. It was addictive. If only all of my university experience looked and felt like that. A girl can dream!

[B-side answer: this lovely White Lily Society community, felt especially when a member reaches out with their work or appreciation]

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

I love crows and ravens, or snails (Spiders are more so a theoretical love of mine, not really in practice). Though I think my soul would also do well haunting a doll of some sorts.

21. Where would you most like to live?

Realistically; where I am now (London), or Paris.

Idealistically / in a symbolically potent way; New Orleans (French Quarter or Garden District), somewhere in the Pacific Midwest (a forest cabin with a wood-fire stove) ((I’ve never been to either of these places)) (((Odds are I would maybe last five minutes in the woods by myself))). Or I’d hide out in the attic of my friend’s house in the Swiss Alps, stealing little breadcrumbs from the kitchen when she’s not around to notice...

22. What is your most treasured possession?

An antique baroque silver jewellery box from my grandmother. My grandfather’s ornate clock. The locket I lost last April and still mourn (my other grandmother’s). My own baby teeth. The little metal ballerina figurine my mom gave me. A 2012 folio edition of Angela Carter’s “the Bloody Chamber” (1978). My Monster High Draculaura creeproduction. A set of six crystal glass bowls I thrifted and always hold onto with both hands lest I drop them. A big sturdy box full of priceless memories and postcards from my friends.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

That post-9pm feeling of needing to completely redo your life, reinvent your self, and just do more. Here’s a tip for future me: don’t trust the intensity of your feelings once the sun has set. Ever. The darkness lies when it whispers.

Or, alternatively, learn more from the enjoyment I get on the fringes of this feeling. I relish general melancholy, not so much the pointed edges of it. But I love to feel bad when I can do so dramatically, in a lacy nightgown, and by candlelight.

24. What is your favourite occupation?

To forget myself in the midst of writing, reading, and researching.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

I am, in all things, Venus-heavy. My realm is one of beauty, aesthetics, romantic tendencies, seduction, and devotion. Therefore, my life work is to create in tune with my desires, something that is beautiful and inspiring to others. I hunger for approval, and to be appreciated / admired, and am sensitive to disharmony, especially visually. As a result I also tend to be quite detail-oriented. Any error, no matter how tiny, is an immediate thorn in my eye.

26. What do you most value in your friends?

All my friends are people I admire, people that inspire me, people that possess traits I would like to cultivate more of in myself. Uplifting, dreamy people I can talk to for hours on end without boredom in sight.

27. Who are your favourite writers?

Angela Carter is the only writer who’s never missed for me. My favourites include all of “the Bloody Chamber” (1978), but especially the short story “the Tiger’s Bride”. And from her other short stories “Flesh and the Mirror” and “the Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe”, not to mention her non-fiction work “the Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography” (1978).

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Most definitely a red flag, but Katherine Pierce from “the Vampire Diaries” (2009-2017) had a devastating effect on my pre-teen psyche. I loved her extreme confidence, self-assured manner, and seductive smarts. Other favourites from the TVDU include Caroline Forbes, and the underrated witch Genevieve. I also love Lucy Westenra from “Dracula” (1897), Kathryn from “Cruel Intentions” (1999), Buffy Summers from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003), Margaery Tyrell from “Game of Thrones” (2011-2019), Olivia Pope from “Scandal” (2012-2018), and Helaena Targaryen from “House of the Dragon” (2022-). But my current favourite is Lottie Matthews from “Yellowjackets” (2021-). I love characters that are clever, seductive, and/or supremely tragic.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Oh, God, how does one even answer this? Truly, I don’t think there’s any one figure out there whom I sympathise with and who also exhibits genuine parallels to my life. I suppose a lot of Anaïs Nin’s writing about sensuality, about needing escape, about being multiple personalities in one, really hits close to home for me.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

Angela Carter, Lord Byron, Dita von Teese, Anaïs Nin, Ethel Cain, Christine McConnell.

My dearest friends: the one I’ve known almost twenty years, who always teaches me to be more open, and unguarded. The friends who make me laugh in the silliest of ways. My inspiring artist friends who are continually unfolding themselves. Anyone who is down to sit on my couch and let me show them my books of vintage glamour-erotica. All the friends I stuck with throughout the years for reasons too plentiful to even begin to type out, or simply because they bring some light to the dark days.

31. What are your favourite names?

For feminine names: Adeline, Alice, Meredith, Lucy, Edith. Ambrose, Rowan, Percy, Jasper, Oscar for the masculine. A current favourite pair is Lenore / Byron.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Judgemental people; bad faith arguments; anybody lacking consideration.

33. What is your greatest regret?

Not wearing the clothes I wanted to wear as a teen because I was waiting to be “skinny enough” (whatever that means!!!). Not doing what would have brought me happiness for fear of what others would think. Losing a part of a necklace my mom gave me to be a family heirloom when I was thirteen or so.

34. How would you like to die?

Not at all.

35. What is your motto?

Donec manus scribentis morte obstet; “Until the hand that writes is stopped by death”, translated to Latin, taken from Anne Radcliffe’s “the Romance of the Forest” (1791).

On a final note, before I blow out my candles, allow me to curate you a list of twenty-four of my favourite songs to celebrate my twenty-fourth year alive. It’s an entirely selfish purpose, this pressing up against my own tastes. Allow me to fill my hands with it once more.

˚ 𝜗𝜚˚⋆｡☆ 📼 An assorted list of most beloved songs…

1. “Compass” - the Neighbourhood // 2. “Two-Headed Mother” - Ethel Cain // 3. “i was all over her” - Salvia Palth // 4. “the Night We Met” - Lord Huron // 5. “In My Room” - Chance Peña // 6. “My Love Mine All Mine” - Mitski // 7. “the Lighthouse” - Halsey // 8. “the Blackest Day” - Lana del Rey // 9. “the Albatross” - Taylor Swift // 10. “Cassandra” - Florence and the Machine // 11. “Lovers from the Past” - Mareux // 12. “Angel” - NewDad // 13. “I Love my Boyfriend” - Princess Chelsea // 14. “Wicked Game” - Chris Isaak // 15. “Monolith” - Twin Tribes // 16. “Goo Goo Muck” - the Cramps // 17. “Mentally Not Here” - Elita // 18. “Sister” - She Wants Revenge // 19. “Burn Alive” - the Last Dinner Party // 20. “Scissorhands” - Maggie Lindemann // 21. “Flash” - Cigarettes After Sex // 22. “Nutshell” - Alice in Chains // 23. “Petals” - Hole // 24. “Mascara” - Sunday (1994)

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society page dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

Come, join the White Lily Society, and become a martyr of deliciousness.

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"Lucy Westenra"

Gorgeous ghost girl, bite into a
poisoned apple, meant for you but 
three souls younger. A spectre of satiation, 
just around the bend of mildew,
doll joints aching. You followed the
man with the cloven hooves until the
end of the known world and now
the rot permeates your being. 

The stake is gentle when compared to the beast.

Did that virgin girl find her rest in the embrace of the bat?
Was the final ache the sweetest one? The hurt reminiscent
of the bounce of soft golden ringlets on the cold hard stone
of the grave. Ever-awake, always asleep, 
you walk a tightrope of ill fortune.

The glass of the coffin is as thin as the eyelid, closed
only as a false protection charm in the moonlit night. 
There is no god in the bay, not across that cursed harbour. 
To die took two hundred steps— the final one is the pounce into the 
monster’s arms. Three velvet suitors line the casket. 

Up in the dark room, your mother unravels
the stitching in her frail heart.
What is the static supposed to do about it?

Switching the channel is useless when the dial is set to love, unconditionally.

Front room love, parlour love, settee love
never dies. The devil was your friend before he
was the face of a faceless melancholy or the
voice of a kind of agony you can only place
after the grandfather clock chimes nine—

A secret kept in the first room, the first house,
is one puncture wound away from the world.

They'll not mention the prophecies in the obituary,
nor the dreams, nor the horror. Gentle hearts 
have broken for less: you are the proof, my dear. 

Over absinthe, they’ll focus their talks on the
rush of pale blood in your cheeks. The life lost—
not slain, but merely relinquished in the battle. 
Your supposed friends won’t soon forget the shadow of you,
who finally knew, with preciseness, what she hungered for.

This poem was posted as part of the limited time submission prompt “Death and the Maiden (again)”

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society page, dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

Come, join the White Lily Society, and become a martyr of deliciousness.

Subscribe now

Recession Indicator.

How do I min-max the ache away and out of my brain?

My whole life I’ve lived with comparative advantage,
but negative elasticity in my heart; in my art. 
Being raised by two economists 
	(Who dislike the term “economists”)
can have strong-side effects. You may
feel dizzy under the demand.

Supply yourself and supplicate the screams of
equity. You can and you will break,
even when you read all the signs right— the
wage you pay in guilt builds no retirement, 
so you might as well 401k yourself.

A free market of pleasure means you’re free to
feel like a 
graph of diminishing returns 
once you go and
shrug of the chains the charts made for you.

Interest rates are lowering; that means
	people are less interested in knowing about your
troubles. (Market saturation)

Supply of time creates demand for self-inflicted
pain. But the opportunity costs are climbing 
with every line you cross out of your poems.
Commodities are comforting but they can never
be you. Never free you. 

Temporary recession is often necessary 
to feel true to yourself.

Divide your labour. The invisible hand that 
lives inside is cruel but can be quieted. 
	(The rational human isn’t real)
National debt creates a deficit, but what else
is there to do? The bonds you break and the bonds
that pay are all budgeted 
to renew. 

No matter what you do, know that
the wealth effect is a balance sheet 
balancing act. Build enough credit to last 
through the wholesale debits, so when welfare
needs hedging you’re too big to fail.

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society page dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

Come, join the White Lily Society, and become a martyr of deliciousness.

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February, baby!

The corner store down the street stopped selling 
blackberries ages ago; everything is already here.
The constant sale of false idols shrink-wrapped in plastic.
Fat grapes of rainfall hiss when they comes into contact
with the cement; I dream the whole way home.

There is always the fear of my own heartbeat;
the excitement of playing hide and seek
always sours in my stomach; like
a keepsake, an amulet of grief, a ceaseless wailing;
I am a medium of romanticism, folding misery like laundry,
back in on itself, and sealing it with an envelope kiss. 

Spring is the cutting of the self; a way of saying
“I am here with you”; a double consciousness.
I suppose a homemade religion is always a dying woman’s
laugh; a rare thing meant to be kept secret;
the prayers are meant to be your own before
they are anything else.

The beautiful thing of martyr’s lace is exactly in that
which the design hides; the flesh, the fruit, the fault.
Today is supposed to be dreadful as I watch the grey 
sky rain ribbons; and my neighbour ceased locking his
doors despite knowing much better; I really ought to complain 
much more.

This here is the London I thought I knew so intimately;
cold and barren and dreary; wasteland of affection;
accessible, playful, chaotic; a thousand locked doors
could never keep us out of it.

One minute is all it takes to fall back into old habits;
washing my life in the river Thames, by the shining rocks 
on the bed,
and in my pockets;
so I may hang myself on a laundry line, hoping to
dry out the fog in my eyes, and make a claim towards 
a heaven I won’t hide from.

It is just there, in the corner between St Paul’s and
a cinema much younger than me; on a brick that’s
never seen blood; and an alley that’s never known
me to be somebody who could weep unprovoked.

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society page dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

Come, join the White Lily Society, and become a martyr of deliciousness.

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"Contradictory Desires"

When I was six I wanted to
swallow the moon, so I got a step stool,
and I lined up my profile and I opened 
my mouth wide to the sky. 
Got up higher and higher and forced my jaws 
shut and pretended that I needed a toothpick to 
separate a stray star from my molar gums, and
that the weight of everything bruised my
throat going down— so I couldn’t
speak for weeks but all the darkness in me
now lived in the world and the light puddled 
and pooled within my guts.

When I’m high on poetics like
I am right now, I imagine the intruder
in me, clawing at my stomach lining,
living next to the dying moon, or even within it,
dissolving in soulful acid, wilful, livid.

Self-doubt started as a seed,
a consumption riddling my brain
and colouring my lungs virgin white.
	I cough it up on Tuesday mornings
on the bus, an altar of hands,
the incense exhaust smoke—
a sickroom within my head
with only one bed and one nurse
because everyone else has left
by now.

It’s exhausting to spell out the words
and to speak them too. My body is my mind
and both of us thought we would simply do 
better soon.
But all the growth went to the grove inside
of me, where mass pumps the planets 
through my nerves. Where I find this accursed mortician,
next to the moon, begging, raising its crowbar
spirit, shaking my arteries like the bars of a prison.

Stories told me that the iron would choke
the magic out of me but it’s impossible
to draw the lines, impossible to be sure,
when it runs through my blood and my bones
and my brain. Grainy vignette on storybook page,
“See the beast!”, the needle, the hospital stage.
Dormant disease, recipe for an eventual refill,
the medication you don’t yet need but know you will.
	At night I sweat a brand new dream, alone to
die, no sole moon in the sky because I absorbed it
decades ago, or at least I tried. 

Gruesome and sanitised at the same time,
stars speckling out my vision and blacking out
the pills. There is a wall between us, a curtain, a
cosmos, because I am envious of clean blood,
the kind that never spills.
And even now, mercury is in my veins, fighting
to get out, always. And my ideas filter through 
dosages of heavy metal before they ever reach a page.

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates the White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

Come, join the White Lily Society, and become a martyr of deliciousness.

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"Thursday, the Vampire's Wife"

Kill the pig, you eat its flesh
To kill is to defile but to honour is to eat.
Don’t waste, don’t waste, don’t waste.

Give me your vampire kiss, the one that 
consumes me like a raging fire.
Promise to be thorough, promise to be rough,
promise to keep your promise
just this once.

Let it burn as it runs.

I’ve never tasted a purer hope.
One that tells me that the castles
won’t be empty,
and the crows won’t fly
as long as I clip their wings,
as long as I roam the halls, keep the candles lit.
As long as I, I , I—
no "you", no "we".
	Is it just me? 
I beg of you, can you see? 
Where is the infection going
and where did it start?
I’ve worn numbness like a blanket
and now I fear it’s reached my heart.

My mother called and said she didn’t
know me, and I said: “You only know my teeth”
not the ones I carry with me, but the ones
that spilled out, the ones you keep.

They should invent a summer that’s bearable.
Not crushing, not fawning, not yearning,
not longing, not crushing on you.

Every poem I write is about hunting, is a hunt,
and sometimes life is like that too.
Truth be told, most days I am pure emotion
but not in a way that feels. The sickness
is too far advanced for that. Like a dog
nipping at my heels.

Terminally ill but beautiful still,
so there’s no use in mourning. 

On the phone, mid afternoon, no, not in the morning,
“Strawberries and cream”, you told me.
We were talking castles and journeys and summer heat,
Fresh fruit and caskets. 
Continued my longstanding tradition of making notes
when people speak, even if it’s all imagined.

Somewhere in the house something is buzzing,
somewhere across the street a phone rings.
The vampire’s wife lives as a housefly because
I left my blood-stained dishes in the sink.

Or, listen to the official performance of this poem here, as spoken in St. Michael’s Paternoster Royal church, the City of London, in late June of this year (my first time performing my poetry!).

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

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“When You Pass Over My Tomb” is a play written by Sergio Blame, translated and adapted from Spanish by Daniel Goldman, put on at the intimate Arcola Theatre in London (Dalston Junction). Its synopsis is as follows:

“[…] a darkly comic meditation on how we live and how we die; the story of a writer who makes the incredible decision to give his body another life after death.

“I remember thinking, what difference is there between donating my body to science and donating it to someone who might find pleasure in it when I’m dead.”

Desire, friendship, and eroticism intertwine in this dazzling new play that asks how far would you go for love? And will the world allow it?”

• Synopsis from the Arcola Theatre website

Oh, to unravel the puzzling structure of this play. For starters, all the actors are presented as “dead” ghosts of themselves (their real selves) that have wandered to put on this play, and we are told about each of their individual demise with a sort of cartoonish glee, occasionally punctuated by sorrow. Then, another layer gets added, roles are shuffled around and assigned. Allel Nedjari takes the role of Sergio, the original playwright. Charlie MacGechan takes on Khaled, the necrophiliac of the hour, and Danny Scheinmann plays Doctor Godwin of the Assisted Suicide Center at which Sergio aims to end his life. These events are all presented as true, except for when the play frequently breaks the fourth wall so that the “Sergio” character, ie. Nedjari, can actively write the story as it’s unfolding. Or when characters refer to themselves in the third person. It’s a complicated web of story structures: a eulogy for the actors and for “Sergio”, as well as self-described autofiction (a mixture between autobiography, and fiction).

This genre choice means that, essentially, WYPOMT is a play that is writing itself as you watch it unfold, the writer’s pen never far out of view, the performance always just out of grasp, the audience disconnected and kept at arm’s length. It’s like watching a play through someone else’s memories of it. Messy, dissociative, tangled.

WYPOMT feels like a play that is laughing at its own audience, mocking them for their interest in its supposed own subject matter. All the purely beautiful scenes don’t linger long. When there’s a genuine moment, a heartfelt sentiment expressed without the play’s own heavy handed turn of phrase- moments where Sergio genuinely connects with Khaled, where he expresses a sort of tender yearning, a flash of true Romanticism- are immediately cut short in favour of more grotesque jokes or quick quips that rarely land. All things favourable for a pure black comedy, but undesirable for what presents itself as a mix between serious provocative drama and darkly humorous think piece.

For the entirety of its 2 hour 10 minute runtime WYPOMT is a play obsessed with needless intertextual connection and meta-commentary, completely undercutting any supposed emotional content in the play. As a structured play, it is more infatuated with the act of combining mediums (song performance, quotes and images on tv screens, “found footage” style connected camerawork, etc.), and weaving references together, than with presenting a neatly packaged whole. In itself this should not be an issue, as there are plenty of works that like to play fast and loose with their structure and their story’s “rough edges”, but for that to work the fundamentals need to be done well— as the play itself literally has Doctor Godwin remind Sergio of. Instead, whenever the dialogue mentioned Frankenstein, or Romeo and Juliet, I found myself longing so strongly to be at a production of those works instead.

Iconography is another thing dragging WYPOMT down: bullfighting, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati, Mary Shelley, superman, sharks and shark attacks, femurs, big athleisure brands, and Coca Cola, all make continued appearances— as if the play tells us all its metaphors outright, palm up, “Here, take a look!”. It’s almost collage, this patchwork of references, alterations and real-time callbacks. Some of this is conscious, to remind us of the author’s manipulations, his embellishments and his lies. Like a scene where Khaled and Sergio meet at a park, and Sergio alters the memory in real time to have Khaled eat an apple instead of a fig, both for practical and symbolic reasons, as he tells us in depth. At times, it seems the play will swerve to imitate and emulate its Frankenstein inspiration into a story about a misguided playwright in love with his own machinations, but then shies away yet again.

For what it’s worth, the three actors all put on fine performances within the messy framework they have to somehow make work. Each and every one has their moment to shine. Nedjari especially nails the sort of self-important manner of a writer longing to infuse his work with every bit of him. His Sergio is egocentric, self-imposed, smug, and that works well within the majority of the text, though occasionally overstaying its welcome in the more gentle moments.

As a work about “desire, friendship, and eroticism” WYPOMT has very little new or original to say, in spite of its occasionally Romantic stance on necrophilia. It’s a rather spineless way to play the game, always wincing at its own seriousness, always scared of being truly inflammatory, scared of being laughed at. So it laughs first. It jokes first. Isn’t this crazy? Isn’t this insane? Laugh with me, please, instead of laughing at me.

But why is this play, and the larger cultural context it presents, so scared of melodrama? Is it because we fear being laughed at, do we fear being “cringe”? Is it simply because it is hard to defend something taboo, something unmentionable, with full-bodied conviction? When I said I would rather be watching Romeo and Juliet or Frankenstein, it is wholly because those plays commit. They are not afraid to be silly, occasionally subtle and then heavy-handed. They are not afraid to be real. Conviction in play-writing is not a narrative life-sentence. Texts, and writers, are allowed to change their mind. What is important is that they don’t flinch away from its own chosen subject matter.

“Complex” is not necessarily a word that comes to mind regarding WYPOMT. Sure, the play is complex in the sense that it is complicated. Challenging, sure. But it is not necessarily thought-provoking. It talks at you for about two hours, and then it ends, but ironically enough, unlike the ghosts of its “dead” actors, WYPOMT doesn’t linger, nor haunt. A shame, really.

“When you pass over my tomb” is playing at the Arcola Theatre, London, until March 2nd. You can book tickets here.

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.

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Song for a Final Girl.

You never know when it’s maybe the last time you can
pull back.

You grew up a pomegranate burst, explosion,
seeds splattered, solely splashing,
slashing. I am a slasher victim,
not the final girl, not the survivor;
I am spilled right beside her.

Anyways, here is a list of
creative ways to get exhausted:
- Peeling pomegranates, twice.
- Running your finger along the seams
where your dreams and your life meet.
- Denying your love, pretending
to be a bird that does not hide its colours
but taking the whiteout to your writing.
- Starting poems you’ll never finish.
- Inhaling breaths you won’t exhale
until you do, you do, you do.

(For the last time; you do and
you will.)

You are only tired because you refuse
the energy you are given.

The killer is indefinitely off-screen and as a
child you used to think
“If I can’t see them, they can’t see me”
Though somewhere along the way that philosophy
finally failed you, didn’t it?

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

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Though I am not a film critic, I am always deeply affected and shaped by the films I love. I’m a big fan of visuals and “vibes”— meaning cinematography, colour, costumes, set design, themes, motifs, more so than distinct “plot” (however you might characterise that). So, with that in mind: my love for films, and the theme of “Desire”, I set out to write for seven days straight about a different film, and what kind of Desire they represent.

This article is a collection of all these writings, which originated on Instagram. Keep in mind that means they are short, snappy, and condensed for the platform’s 2.200 character limit. They are hybrids of reviews, articles, and trivia meant to paint a concise image of the film. Some of these do contain spoilers, and images may be cropped for presentation reasons.

With that said, let’s start at the beginning.

Day 1.

“the Red Shoes” (1948) - desire for artistic self expression.

“the Red Shoes”, at heart, is an adapted fairytale, a story of a young woman torn between the man she loves, and the love of her craft: dance. “Her desire for artistic fulfillment is challenged when she finds herself falling in love […].” (BFI exhibition1)
Because her desires are so overwhelming, and so all-consuming, she cannot have one without losing the other. This inherent desire and the struggle it brings is portrayed in the film through the various long dance sequences, and through its magnificent use of colouring. The film is heralded as the golden standard of technicolor, and continues to inspire filmmakers today.

Most recently, director Greta Gerwig mentioned the film as inspiration for “Barbie” (2023), saying; “[…] just the theatricality and the colors and the way that it never pretended to be anything other than on a soundstage, I like that authentic artificiality. It’s really heightened. That whole ballet sequence was very inspiring in that way.” (interview for Letterboxd, 20232). The film also famously inspired an entire album from singer Kate Bush in 1993, and countless re-imaginings, such as Matthew Bourne’s stage and dance adaptation from 2016.

“Red shoes are never ordinary. They have a place in our shared childhood memories and in the wardrobes of our imaginations. In the Ballet of the Red Shoes, they take their wearer on a wild and willful dance which ends in terrible suffering and death. […] As symbols of love and loss, they hold a lingering enchantment.” (BFI exhibition)

Day 2.

“Bones and All” (2022) - desire to be understood, to find a place of belonging.

Half Americana road trip movie, half cannibal love story, “Bones and All” is a film unequivocally about desire, about being an outsider, about yearning for a place to call home. Main characters Maren and Lee are forced into a nomadic lifestyle because of their cannibalistic urges, literal pleasures of the flesh— something for which the plot never explicitly condemns them, instead choosing to take a more empathetic and understanding stance. To lose touch with the part of them that wants to eat is to lose a part of themselves, after all.

But it is exactly because of their attractions, their desires, that they are forced to exist on the peripheries of society. To exist as outsiders, always looking in, never calling a house a home.

“Here, sexual desire is tied to cannibalism from an opening slumber party, where flirtation swiftly escalates to a gruesome bite. In Lee, Maren sees someone who understands and shares this desire. Together, they explore this dark impulse, driven by the need to eat but terrified by what it could mean to find someone to share this lifestyle with” (Mashable, 20223)
Cannibalism and desire have always been intertwined concepts: the need to eat, to devour, might as well be synonymous with the need to be romantically consumed. Desire is a hunger, but whether it can be satiated or only kept at bay, “Bones and All” isn’t entirely sure on.

Day 3.

“Stoker” (2013) - first desires, growing into one’s desires.

Most of Stoker’s decidedly Gothic, haunting, eerie runtime is spent at the piano4. Half coming of age story, and half Hitchcock inspired psychosexual thriller, the film centers itself around protagonist India Stoker like a planetary system around its sun. Combined with fantastically intricate direction by Park Chan-wook, this is, at its core, a story of desires, urges, and what it means to grow up— whether or not growing up is entirely in our control, whether we are responsible for the outcome, or we are simply predestined to be a certain way.

Through Mia Wasikowska’s sharp and uncanny character India we are presented with a character “growing up” in a rather unorthodox way. Not only is India, as a young woman, growing into herself, and into her sexual desires, she is also growing into another desire: a certain blood lust, a propensity for violence.
Through the arrival of her mysterious uncle Charlie, who shares these murderous urges, India begins to unfold and bloom.

All of this is centered around the piano. The beautifully haunting score uses piano, the characters constantly play, and some of the most integral scenes of the film take place at the bench. In a way, the piano of the house is like a ghost, a specter, something that possesses the characters and makes them uninhibited, temporarily breaking free from their pruned and proper usual selves.

Other readings of the film are definitely possible. The New Yorker5 sees the story more as one of family mythology, a melodramatic “Fractured Fairytale” about secrets. But the eroticism of the film is undeniable, and the film’s opening lines, spoken by protagonist India, leave very little to imagine about its themes: “[…] Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow, I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone. […] Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free, and to become adult is to become free.”

Day 4.

“Black Swan” (2010) - desire to be perfect.

“Black Swan” is a portrait of an obsessed artist, and a psychological thriller about how that pursuit ends up consuming her.
Nina Sayers is a frail, demure ballerina, with an obsession for perfection. But when she gets cast in a production of “Swan Lake” as both the pure white and the more sensual black swan, her director’s wishes go above even that: “Perfection is not just about control. It’s also about letting go. Surprise yourself so you can surprise the audience. Transcendence! Very few have it in them.”

Of course, Nina does end up reaching a state of transcendence, and perfection, but at an enormous cost. During the film, the character is shown as infantilized, stuck with an overbearing mother, and excessively self-critical— but all of that unravels as she pushes herself harder than ever before, including her mental state. Dedication turns to obsession, which in turn easily becomes madness. As the film progresses, Nina starts to act impulsively and out of character. Where she was a more prudish character before, she starts to seek out pleasure. Dance is not entirely a pleasurable thing for her: her relentless pursuit of perfection overshadows any enjoyment she gets from it. So, she turns to physical, sexual pleasures, drugs, alcohol, all of which cause her further dissolve as she starts to get visions of herself turning into a swan, of evil doppelgängers out to kill her, and twisted delusions in mirrors.

Natalie Portman was, just like her character, beyond dedicated to the film. She took a year of ballet classes on her own expenses before the film was even funded, and an estimated 80% of the dance shots in the film are her, untouched, and not her double. Additionally, she sustained countless injuries on set, including a concussion and a dislocated rib. But her efforts paid off: she won an Oscar for her immaculate and outstanding performance in the movie.

Day 5.

“Last Night in Soho” (2021) - desire to escape into the past.

The dangers of nostalgia were big on Edgar Wright’s mind as he directed his “Last Night in Soho”. The story of a young fashion designer with the ability to travel back into the past, the 1960s, through her dreams, where she is able to live the life of glamorous rookie singer Sandie. But not all is better in the past, and coupled with Eloise’s neglect of the present, the film spins itself from a cotton candy nostalgia flick straight into a psychological murder mystery, and a thriller.

Many of the films “double” scenes with both Eloise and Sandie were done practically, including the lengthy dance sequence with Matt Smith, who plays Sandie’s not-as-he -seems boyfriend and manager.

Eloise’s desire to escape her life, and venture into the past, is apparent right from the get-go. Her room is adorned with 1960s paraphernalia, posters, and trinkets.
The past is not always a better place, despite our best efforts to remember only the good parts. Edgar Wright himself said that “the further you get away from a decade, the more tendency there is to romanticize it6”. The choice of portraying London specifically in the 1960s then is a very deliberate one: booming and bustling, the 60s are probably the most glorified era in the Big Smoke’s history. Stories of the swinging 60s and its nightlife have practically made London’s myths as a vibrant cultural scene.

There is no point in looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Eloise’s sympathetic, modern view of the 60s causes her to not realise the era’s flaws— the film chooses to focus most on the rampant misogyny, and sexual violence of the time. This is why the past is better off as just that: the past. The grass is not always greener.

Above: Dance Scene from “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992). Source: see film.

Day 6.

“Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) - desire for all-consuming romance, lust.

The original “Dracula” does not share the same deeply Romantic qualities as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film. The classic novel deals more with lust, than with romance, something which Coppola maintained, and added onto in his adaptation. In fact, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” plays quite loosely with the text it’s adapting.
In giving Dracula a tragic backstory- his love, who looks just like Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker, killer herself- the film is essentially using that hypnotic vampire charisma to makes us care. In doing so, and adding a sizably melodramatic romance arc with Mina, the movie essentially diverts from it’s source to sell is something that looks and feels “Dracula”, but isn’t quite so.

Vampires throughout history have very often been associated with lust. From bloodlust to sexual lust, vampires are slaves to their desires and emotions. Always set in stone and always left wanting. This, in itself, makes the vampire a tragic figure, even if they do commit a slew of atrocities. Lucy herself, already unabashedly flirtatious as a mortal, becomes a sort of tragic beast after she turns, quite literally conflating desire and hunger: “My arms are hungry for you, my darling”.
Yet, [female] desire is not entirely vilified. Though Mina is blinded by love, romance, and lust, she is not a victim, instead choosing to turn on her own accord to be like her love. In the end, her story is a tragedy, not a tale of victimhood.

Of course, one cannot discuss the film without talking about the masterful practical effects and cinematography. Wherever possible, certain looks were achieved within-camera. The shot of the train passing over Jonathan’s journal was done by creating a book several feet wide, and putting it in front of a miniature train model. The shot of Dracula’s shadow acting independently of him was done with a double, and some placement trickery. It’s the very essence of movie magic, creativity, and visual opulence bursting from every shot that aids the story and makes the film so gripping to watch.

Day 7.

“Pearl” (2022) - desire to escape through fame.

The protagonist of Ti West’s twisted “Pearl” is not a good person. Unfeeling, anxious, and on the brink of madness, Pearl is a character yearning to escape not only her dull farm life, but also herself. Serving as a prequel to 2021’s “X”, “Pearl” provides a backstory for the former’s youth and fame obsessed villain, but ends up surpassing the original film.

Using a saturated, almost technicolor style, and multiple nods to films like “the Wizard of Oz” (1939), the film puts a fantastical and empathetic spin on what would otherwise be just a character-driven slasher movie. Of course, there are still deaths galore, splashed in bright cherry red blood. But the film is more an analysis of a character and their breakdown than anything else.
It works because the fears at the core of Pearl’s character are near-universal: the fear of living a dull, boring life, of having regrets, of missing out on one’s dreams, of being different in some way you can never quite put your finger on or fix. Because Pearl is quite different: she has little empathy for others, very little regard for life, and while she has a sweet exterior, she is manipulative and almost narcissistic. The problem is, however, that Pearl, throughout the movie, struggles with these differences. She is uniquely aware of the metaphorical plexiglas between herself and the world, between herself and her peers. She chooses to dance, and perform not just as a way to feel something, or as a vehicle to hopefully leave her quiet life behind, but as an expression of the performance she feels she has to put on in her everyday life, pretending to be like the others. Pretending to feel like the others: “[It] seems like there’s something missing in me that the rest of the world has […]”

At the end of the film, Pearl has a full breakdown, accepting her circumstances with a defeated, but ultimately positive attitude, but not stepping down from her darker urges either. She’s a character in limbo: a wolf hiding among sheep, knowing they have the sharpest teeth of the set.

And with that, we can wrap up the official White Lily Society “Seven Films of Desire” list. Some notes, further readings, and sources can be found in the footnotes below. If you are aching for more, and don’t want to suffer the delay between platforms, I highly suggest following the White Lily Society on Instagram, to get all the writing and inspiration served to you when it’s freshest. Additionally, you can subscribe to the Substack to get the monthly newsletter sent straight to your inbox (all other posts do not get emailed to you, in order to limit spam).

Thank you for your time,

x Sabrina Angelina, the White Lily Society

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I. 00:15

You know how as a child, you would rearrange your entire room and it
would be everything you need to feel like a changed person?
You’d push your bed to another corner, or switch out a few nostalgic knick-knacks
and suddenly you felt different.
Changed and fresher than before. As if you’d seen the light, except there was no
magical change except for the imaginary one. You were still the same, just looking
out on a slightly different angle of the same walls you’d always stared at.

Right now, I feel the urge to rearrange again. It’s much stronger than I
remember, much more crucial in nature.

Will I be different if I push my bed to a different wall?
Will sleeping with a different view cure this aching I feel?
If I switch out some posters or light a different candle, will I feel less useless?
I don’t think so.

It’s eating at me. I yearn, no-, I need to rearrange,
but the furniture is nailed down.

II. Unnamed love poem

But do I haunt you the way you haunt me?
Can you imagine my face by blind imagination alone?
Or do you need your fingertips to guide you,
feel the contrast, the scars, the texture?
Do I stand out immediately?
Pointing towards true north, a compass that lives and breathes
unlike any other
blank canvas, buffet of missed opportunities

III. Unnamed melancholy poem

The sky is an ocean and I'm looking to drown tonight
Like a sailor lusting for the waves,
unsettled by the calmth and steadiness of the land under his feet
Not realizing the journey's never ended

The sky is an ocean and I'm looking to drown tonight
Just let the clouds absorb me like they do airplanes
Take me away and away
until my life is like a molecole of sugar on the dining table

Sadness is one of the most potent drugs there is, 
with its silent suffocating and sleek disguise 
It eats away at anyone who lets it
Still there is the chips in my skin, the dents of time

For all remaining darkness, I'll walk into the ocean tonight
Touch the stars like the old friends they are
and come out with a piece of beauty
Hear the city woosh underneath my feet once more
As if it's an ocean in its own right

IV. Unnamed insomnia poem

It's been such a silent week,
filled with the terror of a gentle mind 
And all the hours I've slept, have been sleeping, 
result in a deficit of words, of meaning 
I miss my thoughts like I miss my childhood; 
only slightly, but nevertheless I long
I miss the poetry I'd write in half-lit chambers, 
waking up to find my phone full of notes 
I'd rather lay awake if it means that I 
once more get the gift of translating
Life onto paper and paper onto life

V. Poem in two verses

We only start to appreciate things 
after they are almost taken away 
and even that gratitude eventually fades

& lower on the page

I went to bed with bleeding hands 
and awoke to find the sheets stained 
when morning finally came back to me 
Cranberries on snow, cherries on ice
The wound's not yet healed

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

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I.
It is not an angel at all, that reaches out to me
just to ask, “Are you still hungry?”,
“Do you still want more?”.
I think, “Yes”, I think, “Of course I am”.
I think of solvent sliding down my throat,
way past where two plump fingers can reach.
Still, I have drank enough green juice to drown out
the merciless sun. Please God, send me an owl,
send me an angel who talks back just a little less,
send me someone who knows, who will
run their fingers through my hair and assure
me it’s okay if I don’t write,
it’s okay if I don’t feel,
it’s okay if I don’t exist at all.


I dream of stabbing people, but I never see the weapon
in my hands. In dreams there are ladybugs
that say my full maiden name, janky and sluggish,
and just hearing that makes tiny cracks in me.


II.
Feeling just a few inches removed from the world,
Not separated by glass like the poets would write.
I am not a whole poet, I am lonely, and my notes say:
red coat, red string, red scissors, red moles
on necks where lovers kiss,
not blank like mine.
Red nose, it’s cold outside, and inside of me.
See the air I exhale turn to clouds,
This song breathes and my lungs writhe.


“Hey, just so you know, you are mortal,
even if you don’t act like it. Even if you don’t feel it.
Which means there’s no use crying about it.
Well… why aren’t you crying about it?”


III.
In truth, I don’t lay awake at night dreaming of axes and
sacrificial blades. I feel my dreams like a hum, or a pulse instead.
And the poems I write are sanitised, and clean,
because my parents read them, and I feel
things so intensely sometimes that on paper I must read like
the loneliest girl to ever exist.


Well. I am, I am, I am. Shedding my skin is only what I call
a pastime, it’s only what I do for fun, don’t read too deeply into it, mom.
Please?
I need to eat myself to survive sometimes, it’s only the truth of being alive.


I fear my stomach has fluttered with moths and poems for a long while.
If I open my mouth and hold up my palms to face the sky, maybe then I’ll
have something to show for my time spent alone- in solitude, in thoughts.
Something to keep me awake at night and put my fears to bed.
So, presently, there are words.
Words I’ve coughed up, arranged, stitched together like a monster of my own and
I spoke with the angel one last time, and they assured me, that fear is a fig,
it exists outside of me, (so it isn’t me), and it’s ripe now. Right now.
“You said you were hungry, so devour, and release”

Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.

White Lily Society links // Sabrina Angelina links

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I. Ken dolls and golden retrievers

Ryan Gosling, in press for the 2023 “Barbie” movie (dir. Greta Gerwig), recently enjoyed a semi-viral moment when a clip of him discussing taking on the role of Ken took off on the internet. Gosling, blond and chipper, eagerly nailed down the essence of what it meant, for him, to take on a role of Ken as a literal male accessory; “Ken’s got no money, he’s got no job, he’s got no car, he’s got no house. He’s going through some stuff”. He smiles, he waits for us, the audience, to get it. It takes a long while. Extended promo for the Barbie movie has not at all been light-handed about both the feminist aspect of the film, nor the existential part, nor the fact that Barbie and Ken are, well, dolls. In another burst of virality for the film, promotional character posters took on a second skin as the hot Twitter meme format of the month when Barbie and Ken’s respective posters featured the phrase “She’s everything / He’s just Ken”, fractured into two. For a week or two, every imaginable internet ship was divided through this format; the high-achiever, and the other one. The loser. Presently, in a post-Barbie world, moments from the film featuring the phrase “I am KENough” and a musical-esque dance number and song aptly titled “I’m just Ken” are proving that like the cultural impact of the movie itself, the loser is here to stay.

The cultural comeuppance of the loser is not the craziest thing to ever happen to society. Like with everything in Vogue, the pendulum swings and we happily swing along with it. Our cultural imagination is pre-occupied with losers right now. Likewise, the early 2000’s had their very own adorkable phase to rival our current cultural zeitgeist embrace of the ‘golden retriever boy’. The nice guy, sans misogyny. The loser, repackaged ever so slightly. He’s just quirky and awkward enough, but still attractive, and above all, respectful and appreciative.

II. ‘Cause I’m just a teenage dirtbag, baby!

I’m using the term “cultural imagination” here to refer to the idea of a “social reality”; a reality separate from biological, or individual reality. That is, it’s the idea of a separate sphere constructed through social interactions. It is the zeitgeist, it is the timeframe, it is the social norms, and yes, our cultural perspective. Perhaps the term that is most appropriate is sociological imagination. Either way, what I mean is this; our imagination and our fascination is shaped within the culture, the society we exist in. Civilisation as a whole can act as a prism for enforcing certain social norms and myths, furthering stereotypes. Thus, with the ways we interact with media and issues regulated as it is by our cultural frameworks, we have a tendency to develop a collective obsession with certain archetypes. And right now, the “loser” is having its cultural moment.

“Loser” may strike you as a harsh term. Really, there’s not just one way to define what it means to be a loser; it is more about a vibe than anything, more about the absence of a vibe. It doesn’t matter what Ken is, it matters what he isn’t. Barbie is everything, Ken is… just Ken. Loser-dom exists within the liminal spaces of the world; not exactly inside of personhood and not exactly outside of it. Think along the lines of Rodrick Heffley from the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movie, Pudge from “Looking for Alaska", Adam Sandler, Ken, Cameron James from “10 things I hate about you”, Pete Davidson, or Jack Black in “the Holiday”. A complete lack of prospects does not a loser make. More often it’s about an easygoing, slightly goofy, yet wholesome energy. A teenage dirtbag, baby!

III. A loser is a wish your heart makes

So, let’s follow this line of thinking all the way back to Romantic poet John Keats, and his love interest Fanny Brawne. Yes, I wish to go there. After all, this essay was born from a ranting text I sent a friend declaring Keats to be quote “Ken-coded”.

If ever there was a historical equivalent of the “She’s everything / He’s just Ken” dynamic, Keats and Fanny fit it best. You can all stop searching, I’ve found it first. Finders keepers. Of course, I could make this a surface-level thing, because Fanny loved fashion, and dazzling a room of people, and Keats never really did much besides his legendary writing and dying young (Only one of those is an actual accomplishment, the other just… happened to him). Though I’m sure the writing took much involvement, keeping it to that would be an awfully dull way to go about such a strange mission statement as mine. Because yes, Keats is a great writer, one of the most impactful Romantic poets to come out of the movement, but he’s also a massive loser. His writing is romantic, yes, but his letters also often skew whiny, possessive, jealous, self-absorbed and melodramatic. Of course, this is what half of the appeal of the Romantics is as a movement of writers: both the dark and light parts of passion get their time on the stage. It’s the intersection of love and violence again (it always is). And while we’re discussing the Romantics as losers, let’s not forget to give Percy Bysshe Shelley his flowers. I mean, a man obsessed with bodies of water, and boats, yet absolutely unflinching in his refusal of learning how to swim, until he eventually drowned. That right there is the very essence loser-dom.

The loser, then, is endearing because we envy their ability to just be a loser. To be weird and awkward and jealous and possessive and whiny, to fully stand in that without much care or doubt. Someone like fellow romantic writer Byron is also loser, yes, but he’s not a loser in the same sort of font as Keats is. He’s a different type of loser altogether. Keats is an italicised font loser because he is at least somewhat aware of his dork-y traits, and how they might be undesirable, yet also aware that he couldn’t stop them from showing if he tried. He often laments his less desirable traits in the same letters he uses to express them. Whereas Byron does not have the necessary literary tone of voice to make us feel like he has any desire or impulse to stop being a regular-font, non-bold, non-italicised loser. In resigning to being, at times, undesirable, yet maintaining a certain apologetic nature, there is a source of respect for our imaginations to latch onto. The loser may not be perfect, but he is self-aware.

IV. The myth of the tortured loser

Plato believed poets were granted divine inspiration, but Keats wrote of “negative capability”; the idea that writers can, and must hold themselves back when pursuing a greater ideal of Beauty, even when that pursuit ends up being detrimental to their own lives, and acts against their logic and reason. It is a call for independence at the cost of the author’s desires. To be free, to remain mutable, Keats argued that poets sometimes had to detach from their subjects. He grasped very well that people don’t enjoy writing that sets out to tell them what to feel: ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design on us. […] Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.’, as Keats wrote in a letter in 1818.

Loser-dom too should be great and unobtrusive. The loser either stands for nothing or they stand for everything. The kind we often find so captivating is more the latter than the former. Only the latter awakens some mercurial respect in us. Keats’ last loser stand is to stand for nothing, to choose negative capability, but in that, he is in fact standing for something, thus the ouroboros of loser-dom strikes again. He is but a humble slave to his writing, and that is what he believes to be right. The loser, like the poet, realises their identity is ever mutable, ever-transforming. They might stand for something now, but there is no guarantee what the next five minutes, days, weeks, or months will bring. Yet still they stand, they float, helplessly, but also painfully self-aware to some degree. Always balancing just right between content and self-pitying, always appreciative but not static, always functioning as a vocal work in progress of sorts. This is integral to the appeal. Like with writers or poets, or artists in general, the mythos of it all can both add or detract to the way we perceive the loser. And it can turn our imagination, our fascination, into disgust at the blink of an eye.

Writers, artists, myths- they’re easier to digest when they’re in their own shackles. The loser is endearing when they acknowledge that, as far as our perception is concerned, it is themselves that keeps them ‘trapped’ in loser-dom. Artists and other types of losers are not mythical martyrs, they present like they keep the keys firmly within their own thoughts at all times, but choose to remain where they are. They could always conform, tone it down. Write less aggressive, more flowery letters to their loved ones. Learn how to swim, get a job, get a house, get a car. Choose to care less, or care more. But no, they have reached a level of acceptance that to us mere mortals can only ever be a dream, something we squint our eyes at to see. A green light on the docks. It’s just that, whether consciously or unconsciously, the loser knows that we’re captivated by them, that we envy them. We have told ourselves that we have to be everything, and they have told themselves that it’s okay, that they can just be Ken. And they won’t lie awake at night about it either. That’s precisely why they have our heart.

x Angel

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This Barbie is obsessed with the intersection of love and violence! If you enjoyed my ramblings today, I would love to invite you to join the White Lily Society. Come join a group of people that say things like “John Keats is a loser” in a text once, and then write a 1700 word essay about it. Come, join, become a martyr of deliciousness.

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Romanticism is having its second coming in popular culture as we speak. Nevermore has the word romanticisation featured so heavily in social debate, nor have the words love and horror been considered such a perfect pairing. When venturing into [mainly feminine] social spaces the conversation has flavoured itself with the philosophy of New, revived Romanticism, the Erotic, and ideas of love and terror, and melancholy. Like a rose coloured wildfire, images with phrases like “a morbid longing for the picturesque” have slid into the cultural lexicon of what it means to love, and into their respective villain monologues on the big screen.

And like love faces the most tender scrutiny, likewise have I wished to examine this New Romanticism, this revived Romanticism, in all its terror-struck and morbid ways. And so I have consumed nothing but Romanticism for the last few weeks, and if you’ll allow me to do so, I’ll tell you what I’ve learnt.

I. Love & violence and its Erotic roots

“[…] as if Evil were the most powerful means of exposing passion”

• Georges Bataille, “Eroticism” (1957)

Romanticism, both the initial kind and the New, revived kind, are rhizomatic in the sense that its roots lie in traditional ideas of eroticism, which in turn offshoots into love, violence, horror, melancholy, and terror. But let’s not place the lover before the love. Let’s begin at the root of all this evil, and all this romance. Let’s begin with the Erotic.

In its most basic, banal interpretation, the Erotic is that which lives on the fringes of what is socially acceptable: the taboo. What is considered erotic is exciting and enticing, although not always the other way around. If we are ourselves, we are mankind, then the Erotic is the call of the void. It exists in whatever lies just out of view and whatever extends just out of reach. The Erotic is the empty, dark and forlorn hallway you cast a glance in but never dare to enter, until you eventually do. You couldn’t help yourself, it just called out to you.

Make no mistake. That there is a link between the Erotic and death or violence is not a novel proposition in any way. But to see these notions transfer from hidden subcultural gems to the more latent layer of popular cultural is entrancing to say the least. Georges Bataille’s book on eroticism is often regarded as depositing the popular theory on eroticism in philosophical academia, and in his writing he discusses eroticism as a fraction of disruption where you seize to be, even if just for a moment. It is that interlude, that pause of existence, that gets you closer to a continuous existence; to death and everything in the infinite beyond. Human beings are discontinuous in the sense that we, as individuals, die, we perish. Yet existence itself is continuous and keeps fuelling itself through the motions of life and death. Thus Eroticism is mankind’s attempt to bring continuity into an eternally discontinuous world. It is a metaphysical pursuit through and through. What is Erotic is that what reminds us of  that continuous existence outside of ourselves;  taboos, death, violence, religious sacrifice, mysticism, and of course Beauty.

To many, Eroticism is often synonymous with sex. Bataille’s work explains this through its reasoning that sex is the ultimate form of violation, and “the whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives”. Nakedness as a motif, as a symbol, factors into this as well; it literally strips the self away. It consumes the ideas we have of ourselves whole, therefore leaving space for the Erotic; that which transcends our individuality.

II. I want us both to eat well

“[…] there’s such a romantic factor and aspect of desperation. It’s so bad, but love that is healthy is so good, and so unappealing, to me, at least. […] I have to want to eat you. If I don’t want to eat you, then it’s not real love”

• Ethel Cain, in interview with Vice magazine (2022)

The recent resurgence of cannibal romance media (“Bones and all”, “Hannibal”, Ethel Cain’s album “Preacher’s daughter”) parallels the renewed interest in Romanticism. The genre is Romantic because of its core convictions that love is tragic, that love is fatalistic; that love consumes. There is a fundamental romanticism and Eroticism latent in the very idea of cannibalism; the idea of loving something so much that you need it to be a part of you. And this undoubtedly matches the Revived Romanticist movement’s fervour for love.

In the New Romantic movement the subjects enamoured by it frequently revert to biting. Girls have taken to wearing Victorian lockets with images of their loved ones, both real and fictional, and just like the eighteenth century women they mimic they make lover’s keepsakes out of blood, teeth and hair. They write poetry, they become enraptured with their lovers. There is an intense preoccupation with lobotomies, with a lovesickness so intense it becomes physical, or a melancholy that twists its way around darkened candlelit bedrooms. Romantic suffering becomes religious, obsessive even. It transcends the bounds of personality and personhood completely. It slithers and surrounds its blissful victims.

In many ways the movement tries to revive the all-consuming ways of Romanticism, but with a focus on the women as the would-be Romantic aggressors, as the “evil”. They are Female Byronic heroes; brooding and capable of moral corruption, yet also capable of infinite love. They are conduits of transcending passion. Instead of loving in the passive tense, instead of being loved, the Romantic Revival posits the women at the centre of its movement as loving in the active tense, and to their fullest capacity.

Before the 2020’s cannibalism era, the era of the 2010’s was plagued with abundant vampire franchises. From “The Vampire Diaries” to “Twilight” to “Interview with the vampire”, “the Originals” or “Vampire Academy”, the Gothic love story reigned supreme. And characteristically, with the Gothic creatures came Gothic Romanticism. Althroughout, there is the threat of consumption, lingering like a soft but constant ringing in your ears. A reminder of impending vampiric doom, and underneath it a shimmering fear of romance eating us whole, of love and longing being so intense it proves fatal in more than an emotional aspect. And that is precisely the appeal. Loving that which is broken or bad, or Love as a leviathan orb, as something larger than ourselves, is enticing and Erotic. It was this way for the earliest Romantics, and it is that way for the New Romantics.

A poem I adore writes “I’m doing a balancing act with a stack of fresh fruit in my basket. / I love you. I want us both to eat well”. These lines resonate with me because they reflect the thoughts I could never have put into words myself. Yes, I want us both to eat well. And by eat well I mean eat love; be nourished by life and romance and Beauty, and everything else that feels so out of reach but never is. Infinite solace of the material earth. I want to eat well for your eventual nourishment, you who is a stranger to me now but might not be in a month. You for whom I will commit the most atrocious, violent acts with nothing but your name on the tip of my tongue. Teach me how to be better, how to be worse, how to be.

III. Of being helpless: romanticism and tragedy, and the pursuit of Beauty.

“In the midst of winter I found within myself an invincible summer”

• Albert Camus

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it” & “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming”

• Donna Tartt, “the Secret History” (1992)

Tell me if you have heard this line spoken before; nothing that is good comes easy. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing what you answered to that, so instead I wish to tell you that I have, but I don’t believe in its objective truth. I think many things could and therefore should be easy, but they simply aren’t so. In particular, feelings aren’t icebergs or foamy ocean tips or metaphors easily understood and written; they are complex sequences of events. They may deceive you into thinking them unembellished and un-ornamented. Especially love, deceptive as it can be.

Yet love is never a peaceful affair. Even when it is smooth sailing, there is always the anxiety of the next wave capsizing the ship. Or as Bataille writes; “Passion fulfilled provokes such violent agitation that the happiness involved, before being a happiness to be enjoyed, is so great as to be more like its opposite; suffering.” Or “The likelihood of suffering is all the greater since suffering alone reveals the total significance of the beloved object” or “Love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible, and at a lower level, a quest for union at the mercy of circumstance”.

Adoration is not a daytime creature, it lives at night in between the dark’s decay and a motorised mind working overtime. If it was easy to fall it would not involve so many violent words; heartbroken, lovesick, infatuated, gutted, yearning, longing, languishing.

A lot of what the New Romantics are selling is familiar wares; the picture of obsessive, fatalistic, grand love. But coupled with it is a prevailing undercurrent of love for the mundane that flows throughout the movement’s main motifs; there is a deep romanticisation of life, a philosophical search for Beauty in the mundane, and abundant attention for the small, domestic and even unremarkable details of love. Love and Romanticism here are tools to feel things fully and wildly. They allow devotees an  almost radical intoxication with life. The horror was for love, and the love was vital to live. The quest here is simply to love and be in love, to think of giving love as a goal in itself, to pursue Beauty wherever possible.

IV. The girl bites back or a woman’s violence

“To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case. To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case- that is, to be killed.”

• Angela Carter, “the Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography” (1997)

One abstractly noticeable facet of this New Romantic movement is the fact that it is undoubtedly feminine. It is unequivocally tied up by the strings of the female gaze (a term which has recently been dulled through use, unfortunately) and the feminine experience as a whole. If “Girlhood is like godhood: a begging to be believed”, then a woman’s experience of love is an inherent belief, or maybe a will to believe, in an evil that can be loved despite its malice and moral wrongdoings. The beauty in this Romantic ideal is that it is both realistic and mystical; it requires a suspension of disbelief while also asking, inherently, for a belief. It is the kind of moral contradiction that can only be conjured up in a woman’s desires.

Violence and love have been inextricably linked in the feminine experience since the first apple tree grew in the garden of Eden, that one symbol of punishment and liberation that would haunt all of womankind like the gender’s very own mark of Cain. There is in this the feminine ideal of an emotional, fragile being; the biblical woman who is expected to be nothing but kind and motherly, and gets trampled in return. There is the inherent violence of womanhood that exists in its cycles of blood and pain, that inevitably leads to more blood and more pain. Love is good, but sex is often not fruitful or even painful for women. Carrying a child is both depicted as a divine act of creation- images of clouds and smells of soft cotton- as well as the worst kind of body horror any sick soul could conjure up.

There is a scene in Game of Thrones in which character Jon Snow is discussing high ladies with his girlfriend, Ygritte, who grew up in the wild and thus away from high society, where he remarks that those ladies would faint at the sight of blood. To which Ygritte responds; “Why would a girl collapse at the sight of blood? […] girls see more blood than boys”. To posit that women are strangers to violence is to lie. And what a dim-witted, simple-minded lie it is. Women continuously bathe in violence, in fear, in love. And there has not been, and shall not be, a day when that is not true.

In a way there is a defeat and a liberation in this revived movement, and I can’t for the life of me seem to figure out which one is dominant. In many ways these “evil” women are a response to a world that does not allow women to be evil, but instead of “true” evil there is a kind of immorality that exists on the fringes of the black and white, good vs. evil dichotomy. Make no mistake; the evil these women think to see in themselves is most often not deserving of the label evil. When we read evil, we have to think flawed.

Is it a win for women to give in and be evil in recognition of a world that has always been cruel to them? Is this an acceptance of the violence of love, or is it a perpetuation of it? Is Romanticism merely a coping mechanism to deal with a meaningless, discontinuous existence? Does it matter whether this movement is moral or ethical, when it is essentially the antithesis of morality?

I’ve let myself get enveloped in this New Romanticism; I’ve read their texts and steeped in their media of choice. I’ve listened to Nicole Dollanganger, and Lana del Rey, and Ethel Cain’s music. I watched the Virgin Suicides and I read Keats. And I understand, I see the appeal. On what is, hopefully, the tail-end of an increasingly depressing state of global affairs, I can’t fault people for reaching beyond themselves into Romanticism, into absurdism, into nihilism even. That is the lure in of all of this philosophical rhetoric; to just exist and accept and let morally flawed inner workings be. To instead aspire to something higher, beyond the self, beyond the physical realm; to reach for love and Beauty wherever possible.

Lucille’s monologue continued beyond that first phrase to posit that “The things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out. It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all.” So if we are indeed doomed, if we are monsters of love, then let our love be immortal and outlive us all. Love is a flesh wound, love is a bloodstain, love is a violation. Love is total obliteration; it is earth-shattering devotion, a loss of control and a loss of self. It is the calmest, most natural and simplest thing in the world to those who are enveloped in it.

How does one overcome sadness? Or terror? Or grief? You choose to see the beauty in it. You let it shatter you and then you rummage through the ravages, hands steadily gaining cuts, and you pick out your favourite shards to hold up to the sun, so you may see them shimmer once more. And then you let the resulting cuts serve no purpose but to enhance the Beauty of it all, knowing they will heal. And maybe, just as long as the sparkle shows, you have ascended beyond yourself into the continuous.

x Angel

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