Tea at Trianon: "She Told Herself She Couldn't Die"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 24, 2013

"She Told Herself She Couldn't Die"

From The New York Times:

At the time of Boettcher’s death, at least one person was doggedly searching for him: Dawn Eden, an 18-year-old student at New York University. Raised mostly by her mom in Texas and New Jersey, Eden had been obsessed with pop music since age 10, when she began visiting the D.J.’s at the local Top 40 radio station after school. While her college dorm mates revered Prince and Bruce Springsteen, she was hanging out in a ’60s revival scene, romanticizing an era she never lived through. Eden only knew about Boettcher through a friend whose father had been a D.J. in the ’60s. The first time she heard the opening chords of “It’s You,” the first single from “Begin,” she got goose bumps. It wasn’t just the music. It was the person the music pointed to.

At the time, Eden was going through bouts of suicidal depression, later diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of childhood sexual abuse. The music she loved, with all its apparent purity, with Boettcher’s angelic voice, represented a promise of happiness that eluded her in real life. She decided to become a rock historian, to write about the acts who, in her loneliness, she could relate to. She hoped that if she got close enough to her idols, she might learn something about herself. She wrote for Mojo and Salon, interviewed Harry Nilsson and Del Shannon. But no one enchanted her like Boettcher.

When she learned of his death, she decided to write his biography. His obscurity seemed like an intolerable injustice, and correcting it gave her a sense of purpose. When she felt suicidal, she told herself she couldn’t die because she had to write his story. And her efforts went a long way toward reviving his music. She wrote the liner notes to several CD reissues of his work, which spread the cult of Boettcher. (She conducted the Gary Usher interview in 1988, quoted above, that is included in the Sagittarius liner notes.) This April, the singer Beth Sorrentino released an album of Boettcher covers, produced by Sean Slade (Radiohead, Hole). But Eden never did write that biography.

What ultimately allayed her depression was not Boettcher, but God. (Read more.)

Via Mary Victrix. Share