The Body

Click photos to enlarge

“The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! Everybody’s holy! Everywhere is holy! Everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!”

Alan Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl

 The Hands and Feet

"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness" 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 The Torso

“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred”

Walt Whitman

The Bottom

“As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Eyes

“The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Penis

'Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body"

George Santayana

The Face

"The face is the mirror of the mind and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart"

St Jerome

The Body in Motion

“The body is a sacred garment.”

Martha Graham

The Lips

“The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.”

Oscar Wilde

The Sleeping Body

“Anatomy is destiny.”

Sigmund Feud

The Assembly of Bodies

“A gay male never gets over the idea the he is a thing of beauty, and a boy forever!”

Our body is the home within which we store our past, create our emotions and through which we interact with the world and those around us. So much do we emphasise the merits of its beauty or mourn the perceived lack of that which we find pleasing. Be it a tall or a stout frame, covered in a pale or a dark skinned outer cloth, pure and smooth or uneven in texture, it is the reality which we have been given or created. There is no universal image of what it should be. The infinite variation is the beauty of us collectively. For each a season and for all an admirer. We should be our first and most ardent lover. We should sing the praise of what we are and how we present ourselves to the world. That which is within will shine through and make glorious the frame within which we are stored. The strength of  the body can be used by some to fight or to dominate and by others to lift up and to dance. Through the grace of our limbs, the passion in our eyes and the tenderness of our mouth and what comes from it are we defined. For none should the body revealed be a source of shame. The honest display of what we have made of ourselves is to be encouraged and praised. If our conscience is true then every inch of our body should be spotlighted and applauded.
M Is for Man, Music, Mozart

A brilliant short film by Peter Greenaway 30 min
available as a bonus on

Peter Greenaway's A TV Dante: The Inferno Cantos I-VIII [DVD]

A commissioned project, made for TV in honor the the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, this is a highly avant-garde piece of music, theater and dance, set to an original score by the controversial Dutch composer Louis Andriessen (who would later collaborate with Greenaway on the operas "Rosa" and "Writing to Vermeer"). Four nude, powder-white dancers (representing the Gods) appear on a stage designed in the style of an 18th century anatomy theater. A woman sings a list of objects beginning with various letters of the alphabet up to "M"; the Gods then decide to create Man, assembling him from body parts listed as onscreen text. Having created Man, the Gods then give him Movement; so as to give him a reason to move, they create Music; finally, so as to have Perfect Music, they create Mozart. 

The recording of the music while video plays on a screen.


My essay on a particular body.