Week 51 - Sculptor, Sculpture & Muse (& Audience)
Hermaphroditus, Aphrodite. It doesn't really change the outcome does it?
The Sculptor sought to sculpt themselves, not in the form of Aphrodite as many before had attempted but Hermaphroditus, The Muse. Many felt this unwise, Hermaphroditus was formed from tumult and horrors, but The Sculptor knew the risks.
The bargain was struck between the two, both would become part of their sculpture, folded into the clay and metal The Sculptor had moulded. Their own face looking back at The Muse, contorted and constructed into a work neither could’ve dreamed of beholding.
The townsfolk rioted and rebelled. They threw their fruit and said their prayers to the return of civility. And The Sculpture answered their prayers. In ways that exposed their fears. The Audience remained in disagreement throughout The Muse and The Sculptor's work. Those who loved the creation forged idols in their image, celebrated it in the streets, and mourned its pain. For those who hated the creation, their forces ripped down any mention of it and wanted to protect their families from the horrors The Sculptor and The Muse were conducting. They contorted it, critiqued it, and broke it down to its bare essentials of clay and metal.
“Bodies aren’t meant to look that way.”
All before The Sculpture’s birth. All before it had taken a single breath.
The Sculptor knew it would disappear into its work, the world would become so overwhelmed with the prospect of living breathing art that they would never be spoken of again.
They would die with this work. They would be reborn with this work.
But The Muse is cursed to live on with something sharing their face. The Muse’s curse is being forced to confront everything The Sculptor loved about them. Immortalised in art.