Lady of the Lake
Spiritualized – I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You
Dress: vintage (my mom’s!). For a similar dress, search for ‘Gunne Sax,’ and you’ll find lots of ’70s Renaissance revival styles.
Photography by Timothy Peterson. Location: Priest’s Pools, Guam.
The Inspiration
The Pre-Raphaelite painters reworked the lady of the lake theme to perfection. She is an Arthurian enchantress, beguilling men to their deaths. The same painters captured all the pathos of the too-young-to-die Ophelia without losing any of her beauty. My inspiration came from both.
Now that I’ve seen Anonymous, I understand Shakespeare a bit more. (Fans of the Bard will love the film.) Besides, of course, Juliet, there’s no more troubled and damned heroine than Ophelia. I rewatched the Kenneth Branagh’s marathon version of Hamlet to be reminded why Ophelia’s story arc was so tragic. Oh, what a tangled web is murder, lust, insanity, revenge, more murder, disappointed affections, war, and then more murder.
The Music
Trying to find the most depressing love song ever written isn’t hard. I have many. The difficulty was choosing just one to represent the pain of lover’s rejection. Will it be the bitterly love sick Lykke Li, the lullaby melancholia of Sigur Rós, or even the haunting bluegrass of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss? I would give you all three if bandwith permitted. I decided on the druggy depression of Spiritualized, the anthem for all degrees of heartbreak.
