victorialis

[musket]

Few here will remember her from the wild west days of Debates, when we were both guides. There were many extremely bright people in Debates back then, but she was the crown jewel. No one ever thought of her as specifically male or female. She was more like a hyper-intelligent alien who had been left behind by mistake after an expedition to earth.

Her mastery of language was complete. Her prose style combined impeccable chains of dizzying logic, trenchant social commentary,  mischievous humor, judicious slang and razor wit. She got along well with everyone but on the very few occasions when someone pushed her too far, you were glad you weren’t on the receiving end.

She left WC in 2006 after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, taking only me with her. Over the next fifteen years we forged the greatest and most improbable and friendship of my life. She lived in England, over 3000 miles from my home in New Hampshire. We never met in person and only started speaking on the phone four months ago, when her second round of cancer, Stage IV, took a turn for the worse. Before that, it was all email, and we didn’t want to jinx what we had with the written word.

She was a dab hand with colored pencil and watercolor, and was a gifted composer with a degree in music. She had a magnificent mind and a generous heart.

She crossed the threshold, as she would have put it, peacefully in hospital on July 15, age sixty-two. Her husband of twenty years was by her side. I could be there only in spirit. I will never get over this loss. She was my littlest sister in all but blood, and what does blood really matter?

I’ll leave it with one of her favorite sign offs.

“Up, the drawbridge! Down, the portcullis! Release the piranhas into the moat!”

[Charlies Mum Administrator (Maureen)]

I didn’t know Victorialis  Musket, having seldom visited Debates, but that’s my loss. I am sorry for the loss of your friend and ‘littlest sister’.

From your erudite tribute, I feel I would have liked to know her…. you honour her. Sincere condolences to you and her husband and family.

Cheers, Maureen

Forum projects: Plant Parade projects in the Florals/Botanicals forum , WDE in the All Media Art Events , Different Strokes in Acrylics forum .

[musket]

Thank you, Charlies Mum. Appreciated.

It is, I think, not inappropriate to post an example of one of our many personal discussions here.

“I expect, after my death, to be reabsorbed into unity.  I expect it to be the end of the distress of differentiation — of the sense that “I” am “in here” and everything else is “out there.” I start from the premise that there are aspects of reality we know nothing about because in our current self-awareness we live in flesh, time, and space.  Our nervous systems are wired for this; we require linear time to order our experiences; and our consciousness takes linear time as normative because we know nothing else —  but it is perhaps a norm for embodied consciousness only.

“I am not my body, not my memories and not my objective history. Those things affect me, but I am, ultimately, a point of view in space-time and I propose that space-time might not be all there is.  It is only what we all know. Why shouldn’t there be more? Maybe there isn’t, but why not?

“I arrive there by wondering about consciousness. What is it, anyway? Evolved consciousness is not a requirement for physical life. Plants have a simple form of consciousness:  they respond to conditions, and they respond to attention.  I intuit that the consciousness we have, by its nature, is fundamentally shared, collective, and that our illusion of separateness is a function of being located in space-time. When we momentarily overcome the illusion of separateness, we might also be somewhere else that is not the space-time continuum, although our temporal forms have not departed from it.

“Nonlocal consciousness intrigued me for a while, but I never made any headway with the idea. Stable, functioning consciousness as I know it requires separateness and differentiation for the sake of clarity.  Consciousness seeks experience and knowledge for evolution. The most granular record of experience demands a single, embodied, restricted point of view — many such single points of view, in fact, to multiply knowledge from all the potentialities of life.”

As a friend of mine who transcribed one of her synth pieces for solo guitar (she had a BA in music and so does he) said of her, “I am struck at the originality of her thought, in the sense that there are no second-hand ideas; everything is arrived at through her experience, her intuition (which she refers to), and then sorted and ordered through patient consideration. She was a wonderful writer, lucid, with an open, friendly tone, and never a hint of presumption.”

It was my privilege to know her.

 

[musket]

And one more, from Debates itself.

************************************

If your trade is fear and dire warnings, there are a couple things you need.

1. Lots of people with yankable chains, so they will harken unto you and serve as your market.
2. Life never getting any better and not a flippin’ thing going well (to enable the development of new and improved dire warnings).
3. An enjoyment of the dysfunctional, so you can endure both the heavy lifting of finding new things to be disgusted about, and the boredom of banging on about the old stand-bys like greed, sloth, covetousness, etc.
4. A powerhouse eschatological mythos to house it all, because people will want to hear more about the end of the world.
5. Utter indifference to humanity, including your own.
6. The presumption that your market is not too clever, and that you know better than they do.

Occupational hazards of being the Voice of Doom:

1. Getting paralysed with fear.
2. Self-sabotage, up to and including suicide, due to the first hazard.
3. Partying gets a lot harder.
4. The temptation to be insincere in one’s dire warnings, to protect oneself from the other occupational hazards.

***************************************

I’m good with words, but she was in a different league. She never edited her posts. It was all off the top of her head.

 

 

[musket]

Finally, to complete this tribute even if no one else reads it, a piece in colored pencil from her WC days, most likely 2005.

 

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[marksmomagain]

Well before my time…. what a glorious tribute Musket.

[musket]

Thank you, marksmomagain. Very much appreciated that you checked the thread out. She deserves the tribute.

[Chronos]

She sounds like the sort of divinity I would like to see about the place, instead of the dusty old ones we’ve all had forever. Though I never had the privilege of being a moth to her flame, I salute her!

Fabulous that you connected, musket, and you’ve left a lovely tribute indeed. We should all have such friends, who can convey our essence so deftly after we’ve left.

[musket]

Thank you, Chronos. A wonderful human being she was, though not without her foibles, just like the rest of us.

[tanube]

Late to the party but hoping you are doing well & will eventually read this, dear musket. Thank you so much for your beautiful tribute post about victorialis.

Every once in a while my memories wander to the old Debates forum where some illustrious minds could be found now & then in the characters that thrived there. Victorialis was one of my all time favourites. Like you mentioned in your wonderful tribute, I never really knew if she was a he or she or whatever, but it hardly mattered as the posts were always so original, calm, thought-provoking – they made you stop, take a breath & then really – REALLY – pay attention.

She was a star that dazzled yet remained humble. I left shortly after she did, returning every now & then to check on what was going on, but it just wasn’t the same.

I wish I had somehow saved some of those threads from Debates. Although I feel like I lost a lot of painting time posting on that forum, it was not wasted time. There was a lot of wisdom there, amidst the fluff. I do have one of your astute posts about the artists’ plateau printed off & thumbtacked to my corkboard – it still rings true!

There have been so many changes to WetCanvas that I had a hard time signing in & ended up forsaking my original handle of dodger for this one that somehow showed up in my mailbox.

Thanks again, musket!

Judy

https://www.judylalingo.com/

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