Cate Blanchett's Face
If Frank O’Hara were still around he would be writing poetry about Cate Blanchett’s face, but as he isn’t, I shall selflessly step up to the plate and try to capture something of its majesty in free prose.
Cate Blanchett’s face is proof not only of God’s existence, but also provides compelling evidence that the Creator has set as a very high priority, “serving cunt.” Cate Blanchett’s face occupies a place in world cultural heritage somewhere between the Parthenon and marshmallow fluff, being simultaneously monumental and immensely comforting; it is the face all of us would like to see smiling down as we depart from our earthly wrappings. Those eyes, glinting, like the bejewelled sockets of a saintly Austrian skeleton, that poker-straight mouth which only suggests cruelty, the cool, elegant marble forehead, seemingly untroubled but liable to crease in a moment of celluloid heartache, and the nose, unmodified, as if to say I’m number 1 so why try harder? Who amongst us does not desire the kiss of death to be bestowed upon them by this celestial bisexual queen amongst Kardashians?
If you say, “Not I”, you’re a liar.
Cate Blanchett’s face is its own Academy Award. It is its own Armani Privé gown, its own Savonnerie rug, it's own magnum of Krug ‘73, its own pair of Qing dynasty earrings, it’s own holy water, it is its own homemade marmalade. Cate Blanchett’s face makes me want to take confession every Sunday to keep myself pure, it makes me want to eat a paleo diet, to wake up at 5am and salute the sun, to speak a third language, and fourth and a fifth, to defrost my freezer, and learn how to mix the perfect martini, and to finally finish reading Middlemarch.
Everything that is good and great resides in Cate Blanchett’s face; if you were to study it long enough, closely enough, the mysteries of the universe would all be revealed, and you would know what came before the Big Bang, and the truth about life on Mars, and who shot JFK, and all about where Agatha Christie went to that weekend, and how they built the pyramids, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? You would know it all, if only it were possible to know it all, if only it were possible for that knowledge to be shared between godhead and mortal.
But alack no, my hungry child, my lusty baby, the receiving of such secrets is impossible, impractical too when the manuscript modulates this quickly.
Cate Blanchett’s face is mutable, and she skips from femme fatale to royal elf, anti-feminist crusader, medieval monarch, high-end jewel thief, Katharine Hepburn, from animated dragon to closeted lesbian, to Bob Dylan, and none of us can keep up, we can't even stay alongside her long enough to read our fortunes on her face, and so we are doomed to die ignorant. Ignorant of everything besides the one great fact, which we all admit to, that truly the reason we are put on this earth is Cate Blanchett’s face.
