beauty will be convulsive - Page 7

Lady Diana is good example of this because she was so beautiful in so many ways, yet one would perhaps not choose a photograph of her over say, Gisele Buchenden or Kate Winslet etc. In many ways, we could say she was rather plain. Yet… yet… there was always something about her that was amazing and light - and light as in really luminous so much so that she seemed almost to radiate it and give it off, casting out bright glints from her eyes and that smile that could knock you dead even when she was holding an AIDS baby in the Sudan, Lady Diana was never more beautiful. Perhaps then she was most beautiful because she was showing that rara avis, compassion, empathy…. Those things we've lost touch with. The Taj Mahal picture will always stand in my mind not because she is beautiful in it, but because she has not yet come into her light. She is still under the royal, fat thumb of Bonnie Prince Charles and his ridiculous family and horsey-faced mistress, but also, she blames herself for a good part of the ordeal and so has been punishing herself in various ways be it with razors or bulimia or whatever, it's a sad photograph.

Still, there is this monument to love behind her and we see a woman who has this incredible potential for light - it seemed the whole world knew it before Diana herself did. Photographers were drawn to her from the start and not merely because she was dating the Prince - Christ, hundreds had gone there before. No, it wasn't just that. It was her humility, her grace, her shyness, her very "Diananess" and slight silliness and lack of self-awareness that made her so lovely, and earned her the nickname Shy Di. In her presence, we all felt enlivened. We lined the streets of England for her, and when she died, again we lined the streets and all the world over, people got up early or later to watch her funeral on television and cared more for her than for pretty much anybody and say what you will but the woman was truly loved and she was loved because she had a kind of beauty that was born out of humility and light and she made us feel alive. Audrey Hepburn is glamorous, but she never made me feel alive in the way Diana had done and photos still can. She was gorgeous, but that is a different beast altogether.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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