Objectum

I would like to be as in love as the woman from Leeds, England is with the chandelier. BBC did a story on her in 2007 at her home. The woman’s name is Lydia. She’s always loved objects; she’s never been in love with a human being. I watch the BBC special in bed and I tear up. Lydia says the chandelier gives her a reason to wake up in the morning, as any lover would.

On the BBC special, Lydia from Leeds is kissing the chandelier and putting parts of it in her mouth. She’s unashamed. I’ve been in love, but I wouldn’t try it with a chandelier. I tried it with Bobby and he ended up moving to Alaska.

At one point, semiotician Julia Kristeva asks this:

“Is beauty inseparable from the ephemeral and hence from mourning? Or else is the beautiful object the one that tirelessly returns following destructions and wars in order to bear witness that there is survival after death, that immortality is possible?”

The woman from Leeds says, I can find immortality in communion with the immortal

or perhaps more obviously,

I can find immortality in the arms of the chandelier.

Perhaps she has experienced some great trauma, or maybe she is just in love.

The woman from Leeds names the chandelier Lumière after she buys her off eBay from a German family in Berlin. “One of my favorite parts of the day is polishing her crystals,” she says, and the cameraman does a closeup of her fingers lightly dusting Lumière with an eyeglasses rag.

If the woman wasn’t older she might seem beautiful. If her clothing wasn’t strange and cheap and ill fitting, or if she seemed wealthy or cared for, people might make her some kind of inspiring figure, or romanticize her as a beautiful crazy woman. She’d get a dose of Kristeva’s feminine melancholia.

And indeed, when I rewatch the video I see that Lydia is beautiful, with her red hair and green eyes. I think the chandelier is elegant. The woman represents a kind of asexual femininity that is still endowed with passion and romance. Or maybe it is sexual, all of this. She kisses Lumière. She says she left her wife, the Statue of Liberty, so she could be with Lumière. The Statue of Liberty gave her the OK through telepathy before she bought Lumière on eBay.

Lumière hangs in Lydia’s bedroom. The rest of Lydia’s house is packed with objects but Lumière is her only lover. Towards the end of the piece Lydia says she’s found love, but she’ll never stop collecting. She goes on eBay every night before bed.

 
 
Lillian Mottern is a writer from Eastside LA, now living in New York. Her work has been published and is upcoming in Currant Jam, The Big One, Dream Boy Book Club, Waif Magazine, Wigleaf, and Discount Guillotine, among others. She edits Perennial Mag and curates a very casual experimental literary project called Future Darling.