Podcast Episode: Art And Melancholy In Rain

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Pip: Ghost Dog is back, and apparently grief, rain, and the Romantics all showed up at the same time — which, honestly, tracks.

Mara: Benn Bell has two posts out this week. We're looking at Delacroix's intimate early take on sacred mourning, and then a short, rain-soaked meditation that braids Nietzsche, Dylan, and the weight of the present moment. Let's start with the painting.

Romantic Painting And Sacred Imagery

Pip: The question here is what Delacroix chose to center — and why that choice still lands nearly two centuries later.

Mara: The post frames it precisely: "By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event."

Pip: So the theological apparatus steps back, and what you're left with is a portrait of grief as its own subject — not a backdrop to doctrine, but the whole point.

Mara: And the timing matters. This is 1829, Delacroix consolidating his place at the head of the French Romantic movement. The post notes this is early work — concentrated and intimate compared to his later, larger, more chaotic crucifixion scenes. The scale is deliberate. It hangs now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

Pip: Small canvas, enormous feeling. The Romantics had a gift for making compression feel like pressure.

Mara: That intimacy is exactly what distinguishes it. Where the later works sprawl into spectacle, this one holds still with her.

Pip: Which brings us somewhere quieter — rain, and what you do with a heavy afternoon.

Rain, Music, And Reflection

Mara: The post called "Rain" is short and almost entirely made of borrowed voices — but the arrangement is the argument.

Pip: The post opens with the frame and doesn't let go: "Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon."

Mara: What that gets you is a particular kind of day — the philosophical and the musical running in parallel, both tuned to something difficult. Dylan's lines surface directly: a hard rain is going to fall, we live in a political world, when teardrops fall, everything is broken.

Pip: Three Dylan songs, one weather system, and Nietzsche before noon. That's a mood with real structural integrity.

Mara: The juxtaposition does the work a longer piece might over-explain. The rain is context, and also conclusion.

Pip: Grief in oil, grief in rain — the week's posts share a key.

Mara: Both find the human scale inside something larger. More from Ghost Dog next time.

Cafe at Night

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This is Vincent van Gogh’s Café at Night. I had a print of this for years hanging in my bedroom when I lived in Philly. I always liked it, but never really had a deep understanding of what it was about until recently.   

During his nearly fifteen-month stay in Arles, Vincent van Gogh created this depiction of the Café de la Gare, an all-night establishment on the city’s Place Lamartine. With varying reds and greens, as well as saturated yellows applied in thick patches, the artist sought to convey—as he wrote to his brother Theo—“the terrible passions of humanity.” For van Gogh, these clashing colors not only evoked an aura of restlessness, but they also expressed “an idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.”

But there is something more. There are 12 figures sitting under the light in the café. The central figure is dressed in white. Behind this figure, you can make out the shape of a cross. This is Van Gogh’s interpretation of the Last Supper. Christ is the central figure, and the figure leaving the scene is Judas.

When I heard this interpretation, I experienced an aha event. A little satori in the evening of my discontent.

Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross (1829)

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Eugene Delacroix, 1829, Oil on Canvas. Delacroix painted this stunning oil on canvas in 1829, right as he was cementing his reputation as the fierce leader of the French Romantic movement. Unlike his later, much larger and more chaotic crucifixion scenes, this early work is a highly concentrated, intimate study of pure grief. By naming it Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross, the emphasis is explicitly placed on her human experience and emotional desolation, rather than just the grander theological event. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as a generous gift from Mrs. Efrem Kurtz.

Rain

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Rain

Heavy rain sometimes comes with a heavy heart. Reading Nietzsche in the morning and listening to Dylan in the afternoon. A hard rain is going to fall. We live in a political world. When teardrops fall, everything is broken.

My Soul She Shrieks

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My soul, she shrieks and flings me down

Laughing maniacally

The wind picks up and lifts her dress

Teasing and pleasing me

All is nothingness, so she says

As she pins me to the bed

With a silver shaft of cold, cold steel

She runs me through and through.

Benn Bell

Analysis

This is a powerful, visceral piece of poetry. It leans heavily into a dark, gothic existentialism, balancing a sense of violent surrender with a strange, Macabre ecstasy.

Here is how the layers of meaning break down:

1. The War with the Self (The Divided Soul)

The poem doesn’t feature an external monster or a physical attacker; the tormentor is explicitly “My soul.” By personifying the soul as a chaotic, maniacal female entity, the poem explores a profound internal fracture. The narrator is at the mercy of their own spirit, suggesting a state of psychological or spiritual crisis where the mind is being violently overthrown by its own deepest, darkest impulses.

2. Existential Dread and “Nothingness”

The emotional turning point of the poem hinges on the line:

“All is nothingness, so she says”

This grounds the poem squarely in existential dread. The “soul” here acts as a cruel messenger of cosmic indifference. She isn’t just attacking the narrator; she is forcing them to confront the absolute void. The maniacal laughter underscores the absurdity and hopelessness of the human condition—the realization that beneath all our struggles, there may be nothing at all.

3. The Intertwining of Pleasure and Pain

There is a distinct, unsettling undercurrent of eroticism mixed with violence throughout the verses:

  • The wind lifting her dress is described as “Teasing and pleasing me.”
  • The act of being pinned to the bed and run through with a “silver shaft” carries a dual weight of violation and intimate submission.

It suggests that the confrontation with absolute truth, or ultimate destruction, carries a terrifying thrill. The narrator is helpless, yet transfixed by the sheer, overwhelming power of the experience.

4. The Silver Shaft of Cold Steel

The “silver shaft of cold, cold steel” that runs the narrator “through and through” reads like a metaphor for a sharp, piercing realization. Silver is historically associated with purity, moonlight, and exposing the hidden truth (like killing a monster). Here, it feels like a cold, unyielding truth cutting through illusions, anchoring the narrator to reality (the bed) by completely shattering their defenses.

It is a striking exploration of a mind wrestling with its own existence—simultaneously terrified of and captivated by the absolute void.

Thoughts?

Dream Log 04192026

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Dream Log

Last night I dreamed Robin and I were in a long line at the airport waiting to board a flight. The flight was overbooked, and we could not board. We were told we would be provided with transportation to another gate for another plane at another airport. A while later, a big cargo truck rolled up, and the driver stopped in front of us and rolled down his window.

“Hello, Mr. Bell, I am here to take you to your gate.”

“Don’t I know you?”

Well, you should, we worked together for 12 years at Anchor Glass.”

Robin and I climbed abroad. She on top of the cab, and I was on top of the cargo with nothing to hold onto. WE drove wildly through the city streets on the way to our final destination. Robin was sitting Indian style on the cab, holding on for dear life with her long hair streaming back behind her. I’m sitting on the load on the back of the truck, trying to find a purchase so that I wouldn’t fall off.

Then I woke up.

NO QUARTER

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In a military context, the phrase “no quarter” means that a victor will show no mercy to a defeated enemy. Specifically, it signals that no prisoners will be taken. Anyone who attempts to surrender will be killed rather than captured. The engagement is to continue until one side is eliminated. The word “quarter” historically refers to providing shelter or exemption from being killed; therefore, “no quarter” is the refusal to grant that exemption.

The issuance of an order of “no quarter ” is a war crime under international law. Although it was common in historical warfare and piracy, it has been strictly outlawed for over a century. The prohibition isn’t just about the act of killing surrendering soldiers; the mere declaration or threat that no survivors will be taken is itself a criminal offense.

Several major international treaties and statutes explicitly forbid the denial of quarter:

  • The Hague Convention (1907): Article 23(d) states that it is “especially forbidden… to declare that no quarter will be given.”
  • The Geneva Conventions (1977 Additional Protocol I): Article 40 clarifies that it is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors, to threaten an adversary with such an order, or to conduct hostilities on that basis.
  • The Rome Statute (1998): This is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It lists “declaring that no quarter will be given” as a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts.

The law of armed conflict is built on the principle of military necessity. Once a combatant is out of the fight, whether because they are wounded, sick, shipwrecked, or surrendering, they no longer pose a military threat. Killing them provides no military advantage and is considered “useless cruelty.”

You don’t actually have to carry out the killings for a crime to have occurred. Legally, the act of issuing the order or making the threat is the violation. This is because such a declaration forces the enemy to fight to the death, invites immediate and equally brutal retaliation, and undermines the basic humanitarian standards that protect all service members.

In a modern military, an order to “give no quarter” is considered manifestly unlawful, meaning subordinates have a legal duty to disobey it.

Pete Hegseth, the Minister of War, has ordered our military to offer “no quarter’ to the enemy. This is a war crime. President Trump is complicit in this policy. They are both war criminals and should be held accountable. As Americans, we cannot allow these criminal acts to be undertaken on our behalf. I urge the military to refuse illegal orders and all Americans to object to these heinous, barbaric, and cruel acts of warfare carried out in our name.

The Bonfire of the Vanities.

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On February 7, 1497, in Florence, Italy, Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar, became the “moral police” of Florence. took over the city’s vibe, preaching against corruption, greed, and what he saw as the pagan excesses of the Renaissance. Savonarola sent out groups of local kids to go door-to-door and collect items that might lead people toward sin. These “vanities” were piled high in the Piazza della Signoria and set ablaze. The haul included anything related to “vanity” cosmetics, mirrors, fine clothing, silks, velvets, and ornate jewelry, books, music, and art.

Mary Had a Little Lamb

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That lambs dislike birds of prey does not seem so strange, and if these lambs should say, “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is their opposite, say a little lamb, would that not be good?” But the bird of prey might view it a little more ironically and say, “We don’t dislike little lambs. We, in fact, love them. There is nothing tastier than a tender lamb.”