Hey PREGRIN
Written ages ago by a mutual friend of Siege and I.
Cesar Jorge Motonow
by Simon Johansen
Most people in the 35th century immediately think of Cesar Jorge Motonow when they hear the words "eccentric and controversial avant-garde filmmaker". This man is best known for a psychedelic remake of
Star Wars which has little in common with George Lucas' original movies except for the names of the characters, as well as once having cut off part of his ear as a homage to Vincent van Gogh. There was much more to Cesar Jorge Motonow than that, however - he was also an important influence the Neo-Alternarealist artistic movement (if not directly part of it), an accomplished musical composer and painter, and helped Raven Tiffany Sinclair re-establish her life as a writer and poet in the 3280s.
[Biography]
Cesar Jorge Motonow was born in 3218 on the Sovereignty world of Emilia to Radomil-Stanislaw Motonow and Alejandra Motonowa (virgin name: Hernandez). His high school records were revealed in his 3304 autobiography to be perfectly average; in fact, he openly reveals that back in those days most people would have laughed at the idea that he should one day become a galaxy-famous moviemaker. During all his childhood and a sizeable portion of his teenage years, Cesar Jorge Motonow envisioned himself as growing up to be a historian. However, he made a decision in 3234 which would set his true future path of life. He describes this change of mind in aforementioned autobiography:
C.J. Motonow wrote:When I was sixteen years old, a revelation occured to me. History is shaped by the thoughts and instincts of people, and what expresses thoughts and instincts in a better way than art and literature? Those who can see hidden meanings between the threads of paints wowen upon the canvas by a painter, or between the networks of tones which music is, sees one possible future. The universe does not create pre-programmed pseudo-linear systems exclusively as it is not once itself; there are countless billions of possible futures. In each piece of art, irrespective of the selection of senses it speaks to, there is a vision of one possible future; or at least a future as perceived by a madman. After all, our ideas also determine what our senses see - for example, supernatural phenomena are only seen by those who believe in them. Point is, one day in the fateful year of 3234, I decided that from now on, I would concern myself with the myriad possible futures and alternate realities seen and created by artists."
Together with a growing clique of likeminded friends, the young Cesar Jorge Motonow formed a society called
The Divine Mirror for what he termed "the exploration of alternate realities through the gateway of the mind". Cesar Jorge Motonow donated most of his income (from whatever part-time job he had at the time) to the Divine Mirror as it grew. 3 months after the inception of the Divine Mirror, complete with a manifesto, Cesar Jorge Motonow was publishing a free magazine called "Visions" along with a webzine version called "Electric Visions" in order to spread knowledge about the diverse array of art produced by Divine Mirror, and also to reach out to other artists. Not just artists on the planet of Emilia or in the USS, but in other parts of the galaxy as well. Contrary to some people's pessimistic expectations, the intentionally unclassifiable and oddly compelling art of young visionaries like Romain Passeron, Jaleh Lashgari and Motonow himself soon gathered the attention of art critics from the entire solar system which contained Emilia; even though they had not yet caught even sectionwide attention.
By the summer of 3236, The Divine Mirror had extended to include an underground publishing house ran from the basement of Romain Passeron, the most prolific contributor to "Visions". There was a general consensus in the group that the work of The Divine Mirror should extend from sculpture and painting to film and music, and that there was a need for distribution of the group's "fruit" in other forms than HoloNet downloads. Not surprisingly, it was through The Divine Mirror that Cesar Jorge Motonow directed his first movie in the very same year. Filmed mostly with handheld camera in black-and-white,
Twin Fullmoon was supposed to shake the very mental fabric from which intelligent beings create their respective worldviews while being made on a shoestring. Motonow himself, however, was somewhat unsatisfied with the result and waited for several years to direct full-length films. Instead, he stuck with various series of less ambitious, if more effective and focused short movies.
In 3237, after his graduation from high school, Motonow and the rest of The Divine Mirror moved together to live as a collective in an abandoned country estate which Motonow's then-girlfriend had managed to locate. With very little connection to the outside world by other means than the holo-net and the occassional visit to nearby towns to buy various other supplies, the Divine Mirror artist collective now lived mostly off the fruit and vegetables grown in the adjoining garden of the now-renovated estate. In the meantime, art critics from all over the galaxy had over the holo-net gained access to these bizarre and unique paintings, drawings, musical compositions, sculptures and movies produced by a group of 16-19 year olds from the rather unremarkable United Solarian Sovereignty planet of Emilia. Scanned photographies of the paintings and drawings, 3d models of the sculptures and downloads of the movies and music turned up for download on the holo-net. Due to the secrecy of the countryside collective in which they lived, all which was known about The Divine Mirror aside from their art were their names and whatever Romain Passeron published in "Electric Visions". Rumours about the group abounded; rumours which were often heard but seldom believed.
It was also in the year 3237 that Cesar Jorge Motonow filmed a series of odd short films which he called
The Vortex Octology, which constitute his most critically acclaimed cinematic achievement. From that point and onwards, The Divine Mirror's life and creations became progressively more strange with each piece of otherwordly art they produced. At a point, Motonow himself even cut off a piece of his left ear as a homage to Vincent van Gogh; his mangled left ear would later on make him instantly recognizeable. Though use of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms had been commonplace, a great deal of The Divine Mirror started using PsychBoost, a lab-created variant of synthesized Psionite which temporarily bestows psychic powers upon individuals born without them (PsychBoost is rarely used for that purpose, since it also is one of the strongest hallucinogens known to science).
By 3239, both Passeron, Motonow and his girlfriend Louise Culliford were sick and tired of what The Divine Mirror had become. From Motonow's autobiography:
C.J. Motonow wrote:What used to be a thriving community of visionaries whom each conjured unique and dream-like imagery, had falled prey to their own lack of discipline. In their quest to expand their imaginations with divine nectars, they foolhardily atrophied their inner vision with PsychBoost. As capricious as LSD can be, the dreaded PsychBoost makes the old trusy acid look like cane sugar in comparison. It was not just me and my beloved Louise who saw this fact, for the sheer obviousness of that particular reality glared like a flame. Romain Passeron was the first to agree with us - and one after one, every member of the Divine Mirror Group who still possessed artistic integrity followed suit.
In 3330, The Divine Mirror group had been disbanded and most of the former members had departed from each other. Some went into rehabilitation and gave up the world of weird art entirely. Motonow, however, soldiered on dauntlessly in spite of financial troubles and Louise Culliford's departure from him.
At the time Motonow returned to the public after years of isolation in the Divine Mirror Collective, art gallery owners from all across the galaxy were willing to pay enormous sums for one of the hundreds of strange paintings he had produced in his teenage years. Though Motonow himself at first shuddered at the idea of giving away art for money, as he believed even the slightest commercial element to be capable of ruining potentially great art, but he complied after considering that he almost was bankrupt at the time due a lack of education.
Finding himself worshipped as a god by art critics (for starting The Divine Mirror) and film critics (for the Vortex Octology), Cesar Jorge Motonow announced in 3331 that he would begin accumulating money for an enormous cinematic project, which he would not reveal until a month before it opened. And when he said that, he already had access to more money than any other artist had in history. Some people started expecting a big-budget version of
Twin Fullmoon, which had become a classic despite Motonow's dislike of it. Motonow started perusing art journals, exhibitions and even comic books to find artists who had been inspired by the Divine Mirror. He contacted other underground filmmakers which cited his
Vortex Octology as a major influence. An army of rumours took flight and it was soon obvious to the public that Motonow was working on the most expensive movie ever, together with an army of likeminded filmmakers who rarely made big-budget movies.
It was testament to the enormity of this project that it did not only involve humans, Apexais and Zigonians; but even Bragulans were significant players in the production. Tens of millions were employed, all under a vow of silence.
In 3337, after six years of hard work by a horde of production crew which moved from system to system to shoot film, Motonow announced that the film was complete. The Mendelsohn Film Corporation took on the arduous task of distributing it all.
The 6th October 3337, the mammoth production had finally arrived in the theaters:
Cesar Jorge Motonow's Star Wars, with Motonow himself portraying Obi-Wan Kenobi.
This was not the first time someone had remade the Star Wars movies, but whereas the previous remakes followed the source material very closely, it was for a reason that the opening credits
Motonow's Star Wars made it clear that it was "an alternative interpretation of the myth first channeled by George Lucas in 1977 A.D."
Fans of George Lucas' original Star Wars movies from the 20th century were outraged. The plot of Motonow's Star Wars only resembled Lucas' in rough details, the visual style was more like Motonow's own paintings than anything else, the familiar John Williams score was replaced by surrealistic death metal composed and performed by Motonow himself and the only things which were exactly he same as in the source material were the names of the characters.
Motonow himself was quick to offer an explanation:
C.J. Motonow wrote:"Star Wars" is a myth of the modern days. George Lucas did not create that myth, he merely was the one who communicated the myth to the general public. Storytellers don't make myths, they tell the myths. Each of us has our own interpretation of a myth. What your ancestors saw on the screen back in 1977 was George Lucas' interpretation of a particular myth. This is my interpretation of the same myth. One should neither forget that George Lucas was a product of a nation and culture which no longer exists. Thusly, George Lucas' Star Wars was a 20th century rendition of a myth that belongs to no place or time.
Motonow's Star Wars was certainly neither the child-friendly Star Wars of Lucas. Motonow's Star Wars depicted self-mutilation as an essential part of the Jedi Experience, and had a certain amount of perverse sexual content. Even more gruesome was the flashback scene wherein the origin of Darth Vader was told. In Motonow's version, Darth Vader committed ritual suicide by decapitation only to let his dismembered soul possess a robotic body he had constructed for the purpose.
Another point of critique from the "Warsies" was the starship designs - whereas most of the starships in Lucas' Star Wars looked uniformly mechanical and utilitarian (with the exception of the Mon Calamari warships and Naboo ships), Motonow went for the complete opposite direction and depicted all of the Rebel and pre-Imperial starships as something which resembled mechanical insects or robotic fish more than actual spaceships; where his depiction of the Imperial warships were heavily inspired by 20th century painter H.R. Giger. Again, Motonow had a reason to do so:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Ever since the Industrial Revolution, human culture has been dominated by one central theme: The conflict between nature and culture. Take a look at a spaceship. The spaceship is the ultimate achievement of culture. The spaceships sailing the sea of stars today are in shape and spirit a far, solemn cry from anything in nature - save for those of the Apexai of the Zedath-Kaleshi Nomads. But Nature and culture do not have to be polar opposites. The universe is not a binary system. It takes drastic steps to unite Nature and Culture as I wish it to be. I also happen to be a pantheist, which means that I do not believe that God created the universe; I rather believe that the universe is divine enough in its own right!
When making this movie, I wanted to subtly yet clearly expect my ideology - and what better than to depict mechanical spaceships of gleaming steel (culture), which nonetheless resemble strange plants and animals (nature) while sailing the astral seas (the divine)? Feel free to criticize my Star Destroyers for not resembling the giant refrigerators which in real life flaunt the arrogance of Man towards the great divine Universe which created him! I am one of the few to even hope of achieving a state of being One with the Cosmos, and all I create reflect that.
My Imperial Star Destroyers are not sterile machines but great warrior-dragons with steel for skin and electricity for blood, whose cyborg souls each will one day find peace in great nebular graveyards littered with the corporeal remnants of other great war-beast of the past who one rode triumphantly across the sidereal battlefields with emerald-gleaming hatred in their myriad eyes! And the fighters that they disgorge forth like hordes of bees from a hive... no mere sterile machines either, but star-chariots from where great heroes launch arrows charged with the energy of the universe, and meet their fate; that is an untimely demise in the light of dying suns!\r\n
In the face of adversity, Motonow did not hesitate to follow it up with his personal takes on
The Empire Strikes Back and
Return Of The Jedi, which were shot back-to-back with his re-interpretation of
A New Hope. They became progressively weirder and more detached from Lucas' edition with each movie. Not only did Motonow's version of
Return Of The Jedi depict a completely redundant scene of Emperor Palpatine (portrayed by Motonow's old friend Romain Passeron) defecating and urinating on-screen, but it also depicted Jabba the Hutt as a rail-thin creature equal part reptile and insect (the total antithesis of the gluttonous Jabba depicted by Lucas), the Ewoks as winged, bird-like creatures which lived in the crowns of mile-high trees and Coruscant as a giant "Dyson Sphere". The ending of Motonow's
Return Of The Jedi, which the author of this biography will not spoil, is considered by many to be the strangest 20 minutes ever filmed.
Motonow didn't stop at remaking the first Star Wars trilogy in the image of his own strange visions. In 3255, he unleashed upon the moviegoers of the galaxy nothing less than
Cesar Jorge Motonow's Star Wars: The Beginning - A Trilogy In Three Parts. In this prequel trilogy, Motonow completely disregarded the much-maligned "actual" Prequel Trilogy which George Lucas made in the early 21th century. Perhaps due to the overall negative attitude towards Lucas' Prequel Trilogy, all three parts of Motonow's
Star Wars: The Beginning were much more well-received than his rendition of the "Original Trilogy" despite being even more surreal and "adult". In Motonow's Prequel Trilogy, Luke and Leia were
seemingly a product of an incestuous union between brother and sister, though Motonow's version of Anakin was in fact just the
adopted brother of Ms. Skywalker; his actual origins being much more outlandish... (for spoilers, read the Encyclopedia Galactica article on C.J. Motonow's
Star Wars)
Cesar Jorge Motonow's Star Wars: The Beginning also introduced Cesar Jorge Motonow to Raven Tiffany Sinclair, as she portrayed Luke Skywalker's mother Honoria Skywalker. (in the Lucas version, she was called Padmé Amidala) However, it wouldn't be before thirty years later that he would marry her and utterly transform her life. Despite being perhaps
the most visually impressive movies ever filmed, Motonow's Star Wars movies barely earned in more cash than they cost; though that most likely were because of the movies' enormous budgets than anything else. The critics were certainly lukewarm at best towards Motonow's re-interpretation of
Star Wars upon their initial release. However, by the day that
Cesar Jorge Motonow's Star Wars: The Beginning- Chapter 3: The Alteration Of The Fabric Of The Multiverse stopped showing at the theatres after a couple of months, Motonow's Star Wars was already rapidly in the process of becoming
the cult classic movies of the 33rd century.
By the year 3257, however, Cesar Jorge Motonow himself was so exhausted from remaking
Star Wars that he moved into a lonely forest cabin on the USS "garden world" of Cathubodva with his newest girlfriend, the neo-alternarealist sculptor Reena Li. The paintings which Motonow produced during his rest on Cathubodva, which are currently in the possession of his descendants, were very different from his usual work. Unlike the nightmare motives he loved to depict, in the 3260s Motonow proved to himself and Reena that he could do more than that - with his own words:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Though the supernatural always is very beautiful, I have not fallen into the Surrealist pitfall of regarding reality as inherently inferior. Art reflects the mind of the artist, and as I sought tranquility in the woods, I painted what I found - vast arboreal vistae of endless forest! The unparallelled majesty of the dark woods, that great eternal temple to the glory of itself! It is a shame that the gift of intelligence always is accompanied by an urge to forget the divine nature of the universe that spawned us, and this universe does certainly encompass more than just the ebony-dark sea of stars! I often felt more at home between Cathubodva's gigantic pines and oaks than among towers of steel and concrete. Most important was the guidance with which Reena provided me; I see it no coincidence that her graceful visage was like that of an elf - for her mind was truly able to reach beyond this corporeal plane of existence and grant all around her wisdom from above!
Aside from what would later be called the Woodland Paintings, his artistic products in the 3260s also consisted of the philosophical book
Sentience (published in 3267), which was an in-depth exploration of Motonow's personal philosophy. It revealed a man who had evolved into a quite different person than the man who formed The Divine Mirror and wrote its manifesto. Though the quasi-pantheist core of Motonow's ideology was intact, philosophers comparing
Sentience to
The Manifesto Of The Divine Mirror found Sentience to present a much more complete set of ideals than the former.
Fully independent of Motonow, the publication of this book led to a group of young visionary artists forming the
New Divine Mirror Group in 3270. Both Motonow himself and the other remaining members of the original Divine Mirror (Romain Passeron, Lagonda Clarkson III, Aatami Laiho, Ciaran McTighearnán and Dana Fialková) welcomed the idea. Not only Motonow but also Fialková and McTighearnán appreciated the New Divine Mirror's decision to use
Sentience as their manifesto. (later on, however, both Clarkson and Passeron developed a pronounced dissatisfaction with the New Divine Mirror; a dissatisfaction which spread its way to Motonow)
Motonow returned to filmmaking in 3271 with
Silent And Dark, a two-hour movie which told a story without depicting or mentioning any characters or people. Instead,
Silent and Dark was perhaps one of the first movies built entirely on a language of symbolism intended to trigger various mechanisms in the subconscious.
To say that
Silent And Dark split the film world would be an understatement. Roughly half of the reviewers praised it as if it was the best thing since the invention of sliced bread, while the other half criticized it as some of the most pretentious and dull material ever filmed.
The following year, Motonow visited the Apexai Settlements of Zedath-Kaleshi Nomads to collaborate with noted Apexai filmmaker Trantys Zeolak Kechaagis on
Interdimensional Travel By The Metaphysics Highway, which necessitated some peculiar cybernetic implant in Motonow and Kechaagis since the "film" was
literally several LSD trips captured on film. What neither Kechaagis nor Motonow expected was the fact that this particular film would become commonly used by biologists to show highlight the differences between the nervous systems of humans and Apexais.
In 3272, Reena Li left him; an event which neither experienced as a tragedy, instead quite the opposite, as documented by following statement from Motonow:
C.J. Motonow wrote:I did not break up with Reena. There was no hostility between us, and we continued to have a healthy friendship between each other which still consists today. Rather, we both came to the conclusion that we no longer had much significant to learn from each other; another thing must also be understood. The relationship I had with Reena was not of a sexual nature. In retrospect, I think that I committed a grave mistake in describing her as my girlfriend. It would have been more appropiate to call her my muse or guiding angel; if only neither of those terms had been beaten to death with extreme prejudice by their respective stati as clichés. Though there indeed is a connection between art and sex, they are sometimes able to exist independently of each others.
He collaborated shortly with Reena Li in 3273 on yet another strange movie of his. Yet another example of Motonow's ability to tell fabulous tales with movies made on minimal budgets,
Union Of Heaven And Hell could not have a more fitting title. Combining more "ordinary" material with a synthesized-by-CGI-version of the filmed LSD hallucinations seen on
Interdimensional Travel By The Metaphysics Highway.
Working tirelessly as ever, he produced two more infamous works in 3274; the 40-minute short movie
Tapestry Woven With Swords which told an undescribable story entirely by means of footage taken from old news transmissions, and the book
Thoughts on the Art of Spaceship-Building: How Artifice Reflects Philosophy. The latter was an analysis of spaceships - both civilian and military - as they were sculptures or paintings rather than vehicles. This book was also written in cooperation with a team of spaceship engineers from all over the galaxy - the most famous of whom were Kyran Naxa Zalkaran (a Zedath-Kaleshi Apexai who would later work on the design of the Zalassar-class heavy cruiser) and Preeti Singh (starfighter designer employed by Eurasian Systems at the time). Due to the following passage in
Thoughts on the Art of Spaceship-Building, the CEID went to arrest Motonow:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Though the warships of the Bragulan Empire are dominated by the same blocky, machine-like forms as those of the Sovereignty's Star Force, the Bragulans' style of design seems noticeably less awkward upon further analysis. A further cultural and sociological study reveals that the utilitarian, technocratic and imperialistic style of the Imperial Bragulan vessels goes hand in hand with the monoculture of the Bragulan Star Empire. Darvyl S. Byzon I, Imperator of the Bragulans, writes in his self-biography that "to ensure a strong culture, beauty should be defined as that which most explicitly projects physical force and military power". When looking at any capital ship of the Imperial Bragulan Navy, that is exactly the type of philosophy I see expressed in its warhammer-like shape. Contrast to the ships which represent the USSF; though the United Solarian Sovereignty is among the most culturally diverse of all interstellar confederations, almost every ship above corvette size is nothing but a monument of the USS' betrayal towards the most gifted ones of its own citizens! Not that I sympathize with the Bragulan Empire, but they produce at least some degree of unison between thoughts and otherwise inanimate objects.
The following CEID-Zero investigation, however, failed to prove any sort of honest sympathy for the BSE within Motonow, and he was released after the period of time which the investigation took. This was not the only misunderstandings arising from
Thoughts on the Art of Spaceship-Building, which prompted Motonow to write a follow-up book in 3276 which aptly more the name:
Yet More Thoughts on the Art of Spaceship-Building.
Aside from featuring some interesting comments on the spacecraft featured in his infamous remakes of
Star Wars in addition to elaborating on the theories of how to apply art analysis to spacecraft. On the former topic, it provided a frequently-quoted paragraph:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Some may accuse me of advocating a style-above-substance approach to the design of spaceships. There is plenty of evidence that this is not true, and many of those sources of hope are within service among some of the Sovereignty's closest allies - the Zedath-Kaleshi Apexai. Look at the Kelvaxor-class interdictor, the Sanbugir-class liners or the huge city-ships that constitute the Settlements; clearly not products of short-sighted shallowness! While most of the galaxy's inhabitants get around in clumsy grey boxes possessing all the charm of an old pair of shoes, there is a thriving civilization here whose members live, travel and fight in glittering vehicles- full of wonder in form and function. No, I do not wish that humanity should start reshaping itself in the image of the Apexai, but I hope that when a billion suns will set upon homo sapiens, we shall not only have as glorious a past to look back upon as the Zedath-Kaleshi, but also much more to teach new civilizations that may spring up in the future.
I dream of faraway future when an utterly ancient humanity, living in their own era's autumn yet a thousandfold times more noble than their forebears, draw envy from the rest of the galaxy for the apotheosis though art which will be achieved through a perfect symbiose of the metaphysical and the corporeal. As such, the future mankind of my visions deserve to illuminate their disciples from aboard great shining ships worthy of the gods we will have become by then; each a testament to the glorious legacy of its builders. Sadly, I have though my life-experience witnessed that only very few of us currently lack such a potential for greatness, but amongst those are I, who have always desired to lead the entire universe to glory!
Though it is debatable whether "The Man With One Ear" succeeded in fulfilling such dreams, he certainly inspired many similar ones. The same year as
Yet More Thoughts... was published, the by-then nascent artistic movement known as
Neo-Alternarealism held their Third Annual Convention. At that particular meeting, they cited as their greatest influence (aside from, of course, the Alternarealist movement of the mid-3250s) none other than Cesar Jorge Motonow himself. Motonow's own response to this was these simple words (simple by Motonow standards, that is!):
"I sometimes think that my influence of those to view me as a mentor will be greater than the influence of my own work. I can certainly say than I am a spark which brought visions of an otherworldy nature to all who would ever whisper my name; even the blind. I am one, I am All. When my body has ceased to function and my ashes cast to the solar winds, my legend will live forever in the collective heart of the Universe, for I am a god among men."
In 3278, he was employed for a short while as an art critic by the famous holo-webzine
The Look And Sound Of Armageddon. Since said holo-webzine happened to be one of the prime sources for information on the rapidly developing school of Neo-Alternarealism, it was already interesting to hear the opinion of a man without whom much of the best known Neo-Alternarealist art would not have existed. By the New Year of 3279, Motonow's work for
The Look And Sound Of Armageddon was compiled in the legendary anthology
Only The Insane Are Truly Free: The State Of The Art 3279 A.D.. The title of this anthology came from Motonow's prologue to the compilation - an essay he had decided to publish as a standalone praise of Neo-Alternarealism in
Art And Philosophy. However, since he finished by the time he had finished compiling his articles written for
The Look And Sound Of Armageddon, he changed his mind and used it as the title and introduction of said compilation. As with many of his previous essays, this sparked much debate in
Art And Philosophy.
However, a day in February 3279, in his distant seaside house on the planet Celeste in the edge of the USS, Cesar Jorge Motonow would be inseperably united with a woman he had only collaborated with by little more than coincidence before. Not one life, but two, would be changed forever for what both would consider ultimately empowering. It was the year Cesar Jorge Motonow met none other than Raven Tiffany Sinclair.
By the time that happened, Raven had reached the absolute low point in her life. 44 years old, she was by then a washed-up former sex symbol whom neither the press nor fellow celebrities would leave alone. Though still a capable actress, her reputation had been damaged forever by the "Review Incident" (see biography of Raven Tiffany Sinclair); though not officially blacklisted, she had become a showbusiness pariah by the time. Motonow vividly recalls it:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Besides my tiny 3332 Fiat Septimio, a huge and lavish luxury car suddenly parked. I'm no expert on automobiles, but the words "Oberon Motors" were written on its colossal hood. Its door opened and out steppened a woman approximately 165 centimetres in height. As she stammered into the light, I could pick out her features more closely. She was rather thin, her figure being more like that of a teenage girl than a grown woman. Her face was somewhat triangular with narrow jaws, raised cheekbones, large blue eyes and a forehead which was slightly higher than normal. Her greasy hair shoulder-length was dyed blue, her skin as pale as cream and she was wearing a quite worn dress which was torn open and ripped various places so that it was no longer recognizeable. The dress appeared to have been mutilated intentionally, as if the wearer had done it. I recognized that woman immediately. I had stared into those sky-blue eyes before. It was Raven Tiffany Sinclair. Drenched in the rain which poured down from the night sky, she huddled herself close to me and looked me in the eyes and said, tears flowing from her eyes: \"I... I want to be reborn, for I have killed myself and lived."
I immediately understood that she did not mean that she had literally attempted to commit suicide, but that said suicide was a spiritual, intellectual and social one.
Unexpectedly, Motonow found out that Raven Tiffany Sinclair had built up some sense of admiration for him. As burned up and depressed she was at the time, she saw no way out other than to flee into his arms to reconstruct her own personality from scratch. Motonow himself eagerly welcomed her decision - for neither of the two had much faith in psychiatry nor even advanced neuro-programming therapy. In fact, Motonow downright detested even the former - he once famously described any sort of therapy as "amputation of the soul".
Rather, Motonow saw himself as Raven's guide on some sort of metaphysical quest. It did not last more than a few months before the two fell deeply in love with each other. Raven felt so reliant upon Cesar that it seemed to her a logical extension of their relationship. Cesar hadn't had an actual partner for a long time aside from various affairs with female art journalists and Neo-Alternarealists.
Motonow felt that he learned just as much from her as she learned from him. Before meeting her, he knew very little about the metropolitan glamour of the Sovereignty's upper class which he despised so much without really knowing why. Surprisingly, it wasn't to avoid a degradation into decadence through wealth, Cesar Jorge Motonow never copyrighted any of his work aside from his
Star Wars remakes. This was rather a consequence of his belief that artists channel visions rather than creating them. This is not to say that Motonow did not work for a living - he had since 3271 made money off by writing for various magazines; most notably
Art And Philosophy where he had a regular column.
By 3281, it appeared as though Raven Tiffany Sinclair had completed her metamorphosis from sexually promiscuous starlet to...
something else. She had certainly changed in appearance when she appeared in public the first time for two years - her hair was short and dark brown instead of long and blue, she dressed more plainly and she also appeared to have gained 5-7 kgs. of weight. It was in fact her who got the idea for the movie which she directed together with C.J. Motonow in 3282 -
The Cupcakes Of Justice, which told the story of a vigilante who fought crime by use of various desserts he had baked himself. A scene from this film which is universally known and often referenced is one where the vigilante prevents a bank robbery by asking a gunman:
"Would you not rather have a delicious apple pie today than 4 million stolen credit tomorrow?"
This interesting satire upon the superhero genre did not stop there - in
The Cupcakes of Justice, the vigilante only as "The Baker" also fought mutated plants and extradimensional demon-gods; all by use of cakes. The movie's climax is often nominated by film critics today as among the most hilarious moments in cinematic history.
Somehow, it was followed in 3283 by
Fried Fish; the title could not be more accurate, but it's the only movie which Motonow regrets making, as opposed to the mere self-disappointment he felt over
Twin Fullmoon. Marketed as his own satire on action movies,
Fried Fish was 90 minutes of Motonow frying fish on a barbecue and explaining the symbolic meaning of it all. Raven Tiffany Sinclair-Motonowa (as she was now called) explained the same year that her husband
directed the movie under influence of hallucinogens as opposed to using them in the writing process; a fact which he admitted.
However, the year 3283 also saw a positive surprise for Motonow. October 12 that year, he read about a new artistic movement called Degeneratism. Capitalizing on the way that 20th century modern art was dubbed "degenerate" by its detractors, Degeneratism set out to create intentionally degenerate and decadent paintings, sculptures, installations, music, movies and architecture. The remarkable thing was that the founder of Degeneratism, Alexander Passeron, was the son of Motonow's old friend Romain Passeron. In this year and up to 3285, Motonow teamed up with the Degeneratists and wrote a regular feature on this movement in
The Look And Sound Of Armageddon while giving said Degeneratism a try. In 3285, Josephine Bernhard's sculpture "Vanity Incarnate In Metallic Flesh" was erected in front of the town hall of Heliopolis, the capital city of the Sovereignty planet Korendor. This strange artifice, which was actually a perfectly ergonomic bench to boot, was partly designed by C.J. Motonow. This year, Raven Tiffany Sinclair-Motonowa also became pregnant with a daughter, who was born later that year, named Tiffaine Sonia Thereza Sinclair-Motonowa. This daughter would, as an adult, often shorten her name to "Tiffaine Sonia Sinclair". (the granddaughter was just named Tiffaine Sinclair-Motonowa)
The rearing of his daughter (as well as his son Augusto Sinclair-Motonow, born in 3287) caused Motonow's own artistic activities to grind to almost a halt for the following 15 years. However, his wife Raven Tiffany Sinclair-Motonowa (soon a mother of two) made her first foray into art with a series of ink paintings of jelly-based desserts intended to emulate the illustrations in a cookbook. Many commented on the odd coincidence of Raven Tiffany Sinclair-Motonowa's fascination with depicting jelly with her recent weight gain, which many considered an improvement upon her appearance. (including herself)
Motonow did produce one artifact in those ten years - the 3290 novel "Diary Of A Severed Head", which he illustrated himself. Like his previous projects, "Diary Of A Severed Head" met quite a mixed response from reviewers; however, this time its detractors hated it for exactly the same reason that it was praised by others: Its plot was impossible to describe, often incoherent, yet it left no-one without an opinion.
In 3298, Cesar Jorge Motonow went into another creative burst. Seeing that Degeneratism had died out, its influence having now been absorbed in painting, architecture and even car design, he proclaimed that he would set sail for new horizons. He started with various poetry collections which he gave away for free to various friends. Some of them later turned up in
The Look And Sound of Armageddon - however, as they asked for permission to print them, Motonow surprisingly demanded payment; an act that showed how he had changed from a solitary eccentric to a man with responsibilities as a husband as a father.
He was not decried as a "sellout" by the art critics now that he was a professional artist; rather, everyone interested was willing to pay. In 3303, he contacted a few of his friends which used to be in the Degeneratist movement and resumed his pursuit of architecture and interior design. Many of the bars popular today among the Sovereignty's upper class were designed as collaborative projects between Cesar Jorge Motonow and people such as Josephine Bernhard and Zhang Wu.
Together with Karam Quraishy, another frequent contributor to
Art And Philosophy, in 3308 he started work on a series of books detailing the art directions of the 33rd century's latter half. The first was a revolutionary book about the Divine Mirror, which was as in-depth an account of the movement's history as possible due to being written largely by its founder. The other books in the series concentrated on the New Divine Mirror, the Neo-Alternarealists and the Degeneratists respectively. His artistic career was over soon, however, as he documents in his autobiography:
C.J. Motonow wrote:Alas, even the immortal grow weary over time. By 3314, I had accomplished more in my life than one hundred lesser men. Some have said that it is better to go out in a blaze of glory than to fade away into obscurity, but my life has been one continuous blaze of glory. Every torch will eventually fade away. I had found out, perhaps too late, that even gods need rest. No, I did not contemplate suicide - instead, I decide to spend the rest of my life in quiet contemplation. For your pleasure, I have written this reflection upon my long life.
Motonow's autobiography,
Farewell, was published in 3316. He did relatively little after his retirement except for the occassional essay in
Art And Philosophy or
The Look And Sound Of Armageddon.
When Raven Tiffany Sinclair-Motonowa died in 3332, he was overcome by a great sorrow he never recovered from. He was not seen in public for half a year and ceased all contact to the world around him.
In 3338, 6 years after the death of his beloved Raven Tiffany, Cesar Jorge Motonow disappeared without trace. Many theories abound as to how he died, but none of them have been confirmed. Some, including his son Augusto, speculated at a time that his father was not truly dead but was in fact the true identity of "Gregorius", a mystery artist whose bizzarre paintings were sent by an anonymous mailbox to an art gallery located on the Sovereign world Tarsonis. When Gregorius was revealed in 3345 to be a collective of various artists who used the same pseudonym, that theory was thrown away. Currently, the most popular hypothesis about Motonow's disappearance is that he committed suicide after being unable to cope with his wife's death, the sorrow defeating him after six painful years.
[Quotations]
C.J. Motonow wrote:I have accomplished more in 40 years than a thousand lesser men can accomplish over a century. I may one day have more influence upon how people think than Jesus Christ or Buddha ever had. How can my mind not be worth more than those of a thousand ordinary men combined?
C.J. Motonow wrote:The genre of science fiction is obsolete. What was fantasy 600 years ago is reality now. Technology has given us abilities which our ancestors attributed to gods. But has such technological advancements made all of its users gods? By no means. My version of Star Wars is not sci-fi. It does not explore the impact of technology upon culture and nature solely, for material for such studies is already too abundant in real life. Rather, it is a mythical and philosophical work which explores subjects much more important - the relationship between mortals and the divine who walk among them. For you see, goddesses and gods are not shadowy, elusive men and women who wait for us in some imagined afterlife. No, deities walk among us! They are beings of flesh and blood - be they human, Zigonian, Apexai, Bragulan or whatever. I am very certain that I am a god myself! Now, you may ask me, where I draw the line between gods and lesser men. That is a good question indeed, and that is the very premise of my version of Star Wars. I believe I have treated such a paradigm with much greater respect and intelligence than anyone who previously channeled The Myth."
C.J. Motonow wrote:I am a god. Some of each generations has the potential to become divine himself or herself. The works of art I create are gateways to divinity.
C.J. Motonow wrote:My movies heal wounded souls better than any psychiatrist could ever hope of.
