…scratched on the plaster with a pin, formulas of love or revolt, more often of resignation: “Jojo of the Bastille loves his girl for life.” “My heart to my mother, my cock to the whores, my head to the hangman.” These rupestral inscriptions are almost always a gallant homage to womanhood, or a smattering of those bad stanzas that are known to bad boys all over France:

When coal turns white,
And soot’s not black,
I’ll forget the prison
That’s at my back.

And those pipes of Pan that mark the days gone by!

And then the following surprising inscription carved in the marble under the main entrance: “Inauguration of the prison, March 17, 1900,” which makes me see a procession of official gentlemen solemnly bringing in the first prisoner to be incarcerated.

—Divine: “My heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”

Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

On a lighter note: I finally got this Rock Band controller to cooperate with the IK Uno synth. Certainly would have made my life much easier on the last Executioner’s Mask tour… anyway, here’s “Danny Boy” George Benson-style for St. Patrick’s Day: