Spike #74 is getting over beauty. The dawn quatrains and swan courtships remembered in rose tint – all that sublime uplift – it’s time to cut contact. Beauty might have become corny behind a monolith of infatuation, or maybe it was gutted and discarded as art became another instrument of moral debt. Whatever it is, it’s changed, and it’s clear the aesthetes have too long been in love with decadence or emptiness. 

So this is a missive to beauty for all that it’s been and may yet be: a magnetic evil and the very eye of its beholders; a blank invitation and a reason to blush; and power or propaganda camouflaged as makeup compacts and endless streams of Instagram tags. 

Pick up a tear-stained copy and join the read-along at the heartbreak hotel.