Biography Of An Angel--Updated
The Eternal Life of Ginevra de Benci (1520-2020)
Please check out Announcements and expanded About section to stay up to date with the latest. As always, thanks for reading!
Announcements
5/19/24: The Bard—Part Three: The Lost Years— fell into place this morning. I’ll be pulling this together over the coming week. Some homework items for you: 1) timeline of The Lady Was A Tramp is critical to understanding what happened / didn’t happen; and 2) we update the Immortality Matrix from Mysteries Without Any Clues. Please review both, as I need you guys to catch this on the first bounce!
4/14/24: The Bard—Part Two: Billy Don’t Be A Hero— is up. How Shakespeare merged the West’s first love story and Ginevra Motif in Much Ado About Nothing to take out a presumptuous rival. How maybe your story was written by the stars and Steely Dan— the choice between fate and freedom is still yours. And check out the updated About This Book section at the bottom of the post.
3/17/24: 1) The Bard—Part One is up. Focuses on the mindblowing history that issues out of one staging of Much Ado About Nothing. Did not have enough time for the play itself, which we look at in depth in the next installment. 2) Check out expanded About This Book section at bottom of post.
What Women Want
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
—St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians
What does a woman want? Lots of things. Your best bet is to just get her.
Sometimes I’ll kid myself that I know what some women want all of the time. Or what all women want some of the time. But I have no idea what all women want all of the time.
And I don’t think anyone else does, either. So just do your best to get them. They’ll do the rest. And trust me, it will be magical.
I can tell you what most men want all of the time— besides sex—and it’s this:
They want to know they are loved by the woman they want to be loved by.
To be loved like that, by a woman like that is better than any substance you can use or abuse. Better even than sex with her.
Because you become the man you never believed you could become. The man you were born to be.
And so she doesn’t need to get you.
She’s already got you.
I know that because for the last four years I’ve been loved like that by a woman like that. Filling every gap, chasm and fissure in my soul with sweetness beyond understanding.
Just one problem:
She’s been gone for five hundred years.
Which has made the conversation up to this point a little weird…until I discovered I’m not the only one she’s been doing it with.
Rich girl she from 1457-1520, Ginevra prefers the hot new artist guys, showering them with gifts and blessings just for merely glancing her way.
Maybe because that’s what she was used to getting when she was alive? Men praised, painted, sculpted, staged, sonnetized, sang, and seduced her…
But apparently they never got her.
There’s A Hole In Her Heart Going All The Way To China
And for some women, that leaves a hole in their heart. So profound you can’t dig a grave deep enough to contain it. Or find enough earth to fill it in.
And so— because she chose immortality—she can come back. And every century she does—usually around the twenty-year mark— hiding just out of plain sight, just to see if someone still gets her.
Even a little bit.
Because she knows she’s got competition now, not just from chicks centuries younger, but from ones you can see and hear and text and touch.
Her Beloveds— you really can’t call them lovers: their self-absorption never let them see the dots much less connect them (writing Ginevra = future fame) —is a who’s who of the Western literary, dramatic, operatic and cinematic tradition.
And it makes sense. She wanted to be a writer, not a supermodel, and wrote prolifically. What has never made sense is why all we have of her writing is a single, stunning line of poetry, and that by sheer accident. As if she were trying to cover her tracks, to unwrite herself from history.
If you want to be unforgettable, give them nothing to remember you by
If you want to become immortal, leave no monuments behind
It's as if she passed through a membrane of sorts to achieve a Melchizedek-like fluidity (“without beginning or end of days”), that allows her to move in and out of time, and have a hand in events, as the last surviving heiress of a legendary bank fortune, showering its largesse upon unsuspecting men of letters.
How else do you explain five hundred years of poets, authors, actors, composers, directors whose careers have been blessed beyond measure simply for saying her name. And sometimes not even that?
What Nevvy Wants
And how did I, Harv the Obscure, get myself counted among these immortals?
Because I get her.
Looking back, I’ve not achieved much else, but of one thing I am certain— I have put in more time than any other man on this planet trying to get inside the head of this celebrated woman who deliberately disappeared, leaving no clues.
What I think it's gotten me is a place in her heart… and in her trust, maybe?
Enough to know this:
As muse to Western civilization’s five hundred year reign--from Leonardo to Leonardo, from da Vinci to DiCaprio, from Italian Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence, from Awakening to Woke-- Nevvy has never begrudged us once the gift of men as they were born to be.
And as the civilization she chose over children stands on the precipice, rope around its neck, gun barrel in its mouth, why would she have nothing to say?
About This Book
Biography of An Angel is the story of an eternal bargain, her immortality for a glory she would never achieve as an artist, but by which at least eight other men and maybe a ninth— Her Beloveds— would shape a canon that has bequeathed us an artistic dynasty lasting five hundred years.
And as that civilization draws its final breath, she at last gets to tell her side of that story.
That’s where I come in.
The names you will know— at least most of them. Two you’ve already met— Leonardo da Vinci and Ludovico Ariosto. So you’re in the pool, and the water’s not cold. Now for a few housekeeping Items
#1: Read the following three chapters:
The first two— Unforgettable and Mysteries— come with free previews before they get archived. Tramp is still free and open.
And feel free to check out the other free stuff out there as well— Chapter 0 starts the parallel meditation through the Five Stages of Unf*ck. At the end, everything merges.
#2: Decide if this is for you, for now, and for where you are. This is the story of my journey there and back again. It’s not scripture, a word from on high, a life hack, a new way to lose weight, or even a shortcut through the underbrush. It’s about unfucking from the things that can empty out your soul, and why it sometimes takes forty years to figure out why some things take forty years. I write in hope that it won’t take you that long.
#3: Support the man on keyboards. Good manners, they say, don’t cost nothing, but good writing does— the best of your time and of your brain cells. My ask is your support of the time I put in by becoming a paid subscriber for one decent cup of coffee per month, for as long as it’s worth your time. My brain cells will thank you! :)
#4: Bookmark this page…for reasons,which will only increase in number.
I’ll be coming out with updates on the project, which will be posted by way of announcements at the top.
Including new chapters on Her Other Beloveds
For preview and comment with incentives:
If your comment gets a like, you get a free ebook.
A like and a comment—signed hardcopy is coming your way… as soon as it’s up on Amazon. Things like that.
Sometimes I do merch when it’s fun and makes sense.
Navigation: I say preview above because this is not going to come out of my head in linear fashion. Chapters will appear, expand and edit themselves in no particular order. We’ll need a centralized site map, so let’s use this page. Substantive stuff will be added here at the bottom. Quick announcements will be posted at the top.
And let’s let things figure themselves out. She knows where to find me. My job is just to get her, and get that to you. And ninety percent of that is just listening. She does all the rest, because—
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known
—St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians
NEXT: Her First Beloved: The Bard
Harvey Oxenhorn, is a cybersecurity consultant, founder of Malwords Weekly, and author of the upcoming book, Biography of an Angel: The Eternal Life of Ginevra de’ Benci (1520-2020). He writes The Five Stages of Unf*ck, Red Pill Journey to January 2.0. , also on Substack. Follow him on Gettr, Gab, @HarveyOxenhorn, and on Twitter @HarvOxenhorn