My aunt was rich, bored, anorexic and lived in a mental asylum.

-- I had an aunt.

The chorus sings " She had an aunt"

My aunt was rich, bored, anorexic and lived in a mental asylum.

The chorus sings" Her aunt was rich, bored anorexic and lived in a loony bin"..





By the time the first ritual description with song, and chorus, and theatrical make up ends you realised you have heard the same story in a new outfit.

Emily had this miserable aunt who took no joy in food, took no joy in life, smoked cigarettes, lived in and out of institutions, scribbled down melancholic bored remarks about her melancholic bored life, tired to gas her head in the oven a few times and somehow fell in to crowds of glitter wearing people who had drug and alcohol problems. They convinced her that her starved frame was elegant and her scribbles where worth reading. They excited her for the first time. She opened her legs to many a famous man who had his time in magazine and newspaper headlines and never mentioned her name. Now her youth is gone, she sits in powdery rooms, looks out of windows, smokes her cigarettes, drinks whiskey at breakfast. A smug look on her crinkled dry face accidentally name drops the men she had sex and drugs and hotel rooms with to anyone who wants to listen. Her posture is proud like that of a crow, her nose in the air, and the moment her listener goes, closes the door, she is left once again to effervesce into silence and memory, alone, melancholy, bored and old.

Any yet, young women, idealise, adore, look up to, smoke cigarettes, down whiskey,opiates and men, imitating glory days of such aunts than.

Tey oh just so want to be like the old aunt they have met or heared of. So bohemian. Beautifully tragic. Glamorous and yet such a social success. More articles are written about the aunt. Stories told about the aunt. By the girls who want to be like the aunt. Or perhaps found that the years, and choices lead them always to the same swampy place, not unlike the aunts glory days.

Between the oscillations of extreme highs, and dark lonesome lows, crawling between the feet of new friends in fabulous new clothes, unnoticed, she makes that aunt her hero, her idol, balms her, mummifies her, wears her as a mask, a measurement, of personal success to all those who dare to reach out and ask , how do you do?

Such brief rocky instants, pauses in the merry go round, scare her, bring her to the edge, bring her to almost consider, think about change, but than in a flash she cuts off her mind. She is strong, She laughs with hilarity and vigour, nose in the air, her hands on the hips, smoking alluringly on her cigarette, the one she is holding on to for her dear life, and than she acidly kicks down the person who dared to ask.

More black and white photographs from aunts institution days are dug up. More male and female names from the 70's 80', dear Emily researches in order to find out the exact numerical quantity of popularity her aunt had socially sexually. More boring articles, come out in glossy magazines.

One day a young girl comes to interview Emily. She looks up with shiny eager eyes, sucking on a cigarette, making an effort to sit elegantly, consciously nonchalantly. She does not ask about the articles Emily has written about her aunt. She asks Emily about Emily. Emily's eyes open a little suspiciously, than soften finally realising she has matured into a somebody worth being written about. The girl wants to know about the famous men she had slept with, and woman too, the bulimia, the psychiatrists, the parties. And after the interview is scribbled. And the doors close, Emily is left to effervesce into silence and melancholy, alone, bored, she shakes the ice cubes in her drink and realises she never really made an effort to live anything but her aunt's shadows, never tried for a happy end, and now has simpley grown old.