Creating something like these leaves and leaving my name and copyright off the leaf would fit my vision of glamour bombs. I’d then like to leave them in a park or beneath a tree or blowing in the wind.
Recently, walking along an industrial stretch of Gray’s Inn Road between Holborn and King’s Cross station, I passed a group of teenagers with a menacing, thickset dog in a studded harness. They parted to reveal the entrance to a lush green community grotto planted with flowers and traversed by a ramshackle wooden bridge. The garden was a jewel coloured sliver, a parallel world that surfaced unexpectedly through a seam in the concrete, a reminder that magic exists. It was a glamour bomb.
Glamour bombs are subversive interventions into the fabric of the real, portals to glamour worlds. They don’t require complicated or stagily esoteric ingredients. In Manhattan’s Hamilton Heights district, where I used to live, homemade glamour bombs abounded. For example, anonymous sidewalk novena candle arrangements surrounding flower bouquet filled chalk outlines. Mysterious, portable kiosks hung with plastic 25 cent supermarket coin dispenser toys, selling tropical, neon syrup drizzled shaved ice. Ornate graffiti tags.
What is a glamour? Wikipedia describes it as a form of magic which affects vision and makes objects and places appear different than they are. W. Black’s “The air filled with a strange, pale glamour that seemed to lie over the valley”, accents the anonymous, out-of-nowhere quality that traditionally characterizes glamours, and their association with subtle shifts in light and atmosphere reminiscent of a piece of coloured cellophane passing over the sun, or a klieg lamp. In its modern incarnation glamour often refer to the big budget movie world, whose magnetic, mind altering concoctions are presided over by a glittering mirage, a faerie court of celebrity stars. Not all magic is life affirming.
Faery Glamour ~ Poetic Terrorism the LJ Glamour Bombs Community
What is a Glamour Bomb? Is it a random act of kindness? Well it could be perceived that way, but really a Glamour Bomb is more a senseless act of beauty ~
What is Glamour?
To understand Glamour Bombing, one must first understand the concept of Glamour. It is the essence of it all. Glamour is dreams and art and creativity and power. It’s energy in its purest form. Traditionally, Glamour is a spell. A fae spell, that is cast on humans. i.e. the historical sirens that would lead sailors to a watery death ~ what they were doing, that was Glamour ~ or Glamoury. As you can see, Glamour can be used in many ways, and not all those ways are what we’d think of as good. Glamour can make people think they see something that isn’t there, or not let them see something that is. A perfect example of Glamour in action is the Shakespearean tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The more you use Glamour and think about Glamour and consciously cultivate it, the more it grows around you. The world appears different then it does for a lot of people. You start to know that it’s going to rain before you hear the weather man say it, you sense people’s inherent goodness (or badness) before they even speak, and you start finding eggs, stones, feathers and other small, funny little gifts in unexpected places ;)
Where did the idea come from?
The concept of Glamour Bombs originated on the Darkfae list, back in 1997. It was largely influenced by the works of Hakim Bey. The fae involved in this original group loosely organized to form a mass Glamour Bombing activity, in an effort to increase energy and magic in the world around them. Glamour Bombs were supposed to take place somewhat simultaneously during the time of the Summer Solstice. That group ultimately disbanded for various reasons but Glamour Bombing activities continued for at least three years after, through 2000, on both Beltane and the Summer Solstice. While individuals continued on with solo acts, Glamour Bombing, as a group, laid dormant for two years thereafter. On November 21, 2002, the idea was formally resurrected and the LiveJournal community was born.
