The Juliet Journals: Sleeping With The Enemy

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY: MIXED MEDIA ART JOURNAL PAGE BY JULES CAPULET AGED 16 (right panel)

digital collage 12ins x 12ins

At some point during last Friday or Saturday, depending on which time zone they were in, followers of Such Tweet Sorrow: the Twitter-based re-telling of Romeo and Juliet, finally witnessed the eagerly-anticipated meeting of Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers. This being a version set in contemporary Britain, and all that, 16 year-old Jules Capulet had no sooner clapped eyes on OMG! OMG! OMG! The Most Beautiful

Boy In The World, than she was inviting him up to her bedroom for a night of enthusiastic love-making, edited highlights of which were relayed via Romeo's mobile phone. Personally, I would have swiftly shown the boudoir door to any lover who engaged in post-coital Tweeting, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned. Could it be that today's teenagers, raised on a diet of reality TV, have no problems with the live-broadcasting of their sexual encounters? For all I know, Jules might have been mortally offended if Romeo hadn't let the rest of the world know what a great time he was having. Being a typical, self-centered teenager, Jules choose meeting up with Romeo, for round two of Strictly Come Shagging, over going down to London to cheer on her sister Jess ("Nursey") in the London Marathon. This rebuffing of family-solidarity did not go down well, but it paled in comparison to what came next. "So which one of you muppets stole my sister's cherry?" raged Tybalt, and indeed, some of us had to suspend our disbelief: how could Jules have engaged in so much intimacy with Romeo and not discovered his surname? When Jess spelt out the truth to a disbelieving Jules, was it really by mistake, or was Big Sis getting her own back? The news that Romeo is a member of the reviled Montague tribe left poor Jules so dazed and confused that she lost the will to Tweet. Meanwhile, Romeo, bereft of his new playmate, skulked around at home like Puff the Magic Dragon: his spirits so low, that even his mate Mercuteio, Tweeting surreptitiously-taken photos of female decolletage could not cheer him up. Whilst on the subject of Mercuteio: Twitter is currently all-a-jitter with anticipation of this popular character's impending demise. As those who already know the story are aware: Mercuteo's youth is indeed a stuff that will not endure.

The collage posted here is the right-hand side of a double page, the left hand side of which contains Jules's journaling but it is not yet complete and ready to post.It may have to wait until later, as the action over at Capulet Towers is moving swiftly on and really must try to keep up.

The previous journal page can be viewed HERE