THE ETERNAL HERMES IN BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S
Audrey Hepburn and the Roots of “The Bohemian Girl” and Breakfast at Tiffany’s are Most Wondrously Alive in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale
There’s an absolutely true realness to the natural eternal magic in art coming true in such accuracy that only the eternal could do it.
In 1925 Willa Cather blithely mentioned the female character Perdita, “the Lost One” and the pastoral landscape in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, clandestinely showing the path to her girl from Bohemia and from this comes what director William Wyler had to find when Audrey first walked in at 22.
It wasn’t about finding an actress.
The Tale of Florizel and Perdita from The Winter’s Tale
Setting and photo: Bohemia, old Europe
Artwork: Dance of the Gypsies, engraving from a painting by Genaro Perez Villaamil (1807-1854). Spain, 19th century. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional (Library); John Mayer, c. 2011 Born and Raised; Shiloh Richter photo 2011 artwork for Apocalypse of the Heart/”Something Like Olivia” music video/short film
“That she is living, were it but told you, should be hooted at like an old tale, but it appears she lives, though yet she speak not. Mark a little while . . . our Perdita is found.”
The Winter’s Tale, Act V.iii. 115-121
The Riverside Shakespeare
When she is known, then the art speaks from across the ages, it’s beloved, long-held secret.
Bohemia, now as the place outside of the structure, where rule is not the order of the day, where play and change are free (en liberté), where reality can be stretched and opened to what is more true and far more enchanting in its realness, and this kind of reality far more true to its beings.
Before bringing back that necessary alteration back into the “kingdom.”
“Shores of Bohemia”–Shakespeare is showing that reality must be played with on purpose for a reason–so that you are ready for his true alteration outside those bounds (the mental bounds like jealousy that try to control and destroy and thus cause the instability of the kingdom– and ‘destories,’ and love and play are not allowed and beauty of rarity has no value). He is preparing his audience for play–so that his alteration in you and in structure can take place.
ITALIA–The tale begins with a sudden case of unsubstantiated manic jealousy that makes the kingdom of Sicily unstable wherein the rarity of beauty cannot be seen and is immediately in harm’s way and dies–the queen and the boy heir, disposed of so easily, and this, appropriately, happens in the cold of winter when the earth and life is frozen over.
The legitimacy of a baby girl of the kingdom is not recognized and she is taken and abandoned on the “shores of Bohemia” to be found and raised by a Shepherd who realizes that she is a changeling. She is named Perdita, “The Lost One.”
In the springtime, Florizel has left the society of his rank as the Prince of Bohemia, taking on attire for his different role and station, and entered into the world of the pastoral–and in this bucolic nature he has fallen in love with Perdita who has grown up as a simple shepherdess.
Photo Bottom Left from The Atlantic: “Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, John Mayer in his favorite vehicle: the Defender.” February 2020, Pacific Northwest
Photo Top Right: The header from my Tumblr, 2010. From John and I first seeing each other in Vancouver, BC, to my first writing to him from Lincoln National Forest in ‘The Land of Enchantment’ in 2010, seeing into the depths of his extraordinariness, outside of what the world was judging as real–when it wasn’t.
His identity isn’t known, the kingdom left behind, and now everything is in flux. And within this “flux of reality and identity” is also a rogue, robbing everyone blind in also assumed attire to fit into the occasion and not be suspected.
Magic: The ‘tale’ of The Winter’s Tale blooms in scenes set 16 years apart, the same time as from 2010 to now.
Willa’s stories were right there with John and I, playing along, not only what had happened with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and what Audrey Hepburn, William Wyler, Richard Avedon had done, but also the propitious path backwards into a formidable past and forward into a coming together beyond imagination, what Willa saw in the eternal art able to alter everything. If I had not stepped out from the judgment and pressure, I would not have seen it forward what I saw as a child, and then found that Willa had witnessed it, too, and likewise knew what it all was. It was all leading to this most remarkable moment.
And so All the ethereally-aligned supernatural events I had seen all my life ‘peeping through’ and what I had searched out in literature became an all-reality, outside of what now was superfluous judgement and pressure. The realness was opening and becoming more pronouced over time and space. The space of ‘play’ became my reality, really through little choice of my own. I wasn’t offered anything from the ‘structure’ and found myself healing on hikes in the woods with my little ones.
The structured world hadn’t seen what Audrey Hepburn actually had to do, furthering a wild and prodigious legacy from Willa Cather and back to what even Willa’s stories were right there with John and I, playing along, not only what had happened with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and what Audrey Hepburn, William Wyler, Richard Avedon had done, but also the propitious path backwards into a formidable past and forward into a coming together beyond imagination, what Willa saw in the eternal art able to alter everything. If I had not stepped out from the judgment and pressure, I would not have seen it forward what I saw as a child, and then found that Willa had witnessed it, too, and likewise knew what it all was. It was all leading to this most remarkable moment.
And so All the ethereally-aligned supernatural events I had seen all my life ‘peeping through’ and what I had searched out in literature became an all-reality, outside of what now was superfluous judgement and pressure. The realness was opening and becoming more pronouced over time and space. The space of ‘play’ became my reality, really through little choice of my own. I wasn’t offered anything from the ‘structure’ and found myself healing on hikes in the woods with my little ones.
The structured world hadn’t seen what Audrey Hepburn actually had to do, furthering a wild and prodigious legacy from Willa Cather and back to what even Shakespeare was bringing about.
Shakespeare makes it “a winter’s tale” that scholars show generally “lacks credibility and consistency”–like the entrance of a bear (in costume)–and now we can tell that this is because by the “improbability” of his tale Shakespeare looses himself from the holds barring his story in order to open it up to the reality of the magic of his writing.
It was the loss of one identity, something hard to go through, into a much more true one.
Outside of the kingdom is the “green world” where everything is in flux and play.
Photos Left: John Mayer for The Atlantic “John Mayer Goes Outside”; Photo of John from 2011-12 Born and Raised
Photos Right: a mannequin wearing a blond wig with bangs; Taylor Swift demonstrating bang hairpieces
For the rogue, Autolycus, there is more value in concealment than snitching on the prince, more to gain in not saying a word, but following it and spying for what is in it for the taking.
I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cutpurse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is a time that the unjust man doth thrive. What an exchange had this been [listening in on the prince having his true identity revealed], without boot! What a boot is here, with this exchange! Sure the gods do this year connive at us, and we may do any thing extempore. The Prince himself is about a piece of iniquity: stealing away from his father with his clog at his heels. If I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the King withal, I would not do’t. I hold it more knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my profession.”
Act IV, Scene iv, lines 670-682
Extempore–spoken, carried out, or composed with little or no preparation or forethought.
Photo: Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer at Bürgenstock, Switzerland
Magic beyond imagination is within of the art itself with astounding world-changing revelations, a prophetic art into reality, the best magic there is. Shakespeare shows he knows it, and in what came before him. William Wyler knew it, and he went looking for its reality, the girl of the real thing, and found her.
William Wyler wasn’t merely searching for an Actress for Roman Holiday in 1951. There was a far greater challenge at hand: the fact of what he knew of the extraordinary realization of the feminine Willa Cather had shown in her writing that is capable of opening everything. Willa had just passed in 1947. There was also the pressuring reality of the blacklisting of writers as the studios forgot the soul of creation, and opted for censorship, money, and power over others instead, as is happening again right now. William Wyler knew the magic in Cather’s works and its roots in the wildest run of eternal art leading to what Willa was showing comes prophetically true.
To top off this, coming out of the Nazi devastation of WWII, there was another dark energy and this one connected to fame and lust for importance and adoration, Truman Capote was “repurposing” Willa’s words for his own identity evidenced in his “Mariam” in 1945, and right after Willa’s passing, in Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). Roman Holiday was a reclamation of the eternal extraordinary in Willa’s works. William Wyler had to have what Willa was talking about, and so he went where she said, old Europe, back to the roots.
What Shakespeare writes is also the basis of Willa’s 1912 story “The Bohemian Girl” and the furthering of that realization through her stories, as in the incarnate in Death Comes For the Archbishop.
The Realness, this magic, begins to show itself just as Shakespeare says it does: the art speaks right upon the realization of the identity of “Perdita” which means “The Lost One.”
In 1925 Willa Cather blithely mentioned the female character Perdita, “the Lost One” and the pastoral landscape in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, clandestinely showing the path to her girl from Bohemia and from this comes what director William Wyler had to find when Audrey first walked in at 22.
It wasn’t about finding an actress.
ITALIA–Photos of Audrey Hepburn with Willa Cather in a composed photograph of the jewelry store window in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; Photo of Audrey Hepburn from Roman Holiday as Princess Anya; Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Center photo: Photo by Richard Avedon in 1951 of Audrey Hepburn in yellow in a scene suggestive of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop
Photos left bottom: Grecian sculptures of Venus; Michelangelo’s Pietá
Photos Left: Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer at the wedding in Bürgenstock on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland
In the capturing of Audrey’s screen test, of leaving the camera running as she talks about her past, Audrey showed her spirit, her realness, her solid strength of vulnerability.
Wyler knew he had to find the very embodiment, the answer to everything of Willa Cather’s works–and for good reason in what was happening–and beyond the circumstances of that odd pressure–the actual reasons for that ‘everything’ deepens. What he knew he had to find expands exponentially into the works that Willa was also alluding to that open their further history and meanings, a prophetic run of works leading to the irrefutable wildly expansive presence of Audrey Hepburn on the screen, an effect beyond a movie. And the moment was exactly right.
Shakespeare’s Romance is most revealing about identity, but in far more profound ways than expected. He opens the art and Beingness of the ages by his spirit and the mastery of his creation. This is why the art is worth everything.
Wyler was looking for the naturally beyond because that is the everything, as of William Shakespeare’s Perdita, “the Lost One” and the spirit of Willa’s Clara Vavrika.
When William Wyler was casting for Roman Holiday he said about it that he was looking for a girl from Europe who had the grace of a princess, a touch of the aristocratic, an accent . . . but what he was actually looking for goes much deeper. He was also following out Willa’s source of forerunner for “The Bohemian Girl” to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and in Act IV, Scene IV, the princesses’ qualities and the impression of her are described, as in the paraphrase:
“Even in the royal palace people of Perdita’s quality are not often born.” [with the further explanation . . . ] “These seven years = for a long time to come (not a definite period).”
i.e. she is extraordinarily beyond even royal office, a female of such beautiful presence that it very rarely happens.
“She’s as forward of her breeding as she i’ th’ rear ‘our birth” IV, iv, line 580-81
“I cannot say ‘tis pity she lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress to most that teach.”
“Your pardon, sir; for this I’ll blush your thanks.”
Shakespeare is bringing forth, spring coming after the winter of a kingdom in trouble, after 16 years of what the name of Perdita is referencing: “the Lost One” of the Biblical and artistic prophecy, just as Michelangelo in Rome, just as Willa Cather did. As Shakespeare sent her to Bohemia, back to the pastoral, before re-entering the kingdom, Willa also pointed her character of “The Bohemian Girl” to return to Bohemia so that she can be her truest self again from the setting, and this is what she saw delivered to Santa Fe from the natural course. That path is also the path of miracles that I have been writing continuously for these past 16 years.
Pictures, Italia: Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer @emmaherpburnferrer and Thomas Pucci @thomaspucci_ “A bit of life, a bit of us 🌞 🌳 🌊 🐕🍦
Photos by the exquisite @maxwbender “
The art can’t speak until the incarnate does–and then the whole history of the master artists, speaks. And so William Wyler, as Willa had recognized, had to have the girl.
Pictures: Emma Ferrer with Anthony DeWitt @ adewitt , Leonardo @leonarddini by Max Bender
Pictures, Spain: Real Club de Campo Villa de Madrid, Athena Hepburn @athena.hepburn
Picture, Right: Catherine, Princess of Wales, arriving in Reggio Emilia, Italy
Pictures, Left: Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare over picture of London, England
Picture, “The Shores of California, Katy Perry appearing at Hotel Cafe, Los Angeles, May 2026
Photo: John Mayer photographed by Clarence Chan @mrclarencechan @hodinkee 2025 at the AP House @audemarspiguet
“That she is living, were it but told you, should be hooted at like an old tale, but it appears she lives, though yet she speak not. Mark a little while . . . our Perdita is found.” V.iii. 115-121
