A Mystic in Our Midst

Mysticism is intriguing to me. I am not religious and I don’t believe in a god. I grew up quite religious and pursued it with true conviction, to the denial of reality. Where the hammer didn’t hammer the nail and 2 plus 2 did not equal 4.

Even though I have pivoted, I find myself feeling connected to mystic qualities, as though I was experiencing something other worldly. So what is this? Is it transcendence? What does transcendence say about our lived experience? What is consciousness? And do any of these unanswered mysteries change the way we engage with the world?

Should we reduce the world down to its most elemental features? Is that true reality? Or are we missing the bigger picture by not stepping back to see the way it takes shape, the story that’s being told?

We miss the beauty of a Klimt painting if we simply focus on the strokes and techniques of the artist. Both minute details and the whole piece are valuable to understanding the beauty of his work. The great and the small. But there is a danger in reducing life and forgetting to step back again. We forget there is more than just one plane of existence. There is the underlying and possibly the overarching story at play.

When I step back and look at The Beethoven Frieze,

I am transformed.

Tethered

We are bound by the earth because we are of the earth. And although we try to shut it out, we seem to keep wanting to return.

In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia discusses Dionysius as it correlates to female sexuality. “Dionysian liquidity is the invisible sea of organic life, flooding our cells and uniting us to plants and animals.” This idea resonates with me.

In my experience, even as a child, I felt connected to the elements. I felt like I belonged to the wind, the trees, the dirt and there was always a yearning to abandon myself to it. Prudence begs us to curb this desire and so the denial of instinct in our society is pervasive.

There is not just this romantic oneness with nature, but also a very dark feature of women’s sexuality. There is a horror, a deadly and grotesque reality that we can’t escape. We are attached. “The fatty female body is a sponge. At peak menstrual and natal moments, it is locked passively in place, suffering wave after wave of Dionysian power.” (Sexual Personae) Out of our bodies are birthed more bodies. Blood, flesh, and ooze drip from us, are pushed from us, and rot with us.

My work revolves around these varying qualities of sexuality, even my poetry.

Recently I wanted to start creating photos based on ideas I had exploring sexuality. I’ve worked with my husband Grant with his nude photography for two decades and he is shooting these images with me. We planned it out, sketched it out and shot it. Here is one of the images that we did.

Woman Other, Other Woman.

Historically it seems, the woman has been defined in contrast to man, rather than as a being in herself. This is something that Simone De Beauvoir addresses in The Second Sex. Women are “Other”, they are not the subject, they are the other to the subject. This has evolved since her time, but it doesn’t completely erase the cultural habit within us women. As a woman, I can sense and feel this propensity within myself, to be defined because of the shadows and not because of the light. In Grant’s podcast Figure Isms, he interviews model and creative Roarie Yum. She talks about women’s tendency to be accommodating and it really resonated with me. It’s true. I am very accommodating. In some ways that’s great, because I will make people feel at home, but on the flipside, other people are made at home more than I am. I will feel guilty if I stand out too much. I’d rather be the object than the subject in the room. Not all women are like that, but I think there are enough of us and we recognize it when it’s referenced.

We are the rib of Adam, but we don’t have to be.

On Sexuality

“Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and  consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition."

-DH Lawrence

I am biased. I love DH Lawerence's work, so it won’t be unusual for me to reference him in this blog. His poetry and books are filled with his philosophical discussions on sexuality which I find compelling. It doesn’t mean I agree with all of his views, but appreciate his exploration. I think this particular quote of his is profound. These veins of sexuality intertwine with existence and in allowing them to take their natural place in our lives, we can become more intuitive and honest individuals.

But, we can suppress sexuality and unintentionally discard the most enigmatic parts of our person. In doing this, it inhibits a more thorough understanding of our nature.

We are connected to the natural world and our sexuality is a powerful quality of our personal world. They are linked. There is a constancy in the universe and you see patterns and themes everywhere. The universe expands and contracts, drys and absorbs, like our minds, our bodies during sex, and the breath in our lungs. These themes resonate with us.

Sexuality informs our lives constantly. We can be more intuitive and self-realized when we approach it and explore what it is and how it relates to us.

We are Less Alone With the Dead

I have read books which have brought me closer to a sense of unity with others than many relationships in my life. I am not alone. It is exciting when I recognize a disposition in other minds and creatives who, even though they have died, strengthen my desire to evolve. Others have gone before me and perhaps they also felt alone to a degree, but that knowledge that they existed gives me a sense of communion.

I just received a book from my husband Grant called Body Sweats: the uncensored writings of Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven. I am excited by who this woman was, how she existed, how she influenced other artists. From what other artists say about her, she lived art.

I felt much this way with Anais Nin, DH Lawrence, Carson McCullers, and the list goes on… The past informs all of the present and we are here because of them. Their work was profoundly individual and also profoundly informed by others. Henry Miller was influenced by DH Lawrence, DH Lawrence by Thomas Hardy, etc. We can reach back in time with every person to see these connections. We aren’t alone, death is just a part of living, and making work that lives beyond us is important for those ahead of us.

The Euphemism

The first time I thought about euphemisms was when I was in late grade school. I thought about the word, its meaning, it's intention and I came to dislike what it stood for. I understand its value, but for me it meant an avoidance of reality. I remember thinking about it in regards to death, “He passed away” —didn't die. It sidestepped something real, something harsh. We are inevitably protected by our euphemistic language. We use it's wielding power to mold a different reality for our fearful ears. 

We are creative and manipulative creatures. We can make you see the world entirely different with an inflection of our voice or a thesaurus. It is amazing and can be alarming.

I can help you grapple with your mortality, by not thinking of it at all really. Funerary practices employ a type of euphemistic application in some respects. They make you look alive, so that we think less of our ultimate end.

I understand its value, and I use it as well as others, but I can’t help but think there is so much about this world that we avoid and aren’t even aware of.

Every Gaze I Have Is Flawed

I want to understand sexuality in a way that is transferrable, so that the information I gather has the ability to be cohesively articulated to another. I don’t suppose that I have the answers to our most puzzling questions on sexuality. I am peering through different windows, asking questions and relaying what I am seeing. No matter how I see, I will always lack all the vantage points. We all do. Everything I attempt to do in this world will be flawed and every view I have toward it, lacks full understanding.

From what I have seen and experienced, sexuality is present in almost every facet of our lived experience. We are sexual beings and cannot surgically excise this feature from our person. It’s in the way we eat, the way we converse, how we move, what we do, how we speak…it is seemingly omnipresent. This conception of sexuality has widened my gaze and yet, without the help of others, I will always see less. And no matter how much I see, it will never be a full view.

I believe the acceptance of that reality, our flawed gaze, will free us to see further.

The Quest

I am avoiding the inevitable, the vast and great unknown, the void. I have worked on the periphery, I have clapped and cheered even, but to stand in front, no, it is not for me. That is what I have convinced myself to believe, because it scares me, as it should. We all have something that we are trying to do, even if that something is pure survival. I realize that I need to partake in what compels me to create, to act, to speak, and to do it in the arena that I am afraid to walk out onto.

We are all compelled by various aspects of our existence, for me, one of those aspects takes on different forms and I want to understand and venture towards it. It takes presence in us like a breath, and it moves into our lungs and energizes our cells and it is one of the greatest forces in our lives—our sexuality. My experience in delving into this raises more questions than answers, as do most explorations. We tend to think we will have the answer, when we really are just broadening our vision of the landscape so that we see more, not necessarily that we see “it”. Something intangible can’t be held like a stone, and it never will, so why do we think it is something that simple?

I explore this in my art and writings, and my goal is to share my thoughts on the nuances of sexuality and existence through this blog.