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My sister’s boots
My sister often wears work boots, which I imagine to be grimy, and she always put her feet up on the sofa in my living room without taking off those boots. That used to bug me and I’d tell her (in what I thought was a reasonably polite way) to take them off. Now I don’t care! She and her partner were house guests over Thanksgiving, and my sister and I were watching the latest Star Trek movie when I noticed those boots on the orange chenille of the sofa. And then I noticed that I had no desire to say anything about them. Ahhh, progress in the world of love.
Memorable voices
When I was taking voice lessons in the early 1970s, my teacher gave me an essay titled “The Voice.” It had been copied from a typed text, not one printed in a book. I’ve kept the essay all these years because it affected me profoundly when I first read it; and each time I’ve read it since, which has been as long as several years between reads, the effect has been equally deep. “The Voice” wakes me up to the sacred powers and dimensions of the human voice.
My teacher’s name was Everett Clarke. I realized long ago that he was a master, one of those sages that you come across in yogic, Taoist, and Sufi writings. He had me doing yoga postures in his studio, he suggested readings, such as books by P.D. Ouspensky, the Russian thinker whose writings interweave philosophy and psychology with a focus on consciousness, and as part of the instruction Everett had me read aloud passages from the art criticism that I’d begun to publish. I was learning, without having to contemplate the matter, that one’s voice is all of oneself and that everything a person does creates the voice that one has. Everett had one of the most mesmerizing voices I’ve ever heard, full of heart, soul, and intelligence, full-bodied and -spirited. (I write about Everett in “Mouth Piece,” which is published in my books Erotic Faculties and Clairvoyance, and in “The Primacy of Pleasure” in Monster/Beauty.)
No author’s name appeared anywhere in the 6 pages of “The Voice,” and every once in a while over these decades I’ve wanted to know who wrote it but I didn’t do any research. Well, last week I discovered the author! It’s Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi whose first expert practice was Indian classical music. He lived from 1882 till 1927, and I see that he wrote much much more, about sound and music, and about beauty, happiness, and love. Fourteen volumes, all part of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan. You’ll find “The Voice” at http://www.sufimessage.com/music/the-voice.html.
- November 29, 2009
- Filed under: Bookshelf, art, and media
- Comments 2
A simple day
Sometimes life is this simple–watering the plants, painting a gate and then the threshold of the front door, seeing things (seemingly) fall apart then come back together (all apparently of their own accord). Within less than 24 hours. With the bad mood that I tell other people I’m in, teasing myself out of it. With the underlying pleasure of taking things as they come rather than taking things to task.
Incandescence
Celebrities interest me very little, though lately I’ve been reading about the phenomenon of celebrity. Such as David Haven Blake’s Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity, from which the reader learns about the construction of fame in 19th-century America, and through that, facts about the foundation of today’s fame-as-the-manipulation-of-people, both the celebrity and the public. The worship of personality, the invasion of a so-called personality’s privacy, the publication of supposedly intimate details about celebrities’ lives, and the embodiment of greatness or talent in the celebrity body–nothing new. And all of it historically as now accompanied by–dependent upon?–frequent disinterest in and even ignorance of the artistic, intellectual, or other skills and talents that supposedly generated the “greatness” of the celebrity; and, more in line with the celebrity as star, skills and talents that presumably generated the celebrity’s brilliant luminosity.
At its absolute height, the star’s brightness is incandescence.
INCANDESCENCE. It describes Rita Hayworth in Gilda, which I watched again a couple weeks ago. Gilda is one of my favorite movies, and I can count them on one hand.
As a star and as an actress, Hayworth got Hollywood-ized up the wazoo. But it isn’t that she’s hot, it isn’t that she’s gorgeous. Here’s what she IS in Gilda: transporting. She transports me–deep within myself. There, and only there, I might learn to flame, glow, and sparkle mightily. She is an impetus towards radiance, and I am grateful to her self-creation in the midst of the film industry’s artifice.
Incandescence is a noun, so may seem static, but Hayworth’s incandescence within me operates as a verb. Incandescence is an idea about radiance, which is always in the making.
- November 18, 2009
- Filed under: Beauty, Body and mind, Bookshelf, art, and media, Pleasure
- Comments 3
Bettie Page Buddha
“Wouldn’t it be great to have a character party?” I asked my friends Frances and Harold. Characters being distinctively–and for the party–pleasurably unusual people. Of course, all of us were included.
Later, as Frances and I were walking to a neighborhood cafe for our weekly treat together, she suggested, “What about everyone wearing a costume?” A costume associated with a famous character. Read more
The first compassion
Sympathy can be a synonym for compassion–feeling someone’s pain and wanting to help him. In other words, experiencing deep affinity, so that rather than running from another’s distress, a person can exist with him in a harmony that gives comfort.
Contemporary Buddhist writings and practice emphasize the importance of compassion. Often within that framing of central virtues a person’s compassionate treatment of other people obscures the necessity of compassionately treating oneself.
The first compassion must be for oneself.
- November 13, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind
- Comments 0
Habits
We think of everyone as having habits and we think of monks and nuns wearing them. We think of performers, whether in Shakespeare’s plays or in the circus, wearing costumes. Costumes indicate a role, or something other than what one really is, and a habit (presumably) indicates something that a person truly is, the monk and nun having chosen to serve the spirit every instant of their lives.
The habits of religious orders are distinctive. The clothing of monks and nuns declares them to be different from other workers, communities, and mini-cultures, who wear everyman and everywoman attire, like suits, or jeans and a T-shirt, or any of the wide array of casual or semi-dressy outfits that we see in the workplace and on the street. Of course, the iconic clothing of religious orders is long, flowing, and supremely simple, and that clothing is worn every day.
- November 11, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind, My work, Pleasure
- Comments 0
Battlestar Galactica–bodies
How could anyone watching Battlestar Galactica, the TV series that ran from 2003 through 2009, not eye the bodies of the actors? Many of the men and women looking similar to one another with very toned, not-too-large muscles? An androgynously styled body, especially in the unisex military gear.
The androgyny appealed to me, but the bodies looked ridiculous in their generic redundancy. From my early 30s until a couple years ago I worked out in the gym–other kinds of movement for strength and aesthetics have replaced my weight training–and I’ve written about female bodybuilders with great respect, discussing their beauty and courage. (See the pertinent essays in Monster/Beauty and my contributions to Picturing the Modern Amazon, which I co-edited with 2 other women, an art historian and a bodybuilder.) Considering my past scholarly and somatic interests, my response to the Battlestar bodies surprised me, because I like the look (and the feel) of muscle that is simultaneously light and strong. Those Battlestar bodies–too much of a good thing? Or fascinatingly (or boringly) absurd? Because the similarity to one another of bodies in Battlestar, created to fit an overtly fashionable type, displaces the human corporeal panoply, so that I’m looking at bodies that, rather than dazzling me with their sensuality, render that sensuality comical.
- November 9, 2009
- Filed under: Body and mind, Bookshelf, art, and media
- Comments 0
Battlestar Galactica–an anxiety, a clearing
“This is my mission for the summer!” I joked with the guy in the video store as I walked out with 4 more DVDs of Battlestar Galactica. I’d already watched 4 or 8 of them, and July had just begun. Battlestar Galactica, the new series (in distinction from the classic one), began its 4 seasons in December, 2003 and ended its run in March, 2009. This past June one of my best friends recommended it. Her husband and 2 kids had started watching and were hooked, and she’d also become an addict. Clearly, I had too! Read more
- November 8, 2009
- Filed under: Bookshelf, art, and media
- Comments 0
Thank you
I’m so enjoying the responses to my posts. Thank you, everyone, for the following qualities that permeate what you write: enthusiasm, humor, friendliness, intelligence, introspection, close observation, curiosity, insight, and the tender honesty of vulnerability.
