05/19/2006 - Twins

[Note: If reading these posts out of order, you may be confused. Two of the gals that modelled for me during the period 2005-8 have since had twins. This post is about my work with R___ K___.  S____ also worked for me starting about the same time. I wrote separately about her twins, and a dream I had while she was giving birth.]

I went to great lengths to work with R_____ one last time before she moved to California.

Pregnant, and recently married, she was all a tither with anxiety over the move, and I think remembered the deep relaxation often induced by this work. We chose a day, and I arranged to have a taxi bring her from the West Village, over to my studio in Brooklyn.

She and I worked just three hours. It was magical. Her gorgeous body was radiant, as the pregnancy was just beginning to show. We spoke frankly about our lives.

The ritual had gained a lot of momentum since we'd worked in 2005. I laid out a simple program. Poses, poetry, then more poses. This time the poem was fun. We were talking about other things as the words rattled out and I painted them into the work, horizontally across, then vertically.

I knew when R____ materialized out of nowhere, that it might be years before I saw her again. Sure enough the car arrived. She flew away, a gorgeous bird, to a happy life. I was choked. I sat at my computer and lifted the four cardboards of words carefully, and typed them in. With only the most obvious modifications, here they are, the voices that I heard in the courtyard that day, speaking of me, now speaking of R_____, of my project, . . . ways to think of it, . . . ways to work.

Fiery film like a symbolic metaphor shimmers,
yet investigates glorious music for communication.
Important opportunity,

Confront the ennui of my verbose experiment
Must I weld through glass? It's gone my asthma!
Co-dependent daughter knows a better surreal harmony.
Understands a psychotic scale, Sanguine hence clever.
Make impressions, write observations, delve every finest character.
Approach, through your original studio
almost understand question, choose a sad torpid companion.

Doctor aesthetic, Sculpt passion, concrete Herculean leader!
Munificent Friend, cunning Beauty
Sound not laughter!
Cruising Dude, discover the sweet guile to investigate an opinion.
PM smoke - you can all think to create individual music.
Imagine, understand there will always be her absurd instrument,
Please share about electric strength!
Chant Equality!
Observe her borderline society that forms the subject.

Check your differences,
Start inclusively, capture canvas
Hate competition, give peace, model looms dead
Child paints grand rhythm comes gives health
I abuse a psychedelic joke, very arid grandeur
Metal Mother, come sing!
Must muscle horny man
Use praise, chisel some unity
Since Memory trashes Life
Laugh!, Languish, Scream!
Dormant pressure, my fresh love, wants freedom.

Look no feeling enervates this body
Mom, stick junk, pain . . .
This serious purple sleep could make free diversity
A deep white smear's best for after nude work
Sister always eschew when sure like star,
We're never curious, as opaque.
Demand break.
Beg then walk with power above,
Dust you know, Nefarious, Obtuse One!


[This is the original. The raw sound. The words we chose and arranged and read, as sounds. Some analysis of this work, and my evolution of the piece now follow.]

Fiery film like 

I'm having problems with this spelling. She doesn't like 'like'. Plain and simple. 

Simile is not her method. Metaphor is. 

     Like is to Sign ,

     As metaphor is to Symbol.

     I liken Design,

    As a Door to a Thimble.

So . . what do I do with it?

Fiery film like . . well yes R___ K___ had left to join her movie director husband. I had long since given up my film career, and was not thinking of restarting. Hmmm. What else could she mean? There must be a way to read this, Dylan-like, so that it makes sense.

The answer came to me:

Fiery film like

sounds like

Fire eye filled in light  . . 

This makes sense. My kiln, a gas kiln at my studio in West Haven, has two 'fire-eyes', devices that keep the burners on, and turn them off if there's a problem. Also, lately I've practiced looking into the sun, and also looking into my kiln even when filled with nearly white light. A simple meditation.

A symbolic metaphor shimmers! 

Yes! She's glad I've cleared up the simili thing. Metaphor baby!

And so. . . it evolves. But stays true to the sound. Always. Always. Always.

If you falsify what I say,

I'll call and lie to you some day.

If you falsify what I said,

You'll gratify me when you're dead.

So I tread politely around this lady. Truly I do. Manners. Manners. Manners.

Note to R___ K___ curious, did you ever think this would keep speaking to us for so long? MP]

05/18/2005 - The Deer

R____ did forgive me.  She came over with a sly grin. She didn't much like the idea of having to sort words. 'Let's get that straight!' Don't worry I said, I have enough.  I sensed she forgave me for messing up the results of her work during our last session.

"One pose, lie down, I'll write your words around you."

I think she knew things were happening, and that having her words 'wrapped' around her was transformative. She still felt some anger, I think. It's a powerful dose, all this. I have to be patient. 

She laid down like a beautiful deer. I think she was wearing a gold thong. Her hair had a little tuft that came from her cowlick, the rest went in a wash to one side. I was writing and I was painting. Suddenly I realized it didn't matter what the words were. Just the sounds that came from them in that situation.

They were peaceful.

In this drawing she is composed and whole, whereas all of her other drawings show a lack of symmetry, a kind of madness, and rage. It always seemed to happen this way. When the drawings become calm and ordered, she stops, almost as if at that point she knows the work is done.

R____ went west, and married a film director.

We worked one year later, when she was pregnant, with twins.

04/27/2005 - Drama

R_____  came over and we spent most of our time on this one drawing. Finally her energy is becoming centered. There's a very potent Dionysian male figure at the center, penis and all. All the masks around the head have started to fall away.

R_____ is a creature of drama. I always feel when working with her, that we're on stage, and that I have forgotten my part. She looks at me and questions in the way that an experienced player eyes down a junior who missed a line. I'm nervous. . .

After we finished this we spent some time on the word project, but I destroyed her work before she could get too concious of it - she had tried to take a picture of the words in their first state, so I messed it up and promised we'd start over next time.

I tried to explain. We had a long talk about this. She doubted whether she could ever get back on track. I said there were an infinite number of sortings she could do, and they would be perfectly consistent in that they would all be hers. The idea is not to see the particular as our identity, but rather as one of the events emanating from our identities. The Self is infinite. Drawings and poems are not, but they can, if we don't get precious about them, reflect that infinity, or portray it to some degree.

04/18/2005 - The Tunafish Sandwitch

A____ came over. around 9:30.

I wanted to start something with the broad brush
that was simple and powerful, like her body.

She had been eating this big tunafish sandwitch and
bits of it were falling all over the place, so I gave her
a plate and she sat down and drank some water and
goofed around a bit and then she came into the studio
and we got down to work.

She has an animal magnetism that prohibits her from
folding her clothes. She literally strips right on the
paper and drops everything in a pile all around her.

I have to pick it up and fold it, and put it somewhere.

She seems amused by this.

04/15/2005 - Desperate to Work

Second session with M_____ S_____.  She arrives, desperate to work. The clothes fall to the floor, she takes poses all over the paper.

M___ was feeling crazy . . it  had been the first day of spring term at Parsons. She's been anxious about her classes, friends . . everything.

I chose the big brush as a way of letting out her angst. She moved all over the page, upside down, back, behind. She seemed to be spelling out
something very dark.

I did my work, tried to hear what she was saying. Deep from a tangle of branches, out of a caged bundle of dark energy, her hands fly up.

A call for help.

03/07/2007 - Warrior and Child

This piece was completed
at the end of a very long evening . . .

M____, who plays violin expertly
posed with her 'Baby'.

I traced her poem around her
The Amazons did this.

Her bow was her sword,
she carried her 'Child',
into Battle.










[That ancient race of female warriors the Amazons, it is written, took their children into battle with them. There is debate though as to the origin of the word Amazon. One explanation derives from the Greek 'a', without, and 'mazos', fr. A.Greek μαστός (mastós) or breast, because one breast either was covered by a sling for a quiver, OR, by a nursing child, OR, as it has been suggested by historians, was removed entirely as an expedient way to free up the drawing of the bowstring. This would explain why in 'memory', (history is cultural memory, or 'mammary'), the Amazons were re-membered as being one-breasted. 

There are curious synchronistic associations with other usages, such as 'history is one-sided',  'half a memory', 'having lost one's memory', . . and so forth. The power of roots reverberate through the work of an eon of poets who listen for sounds, affecting usages everywhere.  Etymologists will quibble, because the roots are different; 'memory' is latin derived. How about 'in memorium'! Just having fun with my memory banks. 'Newborn babes have no memories, but their Mommy has two mammaries!' 

M____, in this painting, had no idea what she was portraying when she took the pose. But she took it. And when she spoke of her violin as her 'baby' I knew what she was referring to.]

Find more Music

Find more music.
Which glitters Girl?
A beautiful opportunity or
   clean sex and fast romance.

Is the drug a fiery mother of heaven?
   We'll soon know your son.

Seek your master, please avoid grace.
Discover thought in a bordered line.
Go out! Scream to my mom!
   Sculpt him blind.

Kiss water, and always give me tea.

So patience, respect nude play.
My brother married one secret night,
He felt vintage freedom about death.
   Clever sense in your endeavor.

Oh I'm sure soft manic canvases,
   see how she understands silence.

6/8/07, with Jasmine Rituper, 28, 29, 30    Part I, Part II, Part III

  The Muse Poems:

   1  2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Kiss me

Choose an old soft ritual about fresh life,
Make an electric picture.
Model Mama, come here.

Heal by intimacy, sexual woman,
you see sanguine perfume
to calm the crazy leader.
Feeling clever, through freedom, about death?

Bird, go out,
Sculpt him blind!
Destroy your pride,
There's no anger to share with art.

Mom tells of that sharp sin, my fear of cooking.
Fiery mother don’t let yourself in.
Flow is harmony,
Serious above our will.

Kiss me always. Give me water tea.


photo: The Brazilian Sisters
Poem from an early muse work, co-attribution lost, 29, 30, 31

The Muse Poems:

   1  2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Yucatan

paper signs are strung from the telephone lines
signs for Mallory Duracell hang
from the limbs of trees
fingers of trade
amputations of nature.

bulls and goats amble
thatch hamlets
a pharmacy, a school, a hardware store, a town square
where a lot of churchmen got hacked by machetes

onions radishes melons mangos
tuna shark grouper rays
a language that is dynamic restlessly overturns the dead earth
     a bulldozer
cuts a new road

trees cut for a golf course
scrub mosquito infested
flat impenetrable tangle brush
spring up eight foot limit to growth
     so it seems
big trees live only
in seeds.

machete hands
returned from clearing brush,
on the bus sits next to me
weeping sores from all the chechen
he has arms and hair doused with
     white lime and chaka.

there is a power to make new names
place names, people names, thing names.
“Corn Flakes”,  “Xerox”
a name invasion.

bicycles, sewing machines from Korea
Kashmiri rugs
pine furniture, a pharmacy for veterinarians,
sellers of live chickens.

Stuck in Vierzon

Wheat fields, slender water in furrows
Calm yielding fog. Misting.
Barns loom.

Life view, belonging.
I belong.
Your life even is not yours,
   my awareness is not mine.

Take courage in this.

Write - when the thinking is right
tidal forces of change
mind distended by super gravitation
a sphere becomes a hollow tube

pride, achievements, all are yours, all dreams, all truths that are,
   all that is, grows, is yours.

now you must leave it here,
   you must leave yourself behind, when you go.

Stuck in Vierzon,
even though I’m here I ask myself
     where the hell is Vierzon?

.

Abandon

Train moving again,
a morning crow calls.
Footsteps on a metal grate,
a distant church spire rises.

Green river swollen, over its banks, rushing
trees midstream, below water, roots submerged
a man in a garden shed, stands
where the hoes and rakes are kept.

Small leaves glow soft yellow . . .
Sheep nibble wet alfalfa cotton
metal wheels grind metal rails
moving through the wheat

Crops in abandon, buildings in
abandon
people walking,
with
abandon.

The trees grow, no one stops them.
Even we,
would not wish to stop them.

Haberdasher's Night Out

Prairie books, gum store novels
how to cook, puzzles, biographies, digests,

No salty poems . . .
or savory wisdoms from the East.

Bars and ballrooms,
neon lit on the prairie strip,
others windowless - pool and beer.

West, no matter
North or South,
it's a long way
to waters of the sea.

Eleven O'Clock Trucker

Eleven o'clock
  hauling a wide dozer on a flatbed . . .
Hit a cop car
  the blade hung over one side.
It opened the vehicle . . .
      like a tin can.

Oh the officer was fine,
  He climbed out, wrote me a ticket.
I'm still jittery though,
"Doll get me another cup would ya?
"And a piece of that, . . pie"

See Romance

See Rome, and look sharp.
On Crete, a Mother of film,
     wants luscious delusions.

Grassed, as in no denial, . . .
Respect, without peeking. I'm all about bed.
Come and pet some party cares, perhaps you heard.

Friday, the dead all howl by then.
Tell us, is delight like some discovery?
     Grip on!

Would it be tearful if I make a man money?
Gave skirts a still body?
She has the last big demand,
     to fill our wild Kate,

On your next day home.


9/6/06, with Jojo Monson, 30, 31, 32

The Muse Poems:

   1  2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81