Marathon Muse

I had an ineresting experience today.

I rocked up to a sketch club to find that the model I exected to draw hadn't turned up. for some stupid reason - I decided to fill in.

what was the stupid reason?
Needed the cash
wanted to feel my body
wanted to meditate

I haven't modelled since may 2004. Apart from little sessions with my partner.

My first 20 minute pose - I adopted an easy old standard - one buttock perched n a milk crate, with one leg kneeling and back twisted.

A pleasing arrangement.

I was amazed to find that my thigh muscles have lost so much tone that supporting half my weight was HARD.

My second pose - a 25 minute killer - I STUPIDLY decided to exploit the fat rolls and do a semi reclining odalesque.

NOTE: Never do a semi reclining for more than 15 minutes.

I propped myself up of one forearm - and after 5 minutes realised it was a big mistake. I only trembled for about 10 minutes once the serious cramps set in - before I managed, by slowing my breathes and concentrating on my toes - to enter "the zone" where ...... time ..... just ..... passes.........

Afterwards I felt great (endorphin rush)

I was initially curious to see if having another experience of modelling would change my current thoughts on it (now mostly informed by increasingly distant recollections).

would i get any flashes of enlightenment for the paper I've got to write?

No -I was too much mired in my body, in staying still, in resisting pain and strain in order to transcend myself and soar into the heights of sheer academic brilliance.

bugger.

Interesting how my mind was telling me what poses I could do -or would be comfortable in -and my body was strangely familiar-and yet quite different in them.

i have put on about 10 kgs since I quit modelling and lost a lot of muscle tone.

bugger again.

so where do I reside? do I adjust my mind to the bigger, slower, softer body - or adjust my body to the racy light mind?

I don't think I'm going to produce much brilliance tonight

maybe its time for bed.


I was wondering about looking again. I wrote sotry aobut modeeling for a drawing marathon, where for three days I was completely still and bored out of my brain. I was still except my eyes. Which look at the other students. Discretely, because I’ve learnt to maintain an unfocussed glazed over gaze from portrait modelling. Don’t point your eyes at their eyes, even when you can see that they are looking straight into your eyes. I do this by opening my crows feet and letting my brows and lids fall. It’s only polite. Curiously, I spend a lot of time peeping at the bodies of students, and feeling stupid for looking at a woman’s cleavage, while my breasts are bared. Sometimes the staring turns to perving, because I’m in pain, I’m bored, and thinking about sex is a nice distraction. I’m female so my body isn’t going to betray my thoughts, and I’m queer, so I know how to perve without being seen to do so, or to do so more obviously, if needs be. (I've practices in rooms with mirrors). The young women in front of me looks butch. Gaydar alert. She’s buxom, and tyring to hold her body like set of compass points. She holds her arm straight, sucks her tummy in and sticks her bust out further. Her top creeps up her bared midriff. I stare past. Not oblivious. How many models have looked at me like this while I was drawing in an ill clad manner? With men, you can usually tell. By their eyes. Idiots. She has stretched piercings in her ears that are bigger than her irises. I feel like 4 dark eyes are staring at me. I note the way she rocks her pelvis in her jeans and shifts her weight between her high tops. . God I’m glad I’m a woman sometimes. Don’t look at the four eyes. My eyes move to the wall behind her. Bricks. This banal ping pong continues for 2 days. We never speak, she’s shy like most baby dykes at art school, and has no desire to pet and fuss and possess me like the middle aged middle class women. Back to posing, she struggles with her drawing. She can’t hold her body with that lanky straight edge ease that the young boys manage. Her lines are too heavy, too stiff, too awkward. She has a nervous tick. I remember my own marathon charcoal battles 4 years earlier. There’s a photo of me, hair cropped, charcoal smudged, kicking the wall with my doc’s. But she battles it out. Finally it’s the end. I’ve stuck it out, and can finally robe up and run off. My head throbs, but I check out some of the drawings on route to the back of the room, where I’ll put on my clothes. The women in front of me has produced a formalist outline of my body, pot plants, chair, other objects. On her drawing my head is an outline with a fringe. Faceless. Curiously, she drew my breasts with enormous, erect nipples. This is a fabrication. But a very odd one. Maybe my eyes were boring into my breasts – so she erased them and drew my nipples as eyes glaring back into the viewer? I know from drawing – that meeting a models eyes is awkward and difficult. So maybe she preferred to facialise my breasts rather than my face. Fair enough. But maybe she read my mind.

I've described this part of the anecdote before - because I am still perplexed by the encounter and the drawing. Were my eyes wandering all around the room -and un draweable? Was i pulling terrible faces?
did I stare in an uncomfortable manner?
did she need to make my face a mask?
Was she trying to assert her self over me?
Did she feel an incredibly strng need to efface - the model - as a weird mimesis for the effacement of herslef during the marathon?

dunno

bugger!