Feeding the Art Gods

The warehouse air was frigid cold. Sunbeams worked their hardest to warm us. Leela and I let the big walls and high ceilings have our laughter, amused by the conditions we found ourselves in to get this job done.

I “hired” this feral photographer to capture me in work mode essence. While I was swiping on my lipgloss in front of a grungy old mirror, Leela reminded me of a cat returning to her old stomping grounds; she wasted no time sniffing out the best lighting and claiming her territory.

I remember feeling like she was heartily making her presence known to some unseen forces.

I turned around, as ready as I could be to get thrown in the deep end.

Leela’s brows furrowed and she playfully commanded me through the space. We had booked the warehouse for one hour and worked within tight parameters in a way that fostered momentum and a mercurial dance. Our decisions had to be made quickly.

After countless images, it was time for an outfit change. I had to wrestle with getting naked and changing fast as I could in the cold, grungy warehouse.

I stripped down and scattered through my pile of clothes laying on the dirty concrete floor.

Something was calling us to loosen our grip.

This call spoke through Leela: “Can we just let go make some art for a bit?”

And that’s when we found… The Chair.

Suddenly, an Aliveness filled my entire body. The Art Gods were rolling their eyes at us before, hungry and wondering if we’d be so bold to feed them.

I fell in love with The Chair.

Although genuinely scared I could contract some strange disease from this dirty, God-only-knows-where-it’s-been chair, I was like a month to a flame.

I wanted to do every possible human act to it. Lick it, fuck it, smash my entire body into it and onto it, throw it, bite it, caress it, be known by it. It was a clear, blank canvas for my carnal desire.

I fell in love with… my humanity. And the feeling of freeing up energy to create something emergent. Bigger than my plans and ideas.

I can’t describe what a feast I felt Leela and I were a part of that day. And a feast for whom, the best I can say is the Art Gods - the forces that come alive when pure creation is happening, for the sake of creation.

Feed, and you will be fed.

-E.R.S

Enter the Mystery

I had a call with a former muse today who revealed something she had been holding back from sharing.

Partly because life had us both by the hair on parallel wild rides, and partly because she was harboring self-doubt.

She said “I feel guilt and sadness that I haven’t used the beauty of our shoot for anything yet.”

We just passed the year mark for the birthing of this shoot.

The intimacy that’s touched in these photoshoots can be deeply precious and tender.

In this particular session, a deceased loved one came through with a message.

The grief we touched changed the shape of how we all navigated the rest of the shoot.

We created something more raw and unprocessed through allowing this.

It was stunning to witness the unfolding and we all walked away a bit more alive that day.

The places I frequent with people are not always for the immediacy of sharing.

Especially in online spaces.

We enter into places that can be deeply emotive, erotic, cathartic, or trance-like.

The rituals we are inside of sometimes call for, or even “require” a certain amount of containment and closeness.

A holding.

And that’s okay.

I actually prefer it this way.

This is one of the reasons I’m growing less and less interested in rushing image turn over.

It is also one of the reasons I’m continuing to work toward making sure there is ample time and bandwidth for these journeys.

The kind of art space I like to hold can resemble a mushroom trip.

Not all shoots go this deep, but they can.

It really depends on who I’m working with and if we need to titrate the surface before there is more capacity to lean in further.

There’s a time for immediacy and there’s a time for waiting.

Discernment is necessary.

Culturally we are so accustomed to having what we want when we want it, and while sometimes there’s a place for that, it’s not always in service to the larger prayer or some of the other energies accompanying us during this process.

I reminded her that I don’t create with a heavy agenda or *for* some ‘thing’.

Some people don’t figure out what they want to use the photos for until 3 years later. Or more.

I’m still in an active listening process with my own work about what it wants from me and how to more deliberately hold it.

These creations have a life and rhythm of their own.

I often feel relieved when people do not immediately use my work for branding.

Namely because I’m not a branding photographer and I’m growing more and more allergic to using these platforms to display the art I’m making.

I say this while also holding the paradoxical truth that it brings me joy to share art and see others share it too.

Creation for creations sake is something we are being conditioned away from.

Part of the magic of Courting this force is falling in love with the process, the Field, and its inhabitants.

What I hope to convey through naming this is a permission felid to un-tangle from the alluring enmeshment of using the Creative current solely as a means to an end.

May we enter into the mystery and be led by it.

Yuba Magic

We crept out of bed before the sun; before the birds began their songs and met under the moonlight.

The morning was full of subtlety, sensation play with the elementals & flowers, dancing with the river’s ripples & rolling in the sand.

The Yuba revealed her magic to us through waking-dream scapes and left impressions on our hearts.

Enjoy the photos.

~L