Ahh, Stephy

Missives

The summer is over
The harvest is in
And we are not saved.
The blow up doll
Has fire engine red lips
But no tongue to satisfy.
Gennifer Flowers had lips
Built for pleasure
And electing a president.
These are things one thinks of
While drunkenly stumbling through Skid Row
On Oscar night.


My life is grafts, intervals, spacing
Leftovers
Wet dreams, epiphanies, regrets
Fuck you
And dualities and multiplicities that shatter hope
All I have left are those games that I play
A process with no remorse
So I play the role of cheerful chipmunk
Ringmaster with a hint of naughty
Know far too much to conform to what's prescribed
But care enough to be engaged
No filter is the answer
A Messianic urge to not urge
Free associate and embrace the surreal
Start with your vagina
Your perky tits and Colgate smile
Wear that strap-on with pride
Show me what's on the inside
You're my catharsis
My wish fulfillment
The Real.

Random and fleeting
Like the lone palm marking Griffith Park
This is the passage from minutiae and ennui
To mountains and landscapes
They say you get the big picture before you die
Night in Edendale
A table of Paris Hilton clones
Speaking in one collective grating voice
The voice of trust fund babies
"Ball gags for all of them"
You hear your friend say
The delicious irony isn't lost on me
Snicker
Deep down I know though
They're the ones that make it
They drive the machinery mom and dad created
They'll take you for a ride
Just be compliant, entertaining
Be the useful idiot they want you to be
Just for a taste of the good life
Your fifteen minutes are up so fast
Your American dream.

Is it war yet? Is this war?
Omnipresent 800-pound gorilla in our midst
I don't fight . . . can't fight
Fair
Or I won't fight at all
You with your territorial pissings
A lie for any and all occasions
A cult of personality built on a make-believe bogeyman
Larger than life in more ways than one
A pathetic self-parody
You're the parasite in our midst
Built your name off the backs of others
Buy your friends
And scare the little children
This war was truly over before it began
No war of the gods here
Or spectacle for tourists
Just a cautionary tale
For whomever comes next.

Waiting for Electra or someone like her
But in the meantime
"I want to be your Julie Ruin"
Eyebrows raised, that emasculating gaze
"Precious. . .
It would be fun to play with gender roles
But I wouldn't want to sit on it."

If I were to build a shrine to John Dorsey
It wouldn't be Disney worthy
No tours for the would-be gentry
No faking it.
Someone told me to hit the streets recently
Rediscover what's real, vital
Base and unflinching.
This is where you can be found
Away from the flowery bullshit
Away from the trust-fund posers and swine-in-training
Downtown
L.A., Manhattan, KC, Denver
Unholy Toledo.
Every time I take the speck from my eye
I look to you.
Mind being my focal point
For my middle-class breakdown?
Not middle-class anymore at any rate
Sell my soul for coffee, cheeseburgers, and cigarettes
A mercy fuck from any anonymous muse?
Settle knowing the art is the gift
The gift requires work
And the hustle is the only solace there is.
You taught me this
My friend.
Been meaning to ask, seriously
Is there such a thing as hope?
Never mind that you are a Norman Mailer book title
No insult intended, of course
I've answered my own question.
You wander through the spaces, ruins
The degenerate paradise
Finding the delicious morsels that make life sad and comical.
Mock the psychoanalytic irony
The self-flagellation of the apologetic.
You are without apology
A voyeur of the grit of Americana.
I have just begun to mark your footsteps

333AM
Self-contained yet restless
Darker dreams pervade my consciousness
While others flee the gloom
I probe by torchlight
Nothing is pretty anymore
Of man or made by man
Yet I would revel in the texture of decay
Let the darkness take me.

There is no such thing . . .

. . . as a metaphysical concept. (Jacques Derrida, Dissemination)

In My Room 4

In My Room 3

“the kind of girl you'd get a pack of cigarettes with
she can read, she's bad”

This is the description for a blog on line I’ve following of late, Velvet Cigarette. One of my guiding principles in life has always been, “book your own life, and make it as fucking surreal as possible.” So, yes, I most definitely approve when someone puts themselves out there with a degree of wit and style. I’m sitting here perusing the photos and text early on a Saturday morning while listening to Skindive.

“Close my eyes tight,
Hurt with this light,
Your devious mind comes shining through to me,
Shining clear to me.

Head for home as the daylight grows,
Crashing to the floor,
As a bitter sound rings clear,
Your tragic song I hear.

Happy thoughts and empty minds can justify my reasons.

No joy for me till the day I can hold my head up.
King in my head, hung in shame, swallow me.

King in my head, hung in shame, I'm the original”
- Skindive, “Swallow”

Daniella Harrison’s voice is pure sex. She’s the girl with the brown lipstick (if you’ve read Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities – movie doesn’t count as it was a disgrace). Her voice is the unattainable, that apex of sensuality and desire that the sensitive artist lists as the “be all, end all.” I would think that I’ve moved away from such a maddening sensitivity, but yesterday comes to mind. I was busy writing and waiting for my copy of my latest coffee table book to arrive in the mail. My friend BeeBs popped in and told she was shooting in a studio downstairs. She invited me down later after borrowing a few bondage toys and there’s this vision of “the girl with the brown lipstick” she’s shooting with. I think I stuttered. Yes, I was a wee bit sheepish. I shoot all kinds of models and all kinds of body types, but there is such a thing as the tyranny of beauty, and the model she was shooting with had beauty in spades. It is what it is.
Beauty to me starts with the eyes. It’s intimacy and knowledge in a lovely package. My newest artistic project, “In My Room,” is born of this. In the bedroom, or in my case my entire living space, the eyes have it. Bullshit and pretense take a hike. Now, this isn’t for everyone. For far too many folks, honesty makes them uncomfortable. That macro shot at the edge of the bed is just too invasive. We turn away when confronted with “the Real.” When you’re shooting what one would consider “erotica,” knowing the sensibility of what it actually is helps. After all, it’s just one skip away from being labeled an amateur pornographer. I am an explorer who honestly wants to know why we feel, act and respond in the ways that we do. Maybe it’s because I think such insight could help me with my interpersonal relations. Who knows? Maybe I’m a voyeur and am living vicariously through you. My model the other day told me that I’m just shooting stuff in the bedroom I’d like to have done to me.
A talented local photographer challenged me recently saying that my work needs to reflect my soul more. I’ve thought about this a lot of late. From my subject matter to how I run a shoot, my work is a deep expression of myself. As another photographer stated once, “photography is my mistress.” My editorial vision is for you to be relaxed and comfortable enough to show me what’s on the inside, not for me to pose your every movement and force my vision on you. I’m not denigrating the other approach. It’s just not mine.

In My Room 2

And sometimes I model. :)

Palimpsest, again

Messianic

English

Adjective

messianic (not comparable)

Positive messianic

Comparative not comparable
Superlative none (absolute)

1. Of, relating to, or resembling a messiah.


The new world we live in demands we believe in something, anything. It’s not that I believe in nothing, it’s that I don’t believe in your prescription. One hegemony begets another.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Here I sit on a warm August Tuesday in Los Angeles, wondering what above all else comes next. I want the space to create, and I have it. As for so many folks everywhere, though, making enough money to stay afloat is the primal urge.
Juxtaposition.
Take a 300 and some odd feet square efficiency apartment, a mini-kitchen and a walk-in closet that leads to a smallish bathroom and what do you have? You have a limited play space to make an editorial statement. Noted, it might seem difficult to convey anything when you’re wearing a hood with an enclosed blindfold and attachable penis gag making it impossible to speak. Still, if you ask the model, she would prefer not to be released from her “disgrace.” “Disgrace” is in quotes, because words have meaning, often multiple meanings for me. “Disgrace” in this case doesn’t carry its usual negative connotation. In our world, to be in control is the epitome of success. A lack of control is unsavory. Flip it. Understanding that one has little to no control is the key to understanding one’s self. I am reminded of this from a play session I participated in at Bondage Ball in Hollywood July 4. Being restrained with a hood on my head while being flogged by a beautiful woman is Boyd at his happiest. Well, insomuch as when I want to suspend the pretense of control. I’m quite sure I could tick off a list of motivations for this and still come up lacking. For instance, each and every one of us wants to feel desirable. We all need to be loved in a way that validates us. We all need to be heard, and sometimes we wish we all could be silenced because of personal shortcomings. We all need to feel. Pain is so relative, and when we can experience it without becoming unhinged, we rejoice.
When I first started as a photographer, a world-renowned fetish photographer explained how I should treat each modeling session as a scene. In the process of explaining this to a model I shot with recently, she was actually concerned. My point to her was not that I desired to create an actual scene, but that power exchange play that isn’t editorial in nature or that doesn’t seek to capture the real finds itself lacking. These indoor games played out wherever I may be will always endeavor to achieve this.

“Messianic.” This is one of the words used to describe the age we live in post-911. It’s a word to describe the United States in how it relates to the rest of the world. We’ll save you from the evils of Islam, communism or whatever else that isn’t amenable to unbridled capitalism. Swap in terms like utilitarianism or humanism if you like. They are all modes of how we engage the world. It’s all about control, the taking or surrendering of. The election of President Obama was said to represent a change from this paradigm. He was going to save us from all of this. There’s irony here. We need a savior to save us from saviors? No matter what your politics may be, someone is convinced they need to save you from some ill. Post-911, we were told we were now living in the post-postmodern era. We were being saved from a worldview that suggested we might try to find some solace or joy in the process rather than in a solution that relies on the same failed methods and runs us in circles. My worldview isn’t cynical. My worldview pretty much says “let’s play.” From a faith-based perspective, it would be the equivalent of “make a joyful noise.” Do what thou will and enjoy it, because life is too damned short to be bound to societal prescriptions. The political is personal, and if a little pony play will set you free, have at it.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I have little taglines I like to use on web sites like Model Mayhem, Facebook, and MySpace. “I can’t be good. They won’t let me.” “Gags for pretty gals.” “I tie your girlfriends up. They like it!” Being cheeky is where it’s at for me. I take myself seriously sometimes. I take the creative process seriously. I want to capture a moment in time with my art that is memorable, no matter what my editorial vision is. If I’m slapping tape on your mouth or am fitting it with a ball gag or tying you up in knots, how serious do you want me to be? I’ll be serious enough to gauge what your limits are and if kink is something you are remotely interested in. I’ll be serious enough to pay strict attention to your safety. But damn it, this should be fun, or why are we doing it? Being an adult is overrated, and I do prescribe to the Freudian convention that all art is play, a return to childhood. It’s just that our games are a lot more elaborate. Where does this put me in respect to everyone else in society? Mainstream folk get on their soapboxes and contextually abuse the DSM to marginalize those who play at BDSM. If we’re not mentally defective, we’re perverts with a capital “P”. One philosophical persuasion will say the one while one will say the other. There’s your “audacity of hope.” There is none. Make your life a surrealistic expression. Create a world of your own and go there.