This week was a milestone for me a professionally and personally. Let me give you the context on how a no-show turned me into an exhibitionist.
On Thursday, I finished an intense day at work and headed over to Homerton library to set up the life drawing class for the evening. As usual, I bought refreshments, set up the podium, and chatted with the new artists who arrived to draw.
My class starts at 7 p.m., but at 6:55, there was no life model. I started to worry. It happens. Two minutes before kick-off, I opened my diary and looked up the model's phone number to manage any delays and let the artists know.
The phone rang and went unanswered.
I dialed again, and the model answered. I swallowed my panic and calmly asked where he was and how long it would take for him to arrive. There was a confused silence on the other end. I repeated myself, adding that he was booked and confirmed two weeks prior. His tone changed. Then he proceeded to gaslight me, claiming he was waiting for my confirmation email. A lie. I told him exactly when he replied to my confirmation, and his tone changed again. With passive-aggressive politeness, he said, "Okay then, bye now," and hung up.
Dear reader, there is nothing more devastating than a room full of artists and no life model. Really, nothing. Ask any host. We pay the rent, purchase refreshments, set up and take down the drawing hall, and risk losing customers—who sometimes travel from the far side of London. Running a small life drawing class very rarely breaks even. This is not a business venture; it's a community service, driven by passion, not profit.
By now, the clock was at 7 p.m. on the dot, and I was blazing with rage. I returned to the drawing hall, delivered the brutal news to the waiting artists, and crossed to the storage room, where I keep my equipment. I took off my clothes and returned to the podium to be the model for the night.
My life drawing class has a set format that starts with a 10-minute cool-down pose, followed by 90-second gesture poses, and then the times lengthen as the night proceeds. My first pose was ill-considered and hurt like hell. My left shin turned to lava, and my mind swam with four-letter profanities. My heart was seething with the wrath of a newly born hatred.
And yet, all that contained rage resolved to a mild, perhaps awkward, serenity on the pages of artwork at the end of the evening. Something happened to me that Thursday evening. Sitting with myself, trapped inanimate, forced to reflect on the recent events.
My anger was left to run its course.
I had else I could do? Nothing! No jokes to make; to displace my feelings. No activity available; to distract from my emotions. Normally, we channel anger away. We defer it. We store it somewhere to fester for a future retrieval. Personally I rarely observe newborn anger. On Thursday, I did, and not by choice.
I was pinned to the podium, stark naked, in a room of strangers
I glared at a fixed point in the room, and replayed the telephone dialogue. I modified the fantasy. I changed the script in my mind, to what I could have said, and what I should have said, and so on, all the while transfixed at the same spot.
Where the eyes go, the body follows.
However, if you fix the eyes, you fix the pose. I noticed that the more I stared at a single point, the more the world collapsed until I blinked. Shuttering my eyes restored the world, only for it to fade again. This change in perception interrupted my internal dramas. I began to look outside of myself, at my experience of the surroundings. My focus shifted away from me into the environment.
The effect of prolonged staring is best described as a Man Ray silver nitrate solarized print. (photo above) The subject appeared to develop an outline with an pronounced neon glow, its edges thickened, and the shadows appeared to invert. By denying my natural blink instinct, the outskirts of my vision softened until visually nothing was distinguishable. It felt like my eyes were searching for something to see, something to recognize.
It was both bizarre and fascinating. Does this mean that what we see in the world depends on eye movement? Starving the eyes of activity makes us blind to what is otherwise obvious.
As the poses changed, my furnace burned cooler and cooler until my animosity was reduced to cold cinders. Then, just as the old, worn-out cliché declares, a phoenix rose from the ash.
Without an internal dialogue...
My focus shifted outside of myself—into the room, the large hall, the circle of observers, the lyrics and beat of the music, the scratch of charcoal, and the fall of my shadow on the mat. What dawned on me was that I was enjoying myself. On the following pose, I picked another arbitrary focal point — a dark smudge on the wall — and just stared at that, as before. The world inverted, as before.
My life drawing class breaks for refreshments after an hour, and in my class, the artists determine the poses for the remainder of the evening. Essentially, they choose between three 15-minute poses or two twenty-ish-minute ones. On Thursday, the consensus was to run with three quarter-hour poses.
I undressed. Charlotte started the clock.
I continued the observation practice mentioned earlier. At some point in the second half, I was looking up at the ceiling, and a thought resonated within me. It was like an externally spoken phrase, yet not expressed in words. Rather it arrived as a complex set of ideas, opposed to a sentence in English. My best translation is probably: "You have arrived." The sentiment was more that, but that is the gist of it in this context.
I honestly do not know what to make of that. I don't know where I had arrived to, or where the phrase came from, but that is honestly what I heard inside of me. The sentence was followed by muscle twitches, in my arm as it went lame, starved of blood. I was physically uncomfortable and yet strangely content.
With the exit of those words, I had two realizations.
Firstly, that modeling naked in a room full of strangers is something quite special and something I actually love doing. And secondly, that all the dread and anxiety of a no-show would never happen again. All the stress and anxiety needed to ensure a model will arrive on time, was gone. Forever.
They may or may not arrive. Either way, I would get to do one or another thing which enriches my happiness. It's a win-win situation.
The last pose finished. The artists showed off their artwork, for others to enjoy before we departed. I got to see myself through other people's eyes—through their unique artistic voices. There I was, naked on paper, dressed in shadows, and made of graphite.
Not a sign of my turmoil was in sight. Just me and my body arranged by their hand. Different skill levels say different things, but at the center of them all was me, the middle-aged man. One artist gave me a sketch to take home as a gift. Thank you Mervyn.
Last Thursday was a wonderful evening...
On a selfish level. Today is Sunday, three days have passed and I still feel the glow of contentment; I hope it lasts forever. Last Thursday I changed.
