Look at me, Listen to me, LISTEN!

The gaze entices, inspects, fascinates. The voice hypnotises, seduces, disarms. Are gaze and voice part of the relationship we call love ...or hate? If so, what part? How do they function?

I have been lifemodelling for foundation year art students today. I don't get paid very much - I think £9 per hour - I don't even know as there seemed like so much paperwork to complete to get my paycheque, for such minimal return that I haven't yet put in my hours and got paid. (this is also my money/over-magnanimous neurosis...). So I'm not doing it for the money. And its hard - its often not quite warm enough, despite heaters, and the body starts to ache or go numb in all sorts of places after 15-20 minutes of sitting without moving. And that's aside from just being there naked, with people looking, without feeling reduced to the object status that one is in that moment.

On the positive side, I've been able to hear the way they teach art at this college - its been incredible. They teach about all the universals or fundamental elements of life: colour, temperature, tone (these could have parallels in music - could music be painted in colour?), form, movement, space, activity. How we don't need to draw the edges of things, they don't actually exist - just the meeting of inner space and the space surrounding it, which we paint from the inside out. And how we can be so object-centric when often the space surrounding the object is what brings it to life, and should be given at least equal attention. I am drinking it in (when not shivering). Plus the feeling in some way of being drawn to life by so many gazes on my body, brushstrokes around my form and contours. And the feeling that in a small way I am breaking one of my barriers (see earlier post) by being able to do this at all.

I've been avidly forming connections in my mind between the art teaching and my engagement with music. Above they make the link between gaze and voice, which I guess are the active expressions of my two main areas of involvement - I want to know more (book is on its way). Voice is my big love but - also see relationship between love and hate below - I only briefly had singing lessons finally last year, and now I've stopped, so I've been wondering why.

One story that could help explain this is the metaphor of brushing hair that is taught in Shambhala. It says that when you brush your hair you don't just do it once, you start at the top and go down to the ends, and then right back up to the top again. I protested that I've found it tends to be a bit more complicated than that (and I reacted to the fact that neither of the two people who shared this story so far could have been talking from experience...one is completely bald, the other has dreadlocks!). So after doublechecking a few mornings ago, I found that the true progression for me is i) start at the top ii) quite quickly hit a knotted tangled section, particularly where I have grey hair iii) take out the comb and then work on that area from both top and bottom, finally penetrating through the knot iv) keep going down to the bottom v) then finally go back up to the top for a clear run...

From this analogy that short burst of intense diving into singing training was the beginning (and perhaps the end) of the process, but now there's all sorts of knots and tangles to work through before I get back to that simple activity. The Kodaly musicianship course and beginner music teaching are all challenging and rewarding ways to make my way through the tangles, as is the consulting and the modelling itself, before I get out of this section of wood. And I might as well enjoy the trees.

Anyway, back to the quote. I was also struck by the connection between love and hate. Mum and I just spent a day and night together, and I am thinking again that love and hate must be so intimately interwoven - why would I bother to hate someone where some kind of strong binding feelings were not already pre-existing?

...love as the mediating entity in the essential antagonism between the sexes, and gaze and voice as love's medium. The contributors (to this book on Voice & Gaze) proceed from the Lacanian premise that 'there is no sexual relationship,' that the sexes are in no way complementary and that love - figured in the gaze and the voice - embodies the promise and impossibility of any relation between them.

I particularly like this as it speaks to both the impossibility I am recognising in the relationship with mum (and know was there between her and her own mother) - I have not yet unpacked the mix of masculine/feminine energies that I believe are part of our conflict despite being mother & child but the above quote I'm sure applies - and I would like to be acknowledged is there between men & women, yet isn't because of the heterosexual ideal. If only because I certainly feel this in terms of my own relationships with both women & men. Maybe humans are in no way complementary - in the sense that we are essentially & poignantly alone?

This may explain why, on reading a small titivating piece in the Metro today on a woman who likes to dress herself up as 'Cute Puppy' and be discplined by her master 'Sir Guy Masterleigh', I found the whole situation made me feel a bit...err...excited. I normally wouldn't even let myself think about anything that connects the worlds of sexual fantasy and animals, having put in a mental 'site blocked' message, but this seemed different... For one, as stated in the article, it could be seen as simply an opportunity for humans to safely play out subordinate/dominant roles which people are in fact doing in relationships all the time - why not have fun with it?

For me, it was refreshing to escape (in my mind) the usual feminine/masculine spin there always is for me - and not the 'dominatrix' way around, but the other. I even had a little bit of fun of my own when I got back home on the back of this, but concluded yet again that when it gets to the point of possible penetration (although somewhat ashamed, I have to protest that those new phallicly-tapered roll-on deodorants even look like a dildo, maybe I'm not alone...?) it makes it all happen faster, somewhat more uncomfortably (ok, I know...), just too much. I don't want it. I know that two women having sex can involve all sorts of penetration, but maybe I'll never make a great sapphist either. And I can see that two body parts uniting/merging could be a mindblowing act, but maybe I'm just not ready? I'm only 32.

...the conflict between the sexes is the site of a larger battle over the destiny of modernity.

And maybe that's why it feels such a conflict, after all.