Chocolate

It is THE BIG DAY!

My 30th Birthday and the day of the official launch.
And I've eaten too much chocolate. If you ever get the chance, buy chocolates from Chocolate Fellmann in Geraldine

This past week I have had books out on hair and makeup for the stage. There is so much we don't get taught by our mothers these days! As I have been looking quite a bit at photography of drag queens recently, I realise how impoverished us 'real' girls are - and I've had short short hair for more than half of my life.

Now I am investing in hair pins and hair nets and am going to see what I can achieve!

I think I am sorted with my three actors (finally) - two women and a man. And so we will start rehearsing as soon as I have moved into the house. My house has sold, so the move is happening next week! I am liking the house more and more - it is much sunnier than my old house, even though it is a dive. And the soil is great. We are doing a lot of seed-raising.

I have rented "Now, Voyager," an on-board romance starring Bette Davis, but haven't watched it yet. Something tells me it is going to be interesting.

My sister gave me a large bunch of red roses for my birthday! The first time in my life. Mmmm

The Launch and Birthday Party

Here is the invitation to the Laverne Launch and Romance Party! I am trying to decide what exactly to do at the party - I have some paint and was thinking about letting people do some decorating/scenography.
I have found another cool book, "Emotion and Relation," a photography book with work by Mark Morrisroe and Nan Goldin and three others. Some great images in there, one of which inspired the invitation design.

True Love of the Future (1979)

The photo is Milton on the way down from a hand-stand against the wall in the bedroom I think I will use for the bedroom in the piece.

I have finally finished "In the Name of Love" and found out what Tweedie thought about True Love (back in 1979 when she wrote the book) . . .

The goal of all humans living in modern society is to know themselves, to understand themselves, to have a clear picture of their identity, confidence to act from that place and awareness of their needs, talents and direction in life.

The problem with old fashioned love (love that is really passion and romance but not love as she understands it), is that we are using it to soothe our troubled egos, to patch up our unstable identities. We play roles (father husband to daughter wife or nanny wife to naughty boy husband etc.) to gain approval from the lover, but in so doing we miss the opportunity to have them accureately reflect us, so we continue to be confused about who we are.

The lovers of the future will be totally honest with one another - about their faults and failures as well as their talents and lovable qualities. They will not be dependent on one another for lies that make them feel temporarily OK. They will truthfully reflect the reality of the loved-one back to them, and each will have the strength to face the truth about themselves.

I like it, especially as I can see how important this sort of relationship is for building identity and confidence, self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-love.

In the Name of Love

If you haven't read "In the Name of Love: A Study of Sexual Desire" by Jill Tweedie, I really recommend it. Here's what I wrote this morning in response to her chapter on the psyche of love:

I have the tendency to make my relationship the centre of my life, the most important thing, the priority, the thing I always choose first, the thing I'd always rather be doing. (Tweedie says that women are brought up with the mother as an example of a woman with no identity, living through and/or for a man (the husband-father). Even though my mother rebelled in word and later in action, everything she did was in reaction, in relation to my father. She had no identity outside first loving, second serving, and third blaming him.)

But I want to be successful and fulfilled in my work. I want, sometimes or in part, to be identified with my work, to BE an artist. I want an identity of my own.

So I choose men who don't demand much, who are blank canvasses, who don't dominate me.
So I can still put energy into my work and art and other people in my life.
And I perceive those men as needing me, so I don't feel like I'm the needy (dependent) one in the relationship.

But there is a basic internal conflict between my habitual psychological behaviour (tweedie) – to attach to, cling to and seek happiness from men – and my conscious desire – to be independent, passionate about my work, and to have my own identity and a) know it and what it is, b) trust it, c) express it, d) be confident.

As Tweedie suggests, I find it difficult to have a stable identity when there isn't a man around to ... serve? (as in to mother and counsel) or to prove myself to (in the initial stages of the relationship)?

And I think this contradiction is inherited part and parcel from my mother, who talked feminist and was a kind of matriarch in a home populated mainly by women, but still saw life as service (to husband but more to children) and defined herself almost entirely in relation to my father, finding it hard to make or keep friends, hobbies or career because they weren't what was really important in life.

Hotere's Song Cycle

This may be too small to see well, but I have always loved the use of Manhire's beautiful words on this piece (created as the backdrop for a touring performance), and am somewhat inspired to use words on the walls of the house in this way.

In Love

Another piece of writing from my mornings. The photo is of the carpet in the lounge, which I am trying to match a wall paint colour for. Soon these old carpets will all be gone. I've loved so many carpets in flats I've lived in, especially that one you used to see quite a lot with large red flowers on it.

Being my body, I walk through the world acting large,
never finding a possibility for the petite, the diminutive.
Being my body, I take up space
and fling myself over the world
to lie in slumber like the giant of lake Wakatipu,
my every breath causing waves on your shores.

And you?
You the shore I lovingly lap,
you the golden sands I worship,
you, being your body, walk through the world on stilts,
touching the heavenly things
and bringing them down with a stoop of your long back,
a stretch of your long fingers.

If you would lie down with me,
like Rangi and Papa in the very beginning,
I would be wrapped up,
tied up in you,
as I am, hopelessly entangled,
loving you with my watery sighs and tears,
wishing you to bring the sunshine of your face closer to me,
imagining the ecosystem we would inhabit together,
the most beautiful paradise imagined.

Writing

I have begun writing daily, and am working on a script. Still looking for that second male actor, and have begun moving into the house, though there have been no offers on my place yet.

I like the house more and more and have ordered a test pot for a colour for the lounge.

This is a moment in the cycle of love that I am interested in portraying:

I watch out the window.
When I cry, my tears scratch their way down my face.
They are acid to me,
and my bones are chalk.
My arms and legs ache to be free of me,
they draw disease to them,
they starve themselves.
If only she were here, I would be whole again.