Compartmentalization of Beauty

After two sessions of filming the Smitten video (the first song on my debut album Delve), we have two more locations and then go into post-production. The video will come out next month (assuming all goes well) to coincide with Spring, a time of change where buds bloom into a new possibility. This cycle of time in the year has always inspired me, as life bursts forth from soil. 

Speaking of beauty and timing, Taly Serota and I kept on crossing paths at the corner where I pick up my daughter every day from school in the afternoon. Taly is a funky, elegant, interesting, open-hearted, vibrant person. When we would see each other, there was a knowing. Then, we "friended" on Facebook, then next time I saw her on the street she told me she was a stylist. Ah ha! An angel has come to help me think through my ideas of beauty, which has interestingly triggered anxiety and a general wretched discomfort with being objectified.

Good to have a place to process this. Writing does that for me although often it is held in the pages of my private journal. No, actually those are far more raw and unpolished. Here, I edit. 

Taly was my stylist during the video shoot of Smitten which means she listened to my grappling and how it felt to wear this or that. Between shoots, she would run up to make sure the lines on my clothes were clean and clear. She would talk with me through color, lighting, fabrics and textures. Earlier that morning, I went to CVS and bought makeup for the first time since my last year of high school. Literally. I bought the powder, the coverup, the blemish stuff. Had the lipstick and mascara already. I like lipstick a lot actually. Mascara comes out only sometimes but I can get into Mascara, a little. Face paint was triggering. That said, after shooting my first video, Be Who You Are, I wanted the next video to be a bit, well, cleaner. For that shoot, I just threw on some clothes, went out to a beautiful forest with Julia, my videographer, sang the song a bunch of times, brought a change of clothes, earrings, scarves, went and did it without a lot of thought beyond that, and no-make-up. 

I was avoiding the opportunity to treat the videos as carefully as I have treated the sonic, still visual, and written experiences of my work. Magnified onto a moving visual expression of something so intimate and from my soul is quite different than anything I've done before. In public radio, music, writing, and even in photography, the receiver of the piece is an active participant. They are able to imagine and interpret their own experience of the work at hand. With video, the artist imposes ideas of what the visuals will be, without as much room, I think, for engaged, experiential media. That said, this Smitten video is beginning to feel like a canvas for the visual and unseen emotional landscape of a song, and its beauty, projected out through the lens of my beauty. I tremble to write that. Feeling a melody about to burst!

I am beautiful, broken, flawed, and imperfect. 
I am beautiful, awkward, off and clunky sometimes. 
I am beautiful and a part of the light that shines on this living circle.
The Circle of life
One leaves as another comes in
Circle of life
Here we are today
Circle of life
No one really knows when our time will come
Circle of life
Rhythm beating beneath the chest tonight

You are beautiful, broken, flawed and imperfect
You are beautiful, awkward, off and clunky sometimes
You are beautiful and a part of the light that shines on this living circle
The Circle of life
One leaves as another comes in
Circle of life
Here we are today
Circle of life
No one really knows when our time will come
Circle of life
Rhythm beating beneath the chest tonight

Is Divine
Let us live to shine
Our gifts of and for humankind
To find
A way to stay recycling the living line 
And circle.

I love it when the skeleton of a song just comes out like that, without effort. When in doubt, my sense of "trust in the process" gets restored in minutes like these. The words and melody (which will be shaped and honed more) are recorded and I will sing a version of this song with participants in a workshop about ecology and ritual at Esalen next month.) 

Back to beauty, when I had my pre-production meeting with Julia Robertson, the filmmaker for Smitten, she asked me to describe the message I intend to communicate with this video. I told her: "Elegance, modesty, connection, depth, grace, power, confidence, and humility." Julia said, "Can you describe that in one word?" And I replied, "Feminine." 

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