On Dancing Masked in the Tangled Garden

Look, perhaps I am outrageous, but at my age, seriously. I can do anything. Besides, I'm masked. And, anyway, my daughter was chaperoning me.

From a video shoot in High Park in June.

All this will be obscured in a long videopoem of three nature poems that is 22 minuters long that I may finish one day.



An early version of the central poem in Tangled Garden.

The little prancing figure in the background is what I would like to re-do, and I have footage, just so much work. And either re-recording the soundtrack or cleaning it up, so much work. It's been sitting on my hard drive for months. I'm trying to get back to it by giving myself just one small task to do. Last night I cleaned up the poetry track you hear here, which took hours, but should I record it again, or, if you know me, another dozen times before I pick one reading. The emotion in each of the readings of the poems in the full videopoem is where I'd like them to be - do I go with imperfect because it has the passion? Since I'm stalled, that's my inclination at the moment.


direct link: In the Hands of the Garden Gods (a poem I wrote at 27).

The final poem in of the three is one I posted here when I wrote it in 2006: Slipstream, oh the Tangled Garden, and I'm using the recording I made back then, too.

Anyway, the only way to get a major piece of creative work done, I find, is to take it in 'baby steps.' Rather than thinking a crazy week of no sleep or cooked meals, which no-one wants obviously and hasn't motivated me, I am thinking, 'clean up the poetry soundtrack,' 'fix the filters on the whole footage that you've mapped out.' 'Then start picking what footage to use in the background,' and where (some sections don't need it). Yadda, yadda.

When I finish it I am going to have to subtitle it too, groan, more work. The poems are so dense, the imagery quite rich, and sometimes I let Catherine Corelli's amazing singing drown my voice, that the viewer having access to the text is almost crucial.

I am such a perfectionist - probably you are too. Everything is the absolute best I can make it, given my limitations in training and equipment. That's how it is.
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Music, 'First Night (Lilith's Seduction)' from Catherine Corelli's album, 'Seraphic Tears': http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547

                              

A Lascivious Tray

For my housewarming you arrive with a cooler on whose ice a bottle of Moet and Chandon Brut Imperial champagne waits, and a power drill to hang my curtains.

While you hang, I toss organic baby spinach, fat green leaves, sliced large white button mushrooms, raw and thick, thin wheels of hot red onion, peeled sliced sweet mango, a handful of ground walnuts, slivered almonds, flax and sunflower seeds in a raspberry vinaigrette.

On the sectioned tray I lay ripe strawberries sweet as jam, green grapes, sinful fresh figs.

From its wooden case, I lift fresh smoked wild Sockeye salmon and lay it down.

Large green olives stuffed with garlic nestle beside the focaccia embedded with olive slices, sun-dried tomatoes, chopped onion and herbs.

Around balls of sweet honey dew melon I wrap ribbons of proscuito.

Peeling the papers from the cheeses, I uncover Isigny Sainte Mère, a creamy Normandy Camembert, Pont-l'Evêque, a soft cheese, pungent white Cheddar, tangerine-coloured rich Mimolette, and from sweet sheep's milk a soft Italian Percorino Toscan Fresco.

It is a steamy June day.

We take each other's clothes off in the enrapt way way lovers do. We feed each other with our mouths, teeth, fingers. We hold strawberries between both our lips and bite them.

We sip long crystal flutes and drizzle champagne into each other.

I'm sure I lap-dance, it's becoming a blur. Leonard Cohen's woman, that beautiful Anjani, sings soft, sultry songs of his poems.

Lust breathes us.

Later, drunk, I dance in the living room, a naked middle-aged woman.

The curtains are drawn tight.





This morning I videod my exercising, dancing, and then layered so many filters on the footage Final Cut Express says it'll take 4 days to render a 12 minute section! I'm currently trying to circumnavigate that by saving to QuickTime, but that's a 20 hour process! Oy ya. These stills may be all that there is to show of my afternoon's work. Let's just say, three years later, not naked.

It was a memorable night, perhaps our best, but our last. I’ve kept the empty bottle of champagne on my shelf since then, knowing I had to write about it. In the Winter I received a letter from his other lover and then we discovered each other, though I had ended my relationship with him not long after the evening I write of here. This is a section from a much longer prosepoem.

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This prosepoem piece was written for Big Tent Poetry's May 28th poetry prompt: aphrodisiac.


You can read the response of some Big Tent contributers and readers here: Rubies In Crystal at WordPress.