Creativity

Post #104 Sunday 25 November 2018 – Theatrical diversion

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 November 2018

I recently went to an interesting piece of “immersive” theatre called A Midnight Visit.  It was held in St Peters in a huge old empty furniture warehouse.  The drama was based on the stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe.  We had to sign a waiver before entering.  We were each given a black surgical mask to wear while we stood around in the foyer.  There was an MC called The Undertaker who then selected people from the audience to enter the performance through different doorways.  We went into different rooms and spaces which were variously got up in detailed Gothic sets reminiscent of Poe themes.  The actors moved around in the spaces performing in among the audience.  There were music and dance performances woven into some of the story fragments.  Then there were features of the warehouse set which can only be described as playful – corridors and stairwells to climb through, mysterious rooms to explore.  One room was filled with CCTV screens “secretly” relaying what audience members were doing in other rooms.  Another room had a small sunken pool filled with soft pink balls and a sign saying No Jumping, and of course people did.  At one stage there was a regal seeming actor strolling around, who would seat himself strategically and beckon a member of the audience to come over.  He would then have an extended private conversation with that person.   He beckoned me at one stage and asked me, whispering, what was I afraid of.  It took me ages to decide but finally I said “uncertainty”.  He said Oh no, you don’t need to be afraid of uncertainty, you need to be afraid of people who text and drive! Lol.

It was clever in parts, apparently developed from a similar immersive theatrical adventure which has been showing for years in an extended season in New York called Sleep No More (based on Macbeth).  A Midnight Visit was ambitious and intriguing.  I could happily have stayed on exploring for another hour.  There are some great photos included in the link here to the review in the magazine Time Out.

xx MG

https://www.timeout.com/sydney/theatre/a-midnight-visit-review

https://amidnightvisit.com/about-the-experience/

 

Post #99 Sunday 26 August 2018 – In miniature

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 26 August 2018

Following a recommendation I braved windy William Street Darlinghurst and went down to the Australian Design Centre where I saw a remarkable collection of miniature streetscapes made by Joshua Smith.  They were fine works of craftsmanship recreating the patina of urban decay in  the shopfronts of poorer neighbourhoods.  Here is a photo of one of them:

It reminded me of the dioramas that used to be in the War Memorial in Canberra, which were battlefields recreated in miniature – tiny toylike scenes made for adults.

MG xx

 

 

Post #85 Saturday 5 May 2018 – More scaffolding, black lingerie and furniture restoration

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Saturday 5 May 2018

I foreshadowed a bit of show and tell last time, so here it is, my scaffolding – assembled and work ready:

Here the scaffolding will be used to move the window while it is finally installed.   There are loads of other uses though – including interior painting Michelangelo style.  These shipping containers in the photo are the little cabins being fitted out as Base Camp, including four layers of insulation…

I have also kept up the pace with my local home improvement, and this is my chair (previously featured as work in progress after sanding), which has two coats of paint applied courtesy my workbench aka the dining room table:

And finally, because black lingerie always like to get into the picture, a selfie from yesterday:

Your glamorous aunt

MG xx

making hardware even more fun

 

Post #82 Saturday 14 April 2018 – Harbour Bridge competition

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Saturday 14 April 2018

I have devised a competition which is based on something that genuinely puzzles me.

This is an older photograph of the Sydney Harbour Bridge which I found on the internet (I don’t know when the photograph was taken):

This is a photograph of the Bridge that I took this evening from the balcony:

If you can see the difference you get to play in the competition.

If you can explain to me how and why this happened – you win!

I am still thinking about what the prize should be…

from your glamorous aunt
MG xx
and this week’s selfie:

 

 

 

Post #81 Saturday 7 April 2018 – Potato farming and furniture restoration

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Saturday 7 April 2018

We have progress in domestic affairs this week including potato farming and furniture restoration.

The potatoes some of you might remember from their first appearance way back on 14 January in Post #69.  I had been given a potato growing bag and put out some of my favourite potatoes so that they would strike shoots from their eyes (which they always do in the cupboard left long enough).  Well it took three months for them to strike decent shoots.  Although at first I thought perhaps this type just doesn’t shoot so easily,  on refkection it must have been because I left them outside when they would have done a lot better in a dark cupboard.  They are btw, Dutch cream (very tasty).

This was the original shot:

These are the update shots of the potatoes and the potatoes cut up in their potato sack ready to grow:

These may or may not grow, we will see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The furniture is a new undertaking but long overdue.  I have a “before” shot and a “mid way through” shot, having spend a very tedious amount of time sanding back the varnish.  I actually have two of these chairs but will take things one at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further instalments will be made as things develop and you can approve the restoration (or not approve! as the case may be).

 

 

Your glamorous aunt MG xx
home improvements impresario

Post #76 Sunday 4 March 2018 – Black Panther, blackberries, more black lingerie and Mardi Gras

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 4 March 2018

I went to see Black Panther during the week which was an all round adventure.  I was very taken with the animated font that was used for the credits at the end of the film.  So much so I did some searches and uncovered a version of the font that a fan had developed after having seen the film and also having been enthusiastic about the merit of the graphics.   The creative fan called the font Panther.  Here is an image I did using the font (I posted this on Twitter at the time I made it):

Perhaps the font won’t look much in this static form.  All I can say is the clever geometric unpacking of the font during the extended credit roll for the film itself was great, it was really captivating.

Something else pretty captivating happened during the week too.  I went roadside rambling in the country to pick blackberries – they are ripe just now.  These blackberries were not affected by any Council spraying (otherwise they would be well and truly dead) and the fruit was delicious.   The very day I picked the blackberries I received a wonderful photo from my resourceful friend M.E., which was a shot of his latest crop of home grown figs which he had just picked.  So I had my own fruit photo to match, just by luck.  Figs are an absolute favourite and if I am fortunate I may get a cutting of one of M.E’s fig trees to grow in the country when conditions are right.  Here is the pair of fruit bowls:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last of all another selfie in black lingerie:

your glamorous aunt

MG xx

Signing out with a Mardi Gras wonder woman

 

Post #79 Sunday 25 March 2018 – Mapplethorpe and Araki

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 March 2018

Earlier this month I managed to get to the NSW Art Gallery to see an exhibition of the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.  Here I am on the stairs posing with  an enlarged self portrait of the artist himself.

 

The challenging thing in the Mapplethorpe show is the kinky erotic photography  – predominantly homoerotic BDSM style scenes – some of them very graphic.

There is a common theme in all the work – erotica, portraits and kink alike –  and that is they have a “sculptural” feel to them.  It’s a very classical form and composition and the subjects are posed and still.   These are beautiful and accomplished images.

 

 

 

Here is one of the sculptural portaits in a classical style:

Mapplethorpe makes some images of kinky “domestic” scenes which are droll.  It’s incongruent to see a tough leather clad master slave couple in a Victorian pose in a 1960s lounge room.

And on the other side of the earth right now, there is an exhibition of photography showing at the Museum of Sex in New York.  There is something of the Mapplethorpe dilemma in this work too.  The exhibition is of the work of Japanese photographer Noboyushi Araki.

Many of Araki’s kinky erotic images are brutally challenging.  It’s hard to freely enjoy the brilliant aesthetic of Araki’s work because of the troubling depiction of feminine bondage and enslavement that features in so much of it.  And it’s troubling no matter what complex quality of consenting relationship the photographic models might have had with the great man.

Unlike Mapplethorpe there is far more candid imagery, action shots, and location work all of which make for a more dynamic subject matter – there might be stillness in the work but it’s only for a moment.  The erotic world of Aaraki is Dionysian.

But like Mapplethorpe there is also great humour in some of Araki’s erotic work.  Perhaps I should be asking a less obvious question: how did comic pornographic art get itself into the gallery…

Here are some Araki images, the one on the left I have posted before and it’s of the Yakuza crouched like a dragon.  The one on the right is a the lighter relief version of “the reptile within”, the lizard having been reduced to little plastic Godzilla figures in the corner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your glamorous aunt MG xx

Post #75 Sunday 25 February 2018 – Zen and the city

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 February 2018

In the background of one of my selfies I must have included the part of my loungeroom wall that has a scroll of Chinese characters hanging on it.   I say this because I had the pleasure of meeting a man who had taken the time to get a translation before we met.  He had read the characters from one of my photos.  I also had pleasure of hearing from him an interpretation of the words on the scroll which was a totally new to me and quite different from any interpretation I had thought of.

The scroll itself I had made about 4 or 5 years ago.  I had found a beautiful Zen saying entitled Subtlety.  I searched about and discovered a Chinese scholar who worked at Macquarie University who was skilled in calligraphy.  He agreed to do the calligraphy.  He also recommended a man who could mount the work in traditional Chinese paper and fabric form.  So the calligraphy was done and the work taken to the scroll maker, and in time I came to own this lovely thing:

 

 

 

The translation of the Zen saying is as follows (reading down first the column on the right, then down second the column on the left):

Entering the forest, he moves not the grass;

Entering the water, he makes not a ripple.

I had, and still do have, a fairly literal interpretation in mind.  But my new friend had another interpretation, thus:  when you enter the forest you are so small in such a great expansive world inevitably your presence does not create any special disturbance.  And the same with water.  When you merge with the ocean you do not disturb the huge body of water, you become part of it.  You cannot disturb it.  And following on from this my new friend drew another parallel – the difference between the city and the village.  In the city your conduct will not be noticed but in the village everything will be the subject of judgment and comment.  And we both agreed how grateful we were that we lived in the city.  In the village we would not be so free to meet.

Yours MG xx

PS On another subject altogether, I give you this week’s before shot:

and the (glamorous) after shot:

Post #69 Sunday 14 January 2018 – On the balcony and in the pool

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 14 January 2018

I am posting this letter a little behind schedule because I was very busy this weekend doing homework for an entry level scuba diving course.  The chance to do the course only emerged last week so I had very little time to complete all the online homework which turned out be to quite intense.  If I had a little more time to practise calcuating residual nitrogen “times” using the old tables (not the now standard dive planning software) I might have become a whiz!  As it was, I really only finished just in time for the first practical day –  from which I am now trying to recover.  My ears just would not equalise easily with underwater pressure changes once we got out of the pool and into the deeper ocean dives in the afternoon.  It meant the dives were slow to start.  So once I can get ahead with the threshhold physical challenges, there will be lots of new adventures to come with scuba diving.  I will post some photos of this episode once I have finished the course.

On the balcony we had a couple of developments in recent times.  The first is that I had to bring the composting worms – the Miriams, inside because the heatwave would have fried them.  They are happily set up in a corner of the lounge room, do not be alarmed there is absolutely no smell, they just carry on as before quietly eating my kitchen scraps.  The worm factory tutors I consulted a few years ago when I decided to get the worms told me that an established colony (such as mine is now) can be anywhere between 20 – 30,000 worms. Fancy that.  Very impressive number of urban wildlife units.

Also on the balcony we had the beginning of an experiment in potato farming.  I was recently given a special potato growing bag.  Here is a photo of the bag filled with earth to the first level, the illustrated instructions I am following, the potatos I want to use as the mother plants (once they develop little shoots from their “eyes”), together with a guest appearance from my pedicure and sarong.

I was separately given some seeds (medicinal herbs and two types of sunflower) by a girlfriend. Having followed her directions carefully, I am seeing early signs of successful germination… The plants inside the apartment grow beautifully, perhaps the ones now germinating on the balcony will too.  Stand by for a progress report in the coming months.

Signing off  MGxx scuba goddess 101

 

Post #58 Friday 3 November 2017 – Kaz Cooke

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  Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Friday 3 November 2017

Another wonderful book gift from Michael Clever Website (I have code names for all of you lol), by a favourite author cartoonist Kaz Cooke, whom I haven’t thought of and whose work I haven’t seen about, for many years

After a very successful career in Australia Kaz Cooke has apparently moved to the US and is enjoying similar success there.

I can’t resist posting the few cartoons I could find online, just to give you the flavour of the exploits of her cartoon heroine Hermoine:

And a Casablanca cartoon, just for cultural completeness:

Your glamorous aunt
enjoying a moment of nostalgic humour

MG xx