Ideas

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 #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 the 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 #68 Sunday 7 January 2018 – Rejuvenation grout and the New Year

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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 7 January 2018

It’s the New Year and I don’t do resolutions so much as I find myself somehow embarking on various new projects, generally a bit domestic.  This New Year it seems to be Rejuvenation Grout.

Well I have bought the product and I am hoping it will transform the tired tiles of the bathroom into something a bit more, hmmm luminous may be :-), or just a bit whiter would be ok.

It’s been a nice start to the year otherwise.  I had a lovely unexpected visitor on Saturday afternoon.  I don’t often get magpies up on the 12th floor so it was a treat to hear that melodic gargling sort of song so close by.

I drove back from the country on Saturday and listened to the radio on the way – as a lot of you know, I love the radio.  On this trip the ABC was rebroadcasting a feed from the US National Public Radio (NPR) and I had a couple of treats.  One was a show on bluegrass which was an excuse for me to rummage around for favourite modern blues music when I got home.  Here is a link to a performer composer I really like and who is a great blues hero for souls who live rough.  It’s Chris Whitley with his melancholy guitar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI8ISl7xpg4

Wishing all the best to all of us for the coming year.

MG xx

Post #65 Sunday 10 December 2017 – Black and White and Sex

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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 10 December 2017

It’s the bane of the oldest profession to be depicted in the media and arts in a way which is misleading, sensationalised and frequently harmful. I haven’t ever seen a depiction of sex work any better than in the short Australian film Black and White and Sex,  which was released a few years ago.  Here is a link to a short review on an amateur blog.

http://www.sassisamblog.com/2012/03/22/film-review-the-provocative-thought-provoking-black-and-white-and-sex-movie/

The official website with the distributor’s contact details is included here as well,  in case you wanted to buy a DVD copy, which I would strongly recommend:

https://www.blackandwhiteandsex.com/

The short film raises a wide range of issues in an undogmatic way.  I dislike art being used didactically.  This film deals with genuine “social” issues but from intimate points of view, and it doesn’t “solve” any problem or preach any particular thing.  The closing episode addresses the mystery question whether the main character Angie, who is played by eight different actress personas (sounds complex but it worked well), actually experiences orgasm in the course of her work – does she “really” enjoy it.

Which brings me to another interesting thing.  A number of escorts keep blogs and internet diaries.  From my observation most of these deal with their personal experience of being an escort, feelings about work and clients and views on the industry.  The diaries differ from the Letters from America because the Letters are generally less reflective in that personal way, and are usually more about music,  landscape, trees and small adventures.

Anyway, long and short of this is that the subject of an escort’s orgasm is very well addressed in a recent post from the escort blog of Asha Grace.  Asha Grace is an experienced escort and lovely soul based in Brisbane.   She says some wise thing that some of you might be interested in.  The post is called Give and Take, here’s the link:

http://escortashagrace.com/blog/give-and-take

Well, it is a beautiful Sunday morning so I am signing out now for the next adventure.  I am looking forward to a great week and hope you are too – notwithstanding it is the lead up to Christmas and the Sydney traffic is mental.

Look out for yourselves and take care not to fall off your bikes, figuratively – and literally.

Yours ever
MG xx
your mysterious glamorous aunt

Post #40 Tuesday 4 July 2017 – Letters from America and Alistair 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 ♦

 

Tuesday 4 July 2017

It is quite fitting that I am posting this Letter on the fourth of July.

I call these posts “Letters from America” in honour of the series of weekly radio roadcasts “Letter from America” that ended  in 2004.  In Australia they used to be broadcast on Sunday evening and I loved listening.  The author and reader was the Englishman turned American, Alistair Cooke.  A lot of you will know the man already, but  it won’t be old news to some souls 🙂

Each week the letter would explore some current issue or issues of American life and politics.  It was an artfully conceived way to share the complexities of American political life with outsiders.  It was conversational but it was also serious, it was brilliant.

I have always loved America.  It was the first country I ever travelled to, and it was a trip with my beloved grandmother who had spent time after the war in Washington and had made many American friends.  The trip we took was to Hawaii where the extended family of one of her American friends were meeting up to celebrate the patriarch’s 70th birthday.  Later trips I took, generally for business – but not all business, confirmed my fondness.

Even though I thought some Alistair Cooke’s approach was from a fairly privileged position and not especially progressive, it was always interesting and intelligent, a rumination and not a lecture, it was a pleasure to be drawn in.  His speaking voice had a gentle pitch and the delivery was disarming.  And the appearance of privilege was not such a simple thing.  He had happily left England where his gifts were acknowledged but where he was also regarded as  the son of an ironworker.   Any English person would know the suffocating class realities Cooke would have experienced, no matter how brilliant.  America would have been freedom from all that.

This program ran weekly from 1946 to 2004.  That’s 58 years.

The BBC has published online a good number of the audio records of the weekly Letters, if any of you are interested.

This is the BBC link announcing the online publication.  It is beautifully written itself and describes Cooke’s life and ideas and his work bringing together the US and Britain by his weekly Letter from America: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20121597

Here is a book cover  photo of the accomplished man himself.

I have put links in here to a couple of the Letters from America, which you may be interested in.  Be warned they are 15 minutes long which is likely longer than the average concentration period required in overloaded digital times.  I used to listen to the broadcast in Australia on a Sunday night, when I was doing some leisurely cooking, so time wasn’t a problem.

This link is to the Letter from America which relates to the key triggers for Nixon’s resignation after impeachment.  It was broadcast 9 August 1974.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yqn3p

This link is to the Letter from America that relates to Thanksgiving, with a Churchill vignette on the same.  It was broadcast on 4 December 1998. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yjnmz

 

And so it goes.

Your glamorous aunt
in subdued mode for the moment.

MG xx