Biographies of Spirited Bodies Organisers

Lessons in Life

After a good runaround in the park

I am looking for answers on my spirited journey, and my search has brought me to a new place.

It has become apparent that those who are not in the know are not qualified to wholly advise. But I wanted intelligence from new quarters; so in this effort, I find myself as teacher. Now I’ve never been to art school as a student or a tutor, but I’ve been listening and watching many times. My pupil is learning how to draw me. It’s never been like this before.

He is challenged by my nudity, and I by our pairing. I show him what I know or what I can do. He slowly realises what life drawing is, and what I am like. He is frustrated by the difficulty, and I by a new tenderness I feel. I want to cross over and embrace him, because he has presented a most welcome opportunity for a blurring of  worlds. There is no money here, but an exchange of skill and a sharing of time.

I laugh out loud from my bed and wonder where I have been all these years.

This is no random contact, we are old friends (of friends) and more than a decade has separated us. I grew up with them in all our immodesty and irreverent rapture; something of my soul belongs with them. It was first on the dance floor together we all were spirited bodies.

He at first was married to line, and careful measured proportion. I bark at him through the briefest of poses, “What do you see? What draws your eye most? What does the pose say? DRAW THAT!”

Stunned by his muse’s orders, he gets it. It’s my stern expression that must be caught, or sheer feminine fragility, the essence in a hand gesture, and the poise of a being inclined to take him on.

Bloodlines in Bethnal Green… and the Jewish Question

Around 1911 my Great Grand-Mother, Rivkah Notlovitz, arrived on a boat in London; she’d fled pogroms in the Baltic East. She headed straight for Stamford Hill, because well you know, it is Ashkenazim HQ. She was bored after a few months however, and boarded another boat; this time for Cape Town. Her religious life over, she now gave herself to politics where an altogether new circumstance of colour presented itself.

Hush descends a shoddy shack and red runs down my leg, heat rising to my face – I forgot the bloody date!

Silence, and after 20 minutes a small pool is at my heel. I clean up.

At break, a German artist books me for an entire week. I’ve got what it takes he says. Public bleeding apparently indicating that I am in fact a woman, not a mannequin.

Pronouncing my name is often followed by, “Are you Jewish?” – by Jews and gentiles alike. Usually I’m not, though occasionally Rivkah has her uses, but technically she’s on my Father’s side, so she doesn’t actually count.

As for why I’m called Esther, well that is another story, and oddly it is related to the holocaust!

Mum grew up in East Berlin and was always an outsider from the off, because she and her family lived there for political reasons, i.e. being on the run from McCarthyism. One thing she observed in the East Germans was, they blamed the holocaust entirely on West Germans. Clearly this was propaganda, but as a child (she left aged 13) it somehow indelibly marked her. She became a dedicated housewife, and her only form of protest for something she witnessed as unjust, was released in the naming of her first born. Somehow she knew that throughout my life I would be mistaken for Jewish, time and time again.

Corpsed

Mother lay on the couch motionless; her brain removed so work could be done.

I thought I better take off her clothes to let the body breathe.

This proved hard work – a pair of tights, skirt, buttons and impossible sleeves… all that tugging, manoeuvring, even yanking down below and I’d lost track of her head. It was hanging off the side, how undignified. I slowed down to rearrange her, gently lift her head where it belonged.

As a natural position realigned I noticed a twinge of life, some left over electricity perhaps. A wave of subtle motion from her eyes to her shoulder and down the right arm. Just a moment of life, so strange, almost shocking it moved me too.

I stayed, wondering if her brain really would come back.

Re-Modelling the Past

Getting my kit off for the first time to model, was not actually the first time for me. As a teenager I worked as a stripper amongst other more dubious professions in the sex industry. It’s hard for me to relate to many women’s anxieties of weight or other physical issues; due to my background however, I’ve certainly had self esteem problems connected with my actions and society’s judgement. Loads of women dip into the sex industry to support themselves so it ought to be less taboo.

 

Trying life modelling was a revelation as it was like reclaiming my nudity in a more positive, less pressurized setting. Staying still is a challenge, but being left to your own thoughts is a far cry from performing sex acts in a dingy Soho backroom.

I came to relish the basically innocent and positive appreciation one gets from being a life model. It is not devoid of sexual undertones but these are muted and quite under control.

 

I was just in my 30s when I started life modelling so there had been a good decade since my earlier escapades. I hadn’t realised how I had become inhibited about my body, but after modelling a while I did feel more vibrant and attractive. When you are in long-term relationships or not in any at all, you can forget the thrill of being found exciting and gorgeous; so being admired in some sense by artists may restore that.

 

On a fundamental energetic level, simply having all those artists’ attention on you for several hours can give you a boost, like they are filling you with energy. As they get immersed in their painting it’s like they fall in love with natural beauty of the body and at this point it doesn’t matter what you look like. I know this apart from what they say, from having tried life drawing myself. When you see the model in a pose in which you discover beauty, the pleasure you elicit from finding a way to capture that on paper is enormous, and you feel such gratitude towards the model. Further, without knowing the model or anything about them, you can share quite an intimate moment.

The beauty of a pose may be derived from nothing conventional, but simply consist of body shapes and the way light falls and illuminates.