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Dear
Heron Dancers,
Over the years, positive emails and letters from subscribers
to Heron Dance and A Pause for Beauty
have outnumbered negative responses about ninety-nine
to one. Of course, that excludes the time a few years
ago when I quoted Doug Peacock, aka Hayduke, who said
in a Heron Dance interview, “Beware
of homicidal lesbian motorcycle gangs in the Dakotas!”
(Issue 21). That time the ratio dropped to about ninety:
ten. A couple of weeks ago the responses became more
like eight to one, and the reactions on both sides
have been much more intense than usual.
Although I wish they didn’t, the negatives preoccupy
me more than the positives, no matter what the ratio.
But Heron Dance now has a creative energy
and excitement it hasn’t had since the early
years. It all still revolves around the connection
with a spiritual core, a spiritual center of…of
what? Of a human life? Of life in general? Of the
universe? I don’t know, but I do know that,
regardless, there are times of flow and harmony and
times of disharmony, distraction and setback. I want
to write about those ups and downs from a different
perspective than I have in the past.
The protagonist of my story is a certain wild artist,
partly fictional, partly me. He’s a deeply spiritual
man and his spirituality revolves around wild nature
and the sense of peace he finds there. He’s
put a lot of thought into how he lives his life and
lives more or less on his own terms. He has a wild
and free creative energy. He loves literature and
music. Security means less to him than sucking, as
Thoreau said, the marrow out of life. He experiences
a lot of ups and downs, triumphs and defeats. He tries
to walk his path with as much dignity and equanimity
as he can find within himself. Sometimes it is a lot;
at other times it isn’t much at all.
As with most of us, eroticism and sexuality play a
major role in his life. That, of course, is the controversial
part of this work. Sex is such a powerful part of
life that we fear it, even try to hide it. Perhaps
we should; uncontrolled, it can cause a life to unravel
and, at times, it causes our protagonist’s life
to unravel. I’m putting the erotic part of his
journey in the story because, without it, the story
lacks authenticity. They all feed each other: his
creative energy, his love of wild places, his sexuality.
He’s known a lot of love in his life. Profound
love. He goes through long periods — in two
instances more than seven years — in committed
relationships. In between, he seems to go through
multi-month periods as a free agent. He didn’t
used to. When he was younger, it was one live-in girlfriend
after another. As our story opens, he is in one of
his wandering phases. He dreams of a committed monogamous
relationship, but he also loves solitude and quiet.
His struggle in this area, as in the other important
areas, is to keep the faith, keep touch with that
spiritual core. Sometimes he loses touch and I really
want to explore that.
I’m painting a lot of nudes these days. I’m
working with three different models, but one in particular
has captured my imagination. She’s a very beautiful
art student; a young woman who sometimes camps alone
in the forest. When she’s standing there with
her back to me, her right hip thrust out, I want to
just go up and bite her gently on the nape of her
neck. Then she’d moan and I’d cup her
breasts in my hands. Of course, she might turn around
and slug me. That wouldn’t be good. Or she might
start crying. I’d very definitely go into a
tailspin. I might start crying too. If I started crying,
she might not pose for me again.
This is all ridiculous. This beautiful young woman,
with her dreams of far off places and of new experiences,
does not fit well into my scenario, nor I hers. We’d
take rather than contribute energy to each other’s
lives, and we both know it. Reality and fantasy are
different sometimes. And difficult. Maddening, actually.
So we talk about past loves, about wild horses and
wild rivers, about art and our families. We talk about
sexual experiences from our pasts. I try to be on
my best behavior, but sometimes my conversation is
out of balance and crosses that vague but important
boundary. I’ve got this fold-down couch and
I ask her to lie down and pretend like she’s
pretending she’s asleep and trying to nonchalantly
interest her boyfriend in sex….She does. I paint
her. My painting is off balance.
I think I need a break for awhile. Maybe I need to
find a different model. There is so much highly charged
energy flowing around the room. Unsettled energy.
I lose my bearings. My vision for this work —
sexual, erotic art but with a flow, a calm and peace
about it — is unlikely to evolve out of this
scenario. Maybe I need to just paint women with whom
I have an emotional bond, women with whom I share
a sense of peace.
That which does not have cannot give. And that, dear
Heron Dancers, is all I have to say for today. That’s
probably more than enough.
In celebration of the Great Dance of Life,
Roderick W. MacIver
Comments
Welcomed!
Comments, positive or negative, are welcome. If you
are on Facebook, please put your comments on the Facebook
Wall. If not, please email Rod directly (rod@herondance.org)
Subscribe
To The Heron Dance Nature Art Journal:
Our print publication, with full color art on almost
every page, explore the themes touched on in A Pause
for Beauty. The next issue — issue 57 —
should mail in late July. Annual subscriptions cost
$30 and Heron Dance is published twice a year.
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The
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