On new beginnings
It feels fitting to be returning to this world just as spring just begins to reveal herself. Having spent the last few months focused exclusively on my own creative projects, I now feel the enticement and intrigue of making new connections, as well as the pleasure of deepening existing connections with much-adored lovers. But in addition to this, I feel a renewed sense of purpose and certainty in myself – body and mind.
Coming back to this writing, I’ve therefore been considering rebirth and renewal, and how best to conceptualise a shift in my feeling after some time away from my life as an independent escort. Thinking about art and spring, how could I not, of course, turn to Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, radical in its day in 1913 – so avant-garde in fact that, as legend would have it, on its opening night the audience ‘near-rioted’. I love this story – whether fact or myth – because it demonstrates the profound connection between art and the senses. This performance caused a sensation – it moved people. Shocked, appalled them even – so deeply that they stood up in their seats and started to shout. Isn’t that thrilling? The lithe bodies of the dancers onstage, their arrhythmic and unfamiliar movements, acting out the story of a girl – just reaching puberty, herself coursing with feeling – who is sacrificed to the gods of spring and dances herself to death. Macabre, perhaps yes, but so deeply, overwhelmingly alive.
What really draws my attention here however, and where my mind really wanders, is the audience sitting in the darkness – of this ballet, of any other. Not the rioters in the front rows, but the opulent viewers in the theatre boxes and on the balconies – lords and ladies – or perhaps lords and their courtesans – intermingling with the avant-garde sects of Paris and St Petersburg. Couples and groups full of intrigue and erotic passions. I like to imagine them, looking down on those spectators who are on their feet and shouting, feeling that thrill and passion while also being wrapped up in their own. Their attention is not only caught by the crowd below, but by each other – as their eyes meet across the theatre, carried on the charged air. In the dim auditorium, on the plush velvet seats, I imagine tight corseted dresses pushing women’s bodies in and up, shoulders bare, and the silk fabric of bodices clasped together over tightly-bound chests by sparkling jewels. I love the richness of this individual performance – of luxe, of glamour, of bodies withheld and artfully exposed, against the backdrop of the modernist ballet which was so challenging and provocative to audiences of the time. These people are there to be seen, to watch and be watched. Bodies move onstage to music, the crowds below erupt – sensationalised and unboundaried, while in the rows above there are other, more intimate, dramas taking place.
This reflection, the fantasy, takes my mind to delicious, indulgent weekends away in European cities like Paris, Malta, Venice and Monaco, full of aching desire in public places where I can play a dancing game of revealing and withholding – over time. This is a slow, hypnotic dance, rich in those aspects of life that are best savoured intentionally. These memories remain my most cherished, and these lovers my most intimate. So, I am saying goodbye to rushed meetings, to too-little time, and will be focusing on dates where we can explore a relationship between time and indulgence – to indulge time, to be indulgent over time, to indulge together, without rushing.
These few months away have sharpened my focus and heightened my desire to be challenged – to be stimulated: intellectually, creatively, erotically. The intense reaction provoked by the Rite of Spring was a result of its challenge to conventions, to the way it destabilised what its audience believed to be steadfast. It was unfamiliar – and this elicited a strong, and deeply passionate, response. I wonder what it revealed to those audience members who – in their passion – might have learnt something new about themselves and each other. In my fantasy, the riot becomes orgiastic, desires spill over and intermingle, bodies press against each other in the heat of passion – anger, yes, but also excitement, risk, transformation.
So, this is me now. Ready for indulgent, passionate encounters, ready to be challenged and provoked. Ready to meet with those new lovers interested in exploring this with me too. If we’ve yet to meet, let us consider together - how might we indulge time, together? How might we find new possibilities in one another? How might we change as a result?