The Enchanter's Theorem

Because post novel ennui wasn't enough by itself. Now! With! New! Improved! Post shoot ennui!

I am so drained. Exhausted. Scattered. Having a bit of post novel/shoot meltdown, now that it's all over and it's sunk in that I have a huge pile of work to go through and edit. The enormity of the task I have set myself has set in, because now...

I have no words.

Yesterday...

Come on, damn it, pull it together, Anji. Find the words.

Yesterday was where my life needs to be all the fucking time. Even with the crushing heat. Only fans in a warehouse loft studio, no AC and we cooked. And my girls didn't once complain. Didn't once flinch from what I asked. Just threw themselves into it and went for it. I am blessed with a Bacchae of models, maenads of the first water. Next time, I absolutely have to build a shrine to Dionysius/Bacchus before we start and pour wine on the floor. Because we let the Raving Ones in and they did not let us down.

Come on, words. Come on!

From the very start where the Mad Model agreed to dance for my new Flip... To M putting on the horns... To A putting on the wings... To the blood and then the ash going so beyond what I had envisioned to suddenly I was looking at Shakespeare's three witches... (I never wanted a huge iron cauldron so much in my life! Next time!) Graces, and witches, and Fates, and maenads, and they became so many different women and so many different goddesses and held and held while my poor camera labored in the heat and took forever to write RAW files because I was making it chew so hard...

The Mad Model was covered in bruises this morning. M says she's lost six pounds since Comic Con. I wasn't entirely teasing her when I said it was from all she sweat yesterday. I'm sure I added to A's bruise count that she had already earned from her silks. I am so damn glad I took them all to the Korean spa afterward in a bare token of repayment for all their incredible hard work.

I can finally say this and mean it. I am a damn good photographer. But I have only become this good because I am supported by the work of these incredible, awesome women. They lift me up. They take my vision and run with it so far that I run out of breath chasing after them with my camera. I have my own bruises today. My legs ache from having stood on concrete for so long. I relish each pain. It means I worked on my Dream.

Why won't the words come!? GAH!

I am so so so so so so so full of feeling that I can not even fully name it adequately. Gratitude is too small. Excitement is not close. Transcendence comes close. But it's still inadequate too.

Clive Barker writes at the end of Everville about the moment Tesla gives in and accepts her fate:

      There was perhaps a moment between the first heartbeat and the second, when she might have rejected the gift, and fled her body.  Let it die again, and wither.  But before she quite realized the choice was hers, she'd chosen.
     And the Art had her.

They're borrowed words.  But I remember the first time I read them and how they sent a chill straight down my spine.

Reading them here again, this is as close to how I can tell you how yesterday and in the aftermath of it today, I feel.

The Art has me. 

Heidi.  Ashley.  Mindy.  Listen to me.

Thank you.

I promise not to squander the gift.

Thank you.