Art or Erotica

I got this idea recently—it may have been an artistic inspiration, but it seems unnecessarily pretentious to say so—to modify one of my hot rod photographs by adding a stylized nude female torso as a distortion map under the grill. Here is a 'before-and-after' so you can judge the results:

original image - artistic by my friend's estimation.

'enhanced' image - that's hair at the top, a shoulder
below, and then a very nice, if somewhat pheumatic, breast -
no longer artistic according to my friend. IDK, really.
You decide.

My original concept didn't work out as I expected, so I made some modifications and finally ended up with the above as the best I could do with my limited command of Photoshop technique. It's okay, I think, but not quite what I envisioned. What I got is abstract to the point of being unrecognizable. I wanted recognizable. I wanted the nude form to pop out of the grill, not because I wanted to titillate but rather because I wanted people to look at it and wonder how I did that . . . or even better, to wonder how the guy that built the hot rod did that. Instead I've got people wondering what the hell it is.

I sent a copy to an artist friend of mine to get her opinion. She thought it was okay until she found out what it was. I had to tell her. Even then, she had a hard time seeing the nude. She thought this was fine so long as the nude was just abstract distortion. If the nude became obvious, then for her at least, what I had was no longer artistic but sleazy. According to her, anything that titillates is not art.

I pointed out that the nude form has been featured in art for centuries. She thinks the nude human form is artistic enough all by itself provided that 1) it is not meant to excite the sexual appetite of the viewer, and 2) it is not attached to something else—in this case a car. Putting a nude on a car cheapens both the car and the nude. Somehow the combination is vaguely pornographic, while the parts may stand alone as art.

I think she is wrong about this. I think she is ignoring two important things. First, she is ignoring the long-standing tradition of erotic art. Erotic art may be a subset of art, but it is still firmly ensconced under the general umbrella of art. Erotic art has been around since the beginning of art. I can't prove that. I don't remember any actual instances of erotic cave drawings for instance, but I have seen examples in Egyptian pictographs, on Mayan, Incan, and Aztec ruins, on ancient Chinese and Japanese scrolls, and even on Medieval churches. Some, if not all, of these were meant to titillate, but no one thinks they are not art. They are just so old that the patina of smut has worn off.

The other thing my friend has failed to understand is the long association of automobiles with eroticism. Every man understands this relationship from adolescence. There is a natural symbiosis between cars and naked women that cannot be denied. It wasn't put there by advertisers, although Lord knows they have spent an awful lot of effort reinforcing it. No, it has existed almost since the beginning of cars—just like eroticism has been a compelling theme in art almost since the beginning of graphic representation. The nude female form has been integral to the design of and the irresistible essence of the automobile since the first sheet-metal artisan hammered the first compound curve into a fender panel over a hundred years ago. You only have to look at the sleek, elegant, and oh-so-sexy Auburn Boattail Speedster on the cover of my book to know that is true.

Speedster is available from a number of outlets in a variety of formats.
Follow this link to my Goodreads book page to find the source that fits your needs.

RITUALS

I like a certain amount of ritual. Ritual is comforting. It unites people in purpose, allows them to celebrate their commonality even in the midst of diversity, and all but eliminates the sometimes nasty surprises that punctuate the rest of our lives.

I remember pointing this out to a young woman at a party when I was in college many years ago. She had just handed me a joint, which was traveling around the room from person to person. I saw it coming. I knew what to do with it. It dawned on me in the midst of it—it was not my first toke at this particular party—that the familiarity of the process was as comforting as the drug itself.

“Don't you think it's interesting,” I asked, “how ceremonial this is?”

“Ceremonial? You mean smoking dope?”

“Yes. It's practically sacramental. Everyone does it the same way. There are conventions. Differences are just variations on a theme. Deviation is frowned upon.”

“Huh?”

At this point I realized that, not only was the young woman already beyond understanding my insight, the fellow next to me was studiously frowning upon my deviation from accepted practice. I was waving the joint around in the air while I tried to explain myself when I should already have passed it along to him.

He may also have been thinking that I was trying to leverage high-toned philosophy into a romantic dalliance with the young woman in question. Possibly it was lost on him that my philosophy was lost on her. In any event, I passed the reefer along and quit talking for the duration of the party. No dalliance happened.

Some years later, when I had given up marijuana as the idle pursuit of the young and stupid, the senior partner of the CPA firm I was working for invited me to his church for Easter services. His church was a brand new structure of glass and steel nestled into several thousand acres of reclaimed Florida orange grove. It was huge and imposing and had attracted a large flock of faithful contributors.

By this time I was already a devout practicing Catholic, and so I was reluctant to spend any time in a Protestant church where I was sure to hear something that would offend my papist inclinations. The senior partner was trying to be persuasive.

“It's really going to be impressive,” he said. “There will be a complete orchestra, and a guy is going to come up out of the floor of the sanctuary on a white horse—just like the second coming in Revelations.”

“Sounds spectacular,” I said. “but it also sounds a lot like pageantry. I actually prefer something a little more liturgical.”

The senior partner never treated me quite the same way after that exchange. In retrospect, I probably should have tried to sound a little less superior, a little less judgmental. I had managed to denigrate the man's religious sensibilities, which were at least sincere if somewhat misguided.

My preference was for the familiarity of ritual—in this case a remembrance of and celebration of Christ's Resurrection from the tomb and the cementing of the Paschal sacrifice. The partner's preference was for a spectacle that embraced the Apocalypse as well as the Resurrection. Nothing says triumph quite like a guy on a white horse.

On the other hand, nothing turns religion into a circus quite like bringing animals into church. I think it's just asking for a surprise calculated to test your faith beyond its endurance. A horse in church is just one step removed from poisonous serpents, and vipers in church are just one step past full-on crazy.

I bring all this up because I have been thinking about rituals (again) lately—since my wife pointed out that I have made a ritual of preparing my morning latte and my evening martini. She said that I seem to enjoy the process as much as the resulting beverages. She is exactly right. Each one has assumed the Zen aspect of a Japanese Tea Ceremony for me. There are precise steps in a precise order, and if I'm somehow forced to diverge from the established way of things I get flummoxed.

first time out with my new
espresso machine. aficionados
will note that I didn't know
what I was doing yet.

A proper latte requires, in my world at least, nine vessels and about 15 minutes. I have to drink it in less time than it takes to make it or it will get cold. I have a manual espresso press, so I have to use separate mechanisms to heat the water and the milk. I need to heat fresh, filtered water in a tea kettle. The milk and a little stevia to sweeten goes into a Pyrex measuring cup, which is microwaved for 80 seconds. The milk is then foamed with a foam pump. When the water boils, I pour some into both the espresso press and the cup I will drink from to warm them up. My big cup won't fit under the filter basket, so I need to use a separate small ceramic pitcher for the final pull. I warm this up too. With everything properly warmed, it's time to pack the coffee into the filter basket. I buy whole beans, and grind them myself—40 seconds in the grinder does the trick. I then pack the ground coffee into the filter basket, reattach the basket to the press, add hot water (now properly just off the boil), and pull a double shot into the ceramic pitcher. Now I pour the coffee into my warm cup, and add the hot foamy milk. Final step is to stir it all together and enjoy.

I fully understand that for most people this is one hell of a lot of work to go to to get one simple cup of coffee. My response is: 1) it's not a simple cup of coffee, and 2) if you don't enjoy the process you're missing the point.

A proper martini at my house only requires six vessels, and the process goes a lot faster than the construction of a latte, but it is somehow more ethereal and satisfying in the end. I don't think this is solely because 'spirits' are involved.

I've written elsewhere on my blog about how I make a martini. You can read more about it HERE if you're interested. What's important to know is this: I swear to you that I can stand next to another person making martinis, and even though we both use exactly the same ingredients in exactly the same proportions, added in exactly the same order, our martinis will taste different. I like to think that mine will be better, but that is probably just a matter of personal preference.

I think that there is a fourth ingredient to a proper martini, beyond gin, vermouth, and garnish, that is not measurable nor discernible. That ingredient is where the ethereal comes into play. I don't even know what it is. It may be love. It may be purity of heart. It may be reverence for the ritual. I don't know, but I do know that whatever it is, it makes a difference, and that difference shapes a lot of my life.

I'm not about to abandon the rituals I've embraced, and at my age I'm probably not going to embrace any new ones either. This doesn't mean I won't change. I certainly will. Change for me has its own attendant rituals, which, practiced with sufficient reverence, render it more charming than surprising, more celebratory than fearsome. I'm happy to change, but I still don't like nasty surprises. Whatever changes I make, you can be certain that I won't be riding a white horse or bringing any vipers to church.

Another Hot Mess

(This entry is part of a writers' prompt exercise at Studio 30 Plus. Take yourself a merry little jaunt over there to see some fine writing. Maybe you'll want to join up.)

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

It was a fair question. Necessary even, under the circumstances, as she had appeared unbidden and unannounced and dressed in such a way as seemed calculated to land me in hot water. I'm not talking about a short skirt or low-cut blouse either. She was full-on exotic dancer provocative in thigh-high leather boots and a thong—too much make-up, too little fabric, and jewelry in places that would have been uncomfortable had she made even the slightest attempt at modesty by covering them up.

“Paul asked me to stop by,” she said, as if that explained everything.

Now, Paul is a man of the cloth—a born-again evangelical preacher of the fire and brimstone variety. Paul has a take-no-prisoners approach to the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and his sermons often leave the blue haired ladies who sit in the front pews nodding their heads in judgment while the rest of the congregation squirm in their seats as their spiritual failings are recounted from the pulpit. Paul is not the kind of man who would casually ask a stripper to “stop by,” let alone to stop by wearing one of the costumes of her profession.

Paul has his secrets to be sure—as do we all—dark thoughts and unseemly proclivities and occasional passions that would chill the bones of his associates if ever they were exposed. I know all of Paul's secrets, or at least I thought I did, because I created them. I gave them to him along with his sculpted hair, graying just so at the temples, his twelve hundred dollar suits, his bottled tan, and his honey timbered baritone voice. I gave Paul everything he has and made him everything he is and settled him down to stir the currents and confound the aspirations of the other characters in my next book. Paul is a character in a work of fiction, my work of fiction. He is not supposed to be making life choices I don't know about. He is not supposed to be changing up the mix and adding new actors into my narrative. He's not. He knows this . . . or should.

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Elise.”

“Don't you think you're a little . . . I don't know . . . tawdry for a visit to a parsonage?”

“We're not in a parsonage, silly. We're in your office—the same office where you wrote your last book. What was it called? Speedster? You know, the one that was full of strippers and kinky sex and ridiculous cars and enough dead bodies to fill a good sized morgue. I really don't think I'm too tawdry for the room that spawned that hot mess, do you?”

“I suppose not, Elise, but this is a different book. I like to think I've got range as a writer. I want to demonstrate that range by writing books that are different from the ones I've already written. I don't want to feature exotic dancers in every book I write just because I did it once.”

“Um, who's the most successful author you know?”

“Well, I don't actually know her, but that would be J.K. Rowling.”

“And you think she showed a lot of range, as you call it?”

“Well yeah, I do.”

“Jonah. sweetie, she wrote the same book seven times. Same characters. Same plot. Same audience. Same themes. Voldemort concocts some scheme to get rid of Harry Potter. Potter goes out of his way to avoid confrontation so he can wallow in adolescent angst and increasingly hormonal pursuits. Dumbledore steps in to teach Potter a lesson about destiny and perseverance. In the end, Potter triumphs over evil, usually by accident. Somewhere in the middle there's a quidditch match.”

“So you don't think she's a good writer?”

“She's brilliant. What I'm saying is you don't have to run a different race every time you break out of the gate. You can be a good writer, and successful too, writing the same stuff over and over and over. Once you've found your audience, they're not going to get tired of your schtick. That's what made Harry Potter popular. That's why there are about a million girls my age writing vampire romance and a million women of a certain age writing dirty stories about forbidden love. People want the same thing over and over, and all you've got to do is change the names to keep them engaged.”

“I'm not buying it. You can't reduce literature to some repeatable formula. It's all about bending rules and pushing boundaries.”

“So now you're trying to tell me that Speedster was literature? Please!”

“No. No. Of course not. I wanted to write something commercial. I felt like I needed to make some money so I could afford the luxury of writing something good.”

“And how did that work out for you?”

It was a revelation to learn at this point just how well a naked girl can do smug. Her smile was textbook. She was right of course. I've sold maybe 40 copies of Speedster in the four months since I published it—not exactly keeping my muse in champagne and silks.

“Not as well as I would have liked,” I admitted.

“So you need to write at least one more commercial book, don't you? And if that one doesn't succeed, you'll need to write another, and another, and so on until you can finally afford to be an artist. Tell me I'm wrong.”

“You know I can't do that, else you wouldn't even be here.”

“But I'm not here for you. I'm here for Paul.”

“That again? I may have allowed Paul a certain amount of freedom within the book, but he can't dictate new characters and sub-plots to me. It's just not done.”

“You'll have to take that up with Paul.”

“Paul? I'm the author here. You may be able to show up in my office, but you don't get into the book unless I write you in. It's as simple as that.”

Elise was trying to look thoughtful or distracted as I said this. I couldn't tell which. She probably would have adjusted an article of clothing if she'd been wearing any. As it was, she just stared at her fingernails like she was trying to decide if she needed a manicure.

“I think you know it's actually quite a bit more complicated than that,” she said at last. “If you don't write me in, Paul's not going to show up. I'm a condition of his continued participation.”

“What is this, some kind of work action?” I asked. “A character in my book, a character who is wholly my invention, is going to strike if I don't accede to his demand? And his demand is that I provide him with a stripper? Really, this is too much.”

“Yeah, well, at the risk of sounding flippant, you made him the way he is so it's really on you, isn't it?”

And so it is.

“It seems you and Paul have me over a barrel,” I said.

“I know,” she said, batting her eyelids to emphasize the irony. “So you're going to write me in?”

“Sure, but we both understand you're a product of my imagination, right?”

She hesitated. Something like worry creased her forehead.

“Um, yeah?”

“Then I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you breast implants.”