The fruit theme is continuing this week, jumping from the golden apples in an earlier post to the noble pineapple in this one. I haven’t got a third fruit-inspired post in the works, but since I’ve got a fortnight to come up with my next one, let’s not be too quick to rule anything out…
One of the things I get up to, when I’m not writing, is the occasional session of life modelling at my local arts centre. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, and I really enjoy it. I’ve sat (and stood, and reclined) for lots of classes where people come to hone their skills in sculpture, photography, painting and drawing. Sometimes they have one session with me; sometimes two (over two weeks); sometimes six (over six weeks.) For some of the sessions, I am clothed. For other sessions, I am not clothed at all. I am entirely naked.
This, as you can imagine, prompts a lot of reactions from people when I tell them this is something I do. Most often, people tell me how brave I am. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to about this has said it’s something they could never do.
But I used to feel like I couldn’t do it, either — and that was precisely why I started doing it. When I first saw the callout for a new intake of models, I reflected on how I’ve spent more than forty years feeling anxious and self-conscious, about my looks and my body, about my masculinity. What better way, I concluded, of challenging these unhelpful feelings than by taking my clothes off in front a room full of strangers?
My first batch of sessions were all clothed; a good way of getting me used to the process, I reckon. It was several months before my first unclothed assignment — a six-week sculpture course. Twelve hours of nudity with ten people scrutinising me in detail and translating what they saw into clay figures — figures of me.
Me, naked.
Standing there in my thin dressing gown, nodding and nervously greeting the artists as they came into the room, I had a moment of blind panic and did not think I could actually go through with it. Once they were all set up at their stations, the tutor gently invited me to take up my position, on a turntable, four feet in diameter. Every half an hour, I’d be rotated a quarter-turn so everyone got to observe me from all angles. (The sensation of being rotated has made me realise how a platter of food on a Lazy Susan must feel.)
The robe was off! I did it! I got naked without crying or collapsing or having a panic attack!
For the first five minutes, I sat on that turntable with a cacophony of voices shouting inside my head — “They’re looking at your scars and they think you’re weird!” — “They’re appalled by your belly fat!” — “They think you’re pathetic because you’re not muscular like a real man’s supposed to be!” — “Look at his pathetic little penis!” — and so on, and so on. Those voices had PLENTY to talk about.
But then, five minutes in, something shifted. The voices went quiet. I realised that everyone around me was so busy trying to block out the basic shapes of their sculpture that they really had no time to waste on anticipating or managing my private feelings of inadequacy. To them, I was a mass of shapes and curves and volumes and shadows, something to replicate or interpret as they saw fit. There is no trace of disrespect in this; if anything, I’d say this polite focus on the (literal) work in hand is a gesture of enormous respect. A silent recognition of how vulnerable the model is, and an unspoken gratitude for that vulnerability expressed by everyone trying their hardest to produce a piece of work they feel proud of.
I’ve done loads of these sessions by now, clothed and unclothed, and my comfort and my confidence have grown hugely. My anxieties and insecurities, I’ve come to accept, are just that: my anxieties and insecurities. But if the tutor placed an inanimate object in front of the artists, they would and should behave no differently towards it. So, I realised, I should behave no differently than the inanimate object would.
The object I gravitate towards thinking about is always a pineapple. A pineapple has no hang-ups about how it looks; it is a pineapple, and that’s all there is to it. It would sit on that turntable and would positively revel in its own pineapple-ness, so that the artists have the best opportunity to observe and capture its pineappley spirit in their work. So now, that’s what I try to do, too. I am there at the service of their development as artists, and of their enjoyment of making art. I’m not there for the purpose of dealing with my own lifelong demons. It just so happens that I get to do that as a convenient by-product of their art-making.
It’s good to be reminded sometimes that, while we may be the centre of our own universe, we are far from the centre of everyone else’s. That realisation isn’t diminishing; it’s enlarging. It’s a gentle nudge to focus our energies and attentions where they can be put to best use — to control what is within our control, and ultimately, our own choices are all that’s within our control. (Can you tell I’ve been reading The Daily Stoic every day like a good boy?)
I can’t control what the artists think of me when I’m perched on the turntable with no clothes on. I can, however, control how I feel within that situation. I can choose to positively revel in my own pineapple-ness. And I’d urge you to revel in yours, too, as often as you can.
