The Hem-nal is a mixed genre work, part of a multimedia collaboration with colleague and friend Charlotte M. Porter. Joint projects take many forms. Ours has been a shared experience of parallel words and worlds. We overlap, we diverge as we move like dowsing rods searching for water. Or, as recently discovered in my town, bodies. The Hem-nal is a mixed genre work, part of a multimedia collaboration with colleague and friend Charlotte M. Porter. Joint projects take many forms. Ours has been a shared experience of parallel words and worlds. We overlap, we diverge as we move like dowsing rods searching for water. Or, as recently discovered in my town, bodies. Our dialogues are lively – like those of the real and imagined characters we conjure. The weight of importance falls equally on a fictional character, relative, and famous person. The hem of a skirt or a dress offers an edgy point of departure. A fragile fortification separates the public space from the private. A borderland always presents temptations. A premise for sifting through drama-dust in the safe versus free debate. A hem, unlike many demarcations, fluctuates according to fashion, mores and personal whim. How much of a woman’s body is available for viewing? The eyes of the Other can caress, judge, map, speculate. In the course of collaborating, we’ve discussed the power of style, at times with a critical, narrowing gaze, at times with bemused awe. I am in thrall of the hem as much as one in a canoe headed for the rapids. No way out, a forced encounter with turbulence. I am sometimes stitching up a scene, sometimes hoping to rip out a heart. I try to free the bird and save the sequins, no matter how chipped. I need glinting light to track the beasts, uncloak phantoms that render us mute and helpless. Hems are a metaphor for limits placed on unexplored territory. Birds appear throughout as a meditation on autonomy. Unlike a woman who learns to express her point of view, a bird cannot articulate its integrity. For centuries, the nightingale’s song was made synonymous with human longings and fears. Failure to recognize our separateness from other animals’ reality will likely continue the spiral of species extinction. In terms of human interaction, a boundless ego destroys vitality and intimacy. The “Chorus” is a boisterous gang whose comments on the action and characters are in turn revealing, oblique and rude. In its more innocent reality, a hem is simply a finish to a garment, a means to keep the fabric from unraveling. In more sinister moments, I think of it as soft barbed wire. The word hem is rife for word play in combination with homonyms. Associations set up resonances that unite the subjective and sacred, the raucous and reflective.
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Two Hem-nal Portraits
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