Court Portrait - Queen of Cups

Think you know yourself? Try your hand at acting, and you may be surprised at what surfaces.

I've given it up myself, mostly. There was a time when I used to find myself onstage quite often, but one night during a painful argument with a close friend I realized I had lost my ability to subjectively grasp my own emotions. As my eyes welled up tears, I caught myself thinking: Should I let the tears fall, so he sees how hurt I am? Or should I stifle them so that I seem more independent? Which would be preferable?

I became bothered by the fact that I was having these thoughts instead of actually experiencing the moment as it occurred. If I was detached enough to play director, how hurt could I really be? So I ended the argument, and I took some time off from acting.

There are people I know who make me want to do a lot more of it. I knew Amy Lee had that quality before I'd even seen her onstage -- in our few chats she struck me as being more genuinely interested in others than most actors I'd known, and more self-aware. Naturally, I assume there's a sad story behind all this. But that is what drew me to AL, the access she granted to both her joy and her sadness, the former shining just above the surface, the latter suspended just below the crust like a rich vein of oil. I've seen Medea smile lovingly with those lips, seen Nurse Ratched weep real tears from those eyes, and somehow they were just as believable as the snarling. As real as the blood.

You can imagine my pleasure in seeing this portrait of the artist as a woman confronting her own reflection, hovering on either side of terminal point where the observation threatens to switch places with her observer. On one side of the glass bright lights emanate, on the other side you see the darkness creeping in from behind. The cup, suitably enough, is just another prop; the litter of empties hints at the long day behind, the long night ahead.

This particular figure, the Queen of Cups, is often imagined to be somewhat inaccessible, gazing raptly into inner space. If she ever hopes to share the observations that lie within, she must either attempt to drag them to the surface (a task better suited to the Princess/Page of Cups), or she must lure people down into the depths where they can apprehend her vision with their own eyes. In my opinion, that is the real challenge and magic of theatre: convincing a stranger in the audience to hold his breath, suspend his disbelief, and dive (not to mention pointing him back at just the right moment, before he can panic and drown).

I don't know if I have the elemental infrastructure to spend any great amount of time exploring those reefs -- my last stab at acting commanded more introspection offstage than on. But will always love watching others try, and I love following them down to the places which they know so well, the underwater fumaroles that give off such surprising heat.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Queen of Cups

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Court Portrait - Page of Swords

If you ever decide to explore the nether-wharfs and industrial rockslides of Brooklyn and Queens, I recommend bringing a friend, or a camera, or both. Matters of aesthetic appreciation aside, personal safety is an issue you do not want to neglect -- you need to maximize the odds that at least one of member of your party will stagger back to the police station, hair blanched into dandelion fluff from pure shock, to file the report. Or at the very least, that a poorly-lit photo providing clues about your last few moments will turn up on the internet.

Colin has been a great companion on these adventures. He has a great photographic eye, an hyperactive imagination, and all of the reflexes necessary to slither over or around a chain link fence without harm to life, limb, or lens.

In the city, carrying a camera is almost like carrying a weapon. Cameras utilize the same terminology as guns (aim, shoot, reload), the same focusing and timing skills, the predatory instincts. We use them to grasp, perceive, capture, and indict each other. Pretty much everyone is packing a camera these days on their cell phones, but even so, nothing raises suspicion faster than poking around and taking pictures. Many cities are making efforts to criminalize this sort of activity, even as government surveillance of the public continues to escalate. This spring I was stopped and questioned in Mesa, AZ while walking around in broad daylight taking pictures of old roadside motel signs; the cops were polite enough, but couldn't figure out -- even after I explained -- why anyone would be doing what I was doing.

The backstreets, waterways and blasted heaths of the outer boroughs are a rich breeding ground for inspiration, but you have to be willing to go out and look for yourself, to brave the unpleasant sights and smells and maybe people, to always be ready with brave smile and an excuse should you run into trouble. Whatever you bring back with you (the memory of a silver egret seen dancing among piles of shredded tires, a photo of an ancient mechanical relic) is yours to keep and sow into whatever you are working on or thinking about.

That's the idea that I think this portrait has captured. The Page of Swords seems perfectly at home in a world of lush decay, both organic and technological, dense with information. Even the sky has writing on it! Colin appears truly innocuous -- a mixed blessing, he would probably say -- but he could very easily be up to no good. There is a tension here too, as if he's spring-loaded to vanish at the first sign of alarm. What is he looking at, and why? As he hovers there on the ledge, you want to see what he sees.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Princess of Swords

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Court Portrait - The Page of Wands

July 18th, 2010 8:29PM:

me: I was wondering if you could bring yourself to write a few sentences about how you feel you might relate to this card. Really, anything. I'll fill in the rest.

annsley:Yes, I will write something

annsley: but not right now when I'm hungover from daydrinking

me: haha

me: I might use this conversation in the post...

We all have our own preferred way of seeing ourselves, and I'm always interested in observing which Tarot cards an individual is personally drawn to, which expressions of self they choose to identify with. In our haste to classify ourselves, we often forget one of the Tarot's underlying principles, which is that each of us contains all of these characters, they reside in us and surface with very little effort, despite the apparent contradictions that they expose in our personalities. In that light, I find it just as interesting to note the cards in which an individual (including myself) is least interested.

In this series of posts that follow, I do not aim to pigeon-hole certain friends of mine into specific categories of characterization. The assignment of cards was a nearly random process; in some cases the subject chose for themself, in other cases I chose. Some of the images are self-portraits, some of them were shot by me personally. In all cases the subject was asked to consider how they felt they could relate to their assigned card, and I will pass on those reflections to you wherever possible.

Consider the case of Annsley, pictured above. Consider her salubrious Fourth of July barbecue, also pictured. Historically, Annsley is not someone I would've associated with the freewheeling, childlike, unreliable Page (or Princess) of Wands. Annsley is very responsible, a hard-headed intellectual who also happens to be scarily attuned to her own emotions, and is therefore often extremely intuitive with regards to her own motivations as well as those of others. If anything, I figured I'd probably turn her loose with one of the Swords cards.

That brings us back to the barbecue in question, to which I arrived quite late. In terms of drinking I caught up with everyone pretty quickly, and in terms of eating I was happy to pick through the ripe remainders piled high on the picnic table and eavesdrop on everyone's chats. It was in the middle of my third cream-filled cupcake that something occurred to me: Annsley is really good at throwing a party. She's also really good at attending a party. For someone who comes across as so well put-together, she's got a real knack for relaxing and letting things fall spectacularly out of control; she doesn't seem to question how the rebound or the recovery will occur, she just assumes that it will. That's a true gift for any hostess to have -- at my own parties I often find myself too busy imagining how I'll put everything back together to truly enjoy myself.

The Page of Wands is a mingling of the Fire and Earth elements, it revels in the heat of the former and the bounty of the latter. In her Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, Mary K. Greer writes: "You are likely to be frank and candid, artless and unstudied. You might explore things that are close at hand with a certain fearless grace and could be in strange surroundings where everything is unusual and fascinating... it suggests unexpected information, surprises, and new possibilities that might require immediate actions." Anyone who has attended one of the MetaFilter meetups Annsley's organized can probably attest to the veracity of this observation. By the end of these nights, when everyone is sweaty and broke and borderline incoherent, we still feel as if we have accomplished something truly great.

So that's the first chapter in what will be a sixteen-card series of snapshots. My challenge to the reader for each of these: consider how you would portray yourself in these cards. What would you have to reveal or conceal about yourself in order for others to glimpse your inner multitudes? If you'd like to share pictures of your own, please send them to me and I'll put together a gallery for them after these sixteen entries are complete.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Page/Princess of Wands

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