shoshannalightsmith

Today in London the sun was flirting with the clouds and after a downpour I looked longingly at the bright trees in the wind but didn’t go out again. My daughter calms my sleepless little granddaughter. I had an awkward conversation with a friend who is not really a friend but one whose destiny has crossed mine. We don’t really understand each other.

I have six to ten weeks left in London…after 28 years.

I just finished a painting…an homage to four women executed for dancing in a room with men in a small village in Pakistan. They are being embraced by Nuestra Senora de la Caridad del Cobre.

Neustra Senora, they died for dancing, lift them up.

Peter said to Mary, “Sister, we know that the savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember – which you know (but) we do not, nor have we heard them.” Mary answered and said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.”

This painting came from ruminating on the mystery of the story of Mary Magdalene and the red egg, the exchange above from the Nag Hammadi gospels, which was followed by Mary imparting Jesus’s teaching on visions: seen not with the soul or the spirit but the mind which lies between, and finally a vision of Jesus coming out of a woman’s mouth on the breath. The following four pages of the texts is destroyed. It falls to us to reveal what is hidden and I have taken up the quest as my mantle. I trust the process of painting and intention to reveal what is hidden.

“There’s no such thing as bad taste, good taste is just something that doesn’t alienate you from your peers” Grayson Perry…speaking of taste—which shock/horror, does influence the arbiters of quality and even greatness—when did beauty lose it’s gravitas? How is it that comedy is considered insignificant and drama ‘worthy’…drama without comedy becomes polemic without humanity, it sinks into bathos—for me the great works all have comedy—not only does it supply an essential humanity but it throws one off guard so the true drama/tragedy can pierce the veil of our armoured hearts—drama with no levity can become relentless and unmoving, something to admire perhaps but not engaging the fullness of being, surely a hallmark of great art in any medium—but then again, it’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it? I’ll finish my little rant with a quote from Maggie Smith, a tip for actors and directors…’play everything like comedy, especially tragedy’…the divine paradox at play—keeping it light can actually be more effective, which surely is the point?

I walked into a shop today in London, in the rain, (at the beginning of the Diamond Jubilee, this aft the Thames will be covered with flotilla), to buy an articulated hand. That’s those wooden movable hands that artists use as references. they are also very beautiful. The shop, a wonderful shop called After Noah full of beautiful old things and charming repro, was playing some nostalgic music from the 30′s. ‘Never under-estimate the potency of cheap music,’ Noel Coward said…Boy was he right. I began to long for my late husband so much, who loved that kind of music, as do I, I actually was distracted by the enormity of the physical sensations washing over me. First a literal punch in the stomach and then a fluttery feeling in the throat akin to nausea and then tears stinging. Sometime ago my daughter’s golden hound pulled too hard on the leash and I, in slippery crocs, went flying, landing on my face….Wow. What a sensation. The world went white and I literally saw stars. So, all those cartoons weren’t exaggeration. The world continually amazes me.

These past few months I have been amazed as so many of the ancient prophecies we all longed for come to fruition. There does seem to be more unity consciousness and a continual revelation of that which was hidden.

It is said there are two more battles of dark and light to come…light will win but not without wounds…But what is this dark and light if not aspects of ourselves in the continual play? Choices of experience? I have also heard we live in a controlled experiment—like a Matrix, but positive in the sense it is inevitably benevolent. This particular experiment is to see what happens when the patriarchy is dominant and it is coming to an end…a forensic exercise and analysis of imbalance. So, those wonderful Twilight Zone episodes where the people find themselves in a ghost town finally to be picked up and stared at by a giant child take on a peculiar resonance.