So this past Tuesday was our last Keyhole Session of the season and it was a pretty fantastic night. Not that that means we’re going to be totally absent over the summer. In August, there’s talk of doing another Girls on Film session, seeing as how the first one was so successful. Nothing’s confirmed yet, but once it is I’ll be posting about it here & elsewhere.
Before that happens, however, we have this: SneakPeek. From July 8th to July 13th we’ll be showing off some of the best artwork that’s come out of the past 55 Keyhole Sessions at the Gladstone Art Bar, here in Toronto. Click through to find more information about both the exhibition and our Gala opening on July 10th. There’s a chance, space & time allowing, that I’ll be doing a bit of a demo at the opening. Hopefully I can find myself a little corner I can tie in…

The ToroGRUE 2 happened. After a lively meet & greet Friday night, Saturday was a day full of amazing discussions from a mix of brilliant minds. Sunday, lots of pancakes happened, made by Men in Kilts, followed by a little bit more GRUEing. I don’t think any of us were expecting the Sunday session to continue quite as it did, but I for one loved it. Graydancer has a post up about his impressions of this GRUE – the second in Toronto, and certainly not the last – as well as what I think might be the best picture of him and I I’ve seen to date:

Men In Kilts With Kitchen Implements

Our first ever Girls on Film Keyhole Session happened. Lots of fantastic shots came out of that night. A sure success, and one we’ll for sure be repeating. I had a LOT of fun, tying for Keyhole in a way I don’t often get a chance to. Fast, and for restraint as opposed to purely aesthetics. A pretty complete collection of shots from that night can be found here One of my favourite shots of the evening, below, was taken by VoulaVous and I think is simply lovely.

The following week The Keyhole Sessions and Art Battle Toronto teamed up for Art Battle 6. The final Battle of that night was two artists painting two of our models. I tied in front of the Art Battle crowd… not sure what they were expecting but they were certainly paying attention. Sonya shot a video of me tying, which is good as it shows the crowd around us but I still find it very strange watching myself tie on video.

As a result of my work with The Keyhole Sessions I’ve been invited to give a workshop on Tying the Female Form as part of Kinky4Play. That’s happening mid-August. I’ll post more details as they come up.

I discovered a new online artist (thanks to a blog post by Violet Blue) whose work I admire and am following with great interest. Ben Newman keeps a blog at bennewmanart.blogspot.com and is very much worth a look. Here’s a sample piece of his. (I am such a fan of the red rope in this.)

"Handle with Care" by Ben Newman

Part of the Sunday session at the GRUE was a discussion I led (after making many pancakes and watching Graydancer wrassle with my partner A.) on Philosophies of Service. I’m expanding that with more notes and thoughts, with the idea of eventually turning it into a class. Yes, I’d like to get on that touring circuit. But I don’t feel any great need to get on that circuit as a rope educator. At least, not at this moment. Who knows, that may change with time.

Actually a test of two things. Posting from Wordpress 2 on my iPhone – which seems to be working just fine, thank you very much – and dropping this Formspring question box here, as well as on Twitter. It won’t be on forever but I’m curious to see what comes of it.

I got home from ArtCore last night around one in the morning, a very heavy bag of rope over one shoulder and a bag of chinese takeout in the other. As usual I brought WAY more rope than I used, but I just know if I’d decided to bring less than I did I would have needed more… that’s just how it goes.

The event was amazing, a packed and raucous crowd filling Bread & Circus in support of Good For Her and the Feminist Porn Awards. I’m glad I got to be a part of it. I got to have conversations with various people while I was tying, people both novice and experienced who all wanted, for whatever reason, to touch the rope.

Let me just make this clear: to touch the rope, but not the beautiful people IN the ropes. Now that’s something.

We gave away two passes to the Keyhole Sessions at the end of the night, and of COURSE I know the person who won them. It was a sort of last-minute decision to offer the passes, and having me step up onstage at the end of the night while they were being given away. I do wish, in retrospect, that I’d given a bit more thought into what I was going to say when I got up there. As it was I said nothing. Which I know will be not surprising at all to those of you out there who know me. I can’t think of a time when I’ve not preferred to be more invisible than not. What will be surprising, and what you can kind of tell from the picture above, is that I was wearing a tie. Grey, of course.

The pic above is of my second tie of the night – a bodycorset on Jen in black and orange. I knew before I arrived at Bread & Circus that night I was going to do the corset tie at some point. In many ways it’s the most crowd-pleasing tie I have, a kind of showpiece. A great many cameraphones started flashing away while I was tightening the lacing down Jen’s back. I feel I should say here again that tie was inspired by Leon of Monkeyfetish.com, based on an arm-only version I learned in one of his classes at Shibaricon 2008. Thanks, Leon. I owe you for that one.

I’ve included other pics of each of the models, as well as the piece of writing each one gave to me in advance, as I mentioned in my last post about the event, on this page here. I’m expanding the WORK section of the website. Up until now I’ve had it hidden, but it seems like since more and more work is coming my way, I might as well make note of it.

For example: at the end of the night there was talk of having me back to perform at the next fundraiser Good For Her is throwing in February. Needless to say, not only am I totally game for that idea, but I’ve already started tossing around performance ideas in my head.

I’ve been invited to perform at ArtCore, a fundraiser being thrown by Good For Her in support of the 2010 Feminist Porn Awards. The show’s happening this Friday, November 6th at Bread & Circus theatre in Kensington Market. It’s at 299 Augusta, so just a little bit south of College and west of Spadina. Here’s a link to the Facebook Event page. It’s ten bucks, 19+ only (a licensed venue), and doors open at 8pm. It is shaping up to be a pretty fantastic evening, with a great lineup of videos and performances throughout the night by Dylan Ryan, Frances Mahon and Ab Horrence.

From Good For Her’s release:

“One person’s art is another person’s porn, and one person’s porn is another person’s art. ArtCore will look at art influenced porn and porn influenced art with video screenings and performances that laugh in the face of boundaries between the erotic and the artistic.

Featuring clips from both new directors and new work from Feminist Porn Award winning directors, this evening promises you’ll never look at fruit, hot dogs, Barbie dolls or fully clothed men in quite the same way again.”

I’ll be tying before the show, during the intermission, and after the show is done. I’m not sure WHERE I’ll be working… I have a feeling that’ll get sorted out on the night. Wherever there’s space, pretty much. Pictures will be posted after the fact, as long as permission is granted by each of the three models I’ll be working with.

Two of the models – Jen & Mara – I’ve worked with quite a lot at the Keyhole Sessions. In fact, both of them were there from the very beginning, and are not only familiar now with my style of tying, but comfortable with me, which is important. The third person, and first up in the evening, is my friend Laura who I’ve tied before in a demo-like situation and am looking forward to getting some rope on again.

When I was approached to take part in this event, and found out that they wanted me to tie, I was a little apprehensive at first. Frankly, I was worried about the optics of the whole thing. I wasn’t sure how me tying up pretty ladies fit in with the context of the evening, and I didn’t want to do it if it meant I was going to stick out as being THAT guy. After talking about it a bit with Chase & Alison, the organizers of both this event and the Feminist Porn Awards, we came up with a way to have the ropework fit into the context of the evening.

Each model is giving us a piece of writing, a few paragraphs at most, about how the act of being tied or being in bondage makes her feel stronger, more empowered or connected with her sexuality in a positive and healthy way. Each model’s piece will be printed large and displayed behind her, or just off to the side, while I’m tying so that the audience has a bit of an inside view on her experience. I’m hoping as well – and I’ll encourage this – that the models will interacting with the audience to a degree while they’re being tied. The last thing I want is for the models to be disconnected or passive. I want them to be engaged, both with the audience and with me.

I hope it works. I’ll of course be answering any questions the audience might have, as best I can. Not to mention live tweeting as often as is possible.

This is what I spent the night of October 3rd, 2009 doing. And I have to say, there are much worse ways to spend an evening.

The Keyhole Sessions hosted a special event at Nuit Blanche this year, “Girls.Grease.Rope” and it was a blast. Seven models, six hours, two riggers, a lot of energy and some fantastic artwork made for a very memorable and exciting evening. Everyone pulled together and the whole night ran amazingly smoothly.

Click on the picture above for the Madame’s wrap-up post about the evening, she pretty much covers all the necessary thank-yous and shout-outs. My co-rigger for the evening, lotuslily, blogged some thoughts about the night here, and Skellington, one of our models, wrote about her first experience on stage for us here. I haven’t done much digging, but I imagine a search on Flickr  for “nuit blanche keyhole sessions” or even just “nuit blanche hot girls rope” might come up with a few images. Besides the amazing number of people who came out to draw, there certainly was no shortage of cameras, phone- and otherwise.

We took last week off of the Keyhole Sessions, giving us all a chance to recouperate. We’re back on stage this Tuesday the 13th, in the lower studio at 100 A Ossington in Toronto. If you’re around and feel like getting pencil to paper, come on by.

Thanks to @violetblue for the tip.

“So, in the “couches” area, around a gradually growing cluster of onlookers, an older bald man (a fairly popular look in this crowd, it seems) started intricately trussing up his lithe female model — in his words, he was “adorning her body” — while maintaining a steady smile and light banter. It was a demonstration of a Japanese bondage called shibari, and it looks absurdly complicated. Bald bondage guy did explain, mostly lucidly, exactly what he was doing: touching on the purpose, intent, execution, and theory. (He even gave a brief lay introduction to the body’s pressure points and sweat glands.) Still, those strikingly symmetrical knots and twists seemed impossible to recreate without a ready, detailed set of instructions, IKEA-style. Which made it less a lesson than entertainment, and erotic appeal aside, it was — like any finely honed art — mesmerizing.”

From this article in the Huffington Post, posted on the 10th of August. A NYC-based writer attends LoveFestIV and is disappointed, it seems, that he wasn’t walking into an orgy.

That’s a picture, taken by Chelsea Miya, of some of my work for the Keyhole Sessions. I think this was taken in early May, quite possibly the second or third session. Chelsea was in the class that night writing an article for NOW Magazine, a local Toronto weekly. She spent most of the class taking pictures of the models, and during the intermission and after the class spoke to the models, the organizer, and myself, about the experience of putting the class together, and a little bit about the ropework that makes up the majority of the second half of the night.

In the article I’m first referred to as “bondage enthusiast” which is appropriate. I’m not sure if the writer chose that particular phrasing after receiving the URL to this site, but regardless, it certainly sets the tone for the rest of the piece. It’s a solid article that really paints the class and the experience of it in a very positive light.

It also uses my name.

It uses my name, to be clear, in a totally consensual way. As soon as I heard that someone from NOW was going to be at the class that night, I knew what was going to happen. Immediately I knew what I was doing, at the end of the night as soon as I started answering the questions the journalist was asking me. In the back of my head, I guess I’d been waiting for the moment to make myself more public – if for no other reason than to be able to stop thinking about having to conceal this side of myself.

In an earlier post, I wrote, “I’ve been thinking of the power behind naming a thing, especially in an environment like this one where a name, once said, is always present.” This is how things are for me, now – it is and will always be present. As it stands, when you google me, the NOW article shows up on either the first or second page – usually right after a bunch of old theatre links and some Twitter highlights. Not that I think I’ll be googled that often, but I do work in the digital media field. You never know. Googling people you meet has become a pastime for some, these days, with SO much information available online – often as a sort of pre-date credentials check.

I don’t care, much, if at all. Things going on in my life right now make hiding any part of myself, especially a part that has given me and continues to give me so much, self-destructive and self-denying to a truly upsetting degree. To continue to spend even the smallest amount of energy in any kind of masking is counter productive to the point of insanity. LIfe is stressful enough as it stands right now to add to it, in any way.

My father’s body is full of cancer – bones, blood and brain. After three years of clean tests it’s come rushing back at a pace nobody could have foreseen. He’s started chemo & radiation, but it’s still too early to tell if it’s had any effect; even if it has, what he is full of is incurable. It’s going to take him, sooner or later. I have no illusions about that. I also cannot help but think about my grandfather, who also (I found out, quite a bit later) died of cancer.

To be clear – this is NOT me sounding some kind of genetic death knell. I am Not quite that degree of pessimist. I have been warned, many times, against holding on to thoughts like this, to “putting that kind of energy out there”. Regardless of what I might think about that sort of energy-philosophy, truly, I’m not. What I am doing is thinking more about how I want to spend my time, and my focus, and my energy.

I’m thinking more about what it means to be named, now, and what it’s going to mean to my life from this point on.