Twenty women I loved in my twenties :: Yana

You’re here for the artistic nude.

You are rooted in the slight fetish I had as a child for Yoko Ono. Some unconventional looking artist that seemed to do very ‘deep’ things that made no sense to me and with whom my idol, John Lennon, who looked like my dad, fell madly in love. Some iconic woman who made me feel there were deeper, mystic truths to uncover and that somehow art, sex and music were the key.

That’s why you are here. I need a female artist. We. I mean We. My artistic partner and I. Dieter, you know. The guy next to me, here. The cool distracted one, without the inner demons. We do a lot of stuff together. We want to be famous, it’s sickening, it’s a disease, it’s destroying me, we are attention whores. Which sucks. When you don’t get that much attention.

That’s why you are here. We want to market this Female Alphabet, this auto-therapy of mine, this exhibitionist feat.

We can’t put pictures of the actual girls here. Except in the one case where the girl sent in her picture to go with it.

And it really needs pictures. Nude pictures. To make up for the absence of a story.

And that is why you are here. And also because part of me hopes to have sex with you. Which won’t work, because even though I hate to admit it, I’ve become monogamous and as the years go by I find it harder and harder to hide the inner demons and play the game, the role-playing game to get you into bed.

The concept:

24 girls we don’t know (24 and not 26 because there is no Q and one of them prefers to have her own picture there)

naked

convinced to pose naked by just asking them on the street

to go with each letter

posing in a way that fits the girl that goes with the letter

is it smart marketing-wise?

No, idea. My partner and I always have ideas that seem to be good. But don’t always pay off when put in practice.

24 naked girls. With several pages of psychological rants going with each of them.

Is there a market for that? Can one sell one’s love life?

The girls can be found. Of course they can be found.

That’s not the problem.

Is there a market for it?

And is that really the question when you are doing something creative, something you feel passionate about?

What if nobody reads this female alphabet? Except, stealthily the girls described in it.

Yana, what do you think? You are what I am not: a non-conformist artist. You just do what you want to do, you have your own aesthetic vision and you’re not an attention whore. You’re just professional about what you do passionately.

Is there a market for it?

You don’t know. And you don’t care.

You want to shoot great pictures of girls who have a little ‘extra’ to offer and that fit with the alphabet.

I want to ask if you like the alphabet. But the possibility that you might not, is so nauseating that I don’t ask.

Caring so much about my own writing makes me extremely vulnerable.

Why am I writing about writing in a book about the women in my life?

Because the two are related.

When I was a teenager and way too shy and too socially awkward I could only communicate with women through letters. That’s how I started to write, as a bridge to girls. A bad bridge by the way. More like an unstable pontoon bridge. Letters are ineffective at starting a relationship, whereas they can be very effective in deepening an already existing relationship.

I want readers just as much as I once wanted girls. And I am as frustrated now, readerless, as I was girlless.

Both frustrations have the same root: a chronic ego hunger, a need to feel ‘significant’. And getting readers won’t do it. It won’t make me feel significant. It will get me problems I can’t even imagine now.

Still, I feel every day how my ego yearns for them. Masses of them.

Yana says it’s not a good idea to put nude pictures here, if the only point is to attract readers.

The point should be showing some of their essence. The only real worth according to her is that I tried to de-objectify the girls and dug for their real personality and how they influenced me and I them. That’s what the pictures should convey. That may or may not lead to readers, but we don’t even have to think about that. We just have to focus on making something that means something to us, the artists. Readers are only bonus.

You mean that. You are convinced of that. You live that way, Yana. You don’t need any external proof to feel significant. And I see in your eyes how you find it repelling, my hunt for feelings of ‘significance’.

Can you cure me, Yana? No, I don’t mean by having sex with me. I mean, really, cure me. How do you do that? Create your art and simply not care if any one values it or not? How do you do that? How do you convince yourself it’s not a complete waste of time if nobody notices it? Don’t you get angry when people get lots of attention with stuff that is sometimes a lot poorer than what you do? How do you deal with that? Or you simply don’t care? Tell me, Yana. Can an attention whore stop being an attention whore and focus on his art for art’s sake?

Do the pictures. I can’t. I would put them in poses to attract readers and somehow I would push potential readers away by doing so. I have tried to bring out something authentic in the girls I have had the privilege to share my life with, on these pages. And only here and there I have written for effect.

Add an authentic picture to each of them. They deserve that, really they do. All these girls that are part of who I am.

Don’t think about the marketing aspect, don’t let my business and success mania poison you or you’ll never be succesful ever again. There are no business and marketing models that apply to art. Most a pity.

You can only put soul into what you do and in what you write.Write for yourself first. Would you still write it if you were the last person on earth?

And so I chose to write about what I feel most passionate about. What touches my soul in the most profound way. Women.

My soul is in it. And my soul will be my soul, whether anybody reads it or not. It’s not how I want it to be, but it’s the truth.