2020-09-24 Sacred Geometries of Inspiration
Sacred Geometries of Inspiration
Location: Winters Retreat
Date and Time: September 24, 2020
Summary: Collaborating on projects
Mood Music: The Velvet Underground "All Tomorrow's Parties"
With the slings and arrows of misfortune occasionally flying their way, Jinny and Luu have settled into a rather mundane existence. Those who look at them from outside the bubble see that their life has been rather plain for a Los Angeles lifestyle. Sure, Luu has her fashion, with models coming in and out at all hours in various stages of being outfitted with the latest from Luu's fashion house - one which Jinny has started referring to as 'Hermès, by Luule.’ Sure, it probably has another official name, but the pun is right there and it's very hard to resist in Jinny's case. Still, she does as best she can, all things considered, only giggling, waving off the question of ‘what?’ with a subtle deflection to another subject.
While Luu is busy with her fashion, Jinny has been keeping herself busy as well. Shoe Antechamber 4-B has been converted into an art studio slash bedroom, with the twin bed set up finally and pushed against the back wall, the blankets mussed up from someone collapsing on it after a night of painting. Yes, she has kind of moved in here, more or less, declining to re-sign her lease and moving to a month-to-month kind of thing that can be dropped at any time. The landlord really doesn’t care; after all, she’s clean, rarely there, doesn't complain, and pays her rent on time, every month, in cash. Sure, he probably thought she was a stripper, but he wasn’t going to complain as long as the cash kept coming.
Canvases and sculptures are placed against the wall in various states of completion, the ones closer to the front door closer to being finished. A drafting desk has been set up with a light hanging above it, a few sketch pads strewn over the top, open to various artworks in different stages of completion, but the resident is not there. The door is left open and the shoes normally worn are here, which means that she’s more than likely somewhere in the house. Not barefoot, since socks are both cute and comfortable and allow sliding over polished floors which is what is seen as she comes around a corner, skidding to a halt in the arch separating the ballroom from the study - Luu’s workroom.
Rapping her knuckles on the door frame, Jinny peeks inside to see if her homosexual lifemate is busy inside. She more than likely is, thanks to multiple bolts of that urban camouflage, but it’s always nice to have someone nearby to bounce ideas off of or, in this case, just to have someone close.
Dressed in hip-hugger shorts and a long embroidered mostly see through tulle shirt with a cute flowered undershirt beneath, Jinny quietly makes her way in, sliding into the chair opposite, and curls her legs beneath her. Giving Luu a glance and a smile, she opens her sketchbook to a blank page and then carefully starts to sketch.
Now mostly free of way too many bolts of day glow urban camo, Luu’s time has just begun to free up for new projects. The stress of the camo and almost losing her ‘empire’ -- as small as it might be, it’s still how she lives -- had scattered to the winds a number of ideas Luu had been previously working on.
In her bedroom, sitting at her drafting table, Luu scans through her various notebooks and sketchpads. There are many possibilities, and that’s just the problem. The sheer amount of ideas and inspirations all call out to her waiting to be born. In time, she will likely nurse many of them into reality, but for now she needs to choose just one, but which one.
With the desk lamp lighting up her auburn colored hair, Luu ponders barefooted, while wearing a black tee screen-printed with the phrase ‘decadent and symmetrical’ in front of an appropriate triangular arrangement; and blue jeans; both well tailored; along with Celine frames. Flipping through the books, she lightly taps a pen against the side of her glasses, trying to decide her next artistic move.
The contents of the books almost seem like a collage in the variety of material they cover. There will be a page of a design for a new dress, followed by one filled with triangles, another with arcane sigils and formulae, esoteric postmodern doodles, some math, and more varieties of languages than most people would consider possible. The only real constant of this notebook is the bottom right hand corner, which Luu has turned into a flipbook of a duck waddling back and forth; its thoughtful pacing seems to mirror her current process.
As the door is knocked upon and then creaks opens, Luu turns her head to look, as she takes a moment to stretch out her arms over her head. “Hey,” she says with a smile as Jinny enters and slides into the chair next to her. “Camo dilemma is mostly taken care of,” she explains to her Chantrymate, “but now the task of figuring out what projects to fill that new time with. Someday I’ll figure out how to be in more than one place at a time, but for now? Limits that don’t exist.” A beat as she wonders, “What are you working on?”
Jinny peers over the edge of her sketchbook towards Luu, then back down where the scratching of her pencil follows, her thumb stroking over the graphite to spread it, to make a faded curve, blending it with light touches until it’s seamless with the line it’s growing off of. “Honestly? Just trying to spark an idea for my next mural. I’ve done the statement on the Church holding people back from their growth, I’ve done a togetherness one, I’m working on the Bullet Angel now in my room which is going well...but right now?” She turns the page to show Luu the sketch of a golden apple, a bite out of the side with the letters ‘isti’ still visible with the l half-hidden by the bite, a pyramid behind it, almost like something one might see on the side of a van or on some religious text.
“Right now I’ve got pretty much nothing to show for my time. Lots of sketches, half-baked ideas, visual puns, visual typos.” She flips through the pages as she does. Images of fish, eyes, figures in different poses, geometric symbols, circles made of triangles. “I’ve got a few memes that might spread a little, given time, or take hold and sweep the nation if it hits the ears or eyes of someone with that kind of reach.” A sketch of Kermit drinking a cup of tea, with the text ‘It’s not my business’ at the bottom. She turns the book back to her lap and begins to doodle again, something with straight lines that intersect, circling the border of the page. Interlocking Triangles. “I was hoping…” she murmurs, her pencil working as she talks. “That being near you would give me some ideas.”
Glancing over to her sketchbooks, Luu then looks back to Jinny, giving her a slight nod of understanding. “I get it,” she empathizes, “there’s a bunch of things I could do, but just doing them seems like the easy way to move forward. Sure, it gets me into a project, but at the same time it might not be the right one. It would mean there’s ideas I don’t even know I had that I skipped out on. Now, sometimes you just need to, like, do a project, but you also need to put some time in nurturing the flame. Make sure you’re not becoming derivative, and that you’re doing the best you can do.”
Leaning in, Luu takes a look at the sketch that Jinny’s showing her in the book. “Hmmmm,” Luu says as she thinks about this for a moment, “well, the Golden Apples from the Judgement of Paris are kind of a classic story, and shows both the problems of mortals and deities. It’s probably best well known from The Iliad, or maybe some Discordian text. However, it also comes up towards the end of ‘The Golden Ass.’ There’s a connection in there too with ‘The Golden Fleece’ of ‘Jason and the Argonauts.’ Apple, ass, and fleece seem like they could be used to make a number of visual puns referencing the three of those things.” Pausing a beat, she says, “You could also go all Hieronymous Bosch and make a slightly surreal and slightly mundane landscape in which there are a number of figures that each exist as different visual puns. There’s a number you could do with apple, ass, and fleece, but you might need other things. Perhaps a series of works, that are each a different visual pun on the idea?”
Reaching towards the drafting table, Luu pulls some of her clutter slightly to one side, making some room for Jinny. “I’d be happy to have the company,” she says to the other woman, “you can join me at the table, though it might be a bit crowded. You’re also welcome on the bed or wherever you might be comfortable.”
Jinny’s sketchbook fits perfectly on the cluttered tabletop, resting in the small clear space made among piles of fabric swatches, random needles and thread, and several pairs of scissors that almost certainly would spell her instantaneous doom if she dared cut anything but fabric with them. Jinny herself fits perfectly next to Luu, too after pulling up one of the ubiquitous rectangular stools on wheels that she’s often seen Luu’s assistants rolling around on while fitting whatever models happened to be in the vicinity that day. They’re generally used for automotive work, but it seems that Luu’s habitual repurposing of things for uses not entirely intended in the first place has brought the Snap-On tool dealer into the fray, albeit in a fractional amount. It honestly wouldn’t surprise Jinny if some portion of her automotive tastes made an appearance in next season’s collection.
“I think I’ll join you at the table.” Jinny says once she has done so, her drafting pencil laid across the open pages, adjusting herself so she’s close, but not too close to Luu, sitting back straight, shoulders back, chest forward. And, yes, while she tries to think of an appropriately witty comment on joining Luu on the bed (‘Haven’t we already done that a couple of times before?’ is the current front runner) she settles her elbow on the table, turning to face Luu with her legs hooked in the legs of the stool. “Golden Apples appear everywhere in folklore and myth. Mostly Greek and Roman, with a few mentions in Irish mythology. Dozens of fairy tales, too, and that’s not even going into the idea that words and meanings change over time. Tomatoes, oranges, even quinces could be the golden apple of yore. I mean, Plato talked about the fruit of the Argan tree which smelled of baked apples and looked like small golden apples in his writings about Atlantis, so there’s all sorts of things we could draw from. I mean….” She takes up her pencil and starts sketching. “I normally work in murals, but what might be interesting is a pop-up exhibition with a golden apple tree in the center. Come, take an apple, and see what dreams it may cause to come true. Even if it’s something as simple as a note, telling the bearer that they are loved and part of the city, that they are enough. A cute scarf. Some makeup. Simple, yet empowering words written in golden ink on paper tied around the stems of the apples….” Her pencil stops, the quick sketch of a tree there, its limbs heavy with golden fruit or, well, fruit as golden as one could make it in black and white. “It is an idea…” she says softly, starting to doodle in the bark, in the branches, the leaves turning from leaves to geometric triangle shapes, interlocking, fractals building from the branches over the page.
Scooching over a little more to the side, Luu makes room for Jinny at the table beside her. Tapping her pen against her glasses frames, she takes a moment to consider the other woman’s sketches. Luu hmmms lightly, as an idea begins to come to her mind, and a moment later her pen is in action. The new sketch begins as a series of triangles, just overlapping into a circular shape. Looped over this shape is a second circle, the circumference narrowing slightly as the formations of the triangle tighten up. Again and again, a series of shrinking geometry that begins to form a tunnel that seems to be collapsing towards a single point.
Before the procession can completely disappear, Luu intercepts it with the drawing of an apple. Instead of collapsing into a singularity, the shapes form into a visual pun of a wormhole. Emerging on the other side, the tunnel is transformed into sacred geometry. The apple seeds form into the ‘seed of life,’ and are given a new hyperbolic shape that moves outward to become a tapestry. A croquis is added, the sacred wrapping around the profane to create the shape of a new dress, clothing that transforms both in shape and purpose.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Luu finally responds after a few minutes of sketching, her eyes still locked on the newly created drawing. Turning her head to look at Jinny, Luu offers her a smile and notes, “It’s inspiring me at the very least, and it’s barely just arrived from your mind.”
The apple tree is a good idea, Jinny thinks. They should just have it appear somewhere in the city, unannounced, on some random day, like that stainless steel obelisk that appeared in the Utah desert, then observe from afar and see how people react. The last thing she’d want to have happen is someone plunder the thing for all the fruit that went on it because, magick aside, it would take a lot of work. That meant it would need to be somewhere very public. That would mean getting permits unless you do it guerilla style, which brings Luu’s street team into it. This is getting complicated. Jinny taps her pencil against the page as these thoughts come fast and furious, but as Luu starts sketching, Jinny glances over briefly and then finds herself distracted by the art that’s slowly spreading from the tip of Luu’s pen.
Is this what it’s like when someone watches her do her art? Jinny is quiet, her head tilted at a slight angle as she watches, the only sound in the room their breathing and the scratching of nib against paper as lines converge and disperse, triangles transforming into a wormhole and that transforming into a dress draped over a hastily-sketched figure with long legs, slim shoulders, and an equally slim waistline. A perfect representation of the most minimal of frameworks for the dress to shine. And what a dress it is, too!
“Um…maybe…” Jinny speaks up, leaning over with her pencil to carefully sketch on the drawing that Luu has started.fully expecting to be told to stop but, when she’s not, continuing more boldly. “We add some accenting threads like…this…here.” Her pencil marks are small, outlining some of the triangles in one place, highlighting them in others, the dress’s fractal turning into a collection of interlocking triangles. “And some of those little gems threaded on golden threads to give the impression of depth in the cloth itself.”
Passing the sketchbook slightly towards the side, Luu watches as Jinny adds to it with pencil markings. “I think -- “ Luu starts to say, before pausing to consider things for a moment more. Tapping the side of her pen lightly against her glasses frames, she looks over the various geometries and illustrations. Leaning in, Luu begins to circle a few parts of the tapestry with her pen, adding a layer atop the sacred geometry.
“I think,” Luu finally resumes saying, “that there might be a way to play with the sacred geometry and a second geometry. One that maintains the former by sampling from it, but in the process adds somewhat of a disruption to that flow. In doing that, the viewer’s attention could be drawn this way and that in a subtle and almost subliminal fashion. This could be used to highlight certain elements of the material, much in the way the fabric is already doing this for the body. This additional layering of visual flow outside what is normally expected could be quite useful.”
Looking at it for a moment longer, Luu’s eyes light up as she recognizes a further idea. From two of the new circles, Luu triangulates from their perimeters towards the two ears of her croquis. “Earrings,” Luu begins to explain, “by playing with the symmetries and asymmetries of both the face and sacred, euclidean, and hyperbolic geometries, it seems like one might be able to gain an advantage in social combat. It’s possible with just the right shapes that one could manipulate another person’s micro-expressions in order to exaggerate their ‘tells’ while simultaneously obfuscating their own. I think starting small with earrings will allow for testing out this theory, and then should it work, it could then be applied to the larger outfit, playing with the impressions of depth and shape.”
Looking at Jinny, Luu gives the other woman a big smile, as she notes, “I think this actually could work out very well. I’m going to have to figure out the right dress to make for you to thank you for your help on all of this.”
“It could be a whole ensemble.” Jinny sounds excited, sitting up a little more to look at the page. “The dress, the earrings, all working together in a social setting. I mean if I’m reading this right, this would act to highlight social tells in others. It would make social events even more of a cake walk, if they weren’t already. Business negotiations would be a little more difficult, since it’s inherently an adversarial act, but I could see each individual part working on its own act to fascinate or distract, and the whole thing combined just…” She trails off. Earrings that allow skilled practitioners of Ars Cupidiae, or people with a talent for empathy to have a command presence, almost. Circles with triangles that form circles inside triangles, the geometry shifting and dancing as one moves past.
It would be amazing.
“This is so cool, Luu!” Jinny giggles, turning to quickly squeeze Luu in a tight hug, making an ‘ook’ sound, and letting go, smoothing down her shirt nonchalantly. Be cool, Jinny. She blinks, though, picking up that last bit Luu said. “Wait, make me a dress?”
As Jinny speaks of the possibilities of fashion, Luu leans into the sketchbook, adding some additional markings. She seems absorbed in the task and almost like she might not be hearing a word that Jinny is saying to her. Pulling back from the desk, Luu puts her pen down, her eyes scanning over the sketchbook as Jinny continues to talk. It seems like she’s quite happy with the ideas presented, a smile on her face.
As Jinny moves to hug her, Luu puts an arm around her Chantrymate with such dextrous fluidity, that it seems almost impossible now to doubt that she was also paying attention to Jinny this whole time. The fashionista is, after all, not just a practitioner of Ars Cupedidae, but Ars Mentis as well.
“Mmmhmmm,” Luu responds about making Jinny a dress. “I figure,” she begins to say, “that with you being here more often, it will be much easier to find the time for design and fitting and like all that stuff. I mean, I’d be making you a dress eventually anyway, but now with your help on these ideas?” Letting go of Jinny, Luu folds her arms across her chest as she looks at the other woman with a smile, and explains, “I figure it’s the least I could do.”
