elena siddal

Yesterday brought art (making and viewing) sunshine, trees, friends, too much alcohol, questionable decisions.

Today brought a hangover, uncomfortable silence, the smell of stale cigarettes, and my mom’s second cancer diagnosis of the last two years.

Take two.

I’m really glad I have a perverse sense of humor. Simultaneously, I have absolutely no sense of what I’m feeling beyond the sensation of being pulled kicking and screaming in a direction that I don’t want to go in. At the least, I’m not going to press the self-destruct button as vehemently this time around.

I am actually fairly sure that things like this don’t let up in life, at least not for long, and I have a theory that you become an adult when you learn to accept that it’s always too much to deal with, you never get used to it, but the world doesn’t have to end today and furthermore, you can’t put everything else on hold. Otherwise you’ll be on hold (with little periods of movement) forever.

I am working a lot lately. Many things I’m very proud of and many other things I’m very excited about.

Nothing makes me more glad to do what I do than going to the Met and seeing paintings and photographs of women who look like me on the walls.

Being in those grand, open spaces is good for me, because it reminds me that I have a (perhaps not literal) soul.

I am very tired of these interactions with men who listen to me talk, respectfully and thoughtfully, but then have nothing to say and offer me no challenge. I always leave feeling like I’ve babbled endlessly and have come off as far more neurotic than I actually am, and that I haven’t really been seen at all.

My only real hope in life is that one day someone will find all my neuroses charming.

Coffee ice cream was clearly invented for days like this.

I feel sad that I have never been to Vienna. I’m thinking that way because I would like nothing more than to run away right now.

I’m pretending to be an actor again, and it’s weird.

What am I doing actually… auditioning for something on Saturday? What? I mean, really.

roguebelle asked: Bit! ;) And... Kara from 'What I've Tasted of Desire', and a Night Court adept.

Yaaaaaaaaasss.

moreinsanerer asked: Daphne Greengrass, Merry, and a Sleep No More Witch.

Aw, muffin! What a weird and accurate combination of things.

Name three characters you think of when you think of me.

I am re blogging this because it reminds me of being 15 on LiveJournal.

(Source: geekeryandhockey)

Anonymous asked: Even if you shut it down - it's too late. Those images are out on the net, on 1,000's of servers, you can't stop them from spreading, you can't get them back. Are you shutting down the web site or MM account? Both are sources of images. You seem to want a vehicle to express yourself or you would have been gone now. You can get mad & withdraw, they win or maybe change the outlook & laugh at it instead - saying "it's not porn but if you think so go for it". I hope you choose to laugh. - D.L. Wood

It’s really unnecessary to patronize me by giving me information I’m already well aware of. Yes, they’re all over the internet. I know I can’t stop them from spreading. I am well aware that deleting sources on this forum doesn’t do anything to delete the reblogs. I am also well aware that photographers I work with are still likely to use my image here.

There’s no winning or losing in this situation, because the people reblogging this stuff aren’t doing it out of spite, and saying ‘Haha! I must demean her and make her mad!’ They’re not even thinking about it that deeply.

But the thing is - this is directed at everyone who’s messaged me about this in the last few hours - I don’t have to put up with this directly if I don’t want to. I don’t need to keep feeding my work directly to people who I know are going to misuse it, on a forum where I have to not only sit back and watch it happen, but where I have to collect disrespectful messages in my inbox using awful language at me and talking to me as though I’m a blow up sex doll and not a human being. Do you have any idea how much of that you guys don’t see?

My website and MM are part of a necessary internet presence that I use for networking and self promotion, so I can continue the work that I have been doing for the last several years. Tumblr has proven itself to be far less useful in terms of networking than either of those things, and I don’t need to continue having a presence on it if I’m not getting anything positive out of the experience and am instead continually dealing with a combination of the gross things I cited above. I don’t have to deal with this kind of crap elsewhere on the internet. 

Also, saying that my website or MM are the same in terms of being a source of images is outright ridiculous - they aren’t rebloggable social networking forums! Sure, jerks can save images to their hard drives and use them without credit. It’s the internet - it’s inevitable. But putting my work on a rebloggable forum is just a way of me making the reuse of my images in an unintended context easy and okay for them, and frankly, I would rather not do that.

This dialogue is closed, and I’m not answering any more asks on the subject.

mxrandyqueerius asked: The legal definition of pornography is "erotic content that is designed to cause sexual arousal." That clearly indicates that, at least in that paradigm, the right to decide whether or not a piece of content is pornography lies solely with its creator, the person who designed it, and not with the viewer/consumer. And for the record, Bitches Brew is a jazz album and anyone who thinks otherwise is horrendously misinformed.

Bam.

Anonymous asked: You've posted a great deal on your blog here about how you don't want your work construed as and featured on sites that glorify porn. The thing is, though, you can't ultimately control how audiences perceive your art. Is Miles Davis' Bitches Brew a jazz album or a rock album? Depends on who you ask. If you're naked in a photo, even if its not an overtly carnal or erotic photo, some will interpret it as sexual. It's a primal resonance. You can't dictate others' imaginations.

I’ve addressed this already in previous asks.

No, you’re right. If someone finds something I shoot erotic, that isn’t only out of my control- that’s fine. It’s all subjective. Go nuts! Fap away!

But there is a difference between personally finding something erotic and actively, publicly removing it from it’s intended context and by reposting it in a pornographic forum, encouraging other viewers to view it as porn.

It’s outright disrespectful to the original content.

Tumblr also just has shitty user control. I have a really big problem with the fact that they provide no way for the owners of blogs to control who re blogs their content. I started using Tumblr because it was really popular in the model/photography community as a forum to showcase new work, network, and gain a following. But it’s a really shitty place to put original content, and I’m done.

Learning and relearning and relearning compassion.

I can, at least, never say that I am harder on other people than I am on myself.

For some reason, it’s only when I’m really intoxicated that I’m able to understand the world in a way that makes sense. It’s the only time I’m able to step far enough out of myself that I can conceptualize myself as an actual human-shaped critter like all the ones I talk to everyday, and it’s the only time I spend really believing that everyone - no matter their age or level of perceived status or privilege or whatever - is just a scared little kid trying to look big in their grown up pants and handling things that feel too big for them to handle. And criticizing themselves. And laughing wildly, and making bumbling mistakes, and falling in love with the wrong things, and trying to make sense of things that will never, ever make sense because the world only makes sense if you look at it as a series of repeating mathematical patterns that don’t really mean anything. And anyway, I guess that I’m not a person who passes through people like I always used to think I was as a kid. People like that don’t really exist. People take up space.