A VACUUM OF INSPIRATION (Patreon)

I have a new project that I'm excited to share the beginning creation stages of with you!    

But first ... some musings:

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True vacuums, like space, have no air inside them. 

Fanciful vacuums, like the tower for my contortion act, have . . . at least a little air inside them. Occasionally.

We think of vacuums as sucking all the air out of something, but that's not quite correct. Really, what's happening is that air will rush from an area of higher pressure to an area of lower pressure. In the context of a sci-fi movie set in space, if an asteroid smashes into your space ship (an environment with lots of air particles bouncing around in it, busy keeping you alive) and rips open the hull, you – along with all the air inside your ship – quickly rush out into the vacuum of space (an environment with next to no air particles in it). Game over.  

Now, metaphorical vacuums are just as perplexing and delightful as literal vacuums.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations in which all the oxygen feels like it's been sucked out of the room.
You're left with feeling empty and feeling angry and trying to catch your breath.
But sometimes – just sometimes – that complete lack of anything good in a room means that  a giant tidal wave is ready and waiting to crash in if you can create just a small, tiny tear.

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Friends, patrons:
Some of the most momentous chapters of my life have come from metaphorical moments such as these.
Why, even being a contortionist at all was the result of one such metaphorical vacuum: my first coach told me he thought I'd never even be able to do a bridge; I obviously got very carried away in the I'll-Show-You Department (a department which I like to melodramatically rename as the Vengeance Department. Way cooler and less petulant sounding.)

It was precisely this type of soul-crushing vacuum that I ran into in Germany 2 weeks ago.
And it was precisely this type of Vengeance Department response that has spawned the beginning of a new project that I'm sharing the beginnings of with you today.

But first – some context.
You folks are getting the real ending to the story, before the rest of the mailing list does.  You're the inner sanctum.
You're the ones rooting for me and my art  like there's no tomorrow.
So you get to know early.

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I've hinted at my experience on the soon-to-be-televised production as being less than enjoyable. The very short version of the story (there will be a longer one, but this is not the point of today's post so - the short version it is) is that I was really anxious to go to Germany and be on a show where the language was extremely gendered, and all my worst fears came true. While there were about 6 HD cameras trained on my face.

Now, when I say 'fear', I don't mean that being misgendered by someone is a thing that sends me into a spiral of depression. My fear was that – after exiting the tower and standing in front of the judges without my shirt on, even though at every other stage of the production my gender identity had been discussed and respected – I would be on the receiving end of the kind of ugliness that stems from people not liking what they don't understand.

Let me clear: there's nothing inherently wrong with asking someone if they are a man or a woman.

But there's probably something wrong with asking someone if they're "supposed to be" a man or a woman (amongst other choice comments), with an expression that is trying to be neutral, but failing, and falling instead towards  a 50/50 split between dismissal and disgust (fascinating how a "supposed to be", thrown into a sentence, can reconfigure the entire thing.) ... while you're on the spot with 6 HD cameras trained on your every microexpression.

At least, my gut instinct told me so in the moment.

That and my ears turning what I'm sure will be bright red with anger when that recording finally airs sometime later this fall.

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I stood there on stage while they giggled like children instead of offering any critique or questions towards the performance I had just given them, and – beyond one of the judges, who at least asked me something about the act – had nothing to offer beyond it being "too scary".

And, besides the nearly-barefaced transphobia, they were simply rude. 

In summary, those judges didn't actively spew bigotry at me.

They just ...  represented something more akin to a vacuum of human empathy and tolerance. 

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Out of this vacuum I'm creating something new, with VACUUM.

It's made a clear visual impact – (it's going to hit a million views on YouTube by the end of the year, easily -- we're sitting at 927K at the time of this posting).

But the questions that the act was created to explore are just as compelling, and the medium of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok simply don't have the space to explore those questions in a meaningful way. "

To start dialogue.

To share discourse around circus arts.

I want to change that.

With COVID skewering all performance artists' hopes of the shows they used to do for the foreseeable future, digital cabarets were one of the main ways that circus artists sought to keep sharing their art forms; while these digital cabarets are enjoyable in many ways, they feel hollow to me.

So I'm been scheming up something different.

Something that combines all of these things.

Instead of a digital, video medium, I'm going to explore things through a print medium (I'm quite tempted to call this genre 'Slow Circus'):

You heard it here first, folks:

I'm creating a long-form, beautiful, coffee-table style book that combines long-form written work (essays) with photo essays from 4 other talented photographers in the Toronto area to explore the layers of meaning within VACUUM, and the ways it can be used as a lens to think about other aspects of the world around us, and the worlds inside us.  

I was determined to haul this idea into being BEFORE Germany.

After Germany, there's that element of the Vengeance Department getting involved, which has lit a fire under my butt.  I wish those judges had the inclination and bandwidth to engage with the work in the ways that I want to showcase in this book. This will be - in some ways -  my (lengthy) response to their disappointing behaviour, and (I hope) a positive outcome from a negative situation that spreads more thoughtfulness, more curiosity, more delight, more wonder ... around this act, and around other circus acts.

I'm hoping that this project might inspire other circus artists to start using their art as similar methods of discourse-production, conversation starters, to sink into their work and invite others to do the same along the way – 

I love a good book, and I love good circus. I'm combining the two ... just not in a way I expected.  It's happening now. It's going to epic. 

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I've been running numbers for the last month, figuring out how to manage the first print run without bankrupting myself; the quality of large-format book that will do the work of the photographers service, as well as my writing, has (on average) a baseline cost of something around $40 to $50 per book. I think I'm going to handle the initial costs by doing a pre-sale (that way I won't end up with a giant stack of unsold copies in my front hall closet for the next few years).

I honestly thought my first self-publishing adventure was going to the be short stories that I've been chipping away at (the Mongolia ones first, specifically) - but it looks like it's going to be this.

I've been saving every penny of every monthly patronage from all of you amazing humans to fund the first print run of those short stories – to cover the typesetter, the editor, the layout, and the up front print cost. For something like a text-only, smallscale hardcover, the cost per unit to self publish that is more around $5 to $8 per unit (and a good quality product at that!).
This harebrained scheme of a big gorgeous glossy photo book is on a different scale.

But hey – jumping in feet first.

And, as with the nitty gritty of all my other projects (especially VACUUM related), you guys are gonna be in on the whole process:

My first photoshoot is THIS FRIDAY (tomorrow).
The second is NEXT THURSDAY.
The third is NEXT SATURDAY.
The fourth is yet to be scheduled.

Writing will be happening over the fall and early winter, with an aim to be starting to leak early photos and sample in December/pre-sale starting around then, and production and delivery by Jan/Feb 2021. 

Because I'm extra, I created a pitch book for the photographers I courted for this project (humans who I had the opportunity to work with during my modelling career, humans who's work I've been lucky enough to be adjacent to throughout my circus performing, etc).

I've included it below so you all can sink your brains into this world I'm trying to create with this project if you like.

Updates from the photoshoot tomorrow to come!


Until then, stay strange & wonderful --

XO 

Ess