Please help my lovely talented friend

Now then.  My friend Solange Noir, Soli.  You've met her - and her stunning photographs - before. Here. And here.

Here's the thing.  Soli needs to move.  Pretty urgently.  And, like most of my dearest closest soul friends, she's...well...pretty broke.  She's been offered an amazing place to move to in Tucson and now she's just gotta get there.  And, yup, America's a big place and moving is expensive so...she needs funds urgently.

And it occurred to me that if even a tiny fraction of my readers bought one of her stunning photographs, that would be it. Problem sorted.  It's another of those win-win scenarios really.  Soli gets to move herself and her kids into a healthier, happier environment while you get...something amazing.

Her prints start at $60 - though I confess I'd love a truly vast one.  Maybe those lips...maybe a flying squirrel...maybe a dark and silent pool.  Anyhow...please take a look.  She rotates her shop every month but will merrily dig down through the archives if you're after something in particular.  And please, if you know any cool and delicious shops or cafes or businesses that might like something rather special for their walls, put them in touch?  And if you're broke?  Hey, I understand, truly I do...maybe just spread the word instead?  That's good karma. The fox will bless you.

Come on, guys.  This is what the Internet does really well - spreading the word, doing a little bit of good from time to time.

Is there any rampant self-interest here?  Well, sure.  At some point I'm gonna go visit her and I'd much rather loll around in Arizona than Washington DC.  But...seriously...I just want all the people I love to be happy and healthy. That's the bottom line.  Please help any way you can.  

Forgotten the link?  Here we go again...  Solange Noir.

We are in a holding pattern...

Hello? Hello? Announcement to all passengers on Bonkers Airways flight number 2520.  We are currently in a holding pattern.  The captain is lost in the Himalayas and the co-pilot has mislaid her hearing device and can’t read the map. Meanwhile the controls have mysteriously switched to some arcane language. We have tried to meditate our way out of this situation but the SP keeps distracting us by licking our chakras. 

So while we try to regain control and realign our coordinates, I will hand you over to head of inflight enlightenment, Ms Solange Noir (yes, that's her in the tub). 

Unreally though...I woke up thinking about Solange's images and wandered over to her website and yes, she had put up some new ones so I simply had to share them with you. 

Creep through the cracks

Path to the heart

Infernal portal

Kiss me, my swan

Revolution's Child

And then this photograph, below, flirted with me and I was going to ask her about it (but knew she'd still be soaking in the tub) so I wandered over to her blog and found that, hey, there it was again and she had written a poem to go with it... So I thought I'd share that too. 

Creation's Garden

bright smears of

sweet scented notions 

original hopes

swaddled tightly in buds

fearlessly burst forth

enticing fragrance of youth to 

lure the brightest pollinators 

joining in scenes of original sin

leading to fruitful conception

lusciously juicy fertile

 thought becomes reality as

flowers to fruits to 

seeds far flung

propagation seems unending

reveling in beauty of creation

until

work devours life 

among deadened ends

joyous blossoms fade 

edges tinged umber

slippery underfoot blown in

winds footfalls bruise

swept in gutters 

washed away by grey rains

beauty's seeds obliterated as

routine creeps under the peel

skins rot thoughts age bodies fade to

scattered dreams crushed needlessly 

beckoning death's approach

unabated

unless

tender waters poured

gently over neglected ideas

encourage wasted tendrils to

sprout timidly 

soon to flourish as

yielding youth's ignorance

confidence returns

experience

coaxes desire to

regrow with intelligence

revealing attractions  

sacred and profane to

germinate fresh love of life

fully relished until 

last blossoms

drop

(Solange Noir 2011)

Please note all photographs are her copyright, reproduced with permission - please don't abuse that. 


Bonkers Airways, like most of the world, is financially embarrassed right now, so please show your appreciation by spreading word of her prodigious talent and divine attributes.  In other words, do buy a print from her shop (T-shirts and other goodies coming soon) or offer her some juicy commissions, eh?


Oh, and whaaa...???  Just at this very minute, my CD player fell off the Reviber and started playing this...so I guess it wanted to be included, huh? 

Solange Noir

Let me introduce you to Solange Noir.  Soli. Sigh.  A fully-signed up member on this madcap Journey.  Found behaving blissfully badly on Twitter.  How?  Hmm, was it via Sessha Batto or Frankie Sachs (I’ll introduce you to these two properly at a later date)?  Anyhow, whatever.  She’s always worth talking to – funny, responsive, kind, wickedly naughty, real.  Here's how she describes herself: photographer, documentary film producer, poet, hula hooper, cat worshipper and sake pusher.
I'd add madly talented to the list: I am officially in love with her images. 

She doesn’t ‘take pictures’ btw; she lets her camera ‘give’ her pictures – I like that distinction, don’t you?  She calls her work/play ‘optical telepathy’ using it "to stop time, to trap shadows, to reveal hidden things." 

A blank-faced knight stands guard by a stairwell, silent amidst acid bright. Would you dare ascend? Would you risk the creak of dark armour?

The everyday is made otherworldly.  A girl stands, her back to us, staring down a corridor of scaffolding.  A dark shape waits.  Dog?  Beast?  Monster? We tell the story we hold in our own hearts and minds.  Nobody else's. Nobody else is.

Guardian. A psyche-delish sky –  burning trees branching ganglia into sky blue. Stone Bast, haunched on orange spine.  Pet-rified. 

Worlds reflected. Glance into the gutter and see sky revealed – clouds and space in a sea-puddle.  What is beauty?  Where is beauty? 

A crack in the pavement becomes a threshold; a manhole a portal. Liminal places. Litoral spaces. Without walls as interstices.  The blurring inbetween places. Where elements uneasily meet. 

Time is liminal too.  The precipice – the moment before stepping into the void, sun-induced vertigo. A coat left on railings.

Shadows walk the streets.  People march brashly from or into fairytale, from nightmares, from hinterworlds without passports.  Assaults of colour in a world bleached monochrome.  Shrieks of edible E-number buildings.  Fade to grey.

Colour.  Light transmitted or reflected; wavelengths.  Interest, variety, intensity.  An outward appearance that may be deliberately misleading.  To modify, deceive or distort; to affect in thought or feeling. The characteristic of quarks; the timbre of sound.

See, this is why I sometimes despair of words.  All that verbiage and you probably haven’t a clue what I’m on about.  Yet in one nanosecond an image can say all that – and more, far more. Because everyone sees differently.

You can buy prints of her images... And, damnit, she writes a blog too... wittynoodles.blogspot.com  and she’s producing a film on Gothdom.  Take some time to make her acquaintance.  While you do, some music, I think...a brace of tunes that popped up and demanded to join this post. J

Forgot to say, all the images on this post belong to Soli and are reproduced here with her kind permission.