The Sitter

Everything in the room looks golden. It suddenly becomes apparent to her that time, contrary to what she has always believed, is not linear. There is something about the atmosphere and this particular experience which crystallizes the realization, and she wonders if those watching her can see it somehow register in her frozen face. It is partially the strange combination of silence and music, the clinking of paintbrushes on glass palettes and the roughness of brushes on canvas which evoke it. Wisps of Belle and Sebastian are occasionally audible from the back of the room, a flute or violin strain fleetingly meshed with a whimsical voice. It is the light and the colour in the room, the chaotic messiness but ultimate serenity of a studio. There is something harmonious in how it all looks and moves, like the visual equivalent of music, composing what could be considered a work of art in itself. Mostly though, it is the stillness transposed against so much movement that sharpens and transforms her perception of time.

She is practicing a type of stillness that is rarely attempted, and as rarely reflected upon. Most people would think that her stillness is nothing next to her nakedness – they imagine that the fear of exposure, judgment, or discomfort would be too all-consuming to ignore. But none of these exist while she is immobile. Instead, she feels as though she is a pool of water, completely transparent and in that instant perfectly still, although the balance is fragile and temporary. And in this moment, she is entirely transparent, for it is perhaps the only moment in which she does not feel a need to do or be anything more than she is. While she sits here, nude and still, she feels as though people look upon her somewhat as they would a tree. A tree has no purpose but to exist, no need to do anything other than be, and is appreciated by all for this simple existence. She wonders why it is that people, for the most part, cannot feel and are not perceived this way. Of course, the fragile peace and openness that she feels so naturally in this instant, pretending to be a tree or a water-pool, will vanish at the end of the session. She will return, as others do, to needing to say, wanting to do, and trying to be something more than herself, to legitimize appreciation of her own rarely-simple existence.

Stillness remains the most significant aspect of sitting, for while the body is held consistently still the mind provides an entirely new experience. It is a pity that the majority of people will never know what it feels like to be perfectly still for any stretch of time that is longer than natural. In pretending to be so, most will forget their toes or their mouths, and quietly sabotage the effort without even realizing it. But she is utterly exposed, and must remain frozen down to the flicker of an eyelid. Any movement will be noted and resented, so she must forget her own body.

She always begins by staring at the back of the room, and concentrating upon something. Once it was a tree outside the window, another time it was a postcard, and once it was a fascinatingly-shaped explosion of paint on the concrete floor. This is when time begins to slip – it becomes as difficult for her to remain aware of her thoughts as it is to remain unaware of her body. Sometimes, in the midst of floating passively on a stream of thought, she abruptly wakes from her trance with no notion of how long has just passed. When this happens, she often cannot remember where her thoughts had been lingering or why she had felt so comfortable there. Other times, she is painfully aware of every passing second and has to sustain herself by methodically counting backwards from two hundred, or by trying to remember the names of all the people she has ever known. These painful seconds go on and on forever, maybe because there is a cramp in her leg or her cheek is itching, and stillness feels like insanity. Her only consolation during these unbearable moments is the knowledge that she must sooner or later slip again from this state of unnaturally sharpened consciousness into the comfortable rhythm of daydream where she witnesses everything and nothing at once. She is an object but a subject, she sees but doesn’t watch, is present and absent in these three hours-cum-eternity.

The painters study her, moving closer or further, measuring this or that with a squinted eye and a pencil tilted just so. Sometimes they just approach her and stare, memorizing every colour and line, immersed in the complexity of the body. She is reminded of dancers by the way that they move. It is as though they have been accidentally caught up in a choreography they aren’t aware of, unknowingly fabricating an aesthetic experience that exists beyond the canvas. Again, it is peaceful for her, and she thinks that she might like to spend the rest of her life sitting here in this chair, absorbed in the insubstantial and involuntary meanderings of her mind. Briefly she wonders if she has been sitting here forever, or if the entirety of her life has just occurred within her mind during the past hour. Strangely, the idea does not disturb her in the least. But of course this thought slips, and she is lost, and she begins counting backwards from two hundred.

written by Nicole Gaasenbeek