Her Portrait in Black

This piece continues some of the themes in the earlier Metallica shoot. I’m using a longer(4’) staff, but one that is very light. The music is ‘Her Portrait in Black” performed by Atreyu from the Underworld Evolution soundtrack. The song is about life and immortality. One questions whether or not they are synonomous. Is life without death really life? Is living forever really even desirable ?

The movements of the staff are all contained within the body. Yet they also represent something that is just passing through in the moment. Just energy. They come from nowhere and that’s where they return. From nowhere to now here back to nowhere. Creation in the moment. The mind likes to see the process in forms to which it can attach and identify. It is a much more challenging proposition to hang out in the space between the forms, where creation happens. Hikitsuchi sensei said Osensei stressed that yesterday’s budo was already useless. That budo and the purposes for budo must be born and re-born daily and possibly even moment to moment . The self must be forged and re-forged constantly..When this system becomes self-sustaining, meaning that it’s reason for being is internal rather than external, then I think we begin to tune into Osensei’s Takemusu Aiki. I feel what budo really means is one’s life’s purpose or path. And in Aikido that path is or at some point becomes peace or love.


For the record I am not a genre person. I don’t particularly like spies or at this point of my life spy stories and movies, but I still love “The Avengers”. I’m not particularly a fan of “Metallica”, but I find power in moving to certain of their pieces. And I’m definitely not into gothic or vampires or werewolves, but I am a prisoner of the “Underworld” movies. So anything or anyone who moves me at a soul or archetypal level. I am a very dangerous person to assume that since I like such and such I must like so and so……..

Enjoy!