Feeling surreal (or surreal feeling?)

So... I've modelled for art classes twice in the last year -- as a dancer, not as a nude. Not that there's anything wrong with modelling nude... I just couldn't do it myself. I'd get too self-conscious.

But dancing, wearing a bunch of different costumes as if for performance, playing with shawls and fans and flowers for my hair... That, I can do. It's still the strangest thing, though... The extremely slow-motion moves, the holding of certain [not always comfortable] poses... and the small horde of artists armed with digital cameras, snapping a couple dozen shots per minute from all possible angles... Shots of me. Thousands and thousands of shots of ME! Of ME, who until recently would run for cover at the sight of a camera pointed in my direction! And now I'm happy to do these little sessions, because they're so much fun, so surreal... such a far cry away from my life as I currently know it. And, in a way, they feel so much more RIGHT. Like writing or going to poetry readings and gallery openings -- my life as I used to know it before an incredibly boring and monotonous full-time job became a necessity...

Modelling is very odd. In a way, I'm only a prop, an object... But when I see the pictures chosen to paint from, and especially when I see the actual paintings... Well, suddenly I'm not an object anymore. Suddenly I'm animated and alive -- the pose of my arms, the movement of my skirt, the energy in my hands. Suddenly, I see myself -- not through my own eyes, but through the photographers' And then, most importantly, I see myself like they see me, with whatever intention or story they thought to portray as they painted.

Yesterday, when out of curiosity I went back to the art studio to check out the final results of said modelling session, the workshop leader asked me of one of the paintings: "What would you write about that painting?"

I was a bit stumped. Not because I had no clue, but because, all of a sudden, an ocean of clues, of ideas, of thought unexpectedly washed over me. From words to describe the light, or the use of colour, to the hundreds of possible stories behind that particular pose, those particular flowers in my hair, the earrings I picked, the necklace I had forgotten I was wearing the day of the modelling session... And what if it wasn't me, but someone else? Someone else's pose, someone else's flowers, earrings, necklace...? All of a sudden, I had a character -- rudimentary, sure, but still, it only took seven little words to prompt its birth in my mind...

Now I have a CD with over 300 pictures of me (the selected 'few' from the session, which I hear resulted in over 4000 images snapped by six or seven people). I've gone through them all and... well, some of them have 'story' written all over them... We'll see what I make of them. If nothing else, it might be a cool exercise.

I mean, I know writing from/about/inspired by a painting is far from being a new idea, but I personally have never used this tool to jog my creativity... And since said creativity lately seems to be in good need of a jog (current employment is killing the poor thing), well, I'll take what I can...