Reviewed by Sharazade
The Artist’s Brush is a 24.5 minute audio piece about… well, it’s several things.
I’m going to first mention the things I had trouble with, and then will talk about what worked well, so we can end on a positive note.
The first minute and a half so is like a mini lecture about skin and sensuality.
Then there’s a segue to the narrator explaining that he’d seen a very sensuous painting of a woman and questioned the artist about it, and the artist explained how he’d met the woman and asked her to model for him, and explained to her how she had lost touch with her sensuality. He (the artist, not the narrator) invites her to his studio one night.
At this point (about five and a half minutes in), the main portion begins: a guided meditation/sex session, which ends with their orgasm. This takes about 17.5 minutes. To be honest, I sort of lost track of the fact that all of this—the seduction of the woman, which is told in second person (You feel this, I do this to you, you react this way) is not, in fact, the narrator speaking to me, but rather is the artist telling the narrator how he spoke to the other woman. If you follow me.
Finally, it closes with the narrator telling you (i.e., me) how she (the other woman) had in fact been erotically hypnotized, and then he (the narrator) explains how he (the artist) brought her (the woman) back out of it, and how other women (um… me?) could fall into a trance listening to the story of the other woman.
I didn’t think the framing of the other woman being painted and the non-narrator artist was necessary. If you’re going to talk to me, just talk to me; don’t talk to me while actually being another guy talking to a different woman.
I’d also recommend skipping the introductory part about how important skin is. For one thing, it’s just not necessary. The audio could start with me (as me) being invited to an artist’s studio, and I could be seduced from there. But if I first listen to a sort of lecture… that’s distracting to me. It was doubly distracting because I’m not sure if everything in the lecture was actually true. For instance: “As newborns, we feel everything that touches our body with equal intensity.” Um…. really? See, I’d want a reference for that, because I’m not convinced. I understand that babies haven’t built up calluses on hands and feet, but still… everything is felt with the same intensity? Then: “Your skin covers your whole body, and your skin is the same all over.” Well, not my whole body—not my eyes, or teeth, or hair… and it’s not the same all over. These sorts of details sidetrack me; and in fact, I do actually agree with the main point of the piece, which is that increased awareness of touch and sensation brings heightened pleasure.
There’s a danger as well in being too didactic. The narrator (as the narrator, as well as the artist to the other woman) made a lot of assumptions about me, about how I wasn’t aware of sensual touch, how I was inhibited by society’s expectations, etc., that I simply don’t agree with. Now, those could well be true for other listeners; of course there’s no way for the author to know to whom he’s speaking, and you can’t expect that every woman has the same background or feelings. That would be a good reason not to make any assumptions at all. Whether someone is shy or uptight or decadently wanton, she could enjoy a guided sex or masturbation piece. So I’d recommend not overlaying that part, the part that worked, with any kind of assumed back-story about the listener.
The first bump for me was grammatical, and it happened in the first two sentences: “Many women become deeply aroused by a kiss on the neck or the ear. Others become more aroused by touching and kissing your partner.” Um… who are these other women, and why are they touching and kissing my partner? Back off, ladies! Overall, the grammar was pretty good, although I noticed a tendency to miss adverbs (“relaxing you deeper and deeper,” rather than “more and more deeply”), and to get some comparatives wrong (“more full,” instead of “fuller”). Not huge problems, no, but I noticed them.
A bigger problem for me was the non-standard intonation. This became substantially more marked after about the first five minutes, too.
Now, reading aloud is hard. I get that. I’ve worked with voice talent in audio studios, and you can spend several takes getting even a sentence to sound just right, even with professional actors. It’s much harder than you’d think to read something and not have it sound “read.” However, there were unnatural pauses in a number of places, that after a while I found I could predict, such as:
• after the word “you”
• after the word “to” if followed by a verb in the infinitive form (“to notice,” for example)
• after the word “and”
• after words like “can” and “should” but before the main verb
So, for example, a sentence would be phrased like this:
[As you] + [think about this you will begin to] + [notice when your fingers touch things.]
with a noticeable pause between each set of brackets. A more standard way of reading such a sentence would be
[As you think about this] + [you will begin to notice] + [when your fingers touch things.]
with ideally only a very short pause, if any, between those second two elements.
After a while, I found this very distracting.
In terms of content, I had a bit of a bump when the first exercise in sensuality for the woman (addressed as “you,” but it’s really “her”) is to run a piece of fur over you (her). Not to be overly PC or anything, but fur is a pretty common squick for a lot of people. How about some nice satin instead?
(photo courtesy of scottchan and FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Find scottchan’s portfolio here)
A major part of the exercise for me/her was the artist tracing my/her body with a brush. Now, we hear how he opens a new box of brushes (good, so they’re clean), and then “I select the finest, most delicate brush.” Um… no thanks. That sounds very small, so a) it’s not going to be very effective, and b) it’s way more likely to tickle. Never mind how I know this, but I wouldn’t recommend anything smaller than a #4 in a flat brush—if you check the photo above, that would be like the one with the red handle on the left. Also good would be a Japanese sumi-e (ink) brush, like one of the ones on the right in this photo:
(photo courtesy of Simon Howden and FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Find Simon Howden’s portfolio here)
You want something with some width; soft, yes, but with some substance. This will sound like a minor detail, I know, but once I begin questioning why a painter would have used an ineffective brush on me, that calls into question his artist’s credentials—and the premise of this piece is that he’s a skilled painter.
I also think the exercise would have been more effective if the narrator had actually instructed me (as me) to follow along—to actually caress myself with a piece of fabric, or my fingers.
For me, the piece really hit its rhythm a little more than halfway in. The piece moved slowly and effectively to gradually more explicit (yet never crude) sexual language; it was subtly and nicely done. As it got more graphic, I also found it more effective. By the end of the piece, I was able to engage more with the story line and not be so distracted by the other elements. Telling someone how they’re experiencing sex is very tricky, I think, especially the moment of orgasm, and that’s the part of this that was done the best.
My recommendation to the author would therefore be to cut the introduction and the framing story, and let us get right to the seduction. For listeners, well, you’d have to make your own choices, of course, but you could do the audio equivalent of thumbing through to get to the “good parts” and enjoy a sexually explicit yet tasteful narration of an encounter with a sensuous romantic in the setting of an artist’s studio.
The Artist's Brush is available at HypnoticDreams.com
also available at Amazon.com
Copyright September 15, 2011
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.
This product was provided free of charge to the reviewer. This review is in compliance with the FTC guidelines.