For Ezra Pound:
“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.”
excerpt from: The Waste Land by T. S. ELIOT
featuring Model: Emma Rocherolle
The Full Pink Moon of April:
19 April 2019
Noank, CT USA
New Moon 5 April 2019
introducing my newest Model: Ella Turner
and featuring the poem Dreamland by Royal Young with Photographs by Michelle Gemma
I want to enjoy the sunrise
While we still have them
Your quiet little town
Won’t be safe much longer
A stolen heart is never truly
Yours
A boot to get what you want
Imperfection is beauty
Torrid
Tortured
Terrible glances like lances
Give me open terrain
If I could climb this fire escape
To the future I would
My soul is following
The train’s whistle
My body lays next to
A sleeping dog
The dog dreams
Shivers in sleep
We’re both running
Still
https://www.instagram.com/theroyalyoung/
In 2019, the full Moon of March rises on the same day as the vernal equinox—marking the start of spring!
March also brings the final supermoon of 2019.
The March full Moon is particularly special because it reaches its peak on the same day as the spring equinox, on March 20, 2019. The last time the full Moon and the spring equinox coincided this closely (4 hours apart) was in March 2000, but the last time they occurred on the same date was on March 20, 1981!
Traditionally, the Moon we see in March is called the Full Worm Moon. At this time of the year, the ground begins to soften enough for earthworm casts to reappear, inviting robins and birds to feed—a true sign of spring. Roots start to push their way up through the soil, and the Earth experiences a re-birth as it awakens from its winter slumber.
This full Moon is also a supermoon, meaning the Moon will be nearly at its closest to Earth for the month of March. It’s the year’s third (and final) of three straight full supermoons. This means that the Moon may “appear” brighter and bigger than normal, provided the night sky is clear and dark.
https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-spring-vernal-equinox
featuring Model: Alycia de los Santos
The Full Worm Moon of March:
20 March 2019
Seaside, Waterford, CT USA
—excerpt from the Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, first published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas and later released posthumously under her real name.
featuring Model: Jane Anderson
Photograph by Michelle Gemma
Recently, writer Royal Young suffered the loss of his grandfather, Zayde. As he writes in Fameshark, his memoir noir (Heliotrope Books 2013), “My maternal grandparents Babbi and Zayde supported everything that had to do with the arts. Their three-story house in Great Neck, Long Island was crammed with Zayde’s impressionist paintings and Babbis’ sculptures.” Royal called it “Jewish Grey Gardens”, and everything about this picture was in direct contrast to my own maternal grandparents.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of my grandfather’s death, and I feel nothing, really. We were not close since twenty years prior, though close is a stretch to define our relationship even at all. Anthony Beaudry, my aloof French-Canadian grandfather: he smoked cigars incessantly, my father hated cigars. Whenever my grandparents came down from Worcester, Massachusetts, to visit us at my childhood home in Noank, Connecticut, Anthony was forced outside to smoke his smelly cigars. Yet the house reeked all weekend and even after they left. My other three grandparents, Anthony’s wife Louise Caputo, my paternal grandmother, Helen Pelosi, and my namesake paternal grandfather Rocco Gemma, all radiated an Italian warmth, or at least parlayed easy company.
I left the United States on January 4, 1989 to study abroad for my last college semester, meaning I would graduate while in Grenoble, France, and I had no intention of returning home for an anonymous graduation at UCONN. Plus, my parents’ divorce was finalized on August 17, 1989, a process that started in the spring of 1987 when my sister was just about to graduate from high school. Time was up, and my mom made the announcement, as soon as I got settled in my first dorm room, fourth semester, up at UCONN Storrs. I had just moved out of the house in Noank, after living at home for my first three semesters at UCONN Avery Point.
My sister had started college in the fall of 1987 at URI, and seeking sisterly solace would drive Route 138 West over to UCONN most every weekend, not wanting to go home to Noank. My parents had separated, but due to each of them not wanting to grant the space to the other, they were still living at the same address: my childhood home, a raised split-level ranch, where my mom lived in the upstairs, and my dad lived in the downstairs- a situation that was not fun for anyone. It took another year before my mom moved out, in the fall of 1988.
I was ready to move off campus as well, three semesters of dorm living were three too many for me. In the same fall of 1988 that my mom moved to a temporary place in her hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, I moved into a modest Colonial brick house with four other roommates that I had casually met in the last year, three boys from Fairfield County and the sweetest hippie girl from Norwich. My sister Maria continued to visit me at UCONN, arriving at the brick house most every weekend. When I left for France in January 1989 for my eighth and final college semester, Maria transferred from URI to Northeastern in Boston, and looked up one of my former brick house roommates, who had already transferred to UMASS Boston. She moved in with him, as a familiar counterpart. During the year that I was abroad, their friendship deepened from the platonic to the romantic. When I returned at the end of 1989, it was official that they were an item.
The first family function in Worcester that spring of 1990 was a cousin’s school graduation, and my sister and her boyfriend planned on driving down from Boston to attend. My maternal grandfather, Anthony Beaudry, announced that he would boycott the family event, if Maria and her boyfriend made an appearance. They were living in sin, according to my grandfather. I remember being shocked that he was actually taking a stand on this distinction. He had, heretofore, never crystallized an official definition of his Catholicism. I felt that I was already growing apart from the totality of family gatherings in Worcester, having been raised in Noank since I was five, and I was at that point, barely attending the annual Christmas Eve dinners. My parents’ divorce had far-flung all previously engaged in rituals, so it was basically a free-for-all for my sister and I. We were already feeling the guilt trip that each parent passively placed on us to divide our time evenly, while visiting each side of the family in Worcester for Christmas Eve: the only relief was that at least the host of each family gathering was conveniently located just a few miles apart from each other. We tried to make it a party and have fun ourselves, but there was never a moment that we didn’t feel some guilt, if we had inadvertently let the moment escape at one house, we knew that disappointment would follow at the next stop.
But, my grandfather’s stand clearly required a response. I wrote him a letter, urging him to reconsider his position; that times had changed, and modern relationships were strengthened with cohabitation. That as a couple had the chance to live with one another, they could discover if their relationship would survive in the long run. As children of divorce, we most wanted to not get divorced. We watched our grandparents, in what we interpreted as loveless marriages: separate bedrooms, which seemed frightening, and each grandfather barking orders to each grandmother, who waited on him “hand and foot”, because… he… worked…all… day. Then we watched our parents get divorced. This is not what we wanted.
Anthony Beaudry would not budge, in typical stubborn stance. He wrote back to me, claiming ownership to his religious principles, which forced him to be inflexible in his points of view. I was disappointed, and other relatives intervened on my sister’s behalf, and life moved on. In the summer of 1990, I was not only back from Europe, I was back from an ill-fated trip out west in the US which resulted in a ski-trip accident in Vail, Colorado, and then knee surgery and physical therapy back east. I started a relationship back in Mystic, with an old friend from junior high school. As late summer faded into the autumn, I was ready to get my own place in Mystic, and found a lovely apartment located within the glory of a local mansion, run by my friend Courtney’s family. My boyfriend Rich moved in with me that October 1st, just two short months after we started dating. I was now living in sin.
As my sister and I were the two oldest cousins out of the eleven that comprised my mom’s side of the family, we were the first to experience the many rites of passage throughout our childhood. It makes sense that we would be the first to break ground in the family with boyfriends and living arrangements. As Grandpa Beaudry aged, it seemed to matter less to him, when my younger cousins experienced the exact same milestones, and they moved in with their significant others. My mother was always bitter about this. As well, my grandfather had tried to convince my mom against getting a divorce, on religious grounds, but he lost that argument. He, however, in a finely tuned maneuver, never acknowledged my mom’s new partner that she was living with in Mystic. My mom visited her parents solo from 1992 until her parents’ death in 2009, just ten months apart from each other: January 3rd and October 3rd, 2009.
I could never grasp religion with my grandfather’s type of dissociative fervor. In my childhood, I resented being brought to church weekly, and worse, being forced to attend “Sunday School” at the local high school, adjacent to my church, which was across from the town police station. I could not buy the basic premise of Catholicism, that the Pope was infallible. Noone was infallible. It did not make sense to me. I dreaded church and stopped going just after my confirmation. I understand the structure that religion provides for the ceremonies of life- baptism and marriage, and for the ceremony of death.
Placing judgment on life itself: to define “living in sin” did not have merit to me. The years passed quietly from 1989 to 2009 for me in my relationship with my grandfather. I was polite, dutiful in the sense, that I would not embarrass my mother. I even conceded a visit to him in the nursing home, when all that was keeping him alive was a feeding tube. His mind was gone, and his body followed on the third of January, 2009.
“Don’t Take The Ring” draws from an admonition spoken by Agent Cooper to Laura Palmer in a dream sequence in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The focus of this series is upon choices made, once the ring is taken.
We are drawn into the young blonde model’s world:
she has chosen to stand at the threshold-
she pauses,
she considers what lies beyond,
and then she enters the mansion.
She wants to explore,
and we ride along with her
And then it has been decided
that the consequences have already unfolded before her
as she meets her shadow self- the brunette model.
It is the casualty of her decision-
to cast one’s lot with the angels
in the hopes that it will be received well,
that resonates with the audience.
We are rooting for these models to succeed
because we see ourselves in them.
We understand the platform of complication,
but we want them to rise like the phoenix,
and speak to our own immortality.
It is all about the work.
“Laura Is The One”
All Photographs by Michelle Gemma
featuring Models: Piper Meyers and Julia Farrar
locations: The Haley Mansion, Perkins Farmhouse before it was demolished, woods off River Road, Mystic, CT USA
When I was twelve, my sister and I finally earned the right to be able to stay home on a Saturday, while my parents went to work in the family business, “A Stitch In Time Boutique”, in Downtown Mystic. All previous summers were spent at Butler Elementary School, the host for the local Groton Summer Rec program. We enjoyed Summer Rec, with all of the field trips to Ocean Beach, rainy day arts and crafts projects making “gods-eyes” and strange cakes with blue frosting, and sunny day vigorous games of kickball and football. But then we tired of the didactic hierarchy, and begged our parents to let us stay home. We would keep busy and clean the house every Saturday: a deal our parents quickly agreed to. We lived in a raised ranch in Tanglewood, on Noank’s Palmers Cove, a new development built in the early 1970’s, east of Mumford Cove and Groton Long Point. There were two floors, almost identical in spatial identity. My sister and I would trade off weekly: one week I got the upstairs; the next , the downstairs. It was a fair arrangement and we rarely argued about it. We worked quickly, but thoroughly, and listened to music on our parent’s stereo. I can’t quite recall why we were so satisfied to be free from the grip of Summer Rec, but it was probably due to uncomfortable budding hormones, and it felt safer listening to Cat Stevens “Teaser and the Firecat” and Carole King’s “Tapestry”.
I remember this one day that I got the upstairs. I started with the bathroom, then vacuumed the entire floor, and would end my time with dusting the living room; each shelf of books, and each knick-knack: the wooden gazelle, the amethyst geode, and the tiny marble figurines of Venus and Discobolus- the Discus thrower. Then I got to the stereo shelving unit which occupied the entire North wall of the room, and featured the German 1249 Dual Turntable, which, coincidentally lives today at the Mystic Disc. The record player was on the top right shelf, with two cabinets below it to house the vinyl collection. Below that were three drawers, two shallow ones, on top of the third deeper drawer. As I was dusting, I started opening up each drawer, as if I had never studied the contents before. The second shallow drawer contained my parents’ wedding album. I took it out, placed it on the brown shag carpet below me, sat down, and opened it up. The first page contained the date of their wedding, 7 January 1967, and with a tiny shock paging through the familiar photographs, I realized what was bothering me.
I waited till my parents got home from work later that afternoon to make my triumphant announcement: I had found a mistake in their wedding album! I was confident that I had uncovered an important clue to something larger than my immediate comprehension. I was a serious Nancy Drew acolyte, and had read every edition in the famous Mystery Series at that point. I was certain that title number 24 “The Clue in the Old Album” was playing out in real time.
“Your wedding album has the wrong year in it”, I charged. “It says 7 January 1967, but shouldn’t it be 1966, since I was born in October of 1967??”
“ Yes, you were born more than nine months later.”, my mother said. “You were a honeymoon baby.”
My twelve year old brain consumed this new context of information with a fair amount of alarm, or was it catholic guilt? I did the math, and it DID seem plausible, after all.
All I knew at that point was that my dad was in the Navy, and had been out to sea when I was born, and had received a telegram announcing my birth. Growing up, as the oldest grandchild on my mother’s side, my grandfather told me every single time I saw him on a visit to Massachusetts, “I was the first person to hold you at the hospital.”
It was true: my dad enlisted in the Navy as a senior at North High in Worcester, Massachusetts, on 11 October 1961. Then he signed onto active duty at UMASS Amherst in August of 1965, as a Naval Aviation cadet. He had just met my mother on the beach at Cape Cod that summer of 1965. If you lived in Central Massachusetts, you for sure spent as much time as possible going to Cape Cod every possible weekend. Turns out, my dad had met my mom’s older sister Phyllis in high school, so on a weekend when my mom found herself stranded on Cape Cod, without a ride home, my dad showed up in one of his fancy cars, he owned a Packard with a rumble seat, and a Galaxie 500, and offered my Mom, known as “Little Phylly”, a ride back to Worcester. They fell in love, and she was standing by his side, when he received his wings as a Naval Aviator and commission as an Ensign that December 1966.
According to my mother, the wedding was spontaneous because my dad was under contract with the Navy, and they couldn’t get married until he got his wings, which turned out to be 20 December 1966. Some of their peers in the Navy had planned weddings in advance, only to find out that the groom couldn’t attend his own wedding because he had not gotten in the requisite flight hours. Also, my mother’s family was planning a move to Cambridge, Ohio, from Worcester, Massachusetts, so that my maternal grandfather could start his new job. As my dad’s next deployment loomed, they hastily prepared for the 7 January 1967 wedding date. In fact, there was a giant ice storm that night, which prevented my parents from travelling to New York City for their honeymoon, so they stayed in a hotel in Westboro, Massachusetts. My paternal grandfather, Rocco Gemma did not attend my parents’ wedding, a fact that was dictated to us almost annually. Rocco was in New York City attending a trade show for his employer Wilson Sporting Goods, so he sprung for some Broadway tickets for their honeymoon, “Hello Dolly.” My parents enjoyed a nice idyll in the city, and then my Mom moved to Ohio, to live with her parents, and 14 year old sister Christine, and 16 year old sister Patty, as she herself was only 21 years old. My dad departed the United States on the aircraft carrier, the USS RANDOLPH CVS-15, to conduct Anti- Submarine Warfare Operations, on the Mediterranean Sea.
My dad was on a port call to Italy, visiting my Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Pete in Bologna, when he received the telegram from the ship that I had been born that 10 October 1967. Legend says that he went to the Sistine Chapel on his next stop to light a candle for me. He did not meet me in person until the following April of 1968, when he returned from his “Med“ cruise, and my parents left Ohio for his next assignment in Norfolk, Virginia. My sister was born in Norfolk that February of 1969.
Then the transfer came in for NAS Pensacola, Florida and from May of 1970 to May of 1972, my dad served a second tour of active duty as a search and rescue pilot.. My first memories are in Pensacola and of the white sand beaches, and the hot hot hot weather every day. My mom would dress us every day for outdoor play with the little boys next door, and after five minutes of riding our big wheels down the main drag, my sister and I would run back to the garage where we would tear off everything but our shorts so we could stay cool like the boys.
It always amazes me that my mom was so young, raising two daughters, while bearing witness to my dad’s Navy career. She had taken two years of advanced secretarial courses in high school, before a final preparatory year at Ward Secretarial School in Worcester, Massachusetts, before she met my dad. After Ward, she got a job with the Mayor of Worcester, and worked for him until he lost in the next election. Her next job was working for the president of a local radio station. She went from living with her parents to living with my dad, and instant motherhood, which was de rigueur in the 1960’s, a fashion that did not appeal to her honeymoon baby.
After my dad left active duty in 1972 and joined the Navy Reserves at NAS South Weymouth, Massachusetts with HSL-74, we moved to Noank. My parents opened up the Downtown Mystic Boutique, and my dad only had to report for duty one weekend a month, and two weeks a year: Pancakes for Dinner! But by April of 1987 with my dad now reporting to the Naval War College in Newport, RI, alas, the rigors of a Navy career had taken its toll on my parents’ marriage. By the time my sister was set to graduate from high school that June, it was over after twenty years.
“The Stars Turn, and a Time Presents Itself”:::
I started thinking about all the band photographs I have taken since the early 1990’s, when I first tested the waters with a camera. Musicians were my first muse, before I established a model stable, a steady fuse that still burns today. I realized with a tiny shock, that not a single band in my photographic collection is still together today.
Of course……not shocking at all:
being in a band is the very essence of a photograph: “it is a flash in a moment of time” (Portersville, 1998).
My very first band photo was a live shot of Delta of Venus, at the El-n-Gee in January 1993:
$3 Depth Charge Photo Shoot for Postage Magazine 1997 on promotion for the Trapezium CD.
Fatal Film photoshoot at the Waterford Drive-In Theater 6 March 2004
Estrogen and Tonic (ONE HALF OF PAISLEY JUNGLE!!!!!!!) Hygienic Rock Fix 29 January 2005
Lotus at the Green Marble 1994
Low Beam at Hygienic Rock Fix in New London January 2005
Incessant Pop Group chez Centraal Studios, 2005
Slander band photo June 2012 in our backyard
My last band photo was Slander at the Stardust Motel in North Stonington for a video production of “Ghosts” b/w “Magnets” in 2013.
Over these twenty years, I have photographed in pretty much chronologic order: Delta of Venus, 17 Relics, Lotus, Mindbender, Magpie, MAP, Doug, Cigarette, The Reducers, Vera From Alice, Grand Passion, Semaphore, Mona Gritch, Adams Onis, $3 Depth Charge, Black Pig Liberation Front, AmberTones, Portersville, Roger Human Being, Seratonin, Low Beam, Estrogen and Tonic, Fatal Film, Quiet Life, Ringers, Sodium Lights, Incessant Pop Group, and Slander.
The music of many of these bands can be heard here in the music archive, carefully maintained by Mat Tarbox. The origin of PortFire was in MMA: Mystic Music Archive, and after the Chez Depot Memorial Show in July 2011, it was decided that a larger Artist website would better serve the talent of the roster.
“I can’t find my way home..
That’s when I don’t need you.”
Incessant Pop Group, Anhedonia, from Batterie Electronique, 2006
This is unfortunately, a true story, written in October of 1985, while the writer was 17.
Dedicated to Jason Filardi and John Hughes.
“The Double – Edged Sword”
“Come on Claire, tell us, have you ever done it?”,
Claire hedges, not wanting to answer, yet mesmerized by the mounting peer pressure.
“You can tell us,” chant the other four, “we’re your friends.”
Allison separates herself from the all too eager group, and pauses, “it’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it Claire; you’re a Prude or a Tease if you don’t, and a Slut if you do!”
Above is an excerpt from the teenage movie, “The Breakfast Club”, released in the summer of 1985. However short this scene was, its underlying theme implanted a tiny seed in the back of my mind. Personal experiences and subsequent relationships with males seemed to nourish this little idea, as would water and sunshine to a young flower. The whole concept of a double-edged sword troubled me, and led to a good deal of unanswered questions. Just how do the young women of modern society fall prey to these evil-categorizing vultures? I have to come to believe that one simple date with a boy nowadays tosses a girl on either side: the Prudes and Teases on one, and the Sluts on the other. There are no compromises, no in-betweens, either she does or she doesn’t. Unfortunately, these labels yield one conclusion: the girl never wins!
During my time in high school, a typical pattern uneasily developed when I was meeting a lot of new guys. I had the usual overload of female and male friends, and we all indulged in prescribed activities: parties, concerts, cook-outs, beach outings,and road trips. I thought it was of small importance when a male “friend” asked me to go with him to a party. I thought this guy was a nice person, and enjoyed the easy-going friendship that we shared. Well…..it seems that the moment I stepped into his car, he thinks that my previous “friendly” conversation meant a little more, as he begins to make his move. If I say “No”, I risk losing his friendship and proceed to get labelled a “Prude” (or a “Tease” if I accidentally excited the poor adolescent and failed to carry out his idea of a good time). Should I say “Yes”, however, I not only risk creating a bad reputation for myself as a “Slut”, but our previous friendship is destroyed as egos, reputations, whispers, and rumors are whipped around in a swirl of high school confusion. So, what started as an innocent ride to Susie’s party threatens to become a nightmare of labels and categories.
Example number one emerged from a conversation with a sincere male friend of mine. He mentioned another friend of mine, and ended with, “You know, Michelle, Mark always thought you were a prude, kind of square.” I replied, “You must be mistaken, Mark gave me a few rides, here and there. Sure he’s a nice guy, but he didn’t hint around or make a move towards me. How could he think I was a prude?” My friend only answered with, “That’s exactly it….he feels you weren’t receptive to his signals.” “Oh really”, I said dryly, “Next time I’ll know not to say, ‘Gee, Thanks for the ride Mark’, but I’ll instead throw off all my clothes the second I jump in the car to show my appreciation.”
The irony in this silliness with Mark led to my dismayed reaction in example number two with Matthew. He and I shared a few high school classes. One day, a conversation with yet another male friend revealed this interesting rumor. “Michelle, you know Matthew always thought you were a tease”, said my friend. I groaned silently. “Now really, how did he form this judgment?”, I questioned. “Well, I dunno, the way you acted…. the way you made him feel….the things you said….”, my friend trailed off. I replied, “How wonderful that I have this control and influence over Matthew.”
I was beginning to feel resentful of the ignorant labelling that guys seem obsessed with, as if it were some tribal ritual. Since I could not realistically change the situation, anger led to helplessness. A distressing example number three arose during a reminiscence of my sophomore year, when I had befriended several senior guys, known as “The Men”. (note to my young self, this is a hint and a half for your ass). It seems one of the guys, Jon, supposedly my friend, took it upon himself to spread these incredible (and completely untrue) rumors of he and I having a consuming love affair. When I learned how he implicitly labelled me a “Slut”, I was shocked and amazed. This was the limit!
How could three boys paint such vivid extremes of me, and thus allow me to unwittingly fall into these despicable category traps. I am not going to analyze some psychological process, nor explain the boys’ incessant stories: I am sure that even in primitive cave dwellings, the first vestiges of “locker room talk” were taking form. There are no real satisfying solutions to what I believe is an injustice towards young women. I refuse to start some Anti-Label Crusade; an ignorant guy will think of a new stereotype for me, the “Frustrated.”
Claire screams out to the group before her, “No! I never did it.”
Me too Claire, me too. I could not trust any boy in high school. Eighties, baby, they were interesting!
In hindsight, I am glad that I had a very protective Italian father, who scared everyone away. It’s true! He always told me, “Once you lose your reputation, you can never get it back”. Thank you to Scary Larry, Stormin’ Norman, and Captain Stubing for keeping my idealism intact!
Outtake from The Personal Universe Shoot
featuring Model: Caroline Walz
as my PISCES
Photograph by Michelle Gemma
26 September 2017
Watch Hill, Rhode Island, USA
michellegemmaphotography.com
michellegemmaphotography.wordpress.com
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and