Sex and Music

Noelia
3” x 4”
pencil on paper, 2010

Over the next few days I’ll post a series of observations concerning topics I usually shy away from but never escape from. I’ve seen videos; two documentaries, an interview, a home made tape, and I’m reading a book as well, all having to do with these topics, and with music, and therefore with my Top 100, and thus myself. The topics that kept my mind thinking were sex, hate, violence, love, and abuse. I’ll start at the beginning: sex, present in all the above mentioned topics as well as in everyone to roam this planet (and beyond, maybe?)

Breasts have been a favorite subject of mine to paint (more about breasts in a following post on David Allen Coe) but last year I made the vow not to paint breasts gratuitously anymore (in the context of the Top 100.) As part of me becoming a responsible adult I would treat the (female) performers respectfully. I was prompted to make this vow after learning the tragic fate of the singer Mia Zapata (more about her as well in this mini-series over the next few days.) I’m sticking to the vow. It is not that I gave up having crushes on certain performers and that I don’t look at sexy pictures of them, but I’m not adding any more disrespectful images, I’ll keep the sexual element private. The paintings are still very sexy, I think, just as the music is. One of the reasons I want to bring up the subject of sex here is a video I saw with the Latin pop superstar Noelia, a sex-tape. I had never heard of Noelia and it’s rather sad that I learned of this singer through a sex video I came across on the web by chance. The video shows Noelia having sex with a man who is not seen (save for his penis) but who is the rapper Yamil. The video, in my mind, is not pornographic, it is made very lovingly and the expression on Noelia’s face is that of happiness and comfort. It is a private video that shouldn’t have been distributed. The aftermath of the distribution is messy, to say the least. Noelia has been involved in court battles and scandals ever since. Since the video I watched several performances of Noelia on YouTube and I like it a little bit but am mostly appalled by the commercialism of it. The production is super pop and disco mediocrity. It’s not all that bad though; the songs (mostly written by herself) are strong and catchy. None of these over-produced video’s portray Noelia in such a humanly, kind, and loving way as the sex-tape does. It’s a pity. Really. It’s a condition of human culture (not nature) that the most true and beautiful depictions of human being (and I don’t mean sex here) languish and are substituted for a superficial reality. I hate to admit it but I think that the sex-tape is art and her hits (like Candela) are not. What I want is to see a home made tape of her performing her songs in the coziness of her home. Her full name is Noelia Lorenzo Monge, she lives in Puerto Rico and was also born there on August 31, 1979. The drawing presented here is from a notebook, done from the sex-tape, very small. The actual drawing extends further down (but not below the belt) but I cropped it right above her nipples, a vow is a vow!