On not sleeping,

I stopped sleeping one balmy night in 2007. My relationship with my boyfriend was failing, or starting to fail pretty badly by this point. I had started to notice other people and crucially, they had started to notice me. I stopped socialising around this time, conscious that the pretence of being "a couple" was challenging even my finely honed acting abilities. And so, I would sit up, night after night, playing music and talking to friends on MSN. I would create elaborate projects that would eat into my evenings, time previously spent talking to the man I once thought as my other half became silent, him on the X Box, me on the laptop. Tapping and sighing, pausing for cups of tea or a passing comment about the day, neither one of us really taking in the others response, just acknowledging the noise with a polite "hm".

He worked night shifts, that boyfriend. A lot of our time was spent dancing around the cold spaces of the bed as he, weary from work would slide in beside me, my eyes would snap open with a start, before a kiss or a touch on my shoulder could be received, I would slide out of that bed almost simultaneously as he slid in. Nobody is that keen to get up at 7am. My body was betraying me, I didn't want to be there.

"I'm going up" he would say, yawning and  balancing a glass of water on top of his study books. He didn't ask if I would join him, by this point we had accepted the unspoken issue, I wasn't sleeping. At least not in bed and certainly not with him. Lying in the dark until I could hear his breathing slow to a steady rhythm I would get out and go and sit in the armchair that was now a permanent fixture in out bedroom. He never asked me why it suddenly appeared one day, but he knew. I think we both knew.

You probably think I was doing a lot of thinking in that chair, hour after hour as the light cast funny shapes on my folded limbs, but I don't recall any of it. Sleep deprivation consumes pretty much all your energy in allowing you to simply function. You feel fuzzy, leaden, like you failed at something so intrinsically human and natural that the frustration makes you feel itchy and uncomfortable. Anxiety becomes intermingled with peace and tranquillity and slowly starts to conquer everything. A disrupted sleep cycle is more damaging than poor diet or a lack of exercise. My eyes were permanently bloodshot, with the skin around them translucent and lilac, pallid cheeks with the texture of paper. Lips so dry, I could peel the skin from them with my teeth. My hair, Oh my hair! my beautiful mane of thick, dark, hair started to abandon me, shedding itself from my ruined body in alarming quantities as I cried quietly in the shower, unsure of it was day or night.

When I did manage to snatch some sleep, it was fitful and unsatisfactory. A brief blackout that was never enough and never deep enough to recharge me. I felt the whole time like I was drifting on the surface of sleep, never immersing myself fully in it. My limbs felt achy like I had flu and people started to notice as I made mistake after mistake in my work and at home. Like pouring half a kettle of boiling water over my stomach, just because I was too brain dead to remember if I had boiled it or not.

We tried everything, my boyfriend and I. I think in some ways him trying to fix me was a last ditch attempt to save the unsalvageable. I think he knew, from the moment my body started to deny his company even in sleep, he knew the real reason why I couldn't relax. No amount of hot water bottles, lavender spray or herbal sleeping tablets can fix something that broken. We never slept in the same bed again.

A few years and a couple more relationships down the line I am still prone to those terrible periods of time where I feel I will go mad through lack of sleep, I still sit up until the small hours, trying to calm myself sufficiently, listening to music and over thinking things that I know I cannot change thought the power of irrational thought. I take sleeping tablets at times like this, though I prefer not to. I always find the sleep is not worth feeling like a Zombie the next day for, no matter how much I want it.With less to worry me, I trust my body will override what my head says and that I won't need an armchair in my bedroom again. At least not until I am married, perhaps.

Makeup Artist package.

I have been using Pinterest a lot with clients lately. Having someone create a pin board for me really helps when translating what they want into a set of images for their work. Today I am (as we speak) blogging from a shoot I am doing with Mark, a freelance makeup artist who is just starting out. I met Mark when I was shopping and he stopped to snap me for a street style project. He recently got back in touch and asked me to shoot some looks for him. For the last few weeks we have been creating Pin boards for each other on Pinterest which eventually translated into a concept for this shoot.

While we were waiting this morning for the model he had booked to show up, he did my makeup! I've modelled before and do not know why people do it! I am so impatient!I also really don't like other people touching my face. But I am glad I let him.

The look below was created using Becca foundation, liquid bronzer, touché éclat and a highlighter by Clinique. He then blended the constructivist eye cream by Mac into the eye, buffing a stronger matte brown powder to create depth. Taking the colour under my eye he blended the whole thing with a soft brush to create this smoky look. Lips were evened out with concealer and given a lick of mac colour in myth. I am wearing my own Rimmel mascara and eyebrow pencil which is by Clarins. Finally, Mark blended out any blemishes or shadows with studio sculpt concealer, also by Mac. If I put this much on, my face would surely crack but the results were really good. I guess this is why he is a makeup artist and I am not!

He did a fantastic job and this is more product than I would consider wearing ever, but the finished result looks fabulous. I like a strong eye and this one in brown is something I can get on board with. I will be able to post sneaky perks of the shoot once I get permission and also once they are posted to his site!

I am a little afraid of Love.

If I write it at the title to this blogpost then maybe it will largely go unnoticed. Like an aside, like a whisper, like an afterthought. If I write it like that, then I will not have to admit that I have made this statement based on evidence supplied by the entire canvas of my existence to date. I am as scared of Love as I am of the gap on The Tube. I am as nervous of surrendering to the feeling as Priest is about navigating a Lingerie department. Of course, "Love" does not simply mean the Romantic type, I'm not exclusively talking about the "Knock the air from your lungs, walk about in a daze" kind of feeling, commonly confused with Lust. I am, like perhaps a lot of people, scared to love because of the threat of loss.

When we give ourselves over to Love, we also embrace its sickly and malevolent bedfellow, Loss. This is a notion not lost on me, as someone who lost her (house) Cat for about 5 hours yesterday and experienced the full gamut of human emotion over a tiny Burmese-tabby cross. I love my Cat as much as a human can form an attachment to any kind of inanimate object, or pet. I convince myself her demands for food are affection and thus translate them into my amorously-deficient brain as "Love". When I want to, I convince myself my Cat Loves Me. She actually just loves the food and access to a warm duvet. In writing this last, I am forcibly reminded of more than one ex-boyfriend, only less cute and minus arse licking.

It is funny, the lies we tell ourselves just to feel "it". When we entertain Love, we also entertain Loss. Because there is always a possibility that those and the things we love will leave us. Having lost several things I love, or thought I loved in my life, I was left, as most of us are in such circumstances, bewildered, quiet, shell shocked. The pieces in my head, and in my heart took a long while to fit back together and even now, I am not sure they were repaired properly. The heart does not come with a warranty and love, at least for me, is a bit like taking out an iPhone contract without insurance. You are always a little bit afraid to let someone use it because there is a chance that person may drop it and smash it. We invest a lot of ourselves in Love, in loving a husband or a wife, the implication is that we become a "half"- whilst it is easy to consolidate all that we are with another person when we love that person, it is excruciatingly difficult and almost impossible to flesh out what we so willingly sacrificed to that person, in the event that person betrays or leaves us. It is like growing another limb, as we writhe in the inflicted pain, we vow not to do this again, not to make these mistakes. We wander in a featureless landscape, numb and reeling with the enormity of the task, unable to see potential in anything and trying, trying so very hard, to get our heads around the fact that Love did this.

Who in their right mind would ever do it again?

I might be afraid to love and you might be thinking that my issue is with getting hurt, but about two years ago it dawned on me that I was also afraid to love the people I have lost. Not talking about the dead, choosing instead to keep them locked inside your heart is a natural thing. Some memories are too precious to go diluting them in their retelling, after all. For this reason, I do not wear a heart on my sleeve, but an Angels Wing, in the hope that somebody will ask me what it means and that proudly, I will be able to tell them about the people I am proud to have loved.

I talk about "It", Love, the BIG L, like a person who has never experienced it. But I have, at least I am pretty sure I have. Over the years I have flirted with Love in all of its intoxicating and tempestuous forms; First, Unrequited, Platonic, Cat. I have had it taken from me, I have lost it and I have bestowed it far too willingly. I have had it sneak up on me, grow like a cancer and finally die like a mangy fox. I have held my breath in limbo, terrified and anxious to feel and thrown my expectations at the feet of people who are entirely unable to pick them up and make sense of them. I am a fully paid up member to the love club. I  just don't attend meetings all that often. And other members don't seem to notice me.
-Incidentally, if there were (and as I type this I fervently hope that such a thing does not exist) such a thing as the love club, how VILE would it be? I imagine it manned entirely by cherubs with lots of red velveteen and swags everywhere...

Yes, like a Slimmer who's fondness for biscuits stops them attending a regular weigh in, I am similarly reluctant to perch my derriere upon a (plush, red, velvet) banquette in "the Love Club" I guess I used to wonder why this was, I used to think that a relationship was what I really wanted in life, but with age, we learn that the club rules of "the Love Club" are ultimately too complex and demanding and, like posh London nightspots achieve nothing more than make me look about, wondering what all the fuss was about. The best we can do is be patient, smile, laugh and trust that obstacles will clear away so that Love- the one that is right for us and is of our own design, will find us at last.

7 Deadly Sins (2009 Flashback)

I have been going through some old projects I have done over the years and wanted to share this again, becasue it does not really fit into my current portfolio and is not really something I think represents what I do. I did the 7 Deadly Sins to give my ailing 365 project a boost. The editing is closer to digital art in a way, either way, it was a lot of fun and it was good to have a set theme for a week!

2009.

Studio Shoot.

 Some sneak peeks at some images taken during a studio shoot today. The model is my gorgeous friend Simon and I was lucky enough to mess about with some styling too. More to come- I just like these B&W's best. I will be updating abibansal.com ASAP with this new work.

Let's Go Outside....

Today I had a little jaunt up to Ashton Court Estate to scout for a possible location for a photoshoot I have booked next month. I make it sound like I travelled over hill and dale but really I don't live very far away and it only takes about 20 mins to walk there from my house.

I had my graduation ball at Ashton Court and aside from a run in with Timmy Mallet and being sick in my mouth on a bus, I don't really recall the splendour of the surroundings. A visit to the Balloon Fiesta in the Summer really made me appreciate how lucky I am to live so near to this amazing space.

Not being a Wildlife Photographer, I thought I would try to get some shots of wildlife, there are deer on the estate as well as a lot of birds. What should follow are some lovely photos OF said wildlife.......


..except I can't do that because the shots I did manage to get were DIABOLICAL. I think I lost my confidence when I convinced myself the Buffalo  Deer were charging AT me, ran out of the way, tripped over a log, slipped on some loose ground and ended up on my backside infront of some ramblers. Oh, and I also pulled a German Shepherd off a horse, stopping it attacking its back legs. The owner had no clue.

Done with nature, I managed to get some portraits in the lovely midday sun, despite which was butt-clenchingly cold up there, so next time I shall take gloves.

 Brilliant light at Ashton Court Today.

Still, we stick to what we know.

I have never loved someone.