Aphrodite & The Sirens - Julia Maria Johnson

Julia Maria Johnson, soprano UCLA M.M. Recital This recital was curated, directed, filmed, and edited by Julia Maria Johnson. ABOUT THIS RECITAL: "We have all heard the classic femme fatale story of the siren. Not to be confused with a precious, innocent flower of a mermaid, a siren is an evil seductress who lives only to lure poor sailors to their death. Does she have sex with them first? We don’t know. Does she just kill them for the hell of it? Also unclear. Is the siren actually sorely misunderstood, simply wanting someone to love and hold like the rest of us? Perhaps. In his book, The Etymologies of Isidore Saville, Isidore of Seville c. 560–636), states: “They [the Greeks] imagine that ‘there were three Sirens, part virgins, part birds,’ with wings and claws. One of them sang, the second played the flute, the third the lyre, they drew sailors, ensnared by song, to shipwreck. According to the truth, however, they were prostitutes, who led travelers down to poverty and were said to impose shipwreck on them. They had wings and claws because Love flies and wounds. They are said to have stayed in the waves because a wave created Venus.” Venus is the Roman name for the Greek Aphrodite. Among many things, Venus/Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty, love, fertility, and pleasure. Aphrodite has always been connected to the ocean because she is a woman, miraculously born out of sea foam, who embodies supreme feminine beauty. But she is not just some soggy goddess. She is said to also be the goddess of sex workers (hello, sirens!), ruler over marital and extracurricular sex, infatuation, lust, and passion. She is brilliantly calculating and vigorously persuasive. Aphrodite is often portrayed in a poor light, similarly to the sirens, as conceited and conniving, living to tease and torment mortal men. The sirens embody the deep sea, the parts of the self that we want to keep hidden for safe-keeping and only sparingly show. In contrast, Aphrodite illuminates herself to display in the shallow reef, allowing every particle and cell of herself to shimmer and refract in broad daylight for her inevitable audience. This dichotomy of dark/light and hidden/exposed is a central theme of this recital, portrayed by contrasting visual and musical experience. Through the use of mirrors, voice and video layering, and by multiple reflecting bodily forms, I aim to portray the complexity of the human spirit’s experience of this dichotomy. I will also illustrate the everlong process of discovering and embracing the numerous characters we each have within our deepest selves. We have all felt the scathing pain of unrequited love, the fiery cravings of attraction to another human being, the rapidly unending ascents and plummets of our confidence and self-worth, and the overwhelming desire to rebel, push boundaries, and assert our autonomy and power. These are the things that make life the exquisitely painful experiment that it is. But, women have always been punished and villainized for feeling these completely normal and natural human emotions and acting on them. The historical and literary evidence of this is embedded throughout this program. Throughout history, when women have been culturally expected to focus on marriage and childbearing, archetypal images like Aphrodite and the Sirens have been portrayed as figures of DaNgErOuS FeMaLe TeMpTaTiOn and used as cautionary tales against embracing human rights like passion, sexual desire, and pleasure. This program exemplifies the valuable opportunity for all of us to use the images of Aphrodite and the Sirens as inspiration to access the powerful, healthy, passionate parts of our deep selves in pursuit of physical, emotional, and spiritual liberation and satisfaction. We are called to reflect on preconceived societal and relational human roles, and the molds we are so quick to impose upon ourselves and others. By celebrating these feminine powers, we are liberating ourselves to enjoy life’s splendour and affirming inherent parts of the human soul: the sensual, the erotic, the loving, the graceful, the passionate, the sensitive, the emotional, the vulnerable… the Goddesses and Sirens inside each of us."