Getting ready to shoot on the concrete bed of a dead poet.

Always shy, she goes to great lengths to hide as she dresses or undresses, and I go to just as great effort to interrupt her as she does so. She throws some bread at me a few seconds after this picture.

This is the hook that always catches her attention: writing, or drawing, a sketchbook, the tiniest evidence of creativity. A model stands around, thinking, and then stands around some more, and the whole time she is always wondering what interesting thing she could be doing.

Interrupted. What instruction do I give her? Not to pose, not to lift her chin, not to do anything but feel.

It’s a silly poem, nothing to shout about, but as often happens when you scribble, a big idea comes up like a shark at the beach, surprising the swimmer: “promises are written in moments and spent by time.” Kyla repeats this line several times, and sees that the line eats itself: what does time do to our promises?

This is the sort of moment which is a promise to me, intimacy, a reminder of the first women in my life, undressing without a care in front of an innocent boy. Every Italian movie ever made, basically!

She is smiling too much. For this I do instruct, no smile, and the timbre of the room changes, from soul to symphony, classical, suddenly.

We talk about the story and the scenes, but I rarely give Kyla a script in advance. I write the pieces out into a journal a few minutes before she performs them. She is a fabulous actor, even in a second language, because she feels so deeply and wants so much to say something meaningful. The pictures simply don’t mean that much to her. What can a picture say? It’s the raw idea she is dying to express. When I bring out the camera, she is interested in what comes next, but not excited. When the colored pens come out, she is animated and these are the moments I try to capture her.

And this is what she likes, hiding, playing the part I ask her, of posing like the castle. The wall stretches from her shoulder to her hip, and protects the treasures inside. No problem, she channels this easily.

I know it drives people crazy when I take a break from a project and leave it dangling, unfinished. But I’m starting a new musical, writing a new end to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and so leave this site for now, with the promise that more is coming. Very soon. January 11, 2020.

This is the SONY R1, a “bridge” camera that allowed SONY to start competing with Nikon and Canon. But the camera came with a fantastic lens from Zeiss. Google it and see what an incredibly versatile item it was, emerging just as digital began to murder film. I was lucky as hell to have this on my first shoots with Kyla.

Segovia is next, with scenes from the erotic thriller Assassin 62, and then we drive up to Bilbo and the fish that saved a city. From there to the castle at Loarre, and then through the mountains to Limoux and Carcassonne before concluding this trip in Barcelona. There will be a similar book to Kyla Cole and the Castle Nudes for each of these places. I just have to find the time to carve them into existence!

The next chapter in Kyla Cole and Me. Followed by Bilbo and the great Fish of Frank Gehry, followed by Loarre and the Pyrenees, with another chapter in Barcelona. Iceland, Mexico, the Mayan lands, Moab and Taos, and the mighty Congo still to come . . .

Route 918, from Spain to France, absolutely beautiful, with more of Kyla and Me on the way.