This is my student card for the JC. It's a little embarrassing to think I'm actually seen this way. Day in and day out, always the same worn face. It seems I'll remain this way until I pass away. It's so annoyingly existential. "Oh the Horror!"

I would like to match my personal image with that of my inner sense of beauty. Perhaps I could choose a model that could my match my inner vitality, something that would express my wonder at all the surprising vicissitudes of nature and its stubborn will to procreate. I could make myself over in the image of this model. A makeover. An irony to put things in perspective.

The first thing to come to mind, would be a beautiful woman. The subject of endless paintings by artists of all ages. Who would typify this in a modern age, a Madonna for our times?

For some reason even this godmother of sensuality does not quite find my inner essence. Perhaps because she's still sounds the same; her slick band makes her musical style pale in comparison to the intensity of newcomers. Perhaps because her imitators have made her seem almost common place.

I would like an image of a tougher beauty, with a bold sexual aura, something that would flash quixotically like light flickering on dark water, something as resonant as the depth of the hip hop bass filling up a summer street. Why not as a member of a group who can mix sassiness with attitude and still come off as classic divas.

But even TLC with their writhing rhythms do not quite find my heart. It's one thing to be passionate and another to find the purity of an aesthetic. I seek an innocence that would show my own pacific center, my own clarity of vision, an ingenue that would be able to be both actress and playmate.

I love this vision. Brandy's eyes are wider and her lips fuller than I could ever imagine mine could be. And although I strain to capture my reflection in this figment of imagination, her style does seem to inform my sense of beauty. I've always admired the beauty of African American women. I attempt to express a fullness here and a directness that can't be disguised by the makeup but only enhanced. So the true makeover becomes another different language in the many languages of art, where artifice is not disguise but medium.