Clipping from an early 21st century Elle, that I identified with as being the “writer me”, LS Harteveld. I ve always felt more like her than like my real self, and often dress similarly to her.
It seems ironic that out of all people I am the one who writes a post about staying true to your own identity.
Because I have had an alterego, this alterego of LS Harteveld, since 2006.
This was before I identified with Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell. I have loved Sharon Stone’s portrayal of her since the release of the movie in 1992, and even copied her clothing style to a degree, and still do to this day;
But in the 90s and early 00s I never identified as being so bold in my sexuality, nor as being a writer.
So although I would later write many blogpost of how I identified with Catherine Tramell being my role model for being a writer, it wasn’t “her” that lead the way, in 2006 when I started writing.
It was something else:
A fashion shoot for denim in a glossy, I think it was in Elle.
This was how I identified myself, when I decided how to define myself.
Years later I made a promotional photo inspired by this clipping, and I used it on the cover of my collected works “Het Boek Benjamin”.
Both the book about my love for Catherine Tramell, “The Beach, C” (2021)
as well as “Het Boek Benjamin” with the cover photo can be found in my bookstore at Lulu:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/LaurenandLulu
Since it’s 30 years after Basic Instinct and 20 years after that Elle, when I say “Never forget who you are”, I clearly do not mean there is some super authentic, deeper down version of your universal self, that defines you more, than movie stars or clippings.
No, I mean your true identity is defined by things you were automatically drawn to right from the first moment you saw them.
And there is a good chance it were things (works of art, or performances) that were designed to speak to an audience and to tell a story. And this will have made it all the more difficult to understand that they struck a deeper chord with you.
That what you were feeling was important.
I have had a few of those defining moments, and I have transported or started using many of them, for my work under my real name.
And it feels good: It feels like the identity under my real name is growing in authenticity, as I am giving “her” the same freedom to be who she is, and have her own identity, just like I gave it to LS Harteveld all those years ago.
But this automatically means that although those elements have been present here, under my work of LS Harteveld, they no longer are.
Part of the stories, and memories, will no longer be covered here, because I moved them to my “new”, real identity.
But there are aspects of myself, which will always stay here.
That will always be LS Harteveld, and that will never be anything else.
The sexual part, the Catherine Tramell part, the Carrie Bradshaw part, the having a lover I call Big part;
But also, way more general, the me “A Writer” part!
Which is, as I said in my previous Time Capsule as well, the largest part of me.
That identity, my true identity, will only, ever, be LS Harteveld.
That part of me that shows up for her writing, in the same way Carrie Bradshaw showed up for love. As she said in the final (double) episode of Sex and the City, when she breaks up with her last boyfriend before ultimately returning to Mr.Big;
“I am someone who is looking for love. Real love.
Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.
And I don’t think that love is here, in this expensive suite, in this lovely hotel, in Paris.”
Regardless of how successful I will ever be under my real name, and how lovely it will all be, that ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love?
That can only be found here.
.
~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living
since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
Currently featuring my 1997 diary and letters to my coach Sara.
ABOUT TIME CAPSULES
My time capsules are a written out collection of things that I have come into contact with, and that will influence my art.
The project is Inspired by Warhol, who created one time capsule (box) a month, collecting physical objects.
Time Capsules is a stand-alone project.
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My diaries en erotica are available in my BOOK SHOP