The Beckoning Tides

Orla Sullivan 

Sirens

σειρά (seirá)

Translates to: Rope, cord

Origin: Ancient Greece

Sighted: Sirenum Scopuli

Temperament: Alluring women with tandem for trouble

Found: National Gallery of Victoria

The Sirens by John Longstaff urges a deep visceral force of trepidation through its depiction of Sirens latent in the sunken shadows. A man calls, torn in an amalgamation of pain and desire. The bane of the Siren lives on. 

Known as eclectic bodies, giggling and snacking on bone marrow. Brambled upon Persephone’s meadow, singing aching melodies, enticing death. They are birds, they are fish, they are ugly, and they are beautiful. They are temptation embodied, their name invoking entrapment. Impudent and fickle they emerge within literature, fierce and enticing they are shaped by art. Seductresses that lure with their voice, in animal forms that threaten the man, an animalistic threat of the libido.

Yet, to whittle Sirens down to threat of the libido is a disservice, to ignore their history, the true vitality of their existence. The history of struggle and fear riddled with the ocean. The world is unbeknownst to the mystery that ties Sirens to life itself.

In Homer’s The Odyssey, Sirens soared the sky as birds. Women with wings, who enticed through their knowledge. Spoken in sweet, honeyed breaths, they would rip those apart with sentimental longing, revealing the truth of everything their desire succumbs to. 

What was more desirable than a prophecy so elusive to the heart, it could only be heard through the melody of one’s own shadow? 

Odysseus, although tied up, could not deny such wanting. He was trapped, bound to an entrapment of knowledge consumed willingly. 

They promised what his heart truly desired. Professed these carnal yearnings of the sailors that sought knowledge of the seas. They were the ocean’s cruel enticement, its lack of control and its bitter demise, to those that sought it. The rotten flesh of men that had sunk to the bottom. 

The sirens never touched them, they gave them what they wanted. 

… Once he hears to his heart's content, sails on, a wiser man. We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so—all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all! [1]

Sirens are not real and yet that has never mattered. There is an innocence in curiosity to their stories, a framing of human essence moulded through lived experience, a faith in which their souls remain awake. A part of our antiquity, the defeat of physicality and fact. They are a history of malice and beauty, intertwined in an aching trap of yearning ordained within picture frames.

We see their story change through our history, through different cultures and angles, nullifying and fortifying different interpretations. Art and scripture bleeds with fish scales and the bones they laid to waste. A cry to be heard, uttering words we struggle to say out loud, urging a taste of our inner fears and desires. Maybe that is why Sirens are perfect for our tastebuds. 

They can take the form of the Merrow (Murdúchann), found on the Irish shore. Their story is near forgotten alongside most Irish Gaelic and its history, yet these tales are what log Ireland’s deep roots to their Earth.

The tale of a young prince named Roth, lured by Merrow to sea. The translation from Whitley Stokes recounts:

They sang a wonderful burden to Roth, so that he slept a sleep. Then the monsters flocked towards him, and they carry him off in joints, and the sea sends his thigh here (to Port Láirge), and the drink of a hundred would fit on the flat of its bone. [2]

These creatures held great power over the Irish seas. Their connection to the ocean bound deep in its history, and therefore, is built into their infrastructure, dwelling in the town called Port Láirge (Port of a thigh).

But should we fear them?

Odysseus and Roths tale frame the motif of impending tragedy, and trickery. But what is near forgotten is the beauty held deep within the ocean. The Sirens connection to water, of their welcoming touch. The mortality it brings, the romance, the desire to uncover our greatest mysteries. 

We never recognise the tales that lead emergence to women’s connections to the ocean. How many Western cultures imagine the ocean as a feminine scape, with formations of mermaid-like creatures. 

The ocean is where life began, a regency of birth that intrinsically meshes with the significance of a mother figure. Matriarchal animal species like orcas, narwhal and beluga whales live in the ocean, influencing a feminine nature to its meaning. 

The ocean became where women identified a safe scape, an Atlantis for all corners of the world. The sea encompasses Earth, a country for their own.

As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. [3]

An emergence of women used Sirens to emphasise their connection to water, where they can embrace the space and reclaim their autonomy. 

Tatiana Barona, a lesbian Latina writer, wrote stories such as La mujer del aguahere she entwined women to their homage in the ocean. Where they are strong, protective lovers instead of fearsome seductresses.

A blast of water closed their arms. A pool of water was left on the ground. . . 'Come,' Nifé told Sense. 'Let’s go where no one can bother us.' They returned to the lagoon. In the depths of the tranquil water, they love one another, they sleep, and they dream without waking. [4]

She portrays the water as reformative, the Sirens as women that seek to aid those and reawaken the mortality of life. To imagine the art of femininity through story and art, to breathe a new perspective for these creatures. It represents how water is birth and death, a reawakening, a look into one’s soul. 

And I started to realise, as a woman, an inkling as to why I felt such a deep connection with the ocean.

As I stared down the painting, everything started to fall into place. The Sirens hanging from walls of the NGV. Peering at the frame, the golden encasing hot to touch.

A depiction of blind yearning. A drowning man reaching out for apparitions of want. Though, the light is ultimately drowned by the reality of impertinence.

It is like looking out to the end of a tunnel. We are unsure what is on the other side, but we refuse to be blind to knowledge. 

We walk forward towards the light and reach out, to understand. 

Understand the world to understand ourselves.

As I reached out, memories of my most naked self reached back.

The days I grew up fascinated with fairytales. Their stories drafted within my childhood books, tired pages falling apart with herbs, sketches of monstrous beasts, scales of dragons I could trace my fingers along. Threats of faeries that lead me through brambled bushes and lulling flowers.

My palms were often covered with charcoal, nail beds etched in graphite, dug into the pores of my cheeks. I wanted to become them, imagining myself in those other worlds. I feared the reality, somewhere I felt I had no place in. 

And yet, when underwater, I was real.

The storm rose, I felt recognition, the cold touch of rain. I watched as my body washed away onto the concrete, leaving nothing but my bare soul. Those around me ran home, and I chose to stay. Where rumbles of clouds casted shadows, the earth beneath me trembled, my feet bare.

Blinking water from my lashes, I looked up as the orchestra began. The drums echoed at my feet, every beat purposeful in its staging. Chordophones intermingled, sung with the wind and played strange tricks in the air. Violins wailed and the harp grew weary to the droplets drowning its song. It’s a beautiful harmony, as the draped curtains of rain fluttered in the light, harsh in its teeth and fluid to touch. A heavy Atlantis shaved upon me. 

Light clips the air, I am in a motion picture. My movements clipped. Lighting up my face. 

For the first time I am translucent.

Was this what Odysseus felt when greeting the Sirens. Or Roth, as his thigh forms a rotten brew. Perhaps I came out lucky. Perhaps I was not translucent enough.

The water strips me.

It slowly tears at my limbs, exposing me to my inner child, where I used to crouch my bruised knees by the ocean shore. Frightened of my reflection. Scared of my awful self-ascending from the reeds. 

I would wrap my body head to toe in wear, scared of onlookers peering at my naked body. Too young, and so aware of the alienation that skin provides. The vulnerability that followed, unsolicited stares apparent when I only wished to be free. 

Then there were days I would play ‘mermaids’ in the water, and I pretended to claw their eyes out for ever seeing me as anything but myself. 

So why am I still here?

I am confused, and I am stuck in the need for more. I am digging into my soul as I stare down this painting. A need to grasp the incomprehensible keeps me here. Especially as the painting tries to grasp back at me, a dreamlike daze I become susceptible to.

It made me question my place, viewing the canvas, entangling myself in its roots. It had me endlessly lost in its veil of forgotten meaning.

I could feel it whispering,

Prickled,  

leaking under the ammonia, 

a pull against my will. 

The painting had me under its spell. Burgeoned by a want inside of me, a desire fringing on desperation. The emotion that radiated off the dark, muddled splotches made me want to feel the texture of the paint, the waves under my fingertips. A deeper side of me wanted to dig my nails into the paint, twist it, seize the man’s fear tight until my fingers bleed with his despair. 

Dark figures convened in front of me, a gospel I was not sure I was permitted to hear. Yet the room remained silent, amassed in echoes and rattled keys that led a tired melody. It singled me out, amid the crowd. I could feel the water swallow me, tumultuous and harsh. Or I was the water, creeping into the piece with desire that suffocated and a fear that bled. The painting caught something raw inside me, desperate for a small taste of mercy from the ocean. 

Like an old rag held only by a thread, the muted colours appear heavy and worn. Tantalising fate that is almost inevitable. A reminder of drowning, the feeling of pure desperation, a flicker of hope, within a moment of turmoil. And I wonder if the man could relate, facing the light, death ringing in his ears.

I am sinking,

                        Deeper into the paint, falling into its trap.

And I realise why I continue to stay. It stares back at me, my soul concaved into whittled paint.

Orla Sullivan is a writer and artist from Melbourne/Naarm. She is undertaking a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the RMIT. After starting out in Animation, she embarked upon the art of storytelling. Breeding her passion for the bizarre and nostalgic aspects of life to connect with readers and invite an appreciation for the beauty of art. When she is not writing, she is painting in her study or cuddling up with her cat Baloo.