They've taught you the rudiments? Of course they have. Paths of dream. The floating techniques. And how to enter the old icons and images, like Alice through the glass, absorbing the proscenium, working your way through the molecules of paint to find the character, the ogre or the odalisque -- then the becoming.

We are all players here, all volunteers. Our wizard has studied the sacral mysteries, the methods of those who came before her, draws on all of them. The philtres, chemical magics, tricks of dark and light, coverings, discoverings, the significance of the surface and the ways beneath. Particles of tarnished silver, held in a gelatin boiled out of the tissues of animals, tinted with potions. Cloaks and masks, layers of the onion, put them on or peel away, spirit games. She orchestrates; we perform. Energy conducts.

The light-sensitive emulsion is like amber, it encases you, coats the aspect of you the lens observes, surrounds it in a slow inexorable oozing that starts when the shutter blinks. You learn to wriggle free through the areas the lens can't see, leave that aspect behind like a snake's shed skin, relic of a way you were. A simple trick, really. Fun to look back at them, little layers from your past selves.

Did you know that you can live inside an Ingres, or a Goya, the "Venus de Milo," "Winged Victory"? Of course, they've told you that, but you can't realize what it truly means until you've done it. Follow the rites precisely and, suddenly, there you are. Not trapped on the surface, stuck in the pigment or the marble somehow, but actually present in the world of the image or the sculpture itself, occupying its space. Absolutely! I spent a month in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" once; amazing days and nights. Had to watch my step, though, lots of surprises around the corners of his cosmos, not all of them pleasant.

The strangest part is that you can sense it when someone looks at you, and see out as well, look at whomever is looking at the picture from the other side. So if you're a woman in one of the female nudes -- a Degas, say, a Rubens -- and a man (or a woman with a taste for her own) comes along, you feel those eyes on your skin, their lust and longing actually caress you, soak in, so intense. There's a waiting list to inhabit that Munch, you wouldn't believe the orgasms, cool steady endless ocean waves lifting you irresistibly on a summer day.

Watch out for that oven. It's hot.