Portrait in Blue (2011). Model: Rebekkah Perigrin

I think I believe a little bit in the power of people to really cast a bad energy on you if they want to. If the bad mojo wants to come your way, look out.—Dileep Rao

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Maybe it’s just me, but I hear the word mojo and it’s almost impossible to not immediately think of Mike Meyers in the character of Austin Powers. Then I inevitably wonder whatever happened to Meyers and why he didn’t pursue the whole Austin Powers thing more aggressively while it was working for him. The only answer I can find is that he must have lost his mojo, too. That happens, it seems. Mojo has this ability to just get up and walk away whenever it damn well feels like it. Rather sucks when that happens.

Of course, not everyone has mojo to begin with. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a particularly strong mojo of any kind. If I did, it was when I was too young and stupid to recognize it and put it to work for me. Mojo seems to involve just a bit of arrogance on top of a healthy dose of self-confidence and there have been few times that my confidence has been sufficient to tip the scales in that direction. Although, now that I’m sitting here typing this, the times that I’ve been able to pull off large nude shoots almost certainly have required a bit of mojo working. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Mojo is such an elusive thing, though. I think most people don’t have mjo more often than they do have it. Maintaining mojo is hard work; it requires being at the top of your game, not letting your guard down, having everything together no matter what happens. How many people can realistically do that day in and day out? Sure, two or three days a week, maybe, and almost certainly a couple of times a month, but all day every day? I don’t think so. Not unless you’re someone supremely cool like Sir Ian McKellan or Patrick Stewart; they never seem to lose their mojo, at least not in public.

And then, like the song says, there are some people on whom no amount of mojo works. There’s nothing one can do when encountering such a person; they’re just immune to the stuff. And just because the mojo works on someone once doesn’t necessarily mean it will a second time. Perhaps there’s a little bit of deception in mojo, making ourselves out to be more than we are. Rebekkah had her mojo working the night we shot this portrait. Or maybe it was the wine. Maybe wine is mojo. Wait, scotch is mojo! Maybe. Enjoy the song.[/one_half_last]