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subverting hair fashion since 1981.
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| movin' on. |
[05 Apr 2007|12:39pm] |
I've outgrown the lj. I shall no longer be updating here, but i will be continuing this thought-sharing project here. Thanks for readin'.
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| Clocks Ahead. |
[30 Mar 2007|12:44pm] |
1. Brother. The Annuals
2. Eyes Open. The Gossip
3. Momma I'm Sorry. Clipse
4. Alala. CSS
5. Young Folks. Peter Bjorn & John
6. He Can Only Hold Her. Amy Winehouse
7. On. Bloc Party
8. Through The Backyards. Au Revoir Simone
9. Heartbeats. José González
10. Cosmia. Joanna Newsom
11. Four Winds. Bright Eyes
12. To The East. Electrelane
13. The Dogs of B.A. Mirah
14. A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger. Of Montreal
15. Dashboard. Modest Mouse
16. Silver Tiles. Matt & Kim
17. Parentheses. The Blow
18. No Cars Go. Arcade Fire
Complements nicely: mornings with the windows open, cookie-baking, porch/balcony-sitting, dog-walking. One for everybody, just let me know.
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| Ah, springland. |
[23 Mar 2007|01:45pm] |
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music |
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new Bloc Party |
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What's better than spring? Not much. There's a breeze coming through the windows, birds are hyperactively chirping, and my timer is ticking off the minutes until the cookies i'm baking for my sister are ready. My bike is fixed and ready for the road, proof that contrary to the delightful treatment i received from the bike shop workers, dicks aren't required to repair caliper brakes. I'm multi-tasking as we speak a spring playlist that will knock your socks off and make your feet ready for flip-flops again. I can't wait until my sister gets here, can't wait to be jabbering about her wedding and art and politics, our favorite topics. There's so much energy in the air. Everything feels wonderfully histrionic; i've been having conversations and seeing things move in this lighthearted hammy way, like everyone is responding to the weather by pretending to be Julia Sugarbaker from Designing Women. I love it.
Speaking of the South, it is my summer's ambition to find my way down home. Anyone up for a road trip to the humidlands, keep the end of july clear.
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| An (brief) admission. |
[19 Mar 2007|03:50am] |
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Okay. So, i know it's late, and it's the end of my workweek, and i'm so sleepy, and i'm slightly under the influence, and i'm probably too much affected by the Lali Puna that i was just listening to, but...
I love, love, love my dog. I mean, truly, madly, deeply, just like Savage Love says. I was just watching him poop, and because it's so late and there's no one on the streets i let him poop off-leash, because, you know, who wouldn't prefer untethered to tethered pooping, but then as i was picking it up i watched him scamper back up the stairs to our building, not trying to bolt into the road or shove his nose in some trash or anything, he just easily did exactly what he's supposed to do, and i just stood there at the bottom of the stairs, beaming up at my boy. And he looked back at me, kinda with an "uhhh, why are we still out here?" look on his face, tail wagging all the while, and then wiggled down the steps to meet me.
I absolutely adore him.
And, since you're already here, i just want to add that i'm so glad that he is no longer a source of frustration for me, that i can appreciate him fully without taking out stress or anger or disappointment or whatever the fuck out on him, because i used to do that, which is incredibly shameful, and i'm just really proud that it's been a long time since i've done that, that i'm at a place now where he can just be my boy, and i can just adore him for what he is, and that's it.
That's it. Now, i sleep.
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| Building A Mystery (sarah mclachlan is for suckas). |
[14 Mar 2007|06:27am] |
Monday was an uncharacteristically social day. Usually the day after the "work week" is spent going to class, and then variously sleeping and watching movies. There's a mandatory recovery period for working 30+ hours in three days, but there was a staff meeting where i dorked out about coffee, then two of my coworkers asked me to accompany them on food-getting, so i obliged. The restaurant we ate in, famous among our staff as the place to grab takeout before a shift, was playing the theme song to The Young and The Restless on a loop. I would not have known this, having been partial to General Hospital and to a lesser extent One Life To Live, but both of my friends picked up on it immediately. First it was funny, then it was weird. I mean, on a loop? For forty-five minutes?
Then the two of us that didn't have to work decided to share a drink at the bar, it being only five o'clock, and i was waiting to see if my date for later wanted to meet in manhattan. It was really nice to be tipsy during the day, feeling fancy sitting at a bar i never sit at and having conversations we never have the time for while we're working. As a rule i try to stay away from the workplace once my allotted time there has finished, but it felt extravagantly right talking about art and why we work the ways we do. And then my date did meet me, and even though i was almost drunk by this point, i feel i presented myself well. Charming, but without the awkwardness my sobriety carries. I recommend to anyone attending first dates with a healthy buzz. Oftentimes i feel like i need to work up to being social, mentally prepare or something. But the spontaneity of the day, the ease of it, surprised me into thinking maybe i had placed a limit on myself, a way of being that wasn't really true.
Last week i was sicker than i ever remember being. We're talking incapacitated. My body felt like the time i went sledding after an ice storm, and i was whizzing down a hill superfast and then the sled turned around so we were going backwards and my back slammed full force into the trunk of a tree. It felt like that, except nothing had happened, just a nasty, nasty virus. I needed a nap after getting up to pee. Restaurants are breeding grounds for the grossest of the gross, folks. Remember to tip your servers and bartenders.
I had to cancel some plans and i even missed seeing The Blow live, which would have really pissed me off if i had not been in a semi-conscious sick stupor when i found out. By Thursday i was feeling kinda better, so when my friend invited me to play Legos at her apartment, it was on. Anyone who has ever heard me talk about my childhood knows that i slip into a reverie about Legos. Overdramatic statements like, "Legos are the reason i survived my childhood" and "I would rush home from school to shut myself in my room and play Legos" commonly cascade from my lips. So yes, i have a special attachment to those plastic building blocks.
( for your viewing pleasure )
Needless to say, i'm hoping to incorporate a lot more Lego action into my life.
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| Your skin is something that i stir into my tea. |
[23 Feb 2007|12:47pm] |
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music |
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Joanna Newsom on shuffle |
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A few weekends ago the 2/3 trains were running on a very weird, nearly nonexistent schedule for construction purposes, rendering my commute home from work best accomplished through cabs. The environmentalist and cheapskate in me avoids them except for extreme circumstances, but it was honestly a nice treat, a great comedown from the frat party for professionals that is increasingly my workplace. Bouncing across the Manhattan Bridge listening to Arcade Fire's "In The Backseat" on repeat at 3 am, feeling that Régine Chassagne's voice is designed for accompanying views from bridges, i was gently reminded that i live in new york. Sometimes i spend so much time in familiar places that i forget that it's here, this enormous, alive, pulsing place, it's here that is home. I mean, this is why i am here, this vastness, but it's easy to get caught up in blocking out the masses of people to avoid being overwhelmed by their humanity, it's easy to close off too much.
I was talking with my therapist about this a few days ago, how important it is for me to acknowledge the complexities of the people i interact with, to treat them with the dignity they deserve, even people on the trains or in bodegas or on the sidewalks, but how draining this is. She was saying how difficult it is in a city such as this to find a balance between screening out most people but still allowing enough room for some people to become real. It's so easy for her she said to assume how people are going to respond to her just because she doesn't have enough room to approach every person without expectations. We make judgments, assumptions with how people are going to interact with us to save energy, but the price of that is that they exist less for us. I felt for a very long time that i was incapable of this blocking out, it seemed i was constantly responding to everyone's humanity. I would feel extremely vulnerable just walking on the streets, exhausted and often resentful after retreating back to my apartment. Brooklyn has helped with this, but i still wish there was a way to genuinely interact with everyone, to be so perfectly present, and have it not cost so much. I still believe that everyone deserves to be honored for what they are, and it's frustrating that i am incapable of doing this even most of the time. I think this means that evolutionarily we are not designed to live in cities. I think this also means that my days in new york, while i still can't see myself moving anytime soon, are numbered. Which is a good reason to keep reminding myself why i'm here and to soak up as much as i can.
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| Game on. |
[16 Feb 2007|11:26am] |
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music |
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east of eden movie |
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We had our first real snow here in fair brooklyn on tuesday, making wednesday and thursday really fun dogpark days.
My very good friend was in town this week, and it was wonderful to talk about art with her and compare notes on the lives we're trying to build for ourselves. It just reminded me again how important it is to be around people that have known me for several years, the ease there, the lack of need for explanation. It was also really fun to have someone else around that uses sarcasm and mocking people as a form of affection, an indication of respect; i didn't realize how much i'd missed it.
I found my first grey hair this morning, yay! I really like grey hair, and i'd been jealously watching my sister get a few, listening to my mom tell me she was almost completely grey by thirty, anxiously awaiting the beginning of grey-dom. I'm excited. I'm going to look at it every morning and coach it along. It feels like something earned.
And i got board games! To play at my house! To invite people over to imbibe substances and try to out-trivia, out-scrabble, and out-clue one another. Anyone wishing to partake in the gaming, please invite yourself over. Every night is game night.
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| I've seen your bravery, and i will follow you there |
[26 Jan 2007|02:07pm] |
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I'm on a new music kick again, after a two week break where all i wanted to hear was stuff i already knew, and the news, so i'm addicted to bands that are not really new but new to me, and taking advantage of my newyorkness to get tickets to see the better ones live. The most recent is Matt & Kim, they're not life-changing, but they are really fun:
silver tiles
I'm excited to have a hyper, dance party with them in a few months.
Last night i went to the whitney museum for a lecture on Kiki Smith's retrospective, and also to see her work up close for the first time. I only found out about her maybe a year ago, but she'd become one of my favorite artists because i like how she deals with anatomy, the body, screenprinting, "folk art", feminism, etc. So i showed up pretty psyched, especially since both of the people talking about her work know her personally and have written extensively on her. So we're going through, and i'm really drawn to the intimacy of so many of her figures, especially the bronzes and life-size sculptures of women, most of which are based in various mythologies and folklores. I can't stop staring at them, their crudeness and expressiveness. I hate it when people write about art and don't include images, because, really people, who the fuck can conjure up a precise image of the figure you're talking about, even if they know the artist? So here's some:
untitled(?)
lilith
untitled
a fucking fantastic site for her prints, tangential to my story
My ears perk up when one of the lecturers casually mentions that she uses other people as models for her castings, that she "never uses herself." And a small section of my brain immediately cocks its head. Really? Why not? I mean, they're so personal, they're so specific, it seems odd that she wouldn't have at least used herself once or twice. Maybe she wants to prevent people from drawing autobiographical conclusions where they don't exist, or maybe there's something comforting in the disconnect, in working on her sculptures as "others." So my mind is wandering through all these possibilities, and i think, what the hell, when am i ever going to be around people that actually know the artist i'm thinking about, i should just ask them, even though i'm getting shaky thinking about asking a question in front of all these bored undergrads and heavily-perfumed, fur-wearing elderly people:
Why do you, uhh, think she has never cast herself in her sculptures, you know, considering their intimacy, it would seem to follow that she would use her body in her work.
I can tell you right now, she thinks she's too fat.
I almost said, really? that's fucked up. But i couldn't get it out because the other lecturer picked right up amidst chuckles from the group saying that she's in some of her work, most notably an ink drawing of her and her dead cat:
pieta
But she never refuted what the other woman said. After that the q&a was over so i slowly made my way down the stairs, picked up my bag, put on my winter gear, completely stunned. And fucking pissed. They spent the whole hour talking about how her work has this brazen feminist edge, how she challenges patriarchal assumptions left and right, which i definitely agree with. But then these feminist art critics/historians, these personal friends of kiki smith, so nonchalantly throw out that she has no interest in challenging patriarchal definitions of female body image.
And then it hit me, about the timing on this, not two weeks after i decide to start unschooling myself on all the societal shit i've absorbed about my own body, and i laughed out loud. Yes, the earth is conspiring a plan, in which i will be forced to confront these issues until my brain whittles them down to little sawdusty specks. It really has been everywhere, and not in the sense that it was always there and i'm just noticing it now because i'm focusing on it, but in the sense that there are p.e. teachers somewhere with a gymnasium full of little body image rubber balls for me to catch, and it's really amusing for them to throw them. As an aside, i used to love the smell of those dirty old balls, the ones we used outdoors for dodgeball and kickball, and indoors for crab soccer. We should bring back crab soccer.
I'm a connoisseur of irony, and i think last night was one of the best specific incidences i've personally witnessed. After getting home i took the dog to the park, thinking the whole time of what cool shit i'm going to make as an artist, the kinds of things i want to say. And out there, in the freezing wind, with the shivering branches and the bright half-moon and my scampering dog, i think i may have let a small part of it go.
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| Scrape your knee, it is only skin. |
[23 Jan 2007|03:43pm] |
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music |
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joanna newsom, ys |
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I promise after i write this post i will start working on a new grant proposal. Even though it's boring. And not nearly as fun as constantly refreshing various music blogs. If i repeat the words "self-motivation" over and over in my head, will i get any? I want self-motivation in genie form, except not robin williams genie form because although i really enjoyed aladdin in my youth, he was a little creepy.
I wanted to write about how i felt at the dog park yesterday, but now i can't really grasp it like i did then. It was something about how unleashing my wiggly dog tends to free my brain, it's like he's an extension of my hyper, overactive parts, taking them with him on his urine-marked journeys, and i am left with a calm unique to the dog park. I can't even remember what i specifically thought about, only that it felt like a long exhale. When he found another dog that matched his excitement and my services were needed to converse with his owners, there was a second where i had to remember speech, remember the conventions of language and the cultural norms of the dog park. It was wonderful to watch them play and i didn't feel inconvenienced to talk to them, only surprised at how involved i had become in my own meanderings. This re-telling may or may not be more emo than it is in reality, which i attribute to ys playing right now, giving everything a weight that may not hold once the cd's over. That said, it hurts me to think that there are people that haven't heard it, so if your ys experience is lacking, send me a message with your address and i'll mail you one. This recording is the best argument i can think of for why i listen to music.
Okay, okay, so given the above paragraph, i've decided to take the dog a-parkin'. But then, i swear, grant time. Really. Or i am a time glutton.
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| my ipod knows i'm a dyke. also, some notes. |
[17 Jan 2007|11:54pm] |
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music |
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jazz episode nine |
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It's funny how when you start thinking about something, you know, focusing on it and such, it starts popping up everywhere. Hilarious.
On my way home from a queer anarchist group's meeting which was, typically, lots of talky talky, but very encouraging and positive and exciting and included the unfurling of a pink and black flag, my little music machine serenaded me with the following:
little babies: sleater-kinney
fitter happier: radiohead
that boy: the blow
belong to you: nomy lamm
jason's basement: the gossip
lived in bars: cat power
cameltoe: fannypack
hat 2 da back: tlc
Granted, the Radiohead isn't female or queer, but the rest of 'em? Whoa. It had me grinning a little too much for a early-evening train ride, but none of my fellow commuters seemed creeped out.
And now! I'm! A student! Again! I registered for my first Hunter College class, which is the intro to media studies class, which is the prerequisite for all the other film classes, which will teach me how to work cameras and edit things and record sounds. Thus begins my artist training, long overdue.
I just found out about and purchased tickets for two events coming up that make me appreciate, again, where i live, one is a Gossip show in april, whom i've heard rocks the party live, the other is one of my many stranger crushes Miranda July doing a series of performances at The Kitchen. I'll spare you a text transcription of my giggly teenybopper feelings on these two goings on, but do know it is very hard to suppress them.
And so winds down my last free evening before my work week begins. I can't think of a better way to spend it than right here in my bed, snuggling with a furry dog and typing to you while an episode of ken burns's jazz documentary plays in the background.
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[16 Jan 2007|03:32pm] |
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The coffee-limiting experiment's going well. I'm placing yerba maté in my pantheon of items i unfailingly support, which includes french presses, collapsible dog bowls, johnny, neutrogena face soap, and aunt flo sponges. It tastes good, not like earl grey tea, and does not give me the jitters, or leave my body feeling like those dehydrated ice cream packets that astronauts eat. I'm still going to enjoy a cup of delicious coffee every now and again, but it's nice to not feel dependent on it as my primary energy source.
I have an ongoing interest in inspirational posters, in that the cheesier they are, the more i enjoy them. Recently i spent almost an entire afternoon "researching" various posters, hoping to find that perfect blend of stunning landscape/animal photography, hopelessly cliché advice, and bold neon cursive font. These posters got me through the worst times in elementary school, and the parts of middle school not spent in trailers. Corrugated metal siding = not poster friendly. Alas, i couldn't find quite the same degree of bad design so popular in the late '80s, but below i provide links to some of the better specimens. The first is of course, the ubiquitous "Hang in there, baby" which is no longer in poster form, but only in t-shirts and "night shirts." Nothing guarantees a night of passionate sex like a kitty on a branch.
Oh, baby.
The kitty above should take some cues from this kitty.
We humans. You just can't keep us off treacherous, neverending cliffs.
With this gracing your walls, you'll always be able to "make it happen."
I've been working on my bike a lot, possibly to avoid working on the magazine, which i'm still struggling with, but also i'm committed to learning as much about them as i can. I'm in the taking apart stage, which will probably prove to be easier than the putting back together stage, but it's really cool nonetheless, spending a few hours getting my hands all greasy and feeling like i'm getting smarter with tools and with transforming my bike into what i want it to be, which is a single-speed. I can't wait to ride it again, feeling the changes and knowing that i didn't pay someone else to do what i am capable of.
A good friend was in town this weekend, and while we struggled to hang out around my work schedule, her presence was such a comfort. It's amazing to me that people can be in my life long-distance for years, and when we see each other again we slip right back into each other in the same ways we always have. I miss being around the people that have known me for lots of years, people that knew me when i had dreads (oh, yes), the first people i told i was a queerbag. The history there feels so important to my idea of community, and renews my determination to construct a giant tractor beam to force all the people i love to move to brooklyn. Permanently. Or at least until i want to move somewhere else.
And, finally, something i've procrastinated writing about until the last paragraph, because, well, i don't really want to write about it but i know i need to. I've worked pretty hard developing my politics since i first started thinking critically about the various workings of things and my place in them, but there is one issue in which i am an amoeba. No disrespect to the amoeba; maybe it's better to say that my honest view is so similar to us weekly and teen people that i am seriously ashamed. Yes, my friends, my internalized size discrimination looms large, and it affects my life so deeply that it's stupid. So i'm going to start researching and reading more about fat positivity, and start unschooling myself from all the societal bullshit i've allowed to go unchallenged for so long. If anyone has reading tips, i'm all ears. I'm excited about evolving my deeply fucked-up ideas, and nervous about delving into waters that go back to my earliest memories, that have been with me longer than almost anything else. I'll keep y'all posted.
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| Huh. |
[05 Jan 2007|01:13pm] |
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music |
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Architecture in Helsinki |
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Yesterday i enjoyed my first day off after a seven-day work stretch by running errands and pestering a friend of mine all day, in the "what are you doing?" "how about now?" vein. The week feels like a blur of dirty plates and train rides. Accompanying me on these train rides, almost all week, was the oft-overlooked Ms. DiFranco. I know, how cliché. That's probably why i hadn't really listened to her in over a year, it just seemed too dykey, too "this is what a feminist looks like." But she was so comforting this week, when i was running around without the time to catch up with friends, to read, to play with my dog, i realized how much of my history is framed by her music. Songs from the very first Ani album i bought when i was 17 reminded me of how important she was then, how much she helped shape my idea of myself, my politics, my ideals. I remembered bouncing around my car on the way home from an Ani show with Renee and Atasi, taking the back roads to surprise Renee with a car her dad was giving her, the windows all down, us smoking and singing our lungs out. I remembered when i first heard "arrivals gate" i would listen to it on repeat for hours straight, obsessed with the chord progressions and the lyrics, how stridently i replayed "coming up" in an effort to memorize it perfectly, how "wish i may" was my little anthem to myself for most of my freshman year of college. I can't help it, the woman has been a soundtrack to so much of me.
It was such an important respite this week, from the entitled yuppies with such killer lines as, "hey man, you wanna come out? yeah, my date rape canceled," from my cranky coworkers serving them. She was a favorite pair of pajamas, the kind you slide into after a hot shower, the kind that are just loose enough to have your ass hang out a little, the kind that always seems to preclude hot cups of coffee. It was really lovely to listen to songs so rich with memories, to be so easily reminded.
Speaking of coffee, i am again trying to limit my consumption of my favorite beverage, because i'm afraid that my kidneys will shut down when i'm 35 if i don't. This year's self-trickery: yerba maté. I remember liking it, and apparently it's more caffeinated than regular tea (plus!) without severly dehydrating your body/giving you the shakes/poos like coffee (double plus!). I'll let you know how it goes. Last year i think in March or something i gave up coffee all the way, and nothing happened except i was tired all the time and slept all the time and generally felt like a useless heap of naptime. I think my friends secretly have a pool for when i'm back to my 3-4 daily cups, but i'm fighting the good fight just the same.
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| I made something. |
[15 Dec 2006|01:20pm] |
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I present to you, holiday enthusiasts, one of a kind, hand-compiled greeting cards. Each one is different, a variation on one of four themes. There's nine in stock. You can purchase them for you and yours over here for five big ones. Guaranteed to add finesse to any december-ish occasion.
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| what would the community think? |
[13 Dec 2006|02:21pm] |
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music |
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Cat Power on shuffle |
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I just finished giving my dog his Winter Bath, and now he won't stop prancing around humming the "So Fresh, So Clean" Outkast song. I know, anthropomorphizing is so 1980s, but i can be cheesy because this is my blog. I can also be defensive at will.
My music choice this afternoon would suggest that i am depressed, but i'm not. I think this is the first time i've ever been in a Cat Power mood without an attending sadness. Something about alcoholic musicians brings out the brooding, but not today, today Ms. Marshall's voice is just a sweet companion. It's nice when a sound you've grown accustomed to suddenly gains a new dimension. It gives me hope yet for The White Stripes. Maybe one day i'll wake up, and i'll see what everyone else seems to.
In my laundry was a straight sheet, as opposed to fitted, not as opposed to queer, not because i actually allow straight sheets on my bed but because it had covered my wall art things when i moved, and then one of the frames broke so it was covering the broken glass, and then finally i threw out the glass and could then wash the sheet. The reason i just subjected you to that run-on is because i discovered that folding them is so fun. Fitted sheets you can't really fold due to the elastic bands, but i loved battling with this thing so much bigger than me, trying to get it into a manageable shape. I could fold sheets all day. For probably one day.
I feel like there was more i wanted to write here but now i can't remember. I've just been working a lot, trying to save up, and also probably to avoid re-launching the magazine, which has me a little scared. You know, good ol' soul-crushing fear of failure.
I was at the Strand ostensibly buying presents for my family when i found a hardbound copy of Gray's Anatomy, with an inscription inside that says "Barbara Friedman, Sept 1965." There was something really striking to me about noting the month that this book was received, a book that contains nothing but anatomical drawings and explanations for why the parts are there. I bought it, which should bring a smile to those of you who know of my sordid affair with another copy of this particular title. Bless Gray's little heart.
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| on giving the thanks. |
[22 Nov 2006|04:53am] |
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music |
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The Blow, Paper Television |
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In a few hours i will get on a train to Union Square, so that i can purchase the freshest and best arugula ever, and maybe some hot cider. I have ambitious plans to make the same pumpkin salad we serve at work for my family as part of our Thanksgiving meal. Monday i was supposed to pick up all the ingredients, but i got afraid that the arugula would spoil before Thursday, and all my little pictures in my head of my aunts and uncles and cousins and second-cousins enjoying something beautiful that i made for them would be shattered. So i'm braving the day-prior-to-large-holiday crowds for a simple salad. I want my family to feel luxurious this holiday. For some of my cousins my most recent memories with them involve me as an awkward pre-teen. It's my first time with everyone together as an adult, and i want them to feel how honored i am to have them with me, how honored to sit at my aunt's table with them, passing plates. I even got two bottles of the spring water we serve at work to have with my parents and sister tomorrow, just to be fancy. This trip feels celebratory, my mind is busy uncorking bottles of champagne, and i'm unsure of all the reasons. This same family i was ready to completely disown about four years ago, though my long-term memory is notoriously unreliable, maybe it was three. I remember sitting in my parents' guestroom in a house that was unfamiliar, not the one i grew up in, and thinking, "Fuck them. As soon as i'm out of school, that's it." There's something i needed from them then, some kind of safety, that i've finally figured out only i can provide. I think i sought it from everyone in my life, to some extent, until maybe four, five months ago. Again, my memory is off. There was a refuge that i believed only other people could house, when in fact, the only place it could possibly reside is here. I almost threw my family out, and i've probably destroyed at least three other relationships for this misguided story, where people save each other. Maybe this need to celebrate with my family is wrapped up in this freedom to enjoy them without expectation.
Tonight one of the food runners at work, who is from Ecuador, pulled me aside to ask me about Thanksgiving. I tried to unravel the story, the colonialism, the racism, the difference between what i will share with my family this Thursday and the story that they devote construction paper and staples to in elementary schools all through this country. In my broken Spanish, which i am trying desperately to improve to the amusement of my coworkers, i tried to shove all my cynicism around this particular holiday into words like "blanquitos" and "llegaron." When he asked if only white people celebrated Thanksgiving, i knew i'd let him down, because i didn't know how to explain the historical part and the cultural part, and where they disconnect. In English it seems i can't get this all through my teeth, much less in Spanish. It felt like a missed opportunity.
And yet. I hope everyone's week feels opulent in all the right ways. Nothing to me feels more extravagant than the chance to look into the faces of people that have known me my whole life.
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| mixtape/cd #3, some notes |
[16 Nov 2006|01:05pm] |
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music |
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Mahogany, Connectivity! |
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The 2006 fall mix is as follows, titled flooded sleeves. I would scan in the cover i made, but i know you don't care that much. Should you desire a copy, i'm happy to oblige. Food pairings: apple cider (hot, in cute mug), pumpkin ginger soup, steamed dumplings from your favorite dim sum locale.
1. Autumn Sweater: Yo La Tengo
2. Modern World: Wolf Parade
3. Don't Get Me Wrong: The Pretenders
4. In This Home On Ice: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
5. Heartbeats: The Knife
6. This Is Not: Blonde Redhead
7. Kiss Them For Me: Siouxsie And The Banshees
8. Playhouses: TV On The Radio
9. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood: Neko Case
10. The Police And The Private: Metric
11. Busy Doing Nothing: Love Is All
12. If Looks Could Kill: Camera Obscura
13. Springtime Can Kill You: Jolie Holland
14. Omaha: Tapes 'n' Tapes
15. The Eraser: Thom Yorke
16. Way Out: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
17. Paul Cries: Think About Life
18. I Know There's Something Going On: Frida Lyngstad
19. Postcards From Italy: Beirut
This is what happens when i have (reliable) internet at my house: i post more than once every two weeks. I saw Joanna Newsom live (again) on Monday, she was brilliant and hot and rocking out in suspenders. I can't get her new album out of my head, nor do i want to. I'm still settling into the new place, everyday it seems we move a step closer to establishing our apartment-wide m.o. In about a week i'll feel like we have everything we need, and the time available for taking pictures and also resuming my editorial position on a sadly neglected little magazine will exponentially increase. As for now though, i will admit that picking out little pillows and a new comforter cover is somewhat enjoyable; what this says about my status as a self-hating united statesian consumer is better left unexamined for now. Here's hoping it's just a binge brought on by a new, big space, and i will resume my regular habits of not buying things within a week or so. Or else what my aunt told me when i was in college about trading idealism in for comfort when i get old will be true, and my insulted, self-righteous tears will have been in vain. The horror.
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| It's been a long time... |
[10 Nov 2006|02:57pm] |
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Björk, Vespertine |
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We shouldn't a left you, without a dope beat to step to, step to, step to, step to, step to (freaky-freaky)
Sorry, it's probably too early in the day for Aaliyah. I'm here, there are someone else's clothes scattered in the corner of our living room, my boy is asleep on someone else's mattress and pillow, also on the living room floor. We are getting new carpet installed tomorrow in the bedrooms, and after that our house will start really resembling a house. I'm making a trip to a certain Swedish furniture store on Monday, to buy things i couldn't have imagined myself being ready to buy a year ago, or even six months ago. Telling a friend my intentions involving armchairs and couches and coffee tables, she gasped, "I can't believe it's the same person!"
She meant, the same person who would sheepishly but stubbornly offer her guests a crate or a bucket to sit on. The same person who purged important things like pillows and pans, knowing that she would have to re-purchase them, just to be more portable, to have less to pack. Who thought about boxes and moving trucks six months before her lease was up.
I think maybe i'm getting ready to be home. I always imagined that as something i would need to plan for, would need to concentrate on. Would tenaciously create from scratch. But here it is, in this house, this afternoon a sleepiness in the bent rectangles of light moving across the walls, in the sun's glint through yellow leaves. Just there.
Vespertine seems to be the only thing my ears can tolerate, the album that got me through that winter i came back to Harrisonburg, after spending fall in New York. My feet are just slightly cold in my socks, not cold enough to do something about it, but enough to notice.
Everything disarmingly elegant. A dog's belly rising and falling.
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| update (an exercise in newness). |
[17 Oct 2006|12:23pm] |
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Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People |
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I am moving in two weeks, to an apartment that covers the entire top floor of a small two-story house, where the landlords, a mid-30s couple, live below us with their twelve year-old lab mix, Emma. My room will have a little porch right outside. The entire building is full of windows. There is an arched doorway guiding the dining room into the living room. The kitchen has real counters. I can already see myself spending mugs and mugs worth of tea tucked into a couch corner, watching light move, and learning.
My sister is engaged, and called me one evening last week to discuss "wedding details." A self-professed agnostic concerning pledges of lifelong commitment, i surprised myself with genuine excitement when she sent me a picture of her dress. I get jittery thinking about all of my family and Jason's family dancing to a playlist that i get to make, my grandma getting down to some old Stevie Wonder. I still don't think i'm a wedding person, but if there's one bridal shower and one bachelorette party and one rehearsal dinner i'd like to be there for, it's hers.
This past weekend i spent in Providence with my friend, a grad student at RISD. It was such a welcome contrast to the hardness of the city, her sleepy apartment in a building that's existed since the 1790s, the ease of New England mornings. Her studio is perfect. Coffee and a huge semi-circle window and a stereo and books and drawing paper taped to walls and t-squares and calculators. A whole corner devoted to her hammers and saws and clamps. It is exactly what i am working towards, and was a fitting place to receive the news that our little magazine is about to get a big check in the mail, big enough to print the next 2 issues and get a new website design. A few more of these and i can hang up my food service industry apron forever. It seems completely unrealistic to type that, it still seems like i'm playing at being a magazine editor. Like i'm an 8 year-old spinning around in an office swivel-chair, looking half-swallowed sitting in it.
I can't stop listening to The Knife. What is it with me and the Scandinavians? On "Forest Families" the lead keeps repeating "I want your music tonight," and that refrain with the bouncing keyboards in the background seemed designed for the blurry landscape on the train ride to Rhode Island.
Also, some new accessories that make me and the pup simultaneously feel hotter. A collar that looks like a necktie for him, some new ear plugs and rings for myself. Should you desire a pictorial, i have provided one behind the cut.
( boo-yah. )
The jpg of the immaculate mary plugs somehow got stretched out, sorry about that. They're hotter in real-life.
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[02 Oct 2006|10:28am] |
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Múm, "Please Sing My Spring Reverb (Styromix)" |
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Ah, fall. Breaking out the hoodies, the way cold air slices into my nose and my lungs, the way sunlight falls more sharply through trees and buildings, casting crisper shadows. The farmers' market full of squash, pumpkins, apples, cider(!), sweet potatoes. Wanting hot things between my hands, wanting to make a new fall mix.
I've been falling in love with my dog all over again, with his complexities, his unfailing consistencies, his steadiness. I think fall has always been about starting over for me, i remember the excitement of new notebooks when i was a kid, of three-ring binders with tabs separating subjects, knowing that this year i will be organized and successful. I think there's something about my dog that helps me with this, beginning another year with him, i am awed by his constancy and his flexibility, the subtle ways he grows from year to year. At once more affectionate and more fiesty, more and less needy. He is a privilege.
I am going back to school in the spring. I'm taking some undergraduate studio art classes at Hunter, to get the training i am only now confident enough to be committed to. It's taken me a long time to realize that if i don't try to do this, professionally, i will certainly become chafed and weighted. Becoming that person terrifies me much more than the failed artist person, so we're going with this art thing. It's a huge step, kind of setting things in place to apply to mfa programs after a year of these studios, "making connections", all that shit. I know i haven't yet untangled everything that this means for me, or how i feel about it, but it seems today that i don't need all that to start moving. Maybe i never have, but i couldn't trust myself with it.
What else did i want to tell you? Did i talk about fall already? My parents were in town recently, and i spent a wonderful day with my mom at the MoMA, revisiting pieces i love and hadn't seen since it got back from Queens. It's strange how attached i've become to certain paintings, how good it was to see Picasso's demoiselles d' avignon again, to get up close to the canvas. I hadn't realized how much comfort i find in brushstrokes, the record of movement. A few weeks after this, a business-sized envelope appeared in my mailbox with a MoMA membership card inside. My mom's ease in her generosity overwhelms me every time. Now i make dates with myself, going every week, like church, at my own pace, in my own stride. I don't have to rush around from floor to floor. It's the perfect idea for someone who can get overstimulated after one piece, not to mention one exhibit, floor, museum. And my mom has politely asked that i stop thanking her every time i talk to her.
I hope everyone's fall is new in familiar in all the right ways. Tell me, how is it?
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