strawberries only 7₣ a kilo

"gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow...

the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations...

the waiters whistling as the last bar closes...

the scent of smoldering leaves...

two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers..."

the greatest song of 1936.

gold standard: etta james*

nice and abstract: marc ribot

wonderfully over the top: brian ferry

i love how clearly you can envision the singer moving through his apartment, noting the scattered feminine signifiers and maybe picking them up to inspect

 *an overwrought studio mess, i blame the production style on the era. the intro clarinet is clunky, the rhythm section plods. somehow, though, it does a service to miss james savant vocalization. she owns this, down to the 1:48/1:58 stutters. if anyone else described their heart as a dancer, i would roll my eyes, but you can hear how her the microphone fails to contain her voice, how she's bigger than the recording booth. you almost don't notice what she's saying because her emotion so outshines the lyric. the string section compliments her with shimmers of late afternoon sunlight on creek water. sometimes they tremble like red leaves on the end of an autumn branch, or spiral upwards like a pygmy gale.

kerning

the greatest song of 1932*. yearning yet joyful. the best recording i have is chet baker, but the one i produced in my head is better. guy maddin gets it. probably the Most Winning Metaphor of All Time.

tried baking a cake tonight. experimental failure. thank goodness i have other survival skills, like dancing.

oh, that's not a survival skill, you say?

*except for Night and Day, by Cole Porter

smoke

she's sort of supposed to look like she's blowing smoke... under water. i don't know why.

i have to challenge myself a little more, and find a direction. say something about 'remote viewing' or play dada games. i suppose i have been trying to tamp down my curiosity about things faraway and beyond my influence. i have never been one to miss out on longing, but all that accumulated desire can be burdensome.


i have not been dreaming, that i can recall.

springtime in january

wear

this skirt is the most luxurious silk in an incredible, asymmetrical cut. i've only worn it once so far -- to the touro synagogue for yom kippur. i ride my bike every day, and i'm a little apprehensive about damaging it. it's somewhere between gossamer and parachute. the panel inset on the lower right side is such a subtle detail.

i'm trying to think of a celebrity or artist that died during my lifetime where i felt it more than alexander mcqueen, but i can't, because i tend to not care about people i don't know. with mcqueen, however, his output was so incredible (and i do mean beyond belief in terms of his prints, construction, and narrative). the kind of beauty that he created was just eviscerating, in the best sense. it's hard to come up with words to talk about someone that i admired so much, but i remember seeing his early runways and feeling an adrenaline rush of inspiration.  on portobello road, in 2004, i found a pair of pants (silver silk) for 8 quid -- probably my first designer item and still one of the craziest garments in my closet. this dress is my second piece of mcqueen, for target, under the heading of mcQ. i love that he did the did the masstige collaboration, and this was definitely the highlight, in gray and black silk. his team was able to translate their aesthetic and design to a low price point in a way that did justice to everyone involved.

there are so many things about this shirt that, on their own, would make me avert my eyes, but in concert, the red and leopard print and zebra print (on the back) and bracelet-length sleeves work so well. the loose cut anchors the excitement and skims over me in a casual way. i feel really happy when i wear this.

these are so easy and fun to do. maybe next time i will put an outfit together and depict it on a body, in a setting or scenario.

i love it when, the less time i have, the more i accomplish. yay for the return of time-management!

scrying

i felt like asking for some symbol-based guidance, so i brewed my favorite loose-leaf tea (rosehips, vanilla, chamomile, spearmint, raspberry, lemongrass, hyssop and some other stuff) and tried to focus my mind on a question i have. after it cooled a little, i sipped it down and tried not to get the herbs stuck in my teeth. this is what remained at the bottom of my celadon cup. now i have to peer at it until a shape reveals itself to me, and that abstract form will be some kind of answer to my query.

 i thought it might be easier to decipher (and more silly/interactive) if i made it black and white and upped the contrast. i see.... a girl with her head stuck upside down, in water. or maybe she is looking into a pond, and this is her reflection looking back at her.

at this angle it looks like... a matador waving his cape at a bull. the bull is muscular and dark, and so fast that he is already curving around behind his challenger. the matador seems light and very playful, and unafraid, perhaps foolishly so.

maybe... a continental landmass, like the ukraine and russia and bulgaria around the black sea. this is somewhere that i really want to travel. my family is from belarus and lithuania. ashkenazi.

this one was elusive. my mind finally grasped on a scorpion.

if i synthesize these interpretations, i get water-reflection/bullfighting/ancestral land-travel/scorpion. i associate an amount of fear and danger in each of these images.

• the waters of immersion and reflection are silty and unclear.
• facing an opponent more powerful than yourself is intimidating. but both the fighter and the bull draw on their instincts.
• the ethnic home of my family is a place of prolonged conflict, a place that is always cold and stark in my imagination. a land of tragedy and persecution... but also a place of hidden bravery.
• a scorpion has poison in its stinger, but it kills by nature, not because it is cruel.

these are just the associations that i am making, but it would seem that i am on track to receive some pain. even as i entered onto this path, the signs to be cautious made themselves pretty clear, but my predilection towards introspection enjoys a challenge. i am less afraid of conflict than i am of stagnation. my courage is capable of processing the hurt, and i should also recognize that some sadness/disappointment is not personal, not vicious -- sometimes it is inflicted in self-defense.

one can say anything about tea leaves and it is true, including any (such) contradiction.  what do you see?

draw blood

summer 2009, for a remote viewer installation piece. really embarrassing ...but also kind of wonderful. featuring dave r, cassandra, and dani. we were collecting a blood sample to use in an art project, but the collecting became a project in itself.








please don't go viral please don't go viral please don't go viral

cutting blind

banging it out at molly's on decatur.

why doesn't this town have any REAL (read: old) photobooths? digitally-printed strips just aren't as magical.

fur fins foil

critters razored freehand from a scrap of ghiradelli chocolate foil. there was a sloth that got sucked into the belly of the printer (oh noes!) and a brontosaurus that got glued to a letter. these teeny little guys (the giraffe is just over two inches) will probably also be affixed to letters and be snail-mailed around the country, or even overseas.




i'm not sure why i did this. maybe i'm avoiding something else.




soundtrack for this exercise: shigeru umebayashi and outkast




the lost sloth, before she got et.

habit

vintage camel coat, aquascutum

the thought of drawing every garment i own is a terrifying one. it would be strangely fun if all my pieces were up and friends could dress me like a paper doll, but i don't think it would work. foremost, it's hard enough to dress oneself -- why would anyone want to style me? secondly, apart from me asking my roommate which tights go better with a given outfit, putting together my look for the day is an emotional, messy process.

i don't mean that it's messy in terms of a pile of clothes left on the floor by the time i leave for work, but messy in terms of layered references, signifiers, and personal jokes. hair and makeup are beyond me, but my outfit will suggest a lot about how i'm feeling and thinking and where i'm going. (this is true of everybody, but a few people are waaaaay more conscious than average.)

one reason this blog exists is because anyone around me knows i could rap about anything related to style, fashion, or design, et al until ears start falling off... and those people suggested i pull this blog together... because i don't really talk about fashion. despite the overstuffed closet that is prevalent in western culture, it's hard to find someone with a greater than passing interest. i'm not so much interested in parsing trends as much as a more sociological comprehension. (i'd love to have conversations regarding poetry and poetics, but that kind of nerd is even harder to come by.)

gosh. more on this when it's not 4am.

to find out what it's like

new orleans new year

the 5th of january will mark my one year anniversary of living in this city. it's the longest amount of time that i have lived in any place since i left chicago in october 2008. eight months in seattle, three back in chicago, another four in tennessee. (does that add up? the cost of moving sure does.)


this is a beautiful city, with the most accolade-deserving trees that i have ever seen/climbed. the weather is usually beautiful. the people are especially friendly, generous, and helpful. the architecture, the cuisine, the music. there's a lot that i miss about chicago, but at this particular season, new orleans trumps it hard.


there was plenty of heartbreak in 2010, but most of my pangs were self-induced; i can take responsibility for my choices. i spent a disproportionate amount of time feeling bleak, but there were brilliant flashes of good fortune. my beloved seattle roommate, ilana, moved to nola right after i did, as did one of my favorite people of the last eight years, devlin. because they are here, the city is so much more beautiful, in that i can share it with them. i became friends for real with dave hedges. i've made friends with some excellent people since moving here, too: sunny colin, hilarious esther, wry david, keen rebecca, picayune davitt, and partyboy bowen. i was luckily offered a job that i would never have been bold enough to apply for, and i'm really fond of the people that work there.


many friends came to visit in the last year: joanna, eric lab rat and sarah, my mom, yonina and wil, my uncle, maria, ray and saunia, noah and quin and spector, thea, margaret, julio. it is wonderful to live in a place that folks want to visit, and hopefully 2011 will include many more such opportunities to play host.


having moved so much in a short span of time, i did not feel certain as to my tenure here, and i had even been bracing to switch cities again this spring, but reasons to reinvest asserted themselves. i get to spend more time with the suicide oaks in city park and the zebra-ducks in audubon. i will eat better and dance more and maybe armstrong park will re-open. maybe i will live in a 4th neighborhood (i'm on my 3rd, currently). i want to connect more with the moment and better navigate my bouts of extreme homesickness.


in some ways, this city is a dream of the past. for me, there is a succor here. the remote viewer project (which envelops this blog) has something to do with lifting memories to the light, or submerging myself in them. the humid breezes here are a balm and an agent of [transformative] decay. i am in a good place for listening to what people say, and what they don't; for reading symbols and for watching fireworks on the mississippi.