4/29/11

Bring Your Daughter to Work

Today was Bring Your Daughter to Work day. The boss of the place I work brought his very sweet little girl in, and she had macaroni and cheese for lunch. So I was already thinking about Macaroni.

And then I heard that a short little story I had written a few months ago has been published in the new issue of Dossier Journal.



Fucking rad!

You know that scene in Me and You and Everyone We Know where the Miranda July character leaves that message at the end of her VHS tape which she sends to the curator at the museum, saying something like "If you see this, just say 'macaroni' and I will know you received this message." Something like that? And then the curator calls her and says "macaroni"? Gawd, that part totally gets me. Anyway, when I went to go get a copy of the magazine after work, I had a total 'macaroni' moment. Like: okay. Message received. Good. Great. I've been feeling kinda weird for a lot of reasons, insecure about my work/writing or whatever. I take any criticism (real or perceived) super duper personally. I've been really down on myself lately. And getting this story out makes me feel a lot better.

And I want to be really clear: what made me so psyched about this is not just that it got printed, it's that it was even considered to be in it. In fact, it's not just that. It's that when the lovely person who randomly asked me to contribute something asked me, I thought "No way." And then changed my mind. And I wrote this little thing and it took a couple weeks, and I really liked writing it, and I sent it in. And then I forgot about it, actually. But I was reminded today. And I'm really glad I didn't chicken out. I think it turned out great.

The theme for the section it's in is "The First Time". And it's about sex. It's a compilation of writing, pictures, and memories from various people about their first time. I wrote a piece about listening to Grace Jones. I'm beyond amazed by the other people featured: Miho Hatori, Cynthia Rowley, Richard Kern & Miranda July, among others. Such a trip. A really nice thing that made my day and I don't want to forget so I am logging it (web) here.

Walking up from SoHo with the big glossy magazine weighing me down I realized it was the first really hot day of the year. The first time I realized I was drenched in sweat after only walking a couple blocks. I didn't care. It had been stormy all day and at 6:30pm the clouds parted I swear to fucking god it was rainbow weather. I came home, went to the gym, cooked dinner. I started laying out the new issue of Scorcher the old fashioned way, with scissors and glue stick and guesstimations. Sitting cross-legged on my floor, listening to the Melvins album Stoner Witch. My back started to hurt so I am calling it a night. I'm gonna read that new Eileen Myles book Inferno in bed. I love it. It's hilarious.

Anyway. Macaroni. TGIF.

4/26/11

EVERYBODY KNOWS

To Put On Your Calendars:
(I will remind you all about this, please forward to all your friends)

I am putting out the new issue of my psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher at the end of next month. To celebrate the release I am throwing a PARTY on SATURDAY, MAY 21ST

Scorcher #6: WHITECHOCOLATESPACEEGG Release Party

Flyer by PuR MOODS.

Published by Birdsong Micropress

PLEASE JOIN US to celebrate the newest issue of Scorcher with a super Psychedelic Dance Party with the cool sounds of:
DJ PuR MOODS
DJ LAURA DERN

PLUS a very special live performance by CAROLINE CONTILLO

NO COVER! $3 cans / $4 drafts / $5 can & shots / $5 cocktail pints
Issues of the new Scorcher as well as back issues will be available, bring yr lunch money.

BLACKOUT BAR (916 Manhattan Avenue, Greenpoint)

Facebook event HERE.

The past couple of issues I had readings when I put out the zine, and it was a lot of fun, but I thought I’d do something different this time. When I first began writing Scorcher, I didn’t have a release party and I also didn’t tell people what it was or whatever.

As a reminder, you can get back issues of Scorcher from Birdsong HERE.

And also also there is an excerpt from “Rise High” one of the stories in the new issue, HERE.

This is what the cover of the new zine will look like:

Other Day

It didn’t even occur to me that it had been two weeks since I updated this blog! This might be the longest I have ever gone without updating it. I want to say that it is because nothing exciting has been happening in the last two weeks. That would be a lie. Probably lots of exciting things did happen, but every time I thought to record something, for posterity’s sake, I found a reason not to.

And Mercury has been retrograde.


These dogs are vegetarians. These vegetarian dogs are also in love.

And I’ve been actually doing this familiar ostrich yoga pose of denying any negative thoughts by not recording them. Like, not updating this dumb blog because I’ve been to bummed out and would like to be able to skip over it, these couple of weeks.

Have you ever seen those bumper stickers which say something to the effect of “God is the writer, producer, director, and star of my life”? Maybe the stickers are about Jesus. I’ve been thinking a lot about this bumper sticker in the last 24 hours.

For one thing, shouldn’t you be the star of your own life? Then I think that if you felt like the star of your own life you probably don’t believe in God. Then the whole “movie version of your life” way of thinking. Who would play God? Is it okay to be selfish enough to want to star in the movie version of your own life?

Maybe this is one of those things where it’s like, everybody actually all the time together already knows they want to star in the movie versions of their lives, but the articulation of this desire is what makes one person (the one who articulates it) an asshole and the other (who does not think to articulate it) blissful, ignorant. Is that okay? We’re okay.


This is the soda machine in the impaneling room at the Brooklyn courthouse.

ME: I love this lemon.
YOU: You do?
ME: Yes, I love lemons.
YOU: I love lemons, too actually.
ME: Oh yeah?
YOU: Yeah, I loved them since I was a kid.
ME: Cool.
YOU: Yeah, when I was a kid I was like obsessed with lemons. I only wore yellow and nobody liked lemons more than me. They’re my favorite fruit.
ME: Yeah. Me too. They’re hella old, actually. I think they came from China.
YOU: Actually, lemons first grew in India.
ME: Oh, I didn’t know.
YOU: Yeah.

Like, we’re not really talking about lemons. You know? I mean ‘lemon’ is an example here. Often, we’re talking about boys we both know, or bands we both like, or artists, or movies, or colors, or current events, or something.

I feel like sometimes you use the world as a way to express to me that you know more about it/something than I do. And it used to really hurt my feelings. Like “Damn can’t we both just like lemons?” But I feel like maybe this isn’t about the subject. This is about you wanting me to know that you are different, that your enjoyment of lemons is totally discrete from any experience I could ever have with them. That you are deeper/smarter/more into lemons. I don’t know, actually, what you are trying to tell me. But I know that instead of proving your rightful claim to citrus, that we could instead be drinking a glass of lemonade together.

Makes it more complicated when we’re not talking about lemons, but talking instead about some cool hip art fag who we both know but who thinks I’m really lame. (But is maybe too scared to say so). See? Everybody’s got something they’re scared of. Probably more than one thing.



ONE VISION we had this weekend was, on our way to PLD’s birthday party at CLUMP at Beauty Bar, we (PLD + Boogers + Me) had an idea for an alternate ending to the night. Instead of going to CLUMP, we’d go to Honolulu. We kept making jokes, as the J train hissed into rainy ole Bushwick, that we’d just make a quick detour to Hawaii. I have never been to a volcano. I have never eaten poi. I want to. Really fucking badly. I mean, I know: Hawaii is like the #1 vacation spot in the world. Maybe it’s because of growing up on the west coast though. It felt cruelly possible. Like it wasn’t thousands of miles into the Pacific. I have always wanted to go.

Once in high school my friend Becky and I went to Yoyo-a-Gogo in Olympia, staying at the rustic Golden Gavel Inn. A pack of riot grrrls (and adorable riot boy) stayed in our hotel with us. None of us were over 20, I don’t think. I think my friend Steve was 19, which made him “the grown-up”. I was 16. Anyway these kids were in Olympia to see Bratmobile, to see the Gossip. To see Thrones and Unwound and Sleater-Kinney and Dub Narcotic (Calvin Johnson rubbed his polyester-clad butt and rapped: “The girls, they wanna be me. The boys? They wanna do me.”) But these kids were from HAWAII. It blew my mind that they’d come all the way around the world to go to Olympia. They gave me a CD of their bands. In 2001 it was a thing to have a CD of yourself; it meant you had a nice computer. The girls were in a really cutesy twee band that sang about the sunsets in the tropics, and they wrote zines about difficult feelings and storming out of parties because nobody understood. The boy had an electroclash band (before that was a word). Later, the cute boy from the hotel room moved to SF, though by that point I had moved to New York for college. Now he lives in NYC and writes a really cool blog. Mahalo.


Paul Thek, Compassion

Poor Paul Thek, lost to history. Poor Paul Thek lost to history, whom even in retrospect is the missing link. Constantly disappearing, ephemeral, invisible. Dead and gone.
Unlike the rest of us.


STYLE ICON.

4/12/11

INTIMIDATION

So last week blurred into this surreal stretch of time. It all started seeing Saint Justin Vivian Bond perform at the Bowery Ballroom last Tuesday night. V was amazing, mind-blowing, and beautiful. I loved it. V read one of my favorite poems onstage, “Dogs in Lingerie” by Danielle Willis.



I don’t know how I found out about it, but when I was 13 I had this book and I really loved it. I remember writing about it for a freshman year high school paper, where we got to read whatever poetry we liked. I don’t know why nobody thought to stop me, I guess that’s California. But the book is amazing, Willis is really cool. And I hadn’t thought about her in so long before Justin Vivian brought up her play “The Methedrine Dollhouse”. It pulled the image of the book’s cover out of my memory. It’s great. And Justin Vivian also did a divine cover of “Wishing on a Star” which is such a favorite. Mx J.V. has this really sort of 70s-inspired folk/soul vibe at the show. It was very inspiring. After-party at Von, for the satanic psychedelic lesbian dance party WOAHMONE RISING. Too too much fun.

Wednesday we all piled into a big van to take PUSSY FAGGOT to Philadelphia. What is there I can say about this amazing event? Nothing, really, except that I love Earl Dax so much and was very happy to celebrate his birthday with him. The show was a lot of fun. I think my set sort of sucked. I did a couple grunge songs and told a story about how 4/5 is the anniversary of Kurdt’s suicide as well as Layne Stanley’s death. And I related these to Icarus. And I sand Lydia Lunch’s “Mechanical Flattery”. I wore a blonde wig, to look like Kurdt. It was medium cute. The other performers were AMAZING. Sgt. Sass, Little Victory, Gio Black Peter, the Fancy, Nuclear Family, Needles Jones, the incredible Glenn Marla. It was just too much. We stayed up all night, went out dancing, had really incredible pizza.

The only downside was that while chewing on a sticky ginger candy, I pulled out my filling. Yikes! It totally freaked me out and it did hurt. But then I put some temporary filling in it from the drugstore and I actually feel a lot better. I already had an appointment to get it fixed, but it’s not until next week. Mercury Retrograde. Sucky! What are you going to do. We drove back to NYC in the early morning hours. I didn’t drive—I slept in the van. I slept most of Thursday but then went to the Delancey for the NYC edition of PUSSY FAGGOT. I performed one number, INTIMIDATION.


Photo (and video) by Alex from Primeira Avenida.

Been really into wearing this tank-top onstage. It’s a very old Rei Kawakubo nylon thing. For some reason the tag is under her name (all lowercase) not Comme des Garçons. I imagine that it must be very valuable and therefore is Magick. I do like to perform in it though because it’s sheer and sort of see-through. For a while last year I was wearing it a lot onstage with these black net Tim Hamilton pants because I like the idea of wearing something black and clingy which blocks out the body, but is also see-through and form-fitting and reveals the body. I like an unreliable narrator. You know?

Untitled from primeira avenida on Vimeo.



And when I say “I like” in this case, I obviously mean “I like to be”. Obviously.

4/11/11

ADDENDUM:

I want to add that I have been a subscriber to the New Yorker for probably four years and I am totally in love with THAT magazine.
THINGS RICH PEOPLE ENJOY WHICH I ALSO ENJOY:
  • Getting massages
  • Expensive Clothing
  • Making or looking at or thinking about Art
  • Talking about myself
  • Taking drugs
  • Atheism
  • Being vegetarian
  • Going to the gym
  • Public television
Luckily my friend Jenny is a really talented massage therapist and because we used to live together (dear heart) I made an appointment with her for a massage last night. It. Was. Amazing. I highly recommend her.

We used to live together with the most beautiful can, Quinn. Mercury Retrograde is really bringing up a lot of stuff for me, I guess. Ran into a girl I went to college with but have not kept in touch with. It was nice, sort of strange. For the first couple of years after graduating I hated running into people like that because we'd talk about ourselves and our jobs and I was always temping and I was really ashamed of that. I'd sometimes mention making music or performing or writing. Or go-go dancing. Like sort of as a half-joke. Like I know, I know.

For some reason, for the last few years, there's been a recurring subscription to New York Magazine going to my parents' house in California, under my name. I have no idea why. Nobody has been paying them, and I never signed up for it. My parents asked if I wanted it transferred here, because they don't really want to read it and they've been getting it, reading it and throwing it out for the last three years and they don't want to keep doing that. So against my wishes, they have transferred the subscription to me in Brooklyn.

Now, nothing against New York Magazine. But I feel like that magazine is mostly for rich people, right? Like it seems to be about this really aspirational idea of New York. Like, who has a house in the Hamptons? I mean: plenty of people do, I guess. Even people I think are cool. I dunno. It just sometimes reminds me how poor I am, and makes me wonder if I would like to be rich one day. Hmm.

It's so strange to think that in a few years, definitely within our lifetime, the idea of being "rich" will be completely irrelevant.

MATRIARCHY


"Rehearsal is the enemy of performance art." -- Marina Abramović


"You don't have to wait until you die." -- Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn


"Q: What’s your idea of hell?

A: I’m pretty sure there is no hell. Everything’s going to be great. There is no ultimate punishment hanging over our heads. There’s nothing to be scared of." -- Billy Cheer

4/4/11

Been feeling this really intense need to connect, and consciously. Like, I want you to know that I want to connect with you. If it were possible I would want to open up our bodies to physically connect our organs. I want our interaction to be dangerous, visceral. So I have been trying this new thing, sometimes. In the computer program of my personality (soon in the future there won’t even be computers you know) I am inserting a new application, at increasing intervals. Here is the new application: instead of telling you how much I like what you say, or instead of illustrating a commonality with you by drawing on my own experience/existence to prove our proximity to one another, I just shut up. Or maybe ask a guiding one-word question, like “Really?” or “When did this happen?”

This sounds disingenuous. And it is. Or, it was. Pretty much anybody being nice to anybody else, ever, is and always has been. So there’s a precedence for this kind of experiment. The experiment here is seeing if me shutting up 10%, 20%, 50% more of the time will shut down the connection. There’s this idea I had (somehow—Santa?) that if I don’t respond or somehow attest to my existence, then I don’t exist. Unless I respond to what you are saying, unless I give you immediate direct feedback, this connection/transaction isn’t happening. So I’ve been incrementally testing out the theory that I don’t have to, that no one has to, that the pressure and anxiety of wrestling with how to interrupt someone to say “Me too!” is a painful anxiety which we as a culture can shed.

Maybe I am talking about how certain human beings including myself and almost everyone I know are developing our psychic powers. Maybe I’m talking about how I’m just now realizing it.

I just mean that I’ve been trying to listen more instead of talk more. And I’ve been really excited by the fact that everything is exactly the same, only now there is even more of it than I thought.