2/25/10

Notes. Mopes. Tropes. Ghosts.

I'm drinking soymilk in chai and waiting for this evening.

The nice thing about paying attention is that you can be pleasantly surprised by your surroundings if you just notice. I guess this is why people go vacation in nature or something. To see something at once foreign and familiar. Something occurring naturally, on it's own, which confirms some hunch we have about our own experiences. I'm not really into nature though. I grew up in California, I've had my fill of nature.

The other night I was rummaging around in the cupboards in my kitchen and I found a metaphor for my heart. The pomegranate syrup an old room mate bought from a middle-eastern grocery store, probably some time in 2003. I feel real sympatico with it. I have no idea what it would be used for. Like, what recipes? I think my old room mate didn't know how to use it either, since it went mostly untouched. Like my heart / my love, it is: dark, sticky, will leave a stain, is possibly expired (does this syrup, does my heart, ever really spoil?), is sweet and at the same time bitter, and difficult to imagine using.

I threw it out. I've been thrown out, too, I guess.
I mean. I dunno. I've blown off so many really wonderful guys in the last six months. I guess, statistically, it's my turn to get blown off. Statistics never helped anything feel better, though!

Best friend Bobo uploaded some photos on one of her many adorable blogs.

When we were curly girls.


Or flirty girls.

Some other notes and ideas and pictures.
I got a ton of cute stuff in the mail today, kinda taking the sting out, you know? From mail order with my saved coins and tax rebates:

Chanel nail polish in shiny dark purple, codeword VENDETTA. (I am not a label whore, I am a word-whore. I am a spell-casting whore. I believe in the power of language even if I only speak the stupidest, most offensive one).

New Stinks. What I'll smell like. And then also, what I'll taste like. To sip while we stare at each other and talk about mitosis, at dusk, while we're waiting for the quinoa to finish cooking. I'll have put fresh sheets on the bed and I want to fuck, after dinner, while we listen to the Cocteau Twins when they were still punk, while the snow is falling outside, like it was this morning: in big, fat white chunks, somehow audible.


Also, Monday night, for heartbreakers: PAPS at Cakeshop.

2/24/10


Yvonne Rainer Film About a Woman Who (1974)

2/23/10

and what do I do

SO COME OVER DEAR SISTER

When You Know

Feeling drawn, as I often do when I am "blue", to the music of Rebecca Pearcy. I saw her perform in 2000 at the Thekla in Olympia as part of the very first Ladyfest. I'm not usually into singer-songwriters or the acoustic guitar, but Rebecca set that afternoon really moved me. She dedicated one song to a friend of hers who couldn't be at the show that day, because he was scattering his mother's ashes on Mt. Rainier. The song was really intense, simple and beautiful, and I remembered it very well. When I went back home to California, I found that song ("Poppies") on a newly-released 7" put out by Yoyo, with really pretty hand-made covers. I listened to it so much that I wore that shit OUT. Luckily both songs wound up on Rebecca's brilliant second album, Constellation. I wrote her a fan letter about that song. The next year I went to see her perform at the Capitol Theater as part of 2001's Yoyo-A-Gogo, and she dedicated the song to me. I was about to turn 16, and it was the most wonderful thing.

Anyways, another of her songs mentions that (I'm paraphrasing) "one of the coolest things about sleeping next to someone is waking up and telling them what you just dreamed about". This is bittersweet for me. For as long as I can remember I almost always forget my dreams. I often deny that I have dreams at all. In the past couple years whenever I've given up smoking, I would have very intense dreams. Intense enough for me to not want to quit smoking. Since my dental surgery I have had to, in fact, quit smoking. And I've been having some dreams lately.

Last night I dreamed that I was at my parents' house, but it wasn't the house we have now, in Alameda. I think it was a house that was still in Los Angeles. I don't remember this specific house but I know from the light coming in the windows that it was tropical. In the dream I am visiting my parents, going through my old stuff. I find a VHS tape hidden somewhere and I watch it. It's a porno, starring this guy I hooked up with over the summer. I can't believe it. In the video, he's doing all kinds of kinky shit. All kinds of kinky shit that turns me on to the point of not even turning me on anymore. The feeling I am having in the dream, apart from arousal, is a kind of melancholic thing. I think to myself: "But you never did any of those things with me!" Sort of indignant. It gets very intense and in the dream I am nervous that someone is going to walk in on me watching this gross nasty porno. And in the dream, they would know that I knew the boy in the video. I know he's only pretending to enjoy it, but it still blows my mind.


Andy Warhol, Sleep 1963

I woke up and looked at my alarm clock. It was 3:53 in the morning. I tried the new lube I got from Brandon and jerked off, and fell back asleep. There's another song by Rebecca Pearcy, "Messy", about masturbating to the thought of a former lover "for all the things we haven't done / but I'd like to do, with you / some day soon".

2/22/10

Affection, Reprimands, and the Biggest Heart

  • Blue leather hi-top shoes from Europe.
  • Cerasee tea.
  • Walt Cessna's opening last Friday night was really amazing. Hosted by everyone's favorite queer art magazine Try State, it was packed and gorgeous. Beyond honored to be included in the pictures, among such luminaries as Nicholas Gorham and Brandon B. The show will be up until March 22 in NYC at Live Fast. PLEASE GO CHECK IT OUT.
  • English cold medicine I bought over the summer in Heathrow. I have been hoarding it like magick, only using it when absolutely necessary. This morning as an indulgence.
  • T-shirt either looks like outer space or jism, depending.
  • The idea of outer space as an interior emotional place / system.
  • Yvonne Rainer's No Manifesto. Taken entirely out of context and paraded for my own, like vintage jewelry.
  • Friday night's Birdsong reading was really great. PAPS did another wonderful set. Friends near and dear to us all.
  • Trying to think of new ways to show you affection. New places to kiss you.
  • Watching the Mariah Carey video for Heartbreaker, really feeling it. Every aspect, almost.
  • Mariah Carey, just generally. For me, personally, enjoying Mariah Carey is sort of a Buddhist experience of keeping my heart open and remaining true and present in the experience.
  • Performing last night at Joe's Pub, as part of the Jeffery and Cole Family Radio Programme. Even with a nascent headcold and blistering hangover, it was so much fun and really exciting to perform.
  • Erin Markey, as always. What an inthpiration. Last night I had a dream that I was breaking up with her. This came as a shock to her in the dream, since we're not going out or anything. In the dream, she was confused, but was very understanding. I sobbing hysterically in the dream (which is how I know it's a dream-- I never, ever cry in real life) and I just kept telling her "I'm sorry. I can't do this. We can't be together. I really like you, but I can't do this." Even in the fantasy dream, I realized that it wasn't about Erin Markey. I think she realized that too.
  • Oatmeal with peanut butter and hot sauce for breakfast.
  • I was feeling really awful one day last week so I went to the gym and I listened to house records and I ran as fast and as hard as I could for my allotted 20-minutes on the treadmill and even though I can't cry I can get close and I was really feeling... something. A couple of sentences occured to me. Unfortunately this is the best possible outcome. I had an idea. I fucking knew I was going to, too. So I put some of the sentences aside for a future performance idea (currently titled ENCOURAGER) and I used some of the sentences in a new story I read at Birdsong, called "Hello Bluebird". I wanted to find a way to express the complicated, sort of resigned ways in which we seek each other out with the knowledge that we're not really looking for each other. Per se. Or, you're not seeing me when you're looking at me, but I can still feel it. Does that make any sense? It did to me.
  • I wish I could go to the gym again tonight but I feel really sick and gross. And awful. We'll see.
  • On Sunday morning you mentioned that Patti Smith is good friends with Anne Demeulemeester. I don't know if I had heard that before or not, but it struck me as totally hilarious, in the way that true things often do. We had a few chuckles about that. About the scene. I imagined hanging out with both of them at the same time. Anne says: "Patti, I like your white shirt." Patti says: "Well, I like your white shirt, too, Anne." I imagined myself popping up in between them, saying: "Well ladies, I like both of your white shirts."

2/18/10

Soft Cunt Is This



My room mate invited us to this youth ball. She worked at a residential center for homeless LGBT youth, and the center was co-sponsoring this event. It was a Disney-themed vogue ball, held downtown at an abandoned (I guess rehabilitated) nightclub, for under age performers. It was a massive, endless event and it was entirely sober. There was no smoking, drinking, or drug use. The kids showed up, mostly already in costume, and waited their turns for their respective categories. I was really impressed with how specific some of the categories were, too. "Cruella DeVille Couture Realness" I could see, but "Peter Pan Butch Queen" was new to me. "Aladdin Street Urchin Butch Realness"? "Sea-Witch?" As the evening went on, the categories became less about Disney, more vague, and increasingly competetive. None of the girls actually touched each other's hair, but they did whip each other with their long, long, ribon-in-their, hair. One of the last categories was "Soft Cunt Realness". One of the queens walked, and to my eyes did a great job, but was wildly unpopular with the judges. One of the MCs, a butch queen who had been narrating the event, read her like a billboard after she walked. "What the fuck was that? That was not Soft Cunt!" He motioned to the DJ to put the beat back on, while he demonstrated the lilting wrists, subtle head snaps and syncopated marching that was evidently expected of the category. While he was demonstrating, to thunderous applause from the audience (and considerable chagrin of the girl who had just walked) he roared, over the beat: "Soft Cunt is this. Soft Cunt is this. Soft Cunt is this. Soft Cunt is this."

Thinking a lot this morning about soft cunt realness. (lowercase). Thinking a lot about, like, instructing someone in a public way. Shaming. Manually shifting focus away from dark spots is exhausting and exhaustion is not an interesting place to start from.

2/17/10

How You Could Tell


Activity #9 by Alex Da Corte, 2007

Pash Wednesday

I do think that Pash(ly) is a fashion icon, and inthpiration to me in many ways.



As in, meaning a delicatessen (like the restaurant she is standing in front ot), but also the Cajun meaning of Traiteur. I think Pashly speaks to both.


by Ken Moehn


by Fede Nessi


By Rachel Bevis

Some things coming up this Friday:
WALT CESSNA PHOTO EXHIBIT

Hosted by Try State Magazine, and featuring many near and dear faces. I really like Walt's work and am super excited for this event on Friday. I'm warned that it will get really crowded, so come early.

AND THEN: it's also the BIRDSONG ISSUE #11 RELEASE PARTY

I am gonna read and PAPS is going to play and it's going to be really fun.

2/16/10

Ptrck the Witch, Bobo, PLD and I went to Philadelphia this weekend.

Well, first, on Friday night I went to the Tim Hamilton presentation at Milk. It was really cool! I love goth clothes, and I really love the clothes that Tim Hamilton makes, too. The boots with the crazy textures were a favorite. So were the free drinks. And also, so were all the crazy lovely familiar faces I ran into, including the Cutest Boy Author In The World, Bennett Madison. New York is a Small City. It feels small, sometimes. Afterward, I went to the Birdsong offices to help assemble the new issue.

Saturday we got up, Ptrck made a wonderful breakfast, and we headed out to Philadelphia. I listened to a lot of Maria Callas and dozed during the trip. We went to the Reading Terminal Market and got really good and really cheap food. We walked down to the Mutter Museum but by the time we got there it was closed. No babies in jars. At least not on this trip. We went to the awesome Leslie's house, where we were invited to stay. Bobo and Leslie studied in France together a few years ago, and Bobo had often told me about her amazing cool friend. Leslie totally lived up to the hyper. She has this incredible, very cheap, GIGANTIC studio in Fishtown. We checked out her formidable and exciting art projectsm and she let us try on her costumes. She gave me a really sweet red faux leather trenchcoat which I must say matched my performance outfit plan perfectly.

We went to the Tritone where I was playing my show. The other bands I played with were the Homophones, who I had never heard before but I thought were really cute, totally adorable, and the fucking incredible Sgt Sass. Sgt Sass was, just... I can't even get into how much I loved their performance. Go to their myspace page and get all their records and pin their photos to your bedroom wall. Later we went to a very cool house party at Alex from Cum Rag Manifesto's house, where we all got relaxed, had a dance party, and played Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby" while people sang along to it as loud as they possible could. I cleared a room by making a gay marriage joke (the joke was that I said, in the middle of a typical after-party monologue nonsequiteur, "Fuck Gay Marriage, y'know?") and cleared a room. I also made some kind of announcement from the stage in which I berated the idea of "bourgeois heteronormative love" but I don't think that offended people as much.

Anyways. Philadelphia: I'm sorry if I offended you with my flippant remark.

After the house party we all walked through ice and snow to a huge gigantic loft where there was a RAVE with GREEN LAZERS and we danced and had a blast then went home. In the morning we went out for a delicious brunch and came back to NYC where I, personally, slept like a baby.

Last night I ahd dinner and drinks with my friend Jason. Jason recently moved to NYC and is leaving already to move to Buenos Aries. I am bummed that he's going, but excited because now I can crash his South American party in Argentina! And I fully intend on doing so.


Anyways, guys. The big news is that SCORCHER ISSUE NUMBER FOUR, titled YOU LITTLE CROCODILE will be out on April 11th, published by Birdsong Micropress. It's going to be an Aries of a zine. There will be an event in NYC to celebrate the release, with details shortly.

Exciting!

2/12/10

More Roses

Tomorrow Bobo, Perfect Little Daniel and Ptrick the Witch and I are all going to Philly. I'm super excited. All of the bands in this show feature Fire Signs. PLD and Ptrick are both Tauruses, and Bobo's a Virgo. I am into Earth signs, too.

Maybe I'm just into everything. For a change!

Also thinking about:



I am sad and surprised like everyone else about Alexander McQueen's passing. I remember when Bobo blogged about this collection, and I thought it was really sweet. Bobo is a total style hero of mine, but rarely wants to comment on the world of 'high fashion'. I thought her post was sweet.

Some romance advice from a session with Bobes.

all you got to do from Danielle Rosa on Vimeo.



I dunno, guys. I'm going to a fashion show tonight and really excited about that.
Gonna go to whole foods for lunch.
Live a little, you know?

2/11/10

Miss Thing is TOO THROUGH with these Ugly Duckling Damages

I posted that on my Twitter page last week and it remains true, for me. An accurate description of something.



Basically, here's what I am tired of: I really am too through with the idea of you thinking that you are ugly. Thinking that no one thinks you're cool. You thinking that you don't have any friends. It is inaccurate, and it sets you up to be sort of annoying. Cause, see, you're working with this supposition of psychic poverty, you presume a kind of paucity of personality. You are working under the assumption that you are lame, you suck or are as I have said, an ugly duckling. And, like, A) this isn't true and we wouldn't be friends / I would be so totally in love with you / we wouldn't hang out all the time if this were true. B) it makes it necessary for you to really talk a lot about how awesome you are, when good things happen to you. And I don't wanna begrudge you your happiness because I really do love you and I really do want to encourage you and short of sucking yr dick I don't know another way to make you see how wonderful I think you are. But stop being so fucking vocally surprised when the world, as well, confirms the suspicion of your beauty, intelligence, talent, coolness, whatever.

You are not an ugly ducking. I am sorry to say that you have a much more difficult line to tow and that is being a viciously beautiful creature. Liberate yourself. I'll meet you outside the gates of the zoo.

My BFF Danielle and I had this running joke, this imaginary character we used to make jokes about, named Nathan McQueen. In the joke, he was Alexander's less-fashionable, inexplicably Texan, twin brother, separated at birth. He made clothes for cowboys and was good-natured about his successful sibling. I guess we can never make that joke ever again.

This is how exhausting it is to be a narcissist. I have to do such complicated mental gymnastics, in order to really make things about ME. So, y'know. Think about that the next time you want to make fun of me for being self-centered: I'm very busy and I don't have time to deal with anyone's jealousy and resentment-fueled negativity. Even my own.

I am viciously hungover.

2/10/10

Gonna Let You

Last night I watched this documentary Lagerfeld Confidential. It was sort of depressing. I wanted Karl to reveal himself as secretly enthralled, romanced, seduced by... something. Beauty? Clothes? Money? Boys? He has this inscrutable, almost Zen philosophy about not being attached to anything. He says that he lives for change. For him, to move on from a person, a place, anything, is no big deal. He thrives on change. He waxes poetic about how one can only live in the present moment. About how possessions weigh you down. About how you can't waste your time talking about the "good old days" because they're gone. And if things really are getting worse, he says, if things really used to be better, then you might as well give up. But he's had a really wonderful, cushy job for over twenty years. And the opening scene is his apartment. He has something like ELEVEN iPods. That's a lot to be weighed down with. He also cannot fly or fall asleep without clutching a stuffed pillow from his childhood to his stomach. I don't know. I still think some of his clothes are cool. And I'm sure his world makes sense to him. I think I'm just in the mood to be bummed out. As usual.

At the end of the film, Karl stresses the point that he doesn't want the filmmakers to imply that he is lonely. That for him, for people in his position, solitude is a victory. I finished the film and I had dreams of walking angrily out of my job. I woke up stressed out. I think I could have avoided this if the film had like one second of Karl cruising the young models he surrounds himself with. I want to see him enflamed by desire. Even a very strict, Continental, "Professional", fleeting, don't-get-too-attached-to-the-feeling kind of desire.

In my documentary, I want to show Karl Lagerfeld and everyone else talking about something they really like. Someone they really want to fuck them. Their favorite food. The colors they dream in. The name of their first pet.

Yesterday I got Planningtorock's Have It All Stringed Up EP in the mail. I'd been lusting after it for a little while.

It's really beautiful. It's nice to really want something, and imagine that it'll be great, and then when it finally happens, for it to be great. One of the tracks on the EP is a remix of this song, "Changes". Even though it's one of her hits, I never really got into it, because I don't like change. I think of myself as someone who really digs reliability, loyalty, consistency. But I am realizing that this just isn't realistic. I've changed a lot, even just in the past couple of weeks. And I'm going to keep changing. I don't mind it. I need it.



I began today by feeling really helpless (Un Jour, as Herr Lagerfeld would say, in his adopted mother-tongue Comme Un Autre). I think, ultimately, it is okay to be helpless. It's okay to be confused and it's okay to admit when you are weak. And it's okay to not be the boss. And it's okay to not know what you want. And it's okay to wear pink. And it's okay to let people fuck you. And it's okay to be scared.

And, then, after those, it's okay to change your mind.

2/8/10

Orchidaceae


I want to tell you how brave I've been this week and how painful and isolating this week was. I want you know how awful it is. Why? That won't change any of the circumstances and won't make me feel any better and it'd just bum you out. Maybe the point is not to invite everyone to study the little fissures of my neurosis. Not, I don't think, today. I guess the point is to find new ways of saying things. Hopefully new things.

I feel like I am an horticulturist, tending to the most delicate orchids. I have no aptitude for this kind of hobby: I have no patience and I lack the gentle touch needed to cultivate, encourage even the hardiest of blooms. I may not be able to grow plants, but I can make my language flowery (in big, broad, autistic strokes). I feel emboldened to be proxy to so much potential beauty. How best to nurture?

I want you to feel that I am taking care of you. I want you to feel like I understand how sensitive and fragile you are. And if I am rough with you or withholding it is only because I think you can take it. The orchid does not trust the soil or the water or the birds or bees. Flowers and I both know, now, that chance plays a really big role in making beautiful things happen. And then again, orchids die, too. Fussy. I get so nervous around all these delicate flowers, signaling to me their sundry needs for heat, moisture, minerals and light.

I would go in drag because the dress looks expensive and your hands are rough. Put it on me, I can take care of it. And if I stain it, I'll clean it. If I get it caught on something, if I make some little tear, I'll take responsibility for it. Open myself up for the lashes, take them almost gleefully. There, I imagine, there is the sound of the other shoe dropping. A high-heeled patent-leather number, you know. Let's go chase it. My impulse is to be the girl-shape because I'm afraid you'll fuck it up if you do it. I'm not talking about getting fucked, neither. But I am talking about the fact that someone somewhere will have to wrestle with these facts, and it might as well be us.


Yeah, man it's like where we leave off loving each other is just planted and watered. I pat the dirt around your roots and you smile up at me and then it's up to God, or Time, or Your Favorite Member of Sonic Youth or something. Some divinity, it's a waiting game. We have to let things fall where they may and wrestle with demons as they come up. Sometimes it's a bad time and sometimes the bad times are a long time coming. Sometimes the bad times are broadcast internationally of TV and still escape us. Our best intentions, our fear and our pain are not protection from the future, and it's a waste of breath to arm ourselves in scars.


Once they had some money and could finally have a nice house to themselves, she had them renovate the apartment above the garage. The idea was that when they were home from tour, once they got out of their hers 'n' his rehabs, got their shit together and got the baby into a good nursery school, that she could grow orchids in there.

Had a pretty low-key weekend. I canceled all my plans and refused every date because I feel insecure about how sick I look. The computer I use to make my internationally-upsetting dance music died last night, for like the eighth time, meaning that I can't make any new music. This would be upsetting if it hadn't come at the tail end of such a really difficult week. I sort of expected it to die. I need to buy a new laptop and get some new music software. Tips, recommendations and ideas all welcome, as always.

Highlight of the weekend was going record shopping, reconnecting with my inner teenager. I got some perennial faves:
Mecca Normal - Water Cuts My Hands
Sinead O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Laurie Anderson - Big Science
Dot Dot Dot - The Dot Dot Dot Story
Kill Rock Stars' Stars Kill Rock compilation
Blonde Redhead - S/T and La Mia Vita Violenta
Bis - New Transistor Heroes
I often think about what I would say to myself if I could go back in time. I think the me of ten years ago would be fucking thrilled with my life now. He'd be horrified that I'd become a smoker, but otherwise I think he'd be pretty excited and hopefully would feel like his teenage life is worth it. So if I can (hypothetically) please the teenage me, back in time, then I guess things can't be all bad.

I do wish I didn't have to have a day job, though.
And I wish we could lay in my bed tonight and I could tell you the real reasons, the secret reasons for some of the things between us.
But both of these things will come exactly as soon as they can.

2/7/10

Torch My Eyes

DOMINANT THEMES OF THE LAST WEEK:



The lyrics to Lydia Lunch's "Mechanical Flattery": Fingers my fingers / My wrists made of satin / Don't be afraid of what's gonna happen / Elbows to ankles my fists out of place / I turn around backwards and off slides my face / Bones spilntered shattered / Dissolve in my skin My torso melts it flows out my shins / Open so open a circular mark /The cut on my forehead it glows in the dark.




2/5/10

Posit

LESS HAIR

MORE SHOES

2/3/10

ENCOURAGER NOTES

TWO TIMES I REALIZED THAT WE COULD NEVER BE TOGETHER, and I KNEW THAT IT WAS OKAY:

1. When you slept over that night, on a weeknight, even though we both had to go to our corporate temp jobs in the morning. I wanted it to be special. We argued on the phone about how it sucked that it was Tuesday and we were both so busy that we wouldn't be able to see each other all week. You were sort of whiny, and complained that you wished we could hang out sooner. There was a long pause on the phone.

"I mean," you said, "like... do you want me to come over, tonight? Cause I could." Of course I wanted you to come over. You took a car even though it's a really short walk, but it was Tuesday night and we were both making good money up on 43rd Street (in TV and Film advertising companies, respectively). You showed up at my door wearing a hoodie and pajama bottoms. You had an overnight bag with your stuff for work, the next day's outfit, your toothbrush, contact lenses, lube and condoms and a candy bar for us to share. You said you were really sleepy. We brushed our teeth together, and you rolled your eyes at me because you said I did mine too fast. I was embarassed that you'd think I had bad dental hygiene, but I was also really turned on by watching us brush our teeth together in the mirror. Our mouths getting foamy together. You chastized me for leaving the faucet running while I was brushing my teeth, because it was a waste of water. I kicked you out of the bathroom cause I had to pee, and I get stage fright. You understood and went to bed. When I got back to my bedroom you were smoking my weed and wearing only your underpants. Grinning.

I put on this mix of songs I had put together for us to fuck to. I was secretly really proud of it. It was mostly embarassing trip-hop stuff (I don't know why but Tricky really turns me on). But I remember that towards the beginning of the mix I had put a bunch of Calvin Johnson songs on it. So many things turn me on, all of us on. But the sound of Calvin Johnson's voice always does it, every time. I mean, he's a crooner. He's gorgeous. I'm getting flustered just writing about it. But I put on his song "Can We Kiss?" and I thought you'd really like it. I climbed into bed and put my arms around you and you said:

"Hey Billy, do you mind if we turn off the Homer Simpson record?"

2. We were talking about breaking up with people. You said that you hated to prolong an unpleasant relationship, you were bad at faking it. You said that you learned to be really good at just ending it. Making it hurt less by getting out, and fast. You said it was like taking off a band-aid; you had to do it quickly and get it over with.

I remember you saying this while we were sharing a dish of ice cream somewhere in the West Village or something, some weird flavor like Red Bean or Ginger Mocha Mint Coffee (I always let you choose these things). And I remember being totally baffled by this analogy. Who ever heard of ripping off a band-aid? I would never do that, because I know it'll hurt. I just leave a band-aid on the cut, with the faith that once the wound underneath heals (which it always does), then eventually the band-aid will come off, on it's own, in the shower. Painlessly, and without any knowledge on my part.

PSYCHEDELICACIES

IN WHICH OUR HERO BILLY GOES INSANE


Photo taken Sunday by Ves Pitts.

Some Thoughts Should Be Drunk Up and Swallowed Up Whole

Reading over the blog I get so embarrassed to be airing my dirty laundry in public. I feel like Alicia Moore aka Pink, when she was talking about listening to "Family Portrait" the first time. She said something to the effect of "Oh, no I can't do that. That's too personal, I can't be so vulnerable." I feel just like that, misusing the word "vulnerable" and everything.

There're these dual impulses to, like, SHARE THE FEELING, like make a list of everything that is bugging me today, along with the impulse to NOT DO THAT. Like, it'd be bratty to complain, like, I have no right to complain. Like, shut up, Billy. But then that's having the feeling about having the feeling. Who has the time for that?

And I realize that this is largely a function of my attitude. When I feel better about the world I can sort of deal with it better. And then I start guilt-tripping myself: why can't I just cheer up? Now it is time to put on the Lisa Germano records, man. I worry about how come I can never seem to see myself or my life-narrative in a positive light. I am always disappointed, in a fresh way, whenever I am confronted with myself. I wish I was better-equipped. But then I think about how much my family struggled to make me, and to make me happy. And how guilty they would feel if they knew I was sad. This is not helping, either.

I am sharing this on my blog cause I think it's important to talk about our feelings apart from a clinical way. I used to think it was really important to talk about psychotherapy until my friends started making fun of me for it so now let's just talk about feelings. I think it's good and important to do this. Cause a feeling is (sorry Yvonne) not a fact. And you can't argue with it. It's just there.

Some things that I can be excited or happy about, without having to worry.

There's a new Lady Kier record out. Finally. It's her cover of George Clinton's "Bulletproof" and it's OUT NOW ON DFA RECORDS. It's really great.



At some point this year, there's going to be a new Planningtorock record, called (as of this blog entry) Planet 9. I can't wait.



I am prone to hyperbole but I think that Janine Rostron might be my favorite singer in the whole wide world. I am more invested in her work than just about anyone else's. And I just can't wait.



I really want things to start looking up, man.
Jeez.


Alright. Forward!

2/1/10

STYLE ICON: DELIA DEETZ

Still recovering. Had an epic Saturday which involved:

As well as MOVIE NIGHT. I revisited a perennial favorite, Beetlejuice. I feel like, as a kid, Winona Laura Horowitz' breakout performance as Lydia Deetz was really instrumental to me. I was a goth kid. I wanted to be, as per Lydia "Strange and Unusual". Her layered, lacy outfits and hand-twisted gel-ed ravens-nest bangs were really inspiring to me. But watching it again, I felt much less interest in Lydia than I did in her mom.

MY STYLE ICON IS DELIA DEETZ

OK, I have to sort of make peace with some aspects of the character that rub me the wrong way: she's rich. She's bourgeois. BUT she's also a frustrated sculptress. I actually really like her sculptures. Plus, also: I just adore Catherine O'Hara. In my mind, the woman can do no wrong. And, really, watching the movie over the weekend, her clothes are SO MUCH BETTER than Lydia's. ALSO: throughout the movie, Delia Deetz is almost always drinking WHITE WINE. All I'm saying is: Spirit Twins.


"This is my art, and it is dangerous!"


I'm like watching the video, and I realize that Catherine O'Hara, through her clothes, is living my dream. She is a frustrated, postmodern artist with a wardrobe of 1980s Japanese fashion.


I guessed, and was correct, that she wears Mitsuhiro Matsuda, Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons.


Loves it.
AWESOME BONUS TRIVIA: Catherine O'Hara in real life has a condition called situs inversus viscerum.