9/25/13

ENCOURAGER at La MaMa on Saturday 9/28



I'm performing my solo show/self-help workshop, ENCOURAGER, at the legendary La MaMa Experimental Theater Club as part of their new solo performance series, A Series of One. I'm really excited to get to do this performance again, in Manhattan, and at such a fantastic venue. The performance will be this Saturday, September 28th at 10pm. You can purchase tickets HERE.
There are still some discounted ($10) pre-sale tickets available for the website. Otherwise it's $15 for Adults or $10 Students/Seniors.

You can see more information about the show on the La MaMa Blog.I was also recently interviewed for Next Magazine about the show. There's yet more information about the show from when I debuted it at Brooklyn Arts Exchange/BAX last spring, when I did a some fairly in-depth interviews/features for Gay City News and GAYLETTER, respectively.

Facebook invite HERE.

I hope you can come!

9/24/13

Right Down Here



Mars has been in Leo since the end of August and is going to be there until the middle of October. It's been great and horrible. Too hot, and I don't mean the temperature. I need to chill out. I've been mad all week. Monday, something dumb, the cost of repairing my fancy coat from moth bites, actually, seemed to set me off. Then it was everything. The fact that I need to clean my apartment, I was out of trash bags, I couldn't get anything to work. The train left right as I got to the platform. That kind of thing. I got into an argument today with a friend, which sucked. My parents are coming in two days. Bobo is in town. I am going to this wedding and I'm worried about what to wear. I have my show on Saturday. I'm really stressed out! I'm accidentally broke until payday, and the gym said I was past due and they need to charge me. They let me work out tonight through. So I have no money for a minute. I cooked dinner when I got home from the gym but found bugs in my bag of rice. I cooked the very end of my groceries. Sitting in bed eating, I saw another moth flying around my closet. I bought cedar things online and I also bought some in the store, which is foolish now that I know I'm broke but it's too late. But they're not working if there's still a moth around.There're a lot of things vying for my attention, it really sucks.


I hate being mad. I hate feeling angry. It's a thing about a thing. I wish I could stop it, could stop feeling bad and control my feelings. I was consciously thinking today to try not to worry so much. I have to remind myself about that. Does everybody have to remind themselves to do things like that?

Maybe everybody isn't plagued by insects and somehow unable to mobilize their feelings of frustration. No, probably everybody is more the same than different.

It's just so maddening. It can seem inconceivable one day. It can seem like: "Wow, I can't believe even considered that? How totally foreign from the mindset I know now. Who was that person, who could have such dark thoughts? I hope he never comes back, that's for sure!" And then at other times, even a day later, it's like this certainty. It can go from inconceivable to inevitable. I keep struggling to find the way to say it. Obviously. I keep not finding the right way to say it and it just makes everything worse, because then I'm not only wrong but stupid and wrong. I'm just trying to say it! I find myself like a sleepwalker and I wake up and I'm standing in the fireplace. What are you thinking?



We think, if only they understood me better. Then they'd see where I'm coming from. If only they understood me, understood my perspective. Then they'd agree with me. I know I've lived by any measure a really cushy life but there've been enough experiences to nurture a kind of pessimism in me. I do not have that faith that being more fully understood necessarily leads to connection, a deeper rapport. What if you understand my perspective and came to a radically different conclusion than I do? Was I wrong the whole time? Maybe the error is in the hope that if only you saw me for you I am, you would like me. That does seem to be misguided. After all, I know me the best, if not pretty well, and I wouldn't give myself a good review.

It's nice to think of the people we've loved and miss as being up in Heaven. As if by earning our love and the love of others, by leading good lives, they deserve to live in good graces, forever. They deserve to be angels and live with God in Heaven. It is a nice thought.

9/23/13

Bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny, bunny.

WEEKEND/WAKE UP:
- Black coffee with honey and a little bit of salt.
- Oatmeal with peanut butter and soy sauce and sesame oil and sri racha.
- Baked yams.

I'm excited for Autumn. I've taken my air conditioner out and I keep the windows in my room open. I don't have to water the houseplants as often. One of them, the oldest one actually, died this summer while I was in Berlin. I need some new ones. Some that will grow in the winter.

I found a moth in my room last weekend, and then a few days ago I found some sweaters with holes in them. Not too terribly torn up about it (ha) because it gives me an excuse to buy new sweaters, but was a bit bummed to see that one of them began munching on my much-beloved CdG Homme jacket. So I'm taking it to the fancy couture dry cleaners to get steamed and repaired today, will probably end up spending a third of what I paid for the damn jacket but c'est la vie. I don't actually own any other wool, so I'm not freaking out about cleaning. Should I be? I freak out about so many other things and I really can't bother right now.

I still need to get my winter jacket and my suit dry cleaned but I take those to the cheaper place. I'm going to a wedding next week, I'm a little bit excited and nervous and so happy for dear heart Lizzy's Happy Day. And that my date is the most beautiful wonderful genius in the world, Miss Bobo Rosa. I can't wait to see her.

Last night I was really, I gotta say, overwhelmed with goodwill and happiness and peace and excitement. I'm not trying to brag or act like I'm really special or something, but I am trying to find ways to be grateful and graceful. I realize, now that I am pretty much basically a grown-up adult person (for the most part, depending who you ask, whatever), that I've somehow managed to stubbornly hang on to this small-town suburban fanboy naivete. I can't get over things, I'm so often wide-eyed and jubilant and really impressed. And I like feeling like that. The world has humbled me many times but I still think things are amazing with some regularity. I guess the upshot of having being overly emotional (mental disorder, even) is that while bad things feel HORRIBLE, it also allows for good things to feel WONDERFUL. I don't know if I would have it be a different way, not that I could.

Yesterday morning I went to the NY Art Book Fair, which was typically overwhelmed. It was great, there's always so much great stuff. There's just too much. I'm kind of glad I gave myself a little bit of a time limit for checking everything out. I had gone for the opening on Thursday night but missed the actual opening and only made it in time for the after party. Funny how that works. I went to sound check at Joe's Pub and basked in the glorious sunshine. I took a little nap and played with the cat and really was just so into Sunday.

Then I went around the corner to Soloway for the opening of the new Wynne Greenwood exhibition, "More Heads". It was pretty fantastic, I must say. There are some videos of heads and some sculptures of heads and a soundtrack. The place was PACKED so I didn't get the chance to listen to much of the soundtrack, but it's right near my house so I'll definitely go back. I got to say hi to Wynne, and I remembered that I'd been following her work fro the last 15 years, since I saw her old band MeMe America open for Miranda July in Berkeley. So nuts! I am and remain a huge fan. The exhibition is interesting; a tonic reprieve from what seems like the ubiquitous noise of the NY art world. Just heads, you know? Not conversations, not a debate, not even a monologue. Just heads. Faces and shapes populating a space (physical space of the gallery and virtual space of video). Greenwood's work has often wrestled with the notion of how to inhabit a space, how to make a space and then use it. How to locate yourself within the confines of a discourse, a history, an aesthetic, a relationship. The subtly gorgeous formalism of arranging the heads feels like an even-handed, earnest way of relaying these questions. I liked it a lot, am going to go back, and so should you.

After the opening I went over to Joe's Pub to perform in Aftershocks, the benefit for the Afterglow Festival. Maybe it was the whiskey they had at Soloway's opening (bien joue) or the whiskey they gave the perrformers at Joe's Pub, but was feeling really expansive and thrilled that this is my life. I get to go to a Wynne Greenwood art opening near my house, then pop by Joe's motherfucking Pub to do a number from the show I made with Miss Molly Pope, SalonSalon:



Also performing on the bill were our hostesses/den mother and father Quinn Cox and Stella Starsky, Erin Markey, Michael Cavadias, Dan Fishback, Santiago Venegas, Chris Tyler, Becky Eklund, Joseph Keckler, Lady Rizo, Amber Martin (who covered Laura Nyro's "Woman's Blues" and broke my fucking heart), Jill Pangallo (my hero!), Mike Albo, Dane Terry, Nath Ann Carrera, and Angela DiCarlo. Really, really amazing stuff. I feel so humbled and gobsmacked to be on that bill. A literal dream come true.



Photo of Miss Erin backstage, wearing her FUNX t-shirt, of which I'm UNSPEAKABLY jealous. After the show last night I high-tailed it home and didn't get quite enough sleep. I'm exhausted!



Saturday I rehearsed ENCOURAGER in advance of my performance this weekend at La MaMa (more on that tomorrow), and had a meeting with Catherine, the artistic advisor for my second year as an Artist in Residence at BAX. We were talking about performance and being loved. I'm interested in making a new show in which I'm loved a little bit less, onstage. She made this really good point that a lot of people come to performance because they want to feel loved, but at a certain point, you need to risk not having that love in order to make new (and maybe better) performance. I had never heard it put that way but I was really excited by this. I feel like I've always felt like performing was where I could determine whether or not I deserved love, and possibly get it. There, onstage. But at a certain point, fairly early on, like as a kid doing theater, it did occur to me that that thing of getting love and attention onstage for your own edification, was kind of an exercise in diminishing returns. There is something else there, on the other side of that need. I aim to find out! So I had a good meeting, an okay rehearsal, I was really hungover, and then went with Sister Pico to this cool reading of excerpts from Chris Krauss' book Aliens & Anorexia including reasings by Arianna Reines and Emily Gould. It was way cool, I was really glad I went even tough I haven't read her books yet, and had to stand in the back. I like living in New York, this reminded me of how much I like it here. We went out for margaritas and nachos afterward, and I came home for a quickchange before meeting PLD and sundry friends in the East Village for a new lounge party. Friends of friends were hosting, we got to drink from the free bottle of vodka. Again-- maybe not such a big deal for some other people. Maybe some people only ever drink from free bottles of vodka. I came of age in the suburbs. I was tremendously impressed. I can barely deal with the glamour. After some real nice times at that lounge place, we went in search of dumplings in the Lower East Side, but it was raining. Pouring. Eventually we gave up. I got a sandwich and ate it in bed and felt pretty great about that, falling asleep, drunk, listening to the rain.

Friday night I had dinner with my dear friend Isabelle, whom I hadn't seen in a while and who I love very much. And then I went out for drinks with Hillary, another college chum who I haven't seen in even LONGER. I'm friends with such gorgeous, funny, sweet and fantastic people. I feel really lucky.

Tomorrow Bobo arrives in town, and Thursday my parents arrive in town. And I perform on Saturday. I can't even fathom how to get on with things. Dropping my coat off to be rescued today and then rehearsing and eating soup and hopefully sleeping.



I want to buy a new cardigan and a new button down shirt and a new pair of shoes. All I want is to buy clothes. And to sleep. Deeply.

This Deerhoof song pretty much changed my life when I was in high school. I guess I just didn't know how punk rock could be so, you know, organic. Naturalistic? It's easy. It's like the Shaggs or Beat Happening or anything else, it sounds at first like it could be just noise. Just fucking around. It could be an accident. But it's not-- I saw Deerhoof play a lot around the time their first and second albums came out (they used to put out like four albums a year, actually), and as jazzy and jammy and loosey-goosey as they were, they are also pretty fucking precise technicians, too. Something about the energy captured in this song. Maybe it's because they were a couple? Maybe it's the simplicity of the lyrics? I don't know. I was already a vegatarian but I loved this meat video. I had a VHS of the Kill Rock Stars music videos and I remember taking it over to my first boyfriend's house to watch during a sleep-over (which was after we went to go see the Butchies and then dumpster-dove gigantic bags of popcorn from the movie theater). I loved this video and thought he would too, I guess he did, but he was freaked out at the stop-motion animation in the Satisfact video that came on later. Creepy crawly scary Matthew Steinke genius. I should have known.

9/17/13

Sugarcoma, Busycoma, Beecoma, Honeycomba

Wednesday morning I woke up at 5am to meet up with my collaborator / co-star / inspiration / hero Molly Pope to go up to Provincetown for the Afterglow Festival. I was late to Penn Station but we got on the train and went up to Boston. It was pretty glamorous, I gotta say, getting to ride the train on official business as we did.



After a brief cab ride, we got on the Provincetown ferry and were soon on the Cape. Ptown is obviously gorgeous, and is exactly as all the old heads describe it, "a very magickal place". A place where aging locals will approach me on the street and ask if I'm having fun. I am, I tell them. They smile and welcome me to their town. This happens more than once. Fantastic. After the trip, Molly and I made it to out fantastic hotel room and unpacked. We went to town for dinner, then back to the hotel for a little cocktail party with the other performers before going to the theater for that night's show. I was, I gotta say, in heaven in a fancy hotel suite with Amber and Jill in their very chic clubwear black dresses, sipping wine and getting ready for the showings. We made it down to the theater to see Spookz and Rizo perform. Their shows were fantastic, OBVIOUSLY. After the sets, there was a dance party called FAGBASH, which I went to with some of the kids, but I had to beg off after Amber sang her Chaka Khan song, and before the beauty competition. I had to save my strength, you know.

And then Thursday we had our show! Molly and I made a pretty bonkers and fun show about beauty called SalonSalon. We performed on Thursday at the Crown and Anchor. I think we did a good job. I'm very proud of us. Getting to make a show with the inimitable miss Molly Pope is literally a dream come true. One of the many things I enjoyed about putting this together is that I got to hear her sing so many times. Rehearsals were really exciting, because she's so much fun. I sang as I am wont to do, a little flat, a little weird. I hope it was okay. There's something really weird going on with me where I'm not stressed about it, about this performance. I stress about so, so many other things. This, the being a cabaret singer thing, I didn't have the time or energy to stress about. I had to just show up and be myself and work hard and be creative and I think I did that. If I'm not the best singer, that's OK. And it really is OK. Whatever. I had fun and so did the crowd, it was a banner night. After our performance, Miss Erin Markey performed her show, which was obviously fantastic. We retired to a hotel bar after the shows and hung out for a bit, then went back to the hotel. There was a minor medical mishap by one of the festival artists on their way home, but everyone turned out okay and was more than generous in taking care of each other. Friday we hustled back home on the ferry, and it was just so fantastic.



The trip was too short, I wish I'd stayed for a lot longer. Now I know, for next time. We're performing in the AFTERSHOCKS show, a benefit for the Afterglow Festival, this Sunday 9/22 at Joe's Pub. Maybe you'd like to come get some excitement, dear. Eh?

This weekend I layed pretty low, because I so rarely get a minute to myself right now. I really should be putting the finishing touches on the new Scorcher, and I am, I swear, finishing one. There are, as there so often are, like, 14 different things happening all at the same time. I keep feeling the sentiment: "I wish there was more time. I wish there were more hours in the day." How fucking bizarre is that? Who am I? I would never wish there were more hours in the day, unless the extra hours were for sleeping. But now, yeah, I do really wish I had a few extra moments to work on this or hang out with that person or meditate or cook or go to the gym or muse on something or read that book. Life is so short. Should I become nocturnal? I accidentally only slept for five hours Sunday night and I seemed to be pretty okay yesterday. Maybe that's a bad way to decide how much to sleep, though.

Oh hey, look. The Blow's new single is out and is pretty fantastic, and is sort of about that:



I have the Aftershocks show next, and my darling parents come to town next weekend, which is also when I'm performing ENCOURAGER at La MaMa. There's a cute interview with me about it on their blog. Then there are also some B0DYH1GH shows and the new zine and some other sundry writing projects. All, pretty much, research for the project I'm working on in my second year at BAX, as well.

This weekend I went to Colin Self's legendary party CLUMP and had a great old time, sneaked down to Metropolitan for the dregs of GAG! mostly as an excuse to get a Hana sandwich on my way home. Rode next to a cute boy on the shuttle bus, but maybe I was just hungry. Pondered the sort of pathetic idea that I was debating between going to CLUMP or GAG! on a Saturday night. I'm a grown up and I live in a major metropolitan city. Sunday I woke up early, cleaned my house, and rehearsed ENCOURAGER. I've still got it! Was so thrilled that I pretty much remember all the words (I almost type "that I remembered the lyrics").

Also on Sunday, I went to the AK Burns art opening at Callicoon Fine Arts.



I've known Burns' work for a minute and long-loved it, this show was really sweet and smart. The aluminum sweaters mounted on the walls, and sand from Gay Beaches, mixed with spices, pressed into columns, were a fitting way to return from Ptown. A poignant (if bracing) reminder that although summer must always end, the promise of it doesn't necessarily have to. Super duper worth checking out if you're in town.

Some more cool things before tucking back into busycoma.

SAFE HOUSE USA. A new concept; "streetwear for the home" by Keehnan Konya. I'm totally into it.





I want all of this! Bed dressing is a topic near and dear to my heart (you can read my midrash on the importance of bedding on DIS Magazine). I'm a philistine in many ways, particularly with regard to design. Mr. KK, however, is a sharp thinker when it comes to this, however (check out her legendary blog), and puts his skills to good use in the SAFE HOUSE USA project. While my own taste tends to run to the tacky faded 1970s-hued, I am in love with these sets. They sort of remind me of Beetlejuice (another style inspiration near and dear to my heart). But maybe they only remind me of that becuae my frame of reference is so limited. These are going on my birthday / Hanukkah / Christmas lists.





Cute, right? You can see an interview with Konya about the project on Dis Magazine HERE and listen to the first of their "Stay the Night" mix series here:



FANMAIL. It's no secret, the cute new thing to wear is the ethically made, beautifully simply-designed shirts sweaters (and now pants?) by the new Brooklyn company Fanmail. I went to their launch opening party and I wanted to wear everything they make. It's so dorky.



It's all, like, simple gorgeous basics, which everyone says are really comfortable. I don't know because I haven't worn them yet because I'm still rubbing a few nickels together, but I want to wear these clothes forever and preferably lounge in them in a new Safe House USA Sheet set. I'm just fantasizing out loud.

Looking great on their mannequin, Boy Genius Sam McKinniss:



I want it all. I want everything.

Finally, a new video from Philly heartthrobs Potpourri of Pearls:





9/10/13

Sometimes you're sweet. And sometimes you're not.



I'm off, for a few days, just in time.

9/9/13

Triumphant Return to Modernism



Weekend news. Kids news. I don't feel amazing today. I feel kind of like I'm getting sick? That can't be, I have a show this week. I'm not gonna worry, but I am gonna take care of myself. I don't feel amazing yet, I should say. My horoscope said to come back to life. Horoscope said I'd come back from the dead, that I'd live again but that my loved ones might not understand, my family and friends might feel neglected.

Went to Lola's housewarming party on Friday night. The theme was "I'm Fabulous!" and it was also a 1970s themed party. She wore a gorgeous vintage house dress and we listened to the famous ladies of the 70s (Donna Summer, Laura Nyro) and we drank potato vodka and sat on her new green shag carpet and looked through her nail policy collection and talked about fucking, talked about orgasms. Like liberated women. I ate way too many chips and too much guacamole but had a very nice time nonetheless. Went to bed early instead of having fun. I never want to go out on weekend nights anymore. Something's changing. I feel gross. Do I?



Saturday I went to an Artist in Residence meeting in Park Slope, then a rehearsal for our cabaret show in P-Town this week, then to the Kim Gordon art show exhibition at White Columns. A wonderful show, really. Cool and cynical and funny and sweet. The silver glitter on the floor was a bit of a bummer, though, I must say. It was a kind of retrospective, I guess. In interviews throughout the years, Gordon's always articulated that she doesn't really identify as a musician, or a designer, or a singer, or fashion icon. She always identifies as an artist, and she's not just being snobby. It was cool to see some of her work throughout the years contextualized properly, as conceptual work. She's like a dream critic, essayist. Maybe Essaying is the best way to sum up her style? In a sort of expanded way of thinking of the essay? I was really impressed by her show, it's been such a thrill to live in New York City and get to go to see Kim Gordon Art Shows. I remember the first time I saw her band name paintings in real life, and now it's so rad to get to see them more fully; within the context of the rest of her work. I still have this promo poster on my bedroom wall for Free Kitten's Sentimental Education, which has a paitning by Kim Gordon on it. I've always loved that image. I'm biased. I'm a big fan.

After the art show I went back to Brooklyn to drink some Gin and Juice. I've been really obsessed with Snoop ever since watching his Reincarnated documentary last week. The accompanying album is really good, but not as good as the movie. After feeling bored and drinking a lot, PLD and I went to the Bushwig afterparty. I wish I had seen the performances during the day! The party was cute. I think if I had just moved to New York I would have been more drawn to it. As it is, I don't think I really have the wherewithal or desire to be a peacock, but I like looking. There were obviously millions of gorgeous people there. The boy I have a crush on, the boy you have a crush on. And their boyfriends. And their girlfriends, their room mates, everyone's a lover. It was a nice tableau, psychedelic whirlwind to find myself being pulled into. Of course on our way out I ran into everyone. It's ok. There was one really cute boy who I've seen around a while, at this sort of thing. He was bragging about being on lots of molly and having done 8 bumps of coke. I knew he was too mucbh of a party boy for me. Or not even that, really, since I like to party too I guess and I admire it in a cute boy, but doesn't eight seem profoundly unlucky? I would have stopped at seven.

Sunday I took my time getting dressed up to go to a Fashion Week presentation that I was actually legitimately invited to. It was a madhouse getting in and I didn't get to see the show. Maybe I should have badgered my way to the front of the line, to remind the door person that I was invited, that I'm (at least nominally) press, that I'm here on official business. That I have a right to be there. I'm never sure I have a right to be anywhere, though, so it's hard to demand it. Besides, socialites were describing the show today as for "fam only". So once again it's this Fashion Industry thing of the deliberate exclusivity being the actual art on display, right? In a way, I was the show. The fuckheads who know everyone, they need to cut in line to get into the show and there has to be some poor schmuck in the line, patiently waiting to be refused entry. So I served a purpose. I think it's funny; I don't know why other people are so oblivious about the kind of ajbection we all eroticize. You know, exclude me, baby. Charge me extra, humiliate me. Isn't this the point of the whole thing? Tie me up, make me wear these ugly things.



Instead of getting into the fashion show I was actually invited to, i went to Chanel to buy nail polish and Uniqlo to buy a new shirt to wear to work, and I feel pretty alright about everything. It was a gorgeous day, I went to my usual Fay Da bakery for bubble tea and red bean buns. Went over to the LES to check out the myriad of openings. I had approximately 3,487 glasses of free white wine, which made my epick walk seem so worth it. Oh, on another note, if you are an art gallery and you are charging for booze, as opposed to serving it for a suggested donation, I think that sucks. And I am fully cognizant of what that distinction is, implies, and requires, and I have a big mouth. Gimme that dang hooch, artso.

Again, being excluded, abjection as erotic, etc. So I ended up getting lots of free booze, and checked out the fantastic shows up now at Strange Loopas well as, below, a photo of a peanut butter installation fromAlex Da Corte's fabulous new show1000Island at Joe Sheftel. Both highly recommended. So lovely to see dear Alex, I also ran into Internationally Renowend Boy Genius Sam McKinniss as well. Lovely.



Also yesterday, earlier in the day, I thought I saw my friend Cotton on the street. It was weird, this guy looked just like him, I stopped in my tracks, he and his friends saw me looking and them and they stopped, I apologized, embarrassed, when i realized it wasn't my friend and walked on. How stupid of me, of course it wasn't him, how could it be? But in New York, you know, sometimes people do just show up, without warning. I think that's more common here, a place where pretty much everybody wants to be.

Last night I went to go see the new movie by Rob Roth and Michael Cavadias, featuring miss Erin Markey and miss Cole Escola. It was fantastic! You can see the trailer below:



Hanging out on the street after I wanted Erin eat a taco. I was so hungry. I couldn't wait to go home and order takeout. It was cool.



These websites, you know. You make profiles and you have two options; to let it automatically make you into you, let it just collect and post all known images and details about your. OR, you carefully curate your profile and manually make any updates or changes. You must remain vigilant, though, or you end up like me. With profiles on dating or socializing websites which have out of date photos. Here, look at that one, that version of me, from years ago. Using a kind of dead boy or human shield, right? I feel like everybody does this, too. In a way.

Bouncing around some ideas. The notion of being a fashion blogger. As in drag. As in a role, something to explode/kill. Y'know that game, kill fuck marry? It's kind of like, one after the other, right? Some concepts I've been thinking about lately:

- Fashion Karma ("Everything happens for a season")

- Blog keywords/themes/concepts: Buddhism, Fashion, Psychoanalysis, Postmodernism, American Hikikomori, Woo-Woo.

- Interested in being a bad cabaret singer. The new character I'm thinking of, for my new show. Maybe he has a graduate degree in Rastafarian Studies.

- The overlap between Rastafarian history and Modernism in Western art.

- Finding a way to engineer an honest sentiment behind the phrase "A Triumphant Return to Modernism". I'm so curious in how things get thrown out. In trash. I see trash as a verb and I generally see it as a kind of repression. Like in the 1970s when second-wave feminists talked about "trashing". Essentially, ostracizing members of the community. This is a form of repression. I wonder how unhelpful it is to be so attracted to the language of Psychoanalysis.

- Anaïs Nin as goth style icon. Full disclosure. Career of disclosure. She was also a model, right?



- These yuppies in my neighborhood. They make me so nervous. I used to think that I was the gentrifying agent here and I was comfortable with that. I want to be the worst person in the room, because then it would justify the hunch I always have that everyone hates me. Like, part of me really does want to get dreadlocks, because I want someone to destroy me for the right reasons. At least that way there'll be a reason, a good one, for destroying me. Rather than right now where I might be secretly awful but no one is willing to confirm and punish me for it. Or if they do want to hurt me it's for the wrong reasons. Anyway these yuppies on the train this morning make everything seem different. A stark reminder that my neighborhood isn't mine, never was, nothing is. That my tiny, humble little place is pretty much up for grabs. As a kid, nothing used to infuriate me more than food bing snatched off of my plate.



Right, that brings me home. I'm desperately embarassed to even thiunk of this but if I had a disease right now (and we're all, y'know, just one test result away from having it) it would be Jealousy. But not even of anything in particular. Not of a person; of a person's habits. In that Junkie Doctors movie they asked a character if they were jealous of themself. I almost wrote a song called that "Jealous of Yourself". I'm not actually jealous of me, but I'm feeling the pangs of jealousy for what could, perhaps ought to be. I don't want to be you but I want to have had your stuff. I want your power. I want your garden. I want your demonstrations. I want your proof. I want your entitlement, your certainty. I want to be as indulgent as you are.

I know this guy, he's a big tease. I don't like that word but it fits. It's not mean, though, the teasing. He thinks I don't notice, and I think he doesn't notice when I do it to him, too. He tells me other people want to sleep with me and I tell him that's ok because I just want to sleep with him. It's practice, right? Toying pretty much forever with the idea of poverty, with the idea that I don't have enough so I need someone else's. There is a trick here, there's an option I'm not talking about, and it's switching to point, to a mindset, to a presumption of plenty. Of enough.

9/4/13

Two Times to See

So summer's over, thank goodness, and it reminds me of this song:



Still feeling pretty low and pretty desperate, but what's new. I want to complain but I'm even boring myself. there are a lot of things to be excited about. Specifically:

NEXT WEEK I'M PERFORMING A NEW SHOW IN PROVINCETOWN AS PART OF THE AFTERGLOW FESTIVAL. Check it out:



If you're in P-Town or Boston next week, please definitely come! I've absolutely never done anything even remotely like this show, and I am beyond excited and happy and thrilled to be part of the Afterglow festival and to be working with the legendary Molly Pope. So, so much fucking fun.

Then, after I get back, I jump back into the studio to polish up my solo show ENCOURAGER, which I made this year at BAX. If you didn't get a chance to see the performances in April (or even if you did) I would love for you to come to this performance. I'll be doing ENCOURAGER for one night only at La MaMa as part of their solo performance festival. You can see info about the show including how to buy tickets HERE.

And I'm working on a new issue of Scorcher and B0DYH1GH is playing some shows. I feel like it's back to school time but I'm not in school. Today I guess I'm tired or something, but I feel really cranky. I'm going to rehearsal after work, and singing is fun, I think, so that'll make me feel better. I'll really feel better when I can take my shoes off and cook dinner. I often think of that.

Silently adding to my list of demands, my complaint department box, etc.


9/3/13

I'm actually sort of glad that summer is over (at least officially). I have some very exciting things coming up this month. Which is great! But I'm definitely bummed to be back at work today. I fucking hate Tuesdays. Even if it's sort of a Monday/Tuesday hybrid. On one hand, I really resent my life, the fact that I have to work for a living and don't get to spend all my time writing or being creative or whatever. But on the other hand, I'm really grateful to have a life at all, to get to work with and interact with the people I've gotten to deal with over the years. I guess I'm just tired. I slept a lot this weekend though. Very slowly starting to clean out my room. I can't find a place to get rid of books, so I'm becoming that friend who, every time you meet up with them, gives you a book or a scarf or a tchotchke that "reminds me of you" so that I don't have to throw it out. Maybe the upside (apart from very slowly cleaning out my room) is that people will think I'm nice and generous for giving out presents all the time. I'm working on it.

Here, finally, is a video of B0DYH1GH performing our cover of "Pass the Mission" at the Tori tribute show at Joe's Pub a few weeks ago:



I'm very proud of us. I think we really nailed it. I think we brought some really creative energy to the evening and I think we were a highlight. It's funny how if I had done something by myself, I would probably be too mortified to enjoy it, but something about not being the lead singer in B0DYH1GH or just having a wig to hide behind and a group to perform as makes it easier for me to enjoy the propect of playing music.

As part of cleaning up this weekend I dug up copies of my old recordings from 2006, the "Rambunctious" EP:



RAMBUNCTIOUS

So there's that, if you're interested in hearing some demos. I used to try to get everybody to listen to those recordings. It was my thing, for a minute.

I saw Blue Jasmine yesterday with Paps. I liked it a lot, but it did sort of upset me, that thing of having a nervous breakdown and talking to yourself. Being chronically unhappy, pathologically unlikeable. I had the gnawing pit in my stomach that I was just like that character. Probably that's the point, right? To laugh at her and also feel mortified for sympathizing with her. I'm in a really bad mood today, I guess. I feel like I'm always in a bad mood, like I've wasted the better part of me 20s feeling shitty and being mad at myself for not having what I imagine everyone else has. It must be nice to be cute. It must be nice to be talented, successful, rich. I guess people could say the same things of me, but it feels way different on the inside. It feels like I'm just sort of here to waste oxygen. Like I'm here to not be the cute one. Nobody's favorite, at least, but an important part of the ecosystem. I've been struggling over the last few years to make my peace with this awful fact, and to articulate the tone of this realization. I'm not fishing for compliments so much as trying to drown myself, or some part of myself. It's frustrating; part of me wants to pick fights and part of me wants to have sex with your boyfriend, with your room mate, with your exboyfriend, with your brother. Part of me wants to do like those wispy girls I was friends with on the internet, right? The ones, not us personally but our larger circle, the ones who would hurt themselves and then take photos of it to compare. It's gross. It's literally morbid, but that impulse to be, like, "Okay, here I am." As if someone is yelling "Marco...! Marco...!" in the shallow end of a swimming pool. Only that's not happening, I'm just down here, in the slightly darker chlorine blue of the deep end (only ever 8 feet, 10 feet, 12 feet max, right? Nothing so dangerous) whispering bubbles into the water "Polo, polo, polo."

9/1/13

Liveblogging cleaning my room



When I was 16 I made this Tracy and the Plastics t-shirt (...because they hadn't made any of their own yet? Note "and" and not the "+" sign she actually used.) My dad had to help me paint it. It glowed in the dark, the letters. Then the shirt fell apart. I was cleaning out my closet this morning and I found it and just remembered how this t-shirt totally changed my life. I used to wear it to punk shows. I wore it everywhere but I especially wore it to punk shows, and it's how I met my first boyfriend. I wore it to the first Le Tigre tour, when they played SF for the first time. Tracy + The plastics were supposed to open but ended up canceling.  When my friend Amber and I got to the venue in SF, we immediately saw Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman at the bar in the venue, and they turned around and saw us and Kathleen said "You know they're not playing tonight, right?" I was completely start-struck to be spoken to. Then Amber showed Kathleen her Bikini Kill tattoo. It was a cool night.