8/26/15

Changed Twice

This morning I saw two guys taking a dead cat out of the street. I didn't get a good look at it, but it wasn't gory. It didn't look dead. They were getting it out of the way because someone needed to get into his car and drive away. The cat had probably been there for a while. It was stiff. The guy was just softly kicking it towards the gutter, out of the way of the car. I thought it was sleeping. I was groggy. I thought: "Why is that kitty just letting those guys boss her around like that?" but she was already dead. Do cats get rigor mortis. How cute.

It's funny, I've been saying for the last few days that I was sort of ready for summer to be over. And then this morning I woke up and I was freezing. I feel ashamed for wearing a short-sleeved shirt, for not wearing long pants and a coat. No matter where I go it's too cold. But it feels like it's not just in my body. It's weird how being cold is can go from pleasurable to energizing to numbing to painful. The only place warm enough was the subway station. Maybe I should just have stayed there. How does someone become a mole person, really?



The big thing is this weekend I saw Grace Jones perform twice. It was amazing. Friday night I was very close to the stage, it was a smaller crowd, and I ran into a bunch of friends. Saturday the crowd was much much bigger but still it was a ecstatic experience. I've seen a lot of people perform in a lot of different ways. I've been around performers and artists my entire life. Grace Jones is honestly, without exaggeration, the best performer I've ever seen, heard of, or could imagine. It's just different. On one hand she's kind of a minimalist. There's a vaudevillian or kind of noh formality to her work. It'll be, like, one Look per song. A nice hat, or a cute coat and a particular lighting effect. But the results are magick. She belies this kind of simplicity by just being herself so much. She's not doing that thing that contemporary pop stars do, the heart-breakingly naive cynicism of "Can you BELIEVE I'm wearing his crazy dress while I sing this song?" There's something cold about pop performance. The ambition or something. But Grace Jones isn't being ironic. She's not daring you to laugh with or at her. She's just wearing this hat because she likes it. Sure there's symbolism, too. It's not about getting it or being in on the joke or included or whatever at just about being there while it happens. While she happens. On her last record she sang "I'll be a hurricane" and it's not just poetry. So much of art, music, pop culture aspires to become a god, to become an icon, to become immortal, relevant, powerful, more than just a person. A person plus. But the Grace Jones shoe seemed to be different. People are just one way of being. You could be a storm, an animal, a nightmare, a fantasy. I don't feel up to the task of trying to fully explain it.

After the shows, I heard so many people saying that they weren't rally fans of hers, or familiar with her work, but were blown away by her performance. I met someone the second night who asked me how the previous night's show was, and I said "Okay, we're strangers, but it changed my life." And it did the second night as well.

So now I'm changed again, Twice. And now I guess the third time for the chill. I'd like to warm up, I guess. Maybe that's not true. I could deal with some frost, I suppose.



I'm seeing Earth tonight for the first time, which I'm really excited about. I was going to say that they're about as different from Grace Jones as you can get hit that's not true at all, they're kind of similar. In terms of weight of sound. Wouldn't that be a cool collaboration.

Last night I think I had a dream that I ran into my extended family, in some random store in midtown. It might have been Ricky's or Beauty on 35th, where I buy my wigs. I saw a girl and she looked familiar, and we had that awkward moment of recognition but without acknowledging each other. Then we said hi. It was my cousin. Both of my cousins, who live in New York, and their parents, who live in New Jersey. I rarely see them even though we live close. It was a strange feeling. I was happy in the dream but I was also guilty. That feeling.

What do you do with that feeling. Where you are guilty but also happy. Do you show up and bring flowers.

Remember last winter or last fall when I said I was going to become a demon. I sort of take that back. But I also did become one. And I want to become more of one, I guess. How should I put this? I'm kind of struggling again. Some more. I'm confused. I don't know how I feel. I mean I think I feel a certain way, but I'm guessing. I don't feel very certain. It's difficult in this position to get a lot done, so I'm not getting a lot done.



It's weird how sometimes you can know a thing before you actually really know it. Or it's funny to me how the temperature makes me lazy. I haven't been trying very hard. I was just being silly. On the Fourth of July Erin I were walking around the track in McCarren park and we were talking and I was saying I'm ready. I didn't think I was ready for it but I guess I am ready for it. Is it possible to miss the absence of something you've never had. Is it possible to be ready for something you can't really articulate or name? I think I am.

8/18/15

black and white and red all over

Maybe don't worry so much. I love this article I read today about Dame Judi Dench who "lives in fear" as an actor. If she can, why can't I? Probably neither of us should. What good does it do. I guess it's nice to know that even excellent famous celebrities worry. I feel like I don't know where to go, or something. On the plus side things don't feel so urgent, but I never know if that kind of lack-of-urgency means I'm okay or if it means I'm checking out.

Hey real quick what's the difference between "a feeling" and "a symptom"? Asking for a friend.


Another thing my mom and I have in common is our insatiable appetites for banana chips

I want to dye my hair black. I want to wake up with a different face.


my current obsession, the best sunscreen I've ever tried

I mean I'm working on stuff. I'm working on, at the moment:

- A short story for a picture book project with one of my best friends
- Editing a story for a website that is (inexplicably) going to pay me to publish my writing
- Working on nailing down my new solo show, THE GOOD DAUGHTER, which I'm performing on 9/20 as part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival (yes really)
- Planning the next B0DYH1GH appearance, at Bushwig this year.

I guess there's some other stuff too. Writing my horoscope column. Applying to some stuff. You know.

It's just that nothing feels super duper necessary. I think I'm maybe keeping my head underground. I'm kidding myself. Or else I really am in what I now know to call a mixed-state. Mixed-State reminds me of food, for some reason. I'm always hungry. How out of whack could I be, really, if I'm still so hungry all the time. This is the life force in me.


Panacea

I'm excited to go jogging today, outdoors. To sweat in public. To come up against the limits of my breath. It's like I don't want to be pretty or something. I don't want to be funny or interesting. I want to find something that feels unfuckwithable.

I mean I guess I don't care so much about aesthetics. Maybe this means I'm not really an artist. I feel like I'm only a performer because I don't know another way to do stuff. But like my comfort and my "aptitude" don't seem to... shine... After I did MAPPLETHORPE someone told me they had a discussion with their friend about how I seem like a natural performer and that show really illustrated that for them. I know I'm insecure and all (to say the least) but I feel like the subtext there is... I'm a natural performer, but not in that show, the show I wrote and performed by myself. Fair enough. I'm probably a better actor than I am... maker. This being said I'm excited to do my new solo show.

I had said in the description that I wanted to reverse-engineer drag and fail at it. I had said that I wanted to make work about fags and feminism. And I felt like, at first, I needed to be really heavy-handed and specific about it. But now I just want to write love-letters to my girlfriends and read them out loud in between fucking awful covers of like, "Iceblink Luck".

I want to find a way to make theater and drag and punk rock recover its glossolalia roots. I mean I don't care so much about beauty. Beauty is fucked up, right? Inherently? Like abstraction isn't more interesting or more fair or more righteous to me. it's just less overtly oppressive. Like it's a thing of modulation. Resistance is a spectrum.

There's this idea that imagination is the same as action.

There's been this misapprehension that desire will save you and that's not true. All you need is not love. You need love but you need a bunch of other shit and you can get by without love. Trust me.


for when I'm trying not to smoke

Though I'd like some more, now. Love or whatever. It's like I'm not battling the idea or darkness or trying to get more light. I'm just trying to skate my program.

Been so obsessed with Royal Trux all weekend I feel like my mind is either becoming stronger or weaker and this is some kind of a sign.



Like why can't I just calm down and be happy. Alternately, I'm feeling okay today, which is a blessing.

I'm just having these romantic and nihilistic feelings. Alternating. And it's creepy and weird. But not bad.

Still hungry/

8/17/15

Rhythm Section

I got some money from my mom for my birthday. She asked if there was anything I wanted for my birthday or if cash was okay, and I said cash was okay because I want to buy myself some new running shoes. I've had the same pair for like 5 or 6 years now and they're starting to fall apart and I wanted to really recommit to my workout routine.

I haven't bough the shoes yet. I am paralyzed as always by indecision.

My birthday was pretty fantastic. Last weekend was kind of boring. Things are both exciting and totally nonexistent.

I'm having a really weird time this week, or the last few days, parsing out some information. What if you thought you knew something about yourself and then it turned out to be totally different. Not to be vague. But just what if you were going about things the wrong way.

In some lights there is a clearly defined pattern to my feelings and my thoughts and in other lights it's kind of random and so should I cling to any form of structure. What does anyone want from me. What can you relate to. Who wants to listen to you.



I want to be the favorite person of someone. I want to be exciting. I want (still) not to care what anyone thinks. I want to not be so bogged down. I wish I was less fascinated.

It's funny, y'know, this thing of confirmation bias. When I was 19 I was diagnosed one way by one psychotherapist so that's formed a pretty interesting, fascinating, and to my mind really solid backbone of a story I've been telling myself for 11 years now. But what if it was a totally different story. No less dangerous or gory or bad or dark or tenuous, but just a totally different one. I mean I don't know. Since when did my life become so much about equivocation!

I did a ukulele set and it was pretty okay. I messed up the words. One of my absolute seriously favorite most admired truly iconic #1 movie stars was, randomly, in the house. I didn't get to meet them, but it was still a mindfuck.

Been going to a lot of parties. Been partying a lot. Been shopping a lot. I want to buy new running shoes and new running clothes and to have an all new body. And do know about new songs to run to. I want to sweat out the years of doubt.

I want to prove that I am in fact, you know, perfect for you even if you don't think so. I want to surprise us both by being exactly what the situation calls for. I want to relax into the late afternoon sunshine of being okay, enough. I kept thinking I was making progress in analysis and I guess I am, thinking of how I'm trying to re-route myself all the time. How I'm scrambling to make a map of where I go and where I don't want to go.

But at the same time I've always been kind of a drummer. You know? A percussionist. I was telling someone recently that on the east coast there's one school of thought about self-harm and on the west coast there's another and I was being cavalier because it seems easier than trying to explain. I don't have any interest in self-harm when I say percussion anymore. I mean rhythm though. How many times in the last year have I described this as a fever, a process, a cycle. A reliable series of seasons in hell, boredom, love, fear, etc. Except not all of them. A palette rather than a rainbow.



I wonder though. If I am the rhythm section. What am I measuring. Maybe it's up to me. Maybe it's not but maybe it is.

8/10/15

so FOLK SONG



ok you guys tonight Monday August 10th I'm be performing a new set of songs with ukulele and some beats. The evening is called FOLK SONG. It's like my interpretation of folk songs.

The Amber Zone is a new series of Monday night solo shows at Sid Gold's Request Room, curated by NYC superstar Amber Martin. I'm obviously obsessed with Amber. She's a huge inspiration of mine and a big star and I am such a crazy fan of her, so I am beyond honored to be part of this series. Sid's Gold is a really cute new bar and I'm not actually just saying that-- it's a funky piano bar in Chelsea and it gets cute reviews and has food and fancy drinks and most importantly features like gorgeous interiors by buddy and genius art babe Steven Hammel. SO like even if it wasn't me, it's a cool place to go.

But it is me and you should come. It's been a few years since I played this kind of music, but this is the kind of show I originally gave back when I started. I'm really excited to be playing some of my favorite west coast love songs and stories. This is a pretty different thing from the kind(s) of stuff I've been doing over the last few years, and I hope you can join me.

Doors open from 7pm and show starts at 8pm.

$3