I love the nightlife.

The last line says it all.



Photo by Paul Constant.

The Age of Iron and Bronze

First Phase of Sound from "Bambi's Long Journey into Night"

1. An Ode to the Nocturnal Muse / of Montreal
2. (this is) The Dream of Electric Sheep / Ming & Ping
3. Dumb Head / The Sharades
4. Out Of Teen Revisited / Hawnay Troof
5. Dipped In Vaseline / Mickey Avalon
6. the leash / Xiu Xiu
7. Feel All Right / Oblivians
8. God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me / CocoRosie
9. Transformer / Gnarls Barkley
10. Babystrich / Stereo Total
11. Sixteen / Iggy Pop
12. ike and tina / Jamie T
13. Beatific / Glass Candy
14. Caida Libre / Mala Rodriguez
15. Passing Me By (Hot Chip Remix) / The Pharcyde
16. Swim / Lil Mama
17. Young And Beautiful / The Raveonettes
18. pick up the pieces / Space Ballerinas
19. Get Down On The Floor / Yo Majesty
20. Practical Money Skills For Life / Oh No Ono
21. Beautiful Song / CSS
22. Forever Young / Alphaville
23. How To Hang A Warhol / Little Joy
24. Tongue Tied / Erase Errata
25. Spread Yr Legss, Release the Bats / Die Monitr Batss
26. When You're Young and in Love / The Marvelettes

Another World

The not-so-new Antony track and title of his new EP is a fantastic expression of fiction. The song comes across as a quiet, but seriously powerful spell, an incantation brought into being through the repetition of phrasing, verbal and musical and the listing of objects. The song starts gently and calmly, the fingers on the piano are sure and confident. We hear almost immediately beneath and behind the clear chords the sound of a whining feedback which runs alongside and counter to the beauty of the struck notes, an alien thing beneath the human made. He sings: "I need another place" and once the speaker decides to speak, to sing, there is no way away from his words and what they unleash. The speaker must carry it through to the end. The need for this new place (hopefully peaceful) has transformed his world and he cannot go back. The need for this safety overrides regret. He lists all the things he loved (the sea, the snow, the animals, the bees, the birds, the wind) and in naming them gives life to them briefly one more time. The words fall away and the little creatures fade. He seemingly moves forward, and again that whistling, whining wind, (the [absent] lover he was kissing "so long") rises up and sweeps his previous position away, leaving only the vanishing world and the wind and the silence all around it. I think about The Nothing in the Neverending Story. The Infinite Sadness. The song never falters. Step by step, chord by chord it advances through the fear and into something completely new and hopefully better.

As a counterpoint: "Asleep," by the Smiths and lovingly covered by Xiu Xiu. "There is another world / There is a better world / Well, there must be" The desire stated in this song is for vanishing of the self, for something more than and beyond sleep, more than waking up alone, again, day after day. The idea that the speaker is incomplete never being allowed gladness and joy and how much that makes one a faliure. The quietness of failure and what terrible solitude there is in not being able to escape failure.

Language, Pleasure and Disfiguration

"No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure (Lacan, apropos of Sade). For the writer, however, this object exists: it is not the language, it is the mother tongue. The writer is someone who plays with his mother's body (I refer to Pleynet on Lautréamont and Matisse): in order to glorify it, to embellish it, or in order to dismember it, to take it to the limit of what can be known about the body: I would go so far as to take bliss in a disfiguration of the language, and opinion will strenously object, since it opposes 'disfiguring nature.'"

"What is significance? It is meaning, insofar as it is sensually produced."

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text.

Personal Short #3

I said why don't you set the table and you said why don't you set it? I said I'm opening the wine and you said I'll do it. I'll do both things.

Personal Short #2

I found my pen in your drawer. I asked you if you had seen it and you told me no. It was in your drawer but I don't know if you knew it was there or not or even if you knew what pen I meant.

Personal Short #1

I wanted you to eat them, for the good of you. I said, they're seeds. They're just seeds. But you wouldn't do it even though it was the only way. You wouldn't do it because you found it disgusting. I didn't but you did. I said, this is the only thing separating us. You wouldn't look at me and I couldn't say anything. Everything was wrong so I left.

Notes for Liner Notes for "Age of Iron and Bronze" (Draft One)

1. At the beginning: the meditation, the invocation of the muse. An opening into the possibilities of dream, of transformation. "We won't notice when we're dead." A hint of what will come at the end, sleep falling away with the music. Hero luxuriating in self-made (god-made) world. Rough (unformed) state.

2. Upon waking, another dream. Unmoving, mechanical pulse. City life. Unflinching ("this city's not for sleeping"). The necessities of the human form. "Actions turn to feelings."

3. Introduction of Hero. Crude synths, squalling voice. Foolishness. Reveling in.

4. State of youth. "Live for no Rules." Idea that youth is temporary, but sustainable.

5. Entry into Perversion. (Trial by Fag.) Recounting of "harder, cruder times." The Picaresque. Emergence of "greater, more potent" masculinity. The Swagger of Youth. Trial of Arrogance. (Note the buried "Genius of Love" sample.

6. Trial of Abjection. Temptation into and of death. "Born to suffer, born only to die." "A dog will rut its way into Harm, when let off the Leash."

7. The plea for the Gods' assistance. Lowest of the low. The Plea for and granting of strength. Urgency and Wildness. Hips moving. Ecstatic ritual of dancing and handclapping.

8. Trial of God's voice. Chiming of bells. Hero becomes the vessel and the Hammer. Awakening from dream. "My Heart is pounding, waiting for--"

9. Awakening and Transformation. The Hero Becomes the Hero. "No telling who I will have to be again."

10. The Hero becomes the Independent Self. "She would step into their car." Awareness of power.

11. Sweet Sixteen. "And Leather Boots."

12. "Love it when they live it." "Run, run sonny." Experience.

13. "I'm only 17, but my love is for real."

14. The 2nd Vision. Red Pill or Blue Pill? A choice, or perhaps just a way of seeing. "Poison or Remedy?" "Hey DJ, bring that back!" Dancing is Dangerous.

15. Free Fall. "Me vendo cara." Suggestions of Booty Bass, ecstatic dance.

16. What one was at an early state. The re-imagining of one's history. Youth remembers his youth.

17. Hero is wistful at her "mark" setting her apart from others. The understanding that those who may travel worlds cannot safely bring others with them. (See also: the Little Mermaid, attempts to study deep-sea creatures, "Lipgloss")

18. Trial by Beauty.

19. "At the Disco trying to feel better." "and all the animals are fighting over who's gonna get the last. . ." "he gave her a handful of love" (anna oxygen) Forgetting self through dancing. [See: Dancing is Dangerous.]

20. Ditto. But regaining control. Triumph and conquer (through Dancing.)

21. Return to the city. "Understand the time has come to say goodbye."

22. Perhaps: I don't want to perish like a fading Horse. (Trial by Ponies.)

23. The Origins of the Bambi Party. Desire for and adoration of the state of being twitterpated. Springtime. Love in the air, state of youth, the young in the sunlight being young.

Hours of Work

For the Upcoming Bambi XX-Travaganza I am asking that attendees bring a small plate or large platter of goodies, either sweet or savory. Hopefully these will be finger ready, one bite bitlets. Creativity encouraged! Sweet or Savory little cocktail nibbly preciousness. Sign up in the comments what yr. bringing so there won't be overlap. I will make some things also, just not quite sure what yet.

XOXO
Bambs.

A to B

I try to keep personal effects or mopings off the blog-- it just seems like airing dirty laundry. Maybe this isn't true that I do this, but I like to think that I do, that these trivialities are not interesting to anyone except myself. But this is not triviality.

I may or may not have lost one 14th of my music library through an annoying iTunes guerilla attack. Specifically all music from A-B. That includes but is not limited to: All Antony, Bjork, Built to Spill, Beyoncé, Bahamadia, Art Brut, Bonde do Role, ABBA, Aretha Franklin, Anna Oxygen, Bronksi Beat. Also, any and all collaborations between Bjork and Antony. It may or not have been through my own dull headedness, but I think not.

Watch for me in a black armband, and with ashes in my hair in addition to the already scarred forehead. I feel numb. I need (myth of) closure.

"Living Solutions"

It says "Living Solutions" across the top and this is maybe the title of the manual M. B. gave me last night. (If manuals have titles.) Appropriately, I opened it to this phrase:



CAUTION: Keep fingers away from the Needle (25). The Needle (25) will pierce your skin if your finger comes in contact with it.

Self Portraits on a NYC median, 2007. (Narcissism)

On every occasion I'm ready for a funeral, Pt. II.

(Resurrection)

Well, I am glad I didn't full page obituary my fave blue jeans, cuz they fit again.

All play and no work and too much Spanish beer make Bambi gordito.

That is all.

Bambi's Vision Quest (first draft)

trial by water
trial by spirits
trial by fire
trial by pony
trial by baby
trial by blood
trial by (phil)spector
trial by headlight
trial by explosion
trial by trucker
trial by zombie
trial by vampire
trial by stinging
trial by time passing
trial by death
trial by car
trial by dark, dark night
trial by alcohol
trial by epic (battle of visions)

trial by London
trial by war
trial by poison
trial by eternal space
trial by cover
trial by shame
trial by solitude
trial by booty bass
trial by fag
trial by evil

trial by mashup
trial by vaseline
trial by bat
trial by letters
trial by "gun"
trial by god
trial by young girl
trial by language
trial by electricity
trial by sex
trial by beauty

Fundamental Texts.

From The Escoffier Cook Book:

"362- Melon with Port, Marsala, or Sherry

Select a cantaloup or other melon and let it be just ripe. Make a round incision about the stem end, three inches in diameter; withdraw the plug cut, and through the hole remove all the pips with a silver spoon.

Now pour one-half pint of best Port, Marsala, or Sherry into the melon, replace the plug and keep the melon iced for two or three hours. Do not cut the melon in slices when serving it. It should be taken to the table, whole, and then the plug is withdrawn and the fruit is cut into shell-like slices with a silver spoon, and served with a little of the accompanying wine upon iced plates."

I ran across this a month or so ago and it has stuck in my head. There is something so French in this recipe. Firstly, Escoffier is the ultimate compiler and ultimate aesthete for what we think of now as classic French food. All culinary students nowadays know his name (even if they don't know much about him) and equate it with rightness, as law. His recipes are quite exact, but also (and maybe this is translation and difference in what our foodstuffs are now and our knowledge of our own produce), somehow vague.

There is something in this description that approaches scripts for modern performance art pieces. Everything must be just so (according to the aesthetic of the actor/artist/gourmand) and it is expected that the audience be appreciative of the meaning and carefully planned intention of the action. If nothing else, one appreciates the style, the conviction, the grace or the passion with which the action is acted out. Or should. Instructions are just precise to sound assured, but vague enough to feel as though that the reader needs a guide, someone more qualified to initiate and lead the ritual that should not really be meddled with.

Note that one cannot use anything but a silver spoon to remove the pips from the melon and that it must be just ripe, but not overly so. The plates must be iced. Presumably one would know what shell-like slices cut and removed through a three inch incision would be quite precisely, but to the modern reader it sounds like some mysterious and illicit surgery, but for a fruit. One that you enjoy upon an iced plate, with the accompanying wine. (How does one deal with the remaining highest quality wine upon the iced plate, use a tiny silver spoon? pick it up and lap at it like a kitten? My guess is no and no. But where did and should it go?? I find this to be serious suspense in the text. There are many questions like this in the recipe that [seriously] add a level of high, anxious drama for me.)


Another passage, just above:

"361--ENGLISH MELONS

Their shape is round, their peel is greenish yellow, thin and smooth, and their flesh, which is light green and sweet and delicate, more nearly resembles the transparency of the water-melon flesh than that of the cantloup in flavor."

I love this because it shows language's real limitations in pure description. There is only akin to. There is only comparison, spaces between words to conjecture at what a thing is and still one can only guess at the described object. The object is foreign and will always remain so in the eye and mind of the reader (modern and not modern). It only exists in the imagination. The pipe is not a pipe.

The World Sent Me 3 Things to Make Me Feel At Ease. (Don't Let Me Die At All.)

There must be something ordering these things this way.

Hi, Joachim

I am writing to you this letter to say that I want very much to meet
you in real life and to get acquinted with you.
But it is impossible at present day that is why let's start from romantic
letters to each other.
I do this first step because i don't want to miss a chance to loose
acquintance with such man like you.
Tell me, please, what is this life without love? it is dull, unbearable and
useless. You live, but you don't know why; you work, but don't know the
sense of it; you come at home, but you don't feel comfort and cold bed
makes you feel disgust... do you have the same unpleasant feelings and
need love in your life as I need?
The whole life is wating for me and you in future. But it is died if you are
alone and you can't share a new day with beloved person. Do you agree
with me?
If I don't give love, if I can't share passion and romantic feelings with
beloved, I feel that I am dying every moment, every hour, every day.

Don't let me die at all, write me, please, and just say 'hello, a stranger
beauty from Ukraine! yes, i want to get acquinted with you too!" and after
it, let me do the next step and you will see that I will change your life
and wave you in the cradle of my love.
I close this letter now, but i am waiting for your reply, Dear Stranger whom
I liked and I hope that you will like me too

Kisses
July P

I can't be the only one finding these clues to joy and hope and wonder . . .right? right?

PRSHS

So, soon Bambi Party VI will be in effect. Early November. I apologize for the delay.

"A Bambi's Long Journey into Night"

Think: The Odyssey, The Warriors, Up all Nite, Zombie Attack, Epic Vision Quest, Beastmaster, Fall of Jericho, Battle Royale, Marathon, through the water on a burning raft, Trucker's Bible, Woman melting a block of ice while sitting on it, eat a kilo of honey, drink a litre of wine, Xiu Xiu and Anna Oxygen (as always), Grace Jones and Andy Warhol (as always), also early Roman Polanski, disappearing doors, the appearance of an urn on the grounds

Earlier themes include (for newcomers): Do the Bambi, Re-do the Bambi (a juicyfruit monochrome ball), Bambi vs. Barbie, Bambi Factory, Bambi are Forever (forever until U die)

As always, cocktail attire is required, cab fare is encouraged.

More to come.

I am the DJ I am what I play / Last nite the DJ saved my life

Maybe you knew and maybe not (who is this you out there anyway? my 'loyal' readers or myself?) but I am designing the music at my new work place, Poppy.

The other night I was out at the bar and 'Underwear' (by Pulp) was playing on the sound system. One of the bartenders came up to me and told me that two gals screamed when it came on and proclaimed it to be their favorite song (Pulp fans tend to be ferociously loyal). This pleased me to no end. Then 'Underwear' came on (by the Magnetic Fields) and I remembered that I was listening to the Poppy playlist in reverse alphabetical order which is one of my favored ways of organizing a playlist. I like the imperiousness of chance rubbing up against a systematized organization method. It appeals to my chaotic tendencies and the aesthetics of violence or the potential in violence, the unexpected thing and the fallout around it, the reactions.

In essence, here I was, living the dream-- or my dream anyways-- of broadcasting a set of songs to an audience. And particularly in a restaurant where the music has a power to manipulate and shape an experience, much like the lighting, design of the room, service and food do. The sonic landscape helps create the architecture of the space. This speaks to the reasons that I love the songs in the title of this post so much. It is the DJ and somehow there is something unnameable that is being transmitted-- that needs to be transmitted. There is something in that message that has the power to potenitaly transform the listener. If the listener is open to it. I suppose I could add 'Musique Automatique' by Stereo Total to the mix.



* * *

I had always intended to post about this woman who I discovered online during the long, cold Spanish winter. She has a channel on YouTube called artemisbell (search for it). I became fascinated with her and this channel which I started reading as new art. She is the object being transformed through music. Who knows what she is like in life (I love her real enthusiasm, genuine good spirit and optimism in the comments) but she appears through her work, the constant videos (same format each time, different, but repeating outfits, variations on dance moves) as almost crazed, compelled. Her performance mesmerizes. She often appears very close to the camera at the beginning of the video, dripping with sweat, before moving back to ease into the beginning of the song, picking up speed as the song does, often smiling, often mouthing the lyrics. These songs and words mean something to her that has brought her through pain, or loneliness (she is always alone in the videos-- it is as though no one in the world exists and only this room exists and there are these songs playing over a radio that she remembers from before, or is hearing for the first time, but somehow the DJ knows that she should hear them) and into health and joy. The amazing response that she gets in the comments is pretty impressive for a site like youtube, which are usually spiteful, mean, or trying to drum up a OMFGROFLMAO!! or whatever. It's sort of like the ultimate positive scene that disco or techno or whatever dance club genre can generate. But here it is in a serial form, self-contained and generated. Exhibitionistic, but driven, like much perfomance art or video art.



* * *

Maybe you all are like my listeners and this is my radio program, tinny and infrequent, in between two ticks on the AM dial. I have been thinking recently about Lynne Thigpen's role in "The Warriors" (You may know her as the chief on the kid gameshow "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?") and how the viewer saw nothing of her ever except her lips but how the listeners held on to her every word. I always thought it was mysterious how she knew exactly where the Warriors were and how every person (or more exactly gang member) in NYC listened to her and how they did what she said. It gave the impression that she was really pulling the strings, like a god. (Now I am reminded of the gods in "Clash of the Titans," another movie that I loved as a child, and the pieces they pushed around their playing board and how similar the psychic roles each of these characters play in each movie ultimately). Or the concept of asking for a dedication and waiting and waiting to get through to the DJ and then waiting and waiting to hear the song on the radio and how that gives you a little stake in it.

Prying

I like Vito Acconci. This video is really unsettling. It feels like something that you shouldn't be watching, though nothing much happens except the attempt and re-attempt of him trying to literally open her eyes. The use of force on another human-- UBUWEB does a good job at summing up the video. The tension doesn't get resolved. You want to intervene, but the video just cuts off and you don't know, you don't know what happens to her or to him.

This reminds me of another video by Acconci where he is burning off all of his chest hair with a single white candle. He is determined to burn it all the way down to the skin, but obviously the flame against his skin-- especially sensitive on his chest--cannot be sustained for long. There is this tension between trying to get a task done, the determination to do a thing, and the weakness or limitations of the body that is fascinating to watch. With the addition of the camera/spectator's eye, there is an urgency to that determination, the desire not to fail in front of an audience. This need to complete something, even something insignificant, to feel of worth.

Three Objects

I saw you (and Him) walking in the Rain. You were holding hands and I will never be the same.

Things my mother told me

I have this idea for a memoir. I hesitate to use the word memoir, because I generally find those to be shuddery-no-good. I am afraid that I won't be able to write it until my mother dies, but I am not sure.

When I was small, I believed generally everything that my mother would tell me. As anyone who knows or has met my mother, she is full of stories. Exaggeration is a family trait.

For example, when we were kids, my mother would tell us that a giant was searching for us and he only ate children. She would only tell us this when we would board a Metro bus. She would tell us that the giant had terrible eyesight and not much of a sense of smell, but he had very keen hearing. Any peep out of us and he would lunge down and rip open the accordion section of the bus like a sleeve of Ritz crackers (she would also tell us not to touch the heavy canvas of the accordion section of the bus where we favored sitting because we might lose our fingers which I solemnly believed. I was a somewhat solemn child.) and eat us, picking past the other people on the bus until his hands found us previously, quietly talking, then screaming children. I never asked her about other children on the bus. I somehow accepted that myself and my sisters were the only ones this particular giant desired. She would often tell us that we were "special" after all. We sometimes "played" this if my mother had a migraine, often after a bus ride. She would close all the venetian blinds or re-tack the multicolored 7-up "It's the uncola" sheet with huge orange flowers and electric lime zeppelins on it up over the windows. This would invariably, in my head now, be in the summer because it always made the room seem much, much hotter. But maybe it was only the way the blinds or the sheet glowed with the bright sun, the winter or autumn sun.

I don't think that my mother realized that this filled me with a certain sense of terror, a resolved and controlled terror. Although I was also competitive, even when I was 4 or 6 and so I enjoyed spiting the giant as I sat stonily willing my heart not to make any noise, glaring at my older sister if she tried talking to me, glaring at my little sister when she began to fuss with the heat.

My mother also sometimes told us to pretend that we were blind. We would put blindfolds on and I always peeped through or under the chink showing between nose and cheek. I started to just close my eyes, shutting them very tightly at first so my body wouldn't let me cheat which I very much didn't want, but then trusting myself. My eyelids would smooth out. I saw sunlight through them as I identified different items of clothing by touch, or memorized the positions of the living room's furniture. Sometimes we might have an afternoon snack this way, blinded. This is why I did a report on Louis Braille when I was in third grade. I was shocked to learn that he put out both eyes with an awl (this was when I learned what an awl was). I didn't understand how he could have put out both eyes, but the book told me that he did and so I knew that he must have done it. He went on to invent a way for the blind to read so I knew he could accomplish things when he wanted to. I was convinced that my blind "training" would help me just in case I accidentally put out my eyes with an awl or the scissors that my mother was always cautioning me about or a Tinker-Toy, like the one my brother punched through his soft palate when he was running around with it in his mouth. My mother referenced this often. She would always say, "I told him to take that thing out of his mouth," and that was all she said and like Greek myth it happened to him and I knew it could happen to me.

The difference between me and Harry as demonstrated on a train tray-table.

Illegal action for Facebook #3.

Create a new Facebook profile. Write down a list of names that might be a potential spouse or lover or one night stand. These may not be people that you know personally, they must be an image of a name. Let the name. Be daring and dangerous in your choices, also be conservative in others. Imagine how you could couple with any of these names, the long and short terms effects these names would have on who and where you are now with your life. Ask these names that you search for to be your friends. Examine the differences between your hope for the way that person looked and how he or she appears in his or her profile. Imagine that person having some of the qualities that you bestowed upon their name. If you think it, perhaps it is so.

An example: I searched for Bruno.

Tiny thoughts for garments.

To put on a shirt, a jacket, or dress. How it allows one to become something else, maybe better. Make clothing items for the potential other you. Realize what a prom dress can make one do, how a tuxedo can transform one. Make clothing for specific (dreamed of) situations.

Suit for drowning oneself. Modify a three piece suit. Add quilting over every surface of the suit. Instead of down or cotton or fluff, fill the quilting with birdshot.

T-shirt for disguising bleeding.

A wedding dress for Miss Havisham.

Girl Phone

I got my new cell phone today. I liked this model mostly because it was artificial grape purple. Or Grimace McDonald Purple. As a kid I always dreamed that when I hit the age of 16 I would find a VW beetle from the 60s and it would be purple and I would drive it everywhere and it as an object would be synonymous with me as an object. As a child I was obsessed by the Joker from Batman (fashion) and Prince (I thought 'Erotic City' was so scandalous. I couldn't believe it got radio play. And you know, he was awesome.). When everyone was dyeing their hair with Manic Panic and listening to 'Cannonball' over and over I halfheartedly thought that some day I might dye my hair Purple Haze (tm). I didn't because, you know, everyone else was doing it and I hate that. (xtian calls this the 'baby bird syndrome.' I may be a sufferer.)

I like my phone apart from an annoying swirl design under the front window which made me think at first that the adhesive was coming off. They just have a terrible graphic designer. Harry's phone is plain. A metallic black without any swirliness under the window.

Harry pointed out that my phone was marketed for the womenz. I just thought, oh, right. Then, ugh, how stupid.

Things I miss in Seattle (ongoing).

1. the possibility of seeing the grandes dames of Pho Bang: Ursula Android and/or Jackie Hell
2. Pho
3. walking down the sidewalk with coffee
4. my Grace Jones poster(s)
5. listening to music through a stereo rather than bad computer speakers or headphones
6. Presse/Baguette Box
7. talking to Miss Kiana
8. karaoke
9. Bambi Parties
10. Happy Toast
11. receiving disturbing films through the mail and watching them when I get home from work
12. the fact that the entire city of Seattle does not shut down on Sundays
    

Illegal actions for Facebook #1 and 2.

• Make a false Facebook profile with your real name. Find people who share your name and invite them all to be your friend. See how many multiples of you you can collect. Share your successes and failures. Accept all the application requests they send you. They may know better than you do.

• Make a false Facebook profile. Invite people who share names with your 'real' friends on Facebook to be your friends. In this way, create an alternate, potential you. Post comments about your potential life with your potential friends.
  

I saw birds in Paris.

representation of crow . illegally installed art


conceptual and real vulture eating entrails of golden silk


in a tiny, fresh restaurant . large scale photograph


conceptual obscenity high on a building


actual dead bird . body mostly missing


actual small birds in actual wax . concepts of freedom versus stillness

Ask Me

about my conceptual trip to Paris. It went swimmingly. I even have pictures.

A tiny photoessay on British loneliness in the Malaga airport (feeding/lost balloon)

Confidential for M. ______. #2.

'I haven't seen you since I was a kid . . .

Basically! Jennifer Louise, you don't know me and we're not friends . . . I was just w-w-w-w-w-w-wonderin' 'bout you, wonderin' if you ever think-think-thinka-think about me . . .'

So I have been listening to some playlists (#19-25 On-the-Go out of 147 in total) lately, most of which were composed in transit to work, walking to the bus stop while drinking coffee, reading and spinning the conceptual 'wheel' on my most presh-us Butter Moon and pushing down my thumb to add a highlighted song to my list, swerving to avoid someone else walking then looking down and spinning the wheel again. While passing the Crescent (a bartender invariably cleaning the floor mats, invariably one to two older queens having their first beers [one presumes] and squinting at the bright or dim light filtering into their not currently smoky but smelling like it cave), pausing to pick up an orange or tangerine juice at the corner market, reapplying the earcovering headphones all while adding, adding song to the playlist. I would put the finishing touches on as I waited for the bus, but was generally finished when I mounted the bus and would go (preferably) to the seat just behind the back door and listen to my newly amalgamated list of 'singles of the week' as I called them when I got to the restaurant and pumped it through the 'CD Cruiser', a silver and red Corvette-ish mini boom box which slowly turned the color of grease. 'This is my new favorite song!' I would proclaim every ten minutes.

Listening to these playlists, 3ish years old or maybe more?? I was ever-so-pleased to run up against one of Of Montreal's hidden gems off of what was probably their worst album, or their most forgettable (a feat for Mr. Barnes, to be forgettable, the worst dream of a dandy). The song is called "Jennifer Louise" and it runs a very to-the-point 2 minutes, 1 second. The song is about a cousin that the singer is wondering after, whom he hasn't seen in a long, long time. He can't even imagine what she was like, but hears about her 'good' standing in life from his mother. He remembers good things that her father did for him when he was a child. He admits that he will probably never make the effort to contact her, via a letter or phone, let alone actually speak to her in person. But he wonders about her and wonders if she wonders about him.

I remember being so enthralled with how this song cut to the chase and the range of complex thought and emotion expressed-- no time for bullshit in a song that is about as long as most Ramones' songs. It's a difficult thing to create something minimal and connect emotionally at the same time. The sentiment in this song is so delicate, yet very succintly put together and sad and all. I wonder if Kevin Barnes is on Facebook and if so if he sent a friend request to Jennifer Louise, assuming she exists and if she accepted.

It made me think about what Facebook is becoming and is. How it allows you to spy, sort of, on those people that helped make you you. To recognize that they were part of your daily life at the very least. I am still unsure if those old meanings can be rekindled and put into use again, but you don't have to wonder the same way anymore. It's easy to search for people nowadays. I wonder how this will change the fascination, repulsion and ultimate dynamic of high school reunions?

In time for my birthday

New Of Montreal! Called 'Skeletal Lamping.' Bated breath, eyes lifted. Yum Yum. This is good news as their last album was probably the album of the year for me. It neatly contained my obsessions for several months and has mass classics. I heart Kevin Barnes.

On every occasion, I'm waiting for a funeral.

On the event of my 30th birthday, or 29th.

Put to death, or put to rest: the pegged blue jeans; David Hockney swimming pool colored pegged jeans; and ancient polyster pin-striped pants that I use as my 'nice' pants. I no longer fit into these. (goodbye 28 waist.)

(Do not hope to 'lose' the weight. Do not ignore who you are and who you have become. Idea that your body is essentially you.)

Put to death by live burial, death by shooting, burning, drowning.

Put to rest, set sail in the sound Valhalla bound; bury in a casket; cremate and throw burned fragments into a river for turtles to eat. Consume (probably not possible). Document everything.
Take out large ad in the obituaries for jeans. Do this un-ironically.

Imagine that the shed parts of you are no longer you. The wolf that gnaws off its paw to escape a trap does not consider the part its anymore. Is hindered by.

Public humiliation. Subsuming humiliation.

Document everything.

Haunted, not ghosts, but by fragments in what we say

It has been a strange few days. My lil sis had her first babe after a very long and difficult labor. I had dreamed that the baby would be born via c-section and lo, it happened that way. This is the latest in a string of weirdly premonitonal dreams that I would be happiest not reading into. Perhaps that is a lie.

In any case, something that I have been doing with all the too much sleep I have been the happy recipient of is putting my sleep to work. I have always had pretty vivid dreams, and thankfully generally nightmare free. In several of my dreams, when they aren't restaurant related I have begun actively thinking about things I think about when I am awake and taking them in different directions, pulling out possibilites.

This includes: ideas for new dishes, things to paint, ways to twist a scene in the eternally unfinished but close to feeling more complete play, and lines of text. The text fragments lately have taken the form of short groups of words that remain at the front of my thoughts when I wake up. The first of these fragments seemed like the title of something when I woke. The words were 'Dog Lesson' and it seemed like an interesting title. The lingering feeling from those words was that of someone in a small house in the woods who had to walk through the trees to get to a pond. Along the way he is attacked and killed by a pack of dogs. He is expecting this because it happens every day. This happens forever until he can get to the pond. It is uncertain if he ever gets to the pond. The story was written out before I started which is rare for me, though upon writing it, there were a few twists in the path getting there.

So far there are 4 stories or short little word pieces. I sense more to come. I have a title for the little collection, but I am bashful about writing it down just yet, even though I love it. I don't want the dreams to stop.

I hate my body. I hate my children.

IN Barcelona, I saw Jamie Stewart of XIU XIU electrocute himself on the microphone. It was very sad. Then he beat his drum furiously and tossed a drumstick over his shoulder without care. The crowd was rude and talking all through the whispery parts which pissed me off.

In BCN I also bought a t-shirt with a deer grown gigantic and rampaging through a metropolis.

The Yellow Linen Suit, Pt 2. (Prequel and expansion, or The Objects)

A long while back, Harry and I were in Portland, on 21st avenue looking through thrift stores. I think this is when I had much blazer love, but had yet to paint one. We stopped in a little shop called (and I just figured this out, because I just looked it up) Keep 'Em Flying and I was picking through a circular rack of Wrangler pearl-snap conboy shirts. Harry recognized one of the two people working as being one half of a punk-ish, cabaret-ish act, a twist on Boris and Natasha called Max and (Madame??) that was a semi-regular at the sadly, sadly defunct Pho Bang. In the end the Madame would always kill off Max and here was Max, chatting quietly with the store owner, an extravagantly draped and bejeweled Grande Dame with powerful hand gestures and dramatic upswept hair. Harry asked Max (not his real name) if he was indeed a Pho Bang regular and the store owner, Pamela Springfield, broke in and said something to the effect of, "oh you know [Max]? Did you all sleep together? He has slept with so many people I thought that must be how you know each other. In the future I imagine that we all will have slept with each other. Except for the Chinese. They are so xenophobic."

She dropped several other gems like that. She seemed like a character from Dickens, or maybe a Tennessee Williams play, sprung to life saying things like, "Where are you from? Oh Seattle? They are just cannibals up there, cannibals! I am referring to the art world of course. Although perhaps they are in other ways too." Then she did something that I had never had happen to me, she looked at me and asked me what I was looking for. I replied jackets and she nodded sagely. They she asked what size I was and I said I don't know. She held up one finger and declared that she had something perfect, but it was in the back. She returned with a suit on a couple hangers, a canary or pale lemon colored suit of a very light wool. And I said something like, it's very nice. She demanded that I try it on, to at least take off my jacket and try on the yellow jacket and I did. She said, "see, I knew it would be perfect, just your size." And it was, or at least it fit just the way that I like blazers to fit, slightly tight across the chest and shoulders, buttoned high up, narrow lapels, sleeves a little too short. Again, like some of my favorite things in life, it was as it sprang from my imagination and my obsessions and into the world just for me. Like Deerhoof or The Happiness of the Katakuris, it was perfect, almost too perfect. The suit was 100 dollars which at that time and place seemed a little too rich for my blood, too much for an old suit, even if it was in perfect condition, even if it was vintage and nearly glowing with rightness. Even if, when I put it on there was a sensation of a CLICK like putting a round peg through a round hole after you been trying to fit it through the star-shaped hole. I told her no, a little bit sadly. She raised her dramatic eyebrows slowly and paused as if to give me another chance before hanging the yellow suit up behind the counter.

I told myself I would think about it and if I still wanted it as I knew I did I would come back before we went back to cannabalistic Seattle and buy it. I didn't, of course. It is sort of funny, there are few things that I've done that I really regret, especially regarding things but it really felt like this suit was supposed to be mine. It, the object of the suit is lodged in my head as a regret. A little sadness that I didn't collect that object.

When I painted the white linen suit yellow, it was a sort of apology to the other suit out there, an acknowledgement that I was wrong in not collecting it and taking care of it. There are other issues at stake. I have always been fascinated with the idea that clothing or other objects that we habitually use are somehow an extension of one's body. And conversely that our body is just another object that we use, something that is very close to the thing that is US at the core, but is ultimately a tool that we have attached much value to (with good cause, obviously). But all objects can be modified to clarify purpose. And I have been thinking alot about the desire or indeed need, to modify clothing. That driving force behind marking a thing-- what else is fashion but accumulating a series of marked objects to construct an identity or great object that is more that what the body is by itself? And why not make that construction more explicit, more outrageously there? I think also about some artworks by artists that I admire most: Tapies, or Kiefer, or Fontana, and the idea that those canvases are sort of bodies by extension to transform, mark, harm and to make explicit the fact that they CAN be transformed. The idea that an object of one's own creation is possessed by the spirit of its maker, and belongs (totally) to its owner, to be made better, modified or destroyed, like the myth of the Golem. The objects also take on indpendent lives.

So even with all my jokes about conceptual art. The Yellow Linen Suit was really a conceptual piece. I needed to bring that suit back from the dead. So I did.

Piggy Peaches

Jus Cuz.

(Not so) Breaking News.

I have a job. I will be helping Jerry Traunfeld open Poppy. After 5 years of bussing it out across the lake I am rather elated to be able to walk from my front door to my workplace in, what? 5-7 minutes max at a leisurely stroll. What decadence.

In other news, Harry and I just got back from a mini trip to the Pais Vasco/Pays Basque.



We went to Bilbao and San Sebastián. The Guggenheim was pretty amazing. In the ground floor gallery, which is giant, there are 7 or 8 Richard Serra sculptures similar to 'Wake' at the Olympic Sculpture Garden in Seattle. Many of them are these spiral forms that you can walk into. The oxidized walls completely tower over you and as you walk around and around getting closer to the center the walls alternate from leaning out to sloping in. Solemn, claustrophobic and joyful. You find yourself leaning as you walk, like in a fun house. I felt immense pleasure from the whole experience. I was giggling like a little kid. There was a certain feeling of accomplishment and peaceful elation when one arrived at the center of each sculpture. Great, great work.

I also have a new favorite restaurant. As in all time favorite in the universe. Harry and I had made plans to eat at the Guggenheim restaurant. I read they were serving some amazing food. Indeed they were. I was absolutely floored. Our first course of white aspargus came with a broth that was so intensely floral, with notes of bitter herbs and citrus. It was sort of like perfume, but very palatable and pleasurable. Alongside, they served the peel fried as a tempura, which appealed to my sensibilites of serving the whole beast. It was so simple and so effing good, a complete surprise that they had packed so much flavor in such a seemingly spare dish.



Every other dish was likewise stunning, apart from a pasta that we sent back twice for being undercooked (something I have never done, was semi-mortified by, but got over) though it was marvelously sauced. Everything was so delightful that midway through the meal I looked at Harry and said that we had to make reservations for lunch the next day immediately, something I haven't done since the first time that we went to Lumiere, back when I was just a wee thing. Also, Richard Serra (yes, he of the awesome metal sculptures) was dining with the director of the museum right next to us, which was pretty heart-fluttery:



Let's see, pintxos were total fun also. Just grabbing what looked good at the time, or ordering things that sounded tast-ay.



Bilbao seems to really shut down early (after 11 everyone disappears and the metal shutters start to roll down over the entrances to bars and restaurants) which is very odd coming from Andalucía where often people don't even sit down for dinner until 11pm. The second night in Bilbao we ended up in a little pintxo bar that as it turned out was a clandestine homo-bar. They started playing some rocking 80s Spanish New Wave and cute boys were getting touchy feely. We asked the bartenders for a good place for a nightcap once we sensed that they were about to close. At first they looked somewhat evasive. Then the bartender asked what kind of music we liked. I said 'everything' at the same time that Harry pointed up at the speaker and said 'this.' Then he added, maybe something 'ambientoso' which means with (homo-) ambiance. Then she totally transformed and was all smiley. She took us out to the street and gave us directions to this fun little dyke bar called 'La Marina' filled with ladies and their puppies. It was a riot, they played mass ABBA and also a little La Lupe. During that hour and a half I nearly believed in intelligent design.

What else? We saw a bullfight here in Granada. More on that later. Probably.

Also, this appeared to me on a concrete bench at the Guggenheim. It will soon be on a blazer:

Yellow Linen Suit Part I.

This was originally white linen. I painted the suit by hand.

When I put it on it was like putting on something made of paper. This made me very happy because I always wanted to wear a paper shirt or jacket. I love heavily starched shirts. The pant legs had what looked like fins running down the sides of my legs at first until I separated the fabric. You can see this on the bottom outside of the left pant leg.