Happy Halloween

My favorite holiday!

Lists: an excercise in recollection Vol. 2

We are going dancing tonight......
I made this list to go along with my recent LJ entry (cat's outta the bag. I have two blogs. No wonder I have no free time!) about my brother Jordan's DJ gig, coming up on Nov. 1rst at the Davis Graduate (if you want to see the flier, go here.)

Songs I like to dance to:
1.Babe, I'm on fire- Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
This song is 15 minutes long, and I have danced to the whole thing I think 3 times now. Usually in living rooms. It's basically a crazy organ-fuelled list of all the people in the world we happen to be saying, "Babe, I'm on Fire". And you will be too, after you dance to the whole thing.
2. Miss You- The Rolling Stones
The lyrics are hilareous. Once I was at a party and the host had it on PINK vinyl! AND I didn't steal it!
3. When you were mine- Cyndi Lauper version
This song is by Prince, but I like Cyndi's version better because she is so squeaky. All I imagine when I hear this song is This Girl jumping up and down in the air because it's her favorite.
4. Get Up- Nate Dogg
This is hip-hop, which besides Goth, is my favorite kind of music to dance to. This song has this incredible build up and Nate Dogg sings like he is in a barbershop quartet.
5. Man Tap- The Devil Makes Three
These are my friends, absolutley kickass punk bluegrass, and they dedicate this to me at their shows. OOOh, I love that. Make friends with a band just so you can have that pleasure! This song has great lines about "changing a creature of the sky to a creature of the land".
6. Tainted Love- Soft Cell
A nostalgic favorite, not because I was dancing at clubs in the 80's (I was a child), but because when I got my fake ID JUST so I could go dancing, I would go to 80's nights at bars, and this song would drive me out of my mind.
7. Hives- IBOPA
An amazing song with accordian by the late great IBOPA. The lead singer, Jamie, is not getting famous with his band Xiu Xiu, but he used to make this crazy music. As far as I can tell, it's a song about being HIV positive, and not afraid to die. I'm seriously going to bput it on my computer and link a copy to download, just so you can understand how it makes me dance around in my bedroom like someone who has been mixing their ouzo and their nitrous oxide.
8. Cold Cold Ground- Tom Waits
This is a slow dance song. The first time I went to the local gothic night with Mykle, they inexplicably played this, and it was one of the best moments of my life, cause it's so sad and so beautiful.
9. Magic Stick- Lil'Kim
I just love how raunchy the lyrics are: "I'm in the crib givin' niggaz deep throat". My Lord. Really good for booze-soaked-dance-nights when the dyke crews roll up.
10. Happy Birthday- Stevie Wonder
In case you didn't know already, I have THE DORKIEST family on the planet earth, and damn are we proud of it. Actually, only the children in my family are actually conscious of this dorkiness, but here is an example of it: We have a custom, when it is anyone's birthday in the family, to put on this song (a very catchy song) and dance together in the living room. There are only four of us. It totally rules.

Lists: an excercise in recollection

I was inspired by the recent Summer Pierre nostalgia posts on her excellent and charming blog to make a list. The list (as authored by Ms. Pierre) is called "10 things I loved to do before the age of 10". I originally posted it in her comments section, along with some others with their own ten things:

1. Treeforts. The oak tree where ours perched was named "Annie". It had a rope ladder made out of broomsticks and carpeting salvaged from dumpsters. The musty sweet smell of oak trees still sends me back in time.

2. Mainstream radio. I was a child of hippies and was always wondering why all the bands my family listened to were all broken up and the singers were dead. Then came rides in my neighbor's car where I heard top 40 radio for the first time and was entranced by the racy songs, "Papa don't preach" and one called "Black Velvet" are two I remember. I was a prude as a kid.

3.Mexican Barbies. I wasn't allowed to have real Barbies, and therefore, they were like forbidden fruit. I managed to beg a Barbie ripoff from my mom at the flea market. I think her name was "Rosa". Her hair stuck straight up in the air.

4. Elfquest. I became obsessed with a 70's comic book about hot buxom elves and their struggle for a homeland. I got the first book as a gift from family friends, but my mom took it away and hid it and told me that it was lost. She thought it had too much sex in it. (she was right!)
This connects to....
5. Wanting to be an elf. Why wasn't I born an elf in a land where there was magic and unicorns?? Why why why!? (I would cry and wander around in the forest).

6. Sitting in trees reading Nancy Drew. I would get up early in the morning and go sit in a tree and read before breakfast. I would roll up my pant legs and never wear shoes so to be more elfin. The shoeless thing was rather painful, as we lived in the mountains.

7. Keeping a secret notebook like Harriet the Spy.

8. Paul Simon-"Graceland", Talking Heads-"Little Creatures", The Police-"Synchronicity". My three favorite albums.

9. My mom and dad sang to me when I was falling asleep. My dad sang Beach Boys and The Incredible String Band. My mom sang traditional lullabies.

10. The summers never ended.

In Celebration

The cover to Garrett Pierce's album art = done. You all must buy it when it comes out just because of the artist...me!
Look at how rad it is:



It reminds me of the cherubim from "The Wind in the Door":



but it's really Icarus. The album is called "Like a Moth" and I did all the graphics, inside and out.
Oh look! It's 2 in the morning again!

Twilight

Don't mind me. I'm just writing this post in the color of the sky right now. It's a deep periwinkle grey over John Muir School, whose white facade is now foggy in the dusk, whose tall windows now glow like coals.
Everything is more vividly colored when you live on an enchanted-city island, with tall rolling hills patched with majestic Victorian houses, surrounded and enveloped in this sea fog. I'm on the third floor, staring out at the tops of buildings that are slowly being swallowed in this blanket of wet wool.

That's me where I sit RIGHT NOW, surruptiously taken by Orion a couple of nights ago. That's even the painting I'm taking a break from working on to write this post.
I'm taking care of the internet, as Orion would say. It's hard work holding it all together, but someone has got to do it.

Halloween is in one week! As inspiration here is an AMAZING photographer:

You can see more of her work at Deviant Art. Michelle posed for her once, and someday I will see those pictures! The mask in this picture is made by the photographer's husband, by the way. He just uses Bristol paper. Heavy, white paper. I am in awe.
More Inspiration:
Aya Kato

To whom it may concern...

Mykle is doing fine and is in Antarctica. He called me at work today, much to the amusement of my coworkers and the customers. It's not every day your bookstore clerk gets a call from Antarctica.
He sent me this picture:
Pressure ridges

Woolen goodness

William and Meg came down to visit from Sacremento (we attended a sedate rock n'roll show together), and William (who is a MAN) gave me this hat that he had knitted out of wool for ME! What craftsmanship. The colors are so beautiful!
Everybody I know are all excited about Fall/Winter because it is knitting season.
*
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My favorite knitting magazine online is Knitty. The patterns are made by fellow artsy/craftsy/hip folks like you and I ( it sounds bad don't it?).

and they have a pattern for a knitted womb as well.....



*Michelle just took these pictures of me in the kitchen. My nose looks even pointier and *more beautiful* than usual. Damn.

Illustration Friday - Cold

Cold.

This turned into a portrait of Belis Coldwine, the heroine of a great book called "The Scar", by British author China Mieville. Belis is an unlikely hero, at least in this day and age: an over-40, cold hearted and impassive woman "with lips the color of bruises or plums", severe clothes and an even more severe manner. Her tense ice-queen exterior belies her very human and brave and moral interior, which you come to love as the story progresses. I love that she was the main character in an extremely literary steam-punk fantasy horror novel (Meiville has a lot in common with Melville), where you would expect an ass-kicking young stud and his hot teen girlfriend to be more fitting. I feel that middle aged women get the short end of the stick not only in Hollywood, but also in other artistic venues, including as writers and characetrs in fiction.......
Here's me staying away from that diatribe.....whew. Haha. The illo is done with acrylic paint on matte board that I dumpstered behind a frame shop one drunken evening in the Richmond district. The frozen cloud of her breath reminded me of a cloud, and so the keys on strings are like the slanting paths of raindrops. I also have had keys on the brain lately, I want to get an old iron one to wear around my throat.

Alone with the Beating of my Heart

Mykle left a couple of hours ago, and now i am alone in my house, tired, a bit frightened, shy before myself and the world which offers me nothing. To be perfectly frank and realistic, I haven't been alone for longer than a month for 10 years. Some amounts of time can be argued and technicalities hashed out, but just in general....10 years. My whole adult (ish) life. So this will be and interesting experiment.
I don't like being alone. I am a pack animal, preferring to have someone NEAR, who knows who it may be, at all times. It doesn't have to be a sweetheart, as I lived by myself at Rigg St, if you can be alone in a house with 11 people.
When we found out that Mykle would be going to Antarctica, I was happy and upset, but mainly upset because I was scared. Being in a couple keeps you external and focused on the world outside, and I, when left alone, spiral quickly into an internal space that seems fathomless. I can keep myself busy better than anyone, but the silence and absence of another mind sometimes stills me so much that I do not move, cannot move, and must constantly glance in the mirror to make sure I have not lost form and dissapeared altogether.

I told Aimee about this mirror-thing, this dissapearing thing, and she wrote a poem about it, unbeknowenst to me:
(from about three years ago, when I was breaking up with my sweetheart who had a drug problem)

The Mirror (Part One)

On our girlish pilgrimage today
amidst the deer bones and yerba buena
you and I came upon a cabin
that the earth was demanding back.
It was blown wide open
doors unhinged
yet the dusty mirror remained
haloed by a stained glass flower.
You placed your face within it's petals
and told me what mirrors were to you.
You spent a lot of time looking into them.
You never liked solitude
for it cracked your thoughts so wide open
your mind would swim
your self unhinged
and body lost to you.

I can imagine what your mind would look like
so much paint rained from a palate
onto a landscape
where every rusty trinket is a jewel
and every moment, another door.
It is the mirror that anchors you,
a silver root binding you to the unhinged moment.

But he broke your mirror
before descending
to the dusky dens
of opiate angels
and the liminal of landmine.
A mirrorless room he left you,
except for one lucky shard
large enough to see your face
large enough to know that your body,
that ragged wisp of beauty
was anchored to the earth.

Everything in this poem is the absolute truth. I had that shard of mirror glass that Cassidy broke for many years. I think I got rid of it when I moved. It was just trash. The mirror-flower picture that I took of myself I posted earlier in this journal.
This is what we need poets for: to translate the truth as you see it into the bare essentials and make our life into something meaninful, that we can all relate to. To distill all the jumbled moments into one truth. That's why I love poetry: it makes me feel less alone.

Illustration Friday- Lost

two for one! the top reminded me of this that I did on the back of an envelope while riding through the central valley a couple years ago. The story of Red Riding Hood has all of these strange loss-of-innocence conotations.

The most important thing

Twas Mykle's birthday last night, and so to celebrate we ate an uproarous dinner at an eerily quiet and bright fondue restaurant, cheese cheese cheese and gallons of whiskey for yours truly. tra la la. Afterward to the Zietgiest (noisy ghost) and before-wards to the Orbit room for schmancy cocktails. JJ got one without a name that tasted like spicy cinnamon and cucumber, with sweet mint. It was amazing.
Mykle and I both have the same view on this I think: the MOST IMPORTANT THINGs IN THE WORLD are the people you love. bum da bum. We saw a few of those last night: Orion and Michelle and JJ and Renee, and Josh and Jessica and Jen (oh my!) and Sarah and Tomy, and a few million others that sat in the big backyard and laughed and drank, like there was not tomorrow and the most brilliant lights were the ones seated across the table from them.
Facing the morning light is sometimes terrible, but i do protest AGAIN, I am mellowing in my old age. I used to be party animal to the nth degree and would get crazy and stirred when I could'nt go out and shake my ass at least 2 nights a week. Resulting in sweaty drunken yelling staggering dancing, pink streaked hair, tight wranglers, t-shirts with ripped off sleeves or garter belts, miniskirts, and ties...On my off days I hung out at home and drank on the porch with a selection of indescribable characters and dirt merchants (to use a Pete Bernhardt phrase)...!?

These days....
I am obsessed with Victorian Literature and Symbolists (Odilon redon) and The Book of Hours of Jean, Duke of Berry (pretend I said that last in french):
Redon

Book of Hours

(this is the one for October!) I am going to buy another book I don't need of sumptuous and magnificent beauty that is a facsimile of it, with a forward by Umberto Eco and enlargments. Shiver me timbers it's gorgeous.
Just like you.
Do you want to download Johnny Cash and Joe STrummer singing Marley's "Redemption Song" in Harmonious Duet? Of course you do! Cash and Strummer-Redemption Song

ink pots and artistic fantasy

My hand is about falling off in this strange cramped way from writing out all of Garrett's song lyrics in pen and ink. That means a pen, and a bottle of ink. Dipping, like the old days. I insist upon this because, A. It looks much better, and B. I'm an old-fashioned grandma, who, EVEN AS AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIRL signed her letters with sealing wax, and a brass seal that said "K". (sealing wax doesn't really stay on paper that well, by the way).
This week is starting to be a "glass of wine a night" week for me. Nothing tastes better sometimes than green curry with tofu and the white cooking wine you gaffled from the fridge.
Oooh, stay on topic! Garrett can turn a phrase in an interesting way, and conjures images that are complex too:
"break it down on the kit man do a fill/ I get the chills the way your animal appears"
or
"all wind-washed, holy, tumbling down the sidewalk/ pictures picking up the dirt, soot, semen, pieces of my brain that hangs all noose-like."

See? Not so boring.

Also not boring in the least were the movies that I saw this weekend: "Serenity", which was epic and satisfied me on so many different levels (romance, fighting, witty banter, gunslinging, special-effects? check. Meanful characters? check. yay!) and basically my dream movie: "Mirrormask", which I saw last night with Mykle and Michelle. Oh god it was beautiful. Imagine this: You worship (very privately) an artist who illustrated the comics you and your best friend read starting in grade school, just the covers, mind you, not the whole thing. Thinking always that no one else would ever know about the comics OR even less the artist, you covet things he did and collect his work, completely oblivious to his rising fame and influence on pretty much the whole illustration world, especially where it overlaps with the field of computer art (a new thing in 1990, relatively). Suddenly, said artist and writer make a MOVIE, where you basically sucked into a whole WORLD that was designed and drawn and fashioned by this artist, and you can wallow in his beautiful and disturbing images for an hour plus. Jesus. That would be Dave Mckean.
Here's my favorite Sandman cover he ever did (I think):


Originally this post was going to be about MUSIC, and certain songs which you just HAVE to hear. Hahaha. So here is a perfect song (sort of sounds like Souxie):
Haiti by The Arcade Fire