on the phone with seth yesterday and we start talking about 'synecdoche, new york' cuz charlie kaufman wrote and directed it, and philip seymour hoffman is in it. and seth gave psh the best compliment i can think of for an actor. he said: 'that movie has him in it, and you know, id watch him do anything. id watch him...eat cereal.'
and i laughed, cuz i have thought for some time about what i would be willing to watch some of my favorite actors do. i have for years said id watch johnny depp clip his toenails. so we started thinking of things to have people do. this is the list so far, continue adding to it, if you will.
philip seymour hoffman--eat cereal (rice crispies?)
johnny depp--clip toenails (sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom?)
ewan macgregor--shave face (shirtless, hand towel around the shoulders, of course...)
dustin hoffman--drive thru at wendy's (seth wants to hear him say "ill have a biggie fries")
brad pitt--wash the car (seth was thinking something domestic and yet manly. cleaning out the gutters, maybe. i think this one might be better...)
billy crudup--learn a song on the piano...? make a salad? wait for the bus? (i dunno about this one...)
this may sound like a voyeuristic thing about male celebrities, but really, this is what the essence of good acting actually is. if you are really good at doing something truly, it doesnt matter what it is, people will love to watch you do it.
just watched to movie 'perfume' based on the book which i read last year (cuz there is a nirvana song about it--scentless apprentice--and cuz multiple co-workers at bailey/coy recommended it) and i was kinda worried that it wasnt going to translate to the screen very well. all that gorgeous description of scent--all kinds of scents--which i thought was an amazing feat of writing, to capture that evanescent, oddly wordless realm of the olfactory sense, i was afraid it would be lost in the movie. i was silly to worry. it was beautifully rendered and made for magnificent viewing. to glean all the information about the scent of something by the way it is filmed, was truly amazing. the lighting, the coloring, the angle, all of these factored in to the ghost of a scent that came to your imagination. really brilliant.
anyway, the reason im mentioning this, is that the actor who plays the perfumer with the almost super-human sense of smell, spends the first half hour of the movie not speaking. in fact, prolly only spends 10 minutes of the 2 hour movie in conversation, and yet, when he smells something...i dont know how to describe it. watching him inhale and react to and process what he is receiving is really a stellar experience. you can follow the whole progression of understanding thru the intensity of inhalation, how he closes his eyes, how high he holds his chin, if his pupils dilate or contract, the depth of his eyes, the furrow of his brow, or the subtle upward curve of his lips. he spends most of the movie smelling things. actively, intentionally smelling things. taking them in and paying attention to them, and never did he smell something the same way twice.
and i have no idea who this actor is. okay, thats a lie. his name is ben whishaw so i know as much as imdb.com can tell me. and i remember him in 'im not there,' that amazing dylan movie, but yeah. so hes british. and hes obviously a freaking good actor, cuz he smells like a champ. id love to watch him cook breakfast.
this is why i love acting so much. cuz its really about being completely in the moment. who is it that says the definition of acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances? (uta hagen? sanford meisner? john abramson?) i really believe this to be the point. and i kinda mean for life. taking this idea off the stage (or screen) and thinking about it as an exercise for life makes me really happy. not so much that you should pay attention to everything you do as if someone were watching you (tho for a while growing up that was how i felt about life and how i believed in god...kinda weird, kinda exhibitionist...) but more that you should pay attention to everything you do as an end in itself. that the point is to be really good at eating cereal, or clipping your tonails. anything. everything.
and not for anyone else, for you. just to be truly in it, to be paying attention to detail and doing whatever task you have really well. with intention. and attention. that is worthy. noble, even. be good at whatever you wanna be good at, but please, please be good at living your life.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
oh, geez. oh, bama.
this was my tuesday:
i worked until 6:30 my time, which was 9:30 east coast time, but i was nonetheless very sure that it was going to be a long evening of slow returns and possibly not knowing who the president was till morning. (the last 8 years have embittered me in some really intense ways--i just assume there will be problems with every democratic process we cherish) and i knew i wasnt going to be able to handle the stress of a long wait, so i gathered my honey and my best friend and told them i wanted nothing to do with the election all night. so we went to eat and drink at a place we knew didnt have a big screen tv (which was hard to find on capitol hill that night) and talked about other things. of course, it always came back to the election. no matter what. and i was nervous and edgy and a little too loud. but then, whenever my friend ethan and i get together, we are always a little too loud. hes from chicago too, and hes jewish, so our jewish/italian chicago-style combo of brassiness can get us in real trouble out here. and we love it. to hell with the people who give us looks. cuz they are those polite northwestern almost looks...
anyway, ethan and i were compensating in volume and illinois pride for the worry we felt about the whole election process, and luka was getting even quieter than normal and then compounding our anxiety by talking about what election day is like back home and how upsetting is (luka is from georgia). earlier, luka had gotten a call from a good friend, jimmi, who had been voluteering that day at one of the polling places in their hometown, and had watched a fellow volunteer turn away black voters cuz their names werent on the list. which, my fellow americans, is not correct procedure. you have them fill out a provisional ballot and take their info and a lot of other things to make sure they get to vote if they are registered. so jimmi called whoever you call about those sorts of obstructions of justice, and then it got ugly cuz this woman accused jimmi of doing something shady like stuffing the ballot box or something else as weird and totally untrue. sheesh. talk about all your fears being realized...
so there we were, at the honey hole, eating our sandwiches and drinking our drinks and trying to think of something else to talk about and failing miserably. and 8 o'clock rolls around, and all of a sudden a few people at the bar throw up their hands and scream "yes!" and ethan yells, "what? what happened?" and no one answers so he walks over to the bar and sees all of the west coast go blue. he starts yelling "obama!" and i shush him, not cuz of his volume, but because im afraid he will jinx it. at this point, most of the country was convinced. not me. even long after the acceptance speech happened, i still wasnt there yet, (because i was nowhere near a tv to witness it..)
so we finished eating and ethan was starting to get excited and full of revelry and we walked back to lukas house and checked cnn.com for the electoral vote count, which still didnt convince me, and ethan decided to go drinking with his house to celebrate and left us. luka and i stared at each other for a long moment and i said (possibly almost whined) can we go to bleu? luka kinda snorted, and said "thats the last place i would think of, but sure." bleu is a bar that has a lot of amazingly cozy little alcoves, complete with curtains, where you can hide away and drink marvelously large hot toddys or other strange and magical drinks like a long island iced tea in a pint glass, or a raspberry kamikaze in a martini glass (the latter two of which luka and i ordered, respectively). but before we could even tuck ourselves away, we were bombarded by the noise outside, which, upon investigation, seemed to consist of cars cruising up and down broadway with people out the windows screaming and cheering and a mass of people congregated on the sidewalks yelling and holding up signs and taking over the street for quick little jigs while the light was red and groups of friends doing call and response things like "who's country?" "OUR country!" and everyone just in a beautifully spontaneously joyous mood. sort of drunk on relief and the release of 8 years of cringing.
and i started to let go. to believe this was really true. and luke and i crawled back into our booth to sit in candlelight, and talk in soft voices with the loudness outside drowning us out once in a while, and i started to cry. tears streaming, no sound. and i realized how badly i have wanted this. how amazing i think barak obama is and what hope i have for what he can do for our country (our country--notice my ability to claim ownership again--that says something) and how fearful i was that something, someone (or a lot of someones--i need to start owning my belief in conspiracy theories) was going to figure out a way to keep this from us. from the US. when we need it so intensely badly. we are all so thirsty for someone to lead us who is competent and sounds like they are a thinking person and believes you to be one as well. i had wanted it so bad that i was so afraid i wouldnt get it so i didnt allow myself to even think about wanting it at all cuz i knew my heart couldnt handle not getting it. yes, thats fucked up. but thats what i have done all year. spent a lot of time not owning how bad i wanted obama to be president. so now that it was becoming abundantly clear that it was going to be for sure, i finally let down that wall and cried tears of relief. not joy, more of sadness, somehow. of regret that i couldnt be more like seth, my brother, who has been obsessed with and talking about and watching every speech by obama since january. he donated his bands music to the campaign. you can hear velvetron backing some of the youtube commercials made last week about getting out to vote. he has been so closely following the campaign all year that he calls obama 'barry'. he has been gung-ho since the word 'go'. not me. ive been in hiding. every time someone has talked about him, ill say, "yeah, im from chicago. we voted him into the senate and have been excited about him for years. of course im gonna vote for the hometown boy." but i wont say anything else. after every debate i would call a family member and beg them to tell me they thought obama won. cuz i couldnt see it. i couldnt allow myself, i was too scared no one else would. maybe im a little too west coast, thinking 'middle america' is worse than they actually are. maybe i havent had enough chicago fever, assuming everyone else is as excited about our boy as we are. whatever the reasons, i wasnt ready to believe. but i slowly came round while not thinking about it at bleu. luka and i spoke about our families, made plans to road-trip to visit them. the conversation even got somber for a while, though the celebratory sounds were still emanating from the front door. the cubby hole, the curtain, the candle, all led to sharing confidences, exorcising fears.
we emerged from our cave after an hour or so, a bit refreshed, somewhat intoxicated, a lot more cheerful. we strolled past a few revelers, tho the street had quieted down quite a bit, headed to lukas house at pike and broadway. at the end of the block north of said intersection we saw cop cars blockading the street. we kept walking until we were wading thru the mob of people who had completely filled the entire intersection of pike and broadway, all of the street and sidewalks, with people who climbed up a lamppost on every corner to wave an american flag or a homemade banner or an obama poster. there was singing and chanting "yes we can!" or "obama!" people were buying cases of beer from the shell station and passing cans out to everyone, perfect strangers were screaming and hugging each other.
at this point, neighbours, the gay club on that block of broadway, started blasting music from speakers they lugged up to the roof and pointed at the street. 'dont stop believing' came soaring over the crowd and all kinds of people whooped and started pockets of dance party within the herd. luka and i turned to each other and just stared, sharing both utter joy and total disbelief at the fabulously surreal feeling of this situation that was undeniably happening to us. all of us. it was like fourth of july meets new years, meets the DNC. what?!? we soaked it up and savoured it, then rejoiced in tossing it twinkling back and forth to one anothers eyes. and then there were sparklers and fireworks all around.
i tried to look out over the crowd to take in the dancing and the yelling and the fireworks and to try to understand the number of people without diving into the fray, and then i looked at luka and said "can we go up on your roof?" its a 3 story building and we ran to climb up and perched on the edge of the roof overlooking the street. this is what we saw.
almost directly after we got up there, an african american drag queen stepped up to the edge of neighbours roof with a microphone and talked to everyone down below thru the speakers. it was hard to hear her across the expanse of air, but i recognized the song she was leading the crowd in when it got to "and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air" and then a firework shot up over our heads and exploded in a blue and white lily. after the national anthem and the cheering that followed, another firework, red this time, blew up what felt like 10 feet above our heads, and i hugged luka tight and had the completely foreign yet intensely freeing thought: "i am proud to be an american tonight." i thought about traveling overseas in the next 4 years and not having to hang my head in shame when someone asks me where im from. i thought about having the picture of our president on the front page of a newspaper not look like a stupid ape. i thought about press conferences and state of the union addresses and any other moments when the president speaks publicly, especially to foreign dignitaries of any kind, and how i wont have to cringe and try to shut my ears. how i might start following the news again. and i got giddy. almost dizzy. i mean, that might have had a bit to do with luka's eyes and lips and hands on my back, not to mention the height and our proximity to the edge, but mostly it had to do with the night. luka said, "this is one of those nights our grandchildren will ask us where we were..." "lets go back down." i said.
a friend of lukes found us and said that earlier there was a whole march around downtown and then everyone came back up to the hill and converged with other people spontaneously gathering in the streets and thats how more than a thousand people ended up right where we were. a minute later we saw a whole other cluster of people come streaming down broadway jumping and laughing and hugging all those who were already standing around. this new group had gregoire posters. our governor was just elected. dems unite! most of the people i saw around me were not regulars in the neighborhood. this wasnt all the residents of the hill coming out to hang in their hood, this was just everyone who randomly found themselves here, where people were celebrating, happy to be with others who couldnt contain their joy. it was so beautiful. and exhausting. my face hurt from constantly raised eyebrows. but then we found jess and becky and dan, who were giddy and wide eyed and looked like they were high, but im sure they hadnt smoked. jess had been at the strangers election night party, had been a part of getting the late additions to the paper off to the printer at almost midnight, was prolly a little too sober to be dealing with this craziness. becky looked at dan milling about on the edge of the crowd, looked at the guy halfway up the lamppost with a flag (who had been there for at least an hour, waving his little heart out) and said, "ive lived in this town a long time, and ive been in these streets with hundreds of people, witnessed cops standing by, heard chanting and seen banners waving, but i have NEVER seen anyone wave an american flag. something has changed. something big." and shes right. the town that hosted the WTO demonstrations eight years ago (nine?) was on a completely different plane this night.
at almost 2am, luka and i said goodnight to everyone (goodnight, neverland!) and walked 50 feet to their door, crawling into bed with the sounds of the drunken celebration of mass amounts of people muffled to a dull roar outside the bedroom window. a couple hours later, we were up before it was light out and opened lukas coffee shop in a smiley-zombie-like state. the papers said: "change has come to america" and i spent all morning drinking tea and looking at cnn.com's breakdown of each state by county. saw that indiana and n. carolina went blue. heard relief and expectation and the hangover of excitement in every customers voice. jeremiah, lukas manager, asked people how their night had been. many talked about the cap hill crowd. others said they had seen it on tv. id forgotten about the helicopters flying above, they must have been filming for the news. someone told me 64% of the voting population turned out to the polls. i looked it up--thats more than came out to elect JFK. we did it. i watched his victory speech on youtube. thats how he put it too. 'we did it.' but im so glad he didnt stop there. that he said. 'now we can keep doing it.' cuz thats the thing. thats whats changed. we are all in this together now. we danced in the streets last night together, now lets roll up our sleeves and start changing the world together. starting with this god-damned wasted country. we have our work cut out for us, but with obama in the lead, we can do it. oh, yes we can.
i worked until 6:30 my time, which was 9:30 east coast time, but i was nonetheless very sure that it was going to be a long evening of slow returns and possibly not knowing who the president was till morning. (the last 8 years have embittered me in some really intense ways--i just assume there will be problems with every democratic process we cherish) and i knew i wasnt going to be able to handle the stress of a long wait, so i gathered my honey and my best friend and told them i wanted nothing to do with the election all night. so we went to eat and drink at a place we knew didnt have a big screen tv (which was hard to find on capitol hill that night) and talked about other things. of course, it always came back to the election. no matter what. and i was nervous and edgy and a little too loud. but then, whenever my friend ethan and i get together, we are always a little too loud. hes from chicago too, and hes jewish, so our jewish/italian chicago-style combo of brassiness can get us in real trouble out here. and we love it. to hell with the people who give us looks. cuz they are those polite northwestern almost looks...
anyway, ethan and i were compensating in volume and illinois pride for the worry we felt about the whole election process, and luka was getting even quieter than normal and then compounding our anxiety by talking about what election day is like back home and how upsetting is (luka is from georgia). earlier, luka had gotten a call from a good friend, jimmi, who had been voluteering that day at one of the polling places in their hometown, and had watched a fellow volunteer turn away black voters cuz their names werent on the list. which, my fellow americans, is not correct procedure. you have them fill out a provisional ballot and take their info and a lot of other things to make sure they get to vote if they are registered. so jimmi called whoever you call about those sorts of obstructions of justice, and then it got ugly cuz this woman accused jimmi of doing something shady like stuffing the ballot box or something else as weird and totally untrue. sheesh. talk about all your fears being realized...
so there we were, at the honey hole, eating our sandwiches and drinking our drinks and trying to think of something else to talk about and failing miserably. and 8 o'clock rolls around, and all of a sudden a few people at the bar throw up their hands and scream "yes!" and ethan yells, "what? what happened?" and no one answers so he walks over to the bar and sees all of the west coast go blue. he starts yelling "obama!" and i shush him, not cuz of his volume, but because im afraid he will jinx it. at this point, most of the country was convinced. not me. even long after the acceptance speech happened, i still wasnt there yet, (because i was nowhere near a tv to witness it..)
so we finished eating and ethan was starting to get excited and full of revelry and we walked back to lukas house and checked cnn.com for the electoral vote count, which still didnt convince me, and ethan decided to go drinking with his house to celebrate and left us. luka and i stared at each other for a long moment and i said (possibly almost whined) can we go to bleu? luka kinda snorted, and said "thats the last place i would think of, but sure." bleu is a bar that has a lot of amazingly cozy little alcoves, complete with curtains, where you can hide away and drink marvelously large hot toddys or other strange and magical drinks like a long island iced tea in a pint glass, or a raspberry kamikaze in a martini glass (the latter two of which luka and i ordered, respectively). but before we could even tuck ourselves away, we were bombarded by the noise outside, which, upon investigation, seemed to consist of cars cruising up and down broadway with people out the windows screaming and cheering and a mass of people congregated on the sidewalks yelling and holding up signs and taking over the street for quick little jigs while the light was red and groups of friends doing call and response things like "who's country?" "OUR country!" and everyone just in a beautifully spontaneously joyous mood. sort of drunk on relief and the release of 8 years of cringing.
and i started to let go. to believe this was really true. and luke and i crawled back into our booth to sit in candlelight, and talk in soft voices with the loudness outside drowning us out once in a while, and i started to cry. tears streaming, no sound. and i realized how badly i have wanted this. how amazing i think barak obama is and what hope i have for what he can do for our country (our country--notice my ability to claim ownership again--that says something) and how fearful i was that something, someone (or a lot of someones--i need to start owning my belief in conspiracy theories) was going to figure out a way to keep this from us. from the US. when we need it so intensely badly. we are all so thirsty for someone to lead us who is competent and sounds like they are a thinking person and believes you to be one as well. i had wanted it so bad that i was so afraid i wouldnt get it so i didnt allow myself to even think about wanting it at all cuz i knew my heart couldnt handle not getting it. yes, thats fucked up. but thats what i have done all year. spent a lot of time not owning how bad i wanted obama to be president. so now that it was becoming abundantly clear that it was going to be for sure, i finally let down that wall and cried tears of relief. not joy, more of sadness, somehow. of regret that i couldnt be more like seth, my brother, who has been obsessed with and talking about and watching every speech by obama since january. he donated his bands music to the campaign. you can hear velvetron backing some of the youtube commercials made last week about getting out to vote. he has been so closely following the campaign all year that he calls obama 'barry'. he has been gung-ho since the word 'go'. not me. ive been in hiding. every time someone has talked about him, ill say, "yeah, im from chicago. we voted him into the senate and have been excited about him for years. of course im gonna vote for the hometown boy." but i wont say anything else. after every debate i would call a family member and beg them to tell me they thought obama won. cuz i couldnt see it. i couldnt allow myself, i was too scared no one else would. maybe im a little too west coast, thinking 'middle america' is worse than they actually are. maybe i havent had enough chicago fever, assuming everyone else is as excited about our boy as we are. whatever the reasons, i wasnt ready to believe. but i slowly came round while not thinking about it at bleu. luka and i spoke about our families, made plans to road-trip to visit them. the conversation even got somber for a while, though the celebratory sounds were still emanating from the front door. the cubby hole, the curtain, the candle, all led to sharing confidences, exorcising fears.
we emerged from our cave after an hour or so, a bit refreshed, somewhat intoxicated, a lot more cheerful. we strolled past a few revelers, tho the street had quieted down quite a bit, headed to lukas house at pike and broadway. at the end of the block north of said intersection we saw cop cars blockading the street. we kept walking until we were wading thru the mob of people who had completely filled the entire intersection of pike and broadway, all of the street and sidewalks, with people who climbed up a lamppost on every corner to wave an american flag or a homemade banner or an obama poster. there was singing and chanting "yes we can!" or "obama!" people were buying cases of beer from the shell station and passing cans out to everyone, perfect strangers were screaming and hugging each other.
at this point, neighbours, the gay club on that block of broadway, started blasting music from speakers they lugged up to the roof and pointed at the street. 'dont stop believing' came soaring over the crowd and all kinds of people whooped and started pockets of dance party within the herd. luka and i turned to each other and just stared, sharing both utter joy and total disbelief at the fabulously surreal feeling of this situation that was undeniably happening to us. all of us. it was like fourth of july meets new years, meets the DNC. what?!? we soaked it up and savoured it, then rejoiced in tossing it twinkling back and forth to one anothers eyes. and then there were sparklers and fireworks all around.
i tried to look out over the crowd to take in the dancing and the yelling and the fireworks and to try to understand the number of people without diving into the fray, and then i looked at luka and said "can we go up on your roof?" its a 3 story building and we ran to climb up and perched on the edge of the roof overlooking the street. this is what we saw.
almost directly after we got up there, an african american drag queen stepped up to the edge of neighbours roof with a microphone and talked to everyone down below thru the speakers. it was hard to hear her across the expanse of air, but i recognized the song she was leading the crowd in when it got to "and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air" and then a firework shot up over our heads and exploded in a blue and white lily. after the national anthem and the cheering that followed, another firework, red this time, blew up what felt like 10 feet above our heads, and i hugged luka tight and had the completely foreign yet intensely freeing thought: "i am proud to be an american tonight." i thought about traveling overseas in the next 4 years and not having to hang my head in shame when someone asks me where im from. i thought about having the picture of our president on the front page of a newspaper not look like a stupid ape. i thought about press conferences and state of the union addresses and any other moments when the president speaks publicly, especially to foreign dignitaries of any kind, and how i wont have to cringe and try to shut my ears. how i might start following the news again. and i got giddy. almost dizzy. i mean, that might have had a bit to do with luka's eyes and lips and hands on my back, not to mention the height and our proximity to the edge, but mostly it had to do with the night. luka said, "this is one of those nights our grandchildren will ask us where we were..." "lets go back down." i said.
a friend of lukes found us and said that earlier there was a whole march around downtown and then everyone came back up to the hill and converged with other people spontaneously gathering in the streets and thats how more than a thousand people ended up right where we were. a minute later we saw a whole other cluster of people come streaming down broadway jumping and laughing and hugging all those who were already standing around. this new group had gregoire posters. our governor was just elected. dems unite! most of the people i saw around me were not regulars in the neighborhood. this wasnt all the residents of the hill coming out to hang in their hood, this was just everyone who randomly found themselves here, where people were celebrating, happy to be with others who couldnt contain their joy. it was so beautiful. and exhausting. my face hurt from constantly raised eyebrows. but then we found jess and becky and dan, who were giddy and wide eyed and looked like they were high, but im sure they hadnt smoked. jess had been at the strangers election night party, had been a part of getting the late additions to the paper off to the printer at almost midnight, was prolly a little too sober to be dealing with this craziness. becky looked at dan milling about on the edge of the crowd, looked at the guy halfway up the lamppost with a flag (who had been there for at least an hour, waving his little heart out) and said, "ive lived in this town a long time, and ive been in these streets with hundreds of people, witnessed cops standing by, heard chanting and seen banners waving, but i have NEVER seen anyone wave an american flag. something has changed. something big." and shes right. the town that hosted the WTO demonstrations eight years ago (nine?) was on a completely different plane this night.
at almost 2am, luka and i said goodnight to everyone (goodnight, neverland!) and walked 50 feet to their door, crawling into bed with the sounds of the drunken celebration of mass amounts of people muffled to a dull roar outside the bedroom window. a couple hours later, we were up before it was light out and opened lukas coffee shop in a smiley-zombie-like state. the papers said: "change has come to america" and i spent all morning drinking tea and looking at cnn.com's breakdown of each state by county. saw that indiana and n. carolina went blue. heard relief and expectation and the hangover of excitement in every customers voice. jeremiah, lukas manager, asked people how their night had been. many talked about the cap hill crowd. others said they had seen it on tv. id forgotten about the helicopters flying above, they must have been filming for the news. someone told me 64% of the voting population turned out to the polls. i looked it up--thats more than came out to elect JFK. we did it. i watched his victory speech on youtube. thats how he put it too. 'we did it.' but im so glad he didnt stop there. that he said. 'now we can keep doing it.' cuz thats the thing. thats whats changed. we are all in this together now. we danced in the streets last night together, now lets roll up our sleeves and start changing the world together. starting with this god-damned wasted country. we have our work cut out for us, but with obama in the lead, we can do it. oh, yes we can.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
fall
[typewritten on my old royal while discovering the fleet foxes]
the weather shifted. The apples are on the ground. The hammock is wet. The light shifted. Its white and blue, not yellow, except inside.
And the insides are all red and warm as blood. Books and crafts and soup and coffee and hot toddys. I lean on coffee and spoon with whiskey. nothing crisp about this time of year. Chills. The dying of the light here is a muted affair. With damp seeping in every corner. The greenness darkens and the greys become saturated. I choke on the gulp in my throat. Hot liquid brims over my vision.
But its a different elation streaked despair. There is a soft gathering-in here. Of bounty, friends, creative energy. A promise of lush productivity throughout the coming dark months. Kale in february. So distant from the childhood joy of hazy heat breaking into clear, sharp, rainbow-leaved glory of the shedding of summer's hard-won fruits. The last big push of life before death masks all, shrouding with a crystalline blanket for cold comfort. But darkness at 4:30 wasn't so bad if it was preceded by even snow-glare-false brightness.
It's the greige I fear. The endless, merciless clouding of senses. The forced introversion where the mountains peak out only a handful of times in 6 months. Projects can be saviors of sanity. They bring functionality to a dysfunction of climate. A fortress of weather barring your path to anything resembling healthy contentment. Aah...despair, you are seeping in so quickly. Bedfellow of anticipation these days. Dangerous...
if only there was the promise of respite. Experience is a harsh teacher. But this time I feel ready. I myself. Not relying on outside forces. I get it now. The drive to create equaling the will to survive. That necessity is never stronger than the first of the year, looking back at 3 straight months of greige and ahead at another 4? 5? yeah, the perpetual growth of everything around you can help stretch what little you have left--its heartening to see flowers on trees superbowl weekend. Spring encroaches on the ground early, but doesn't launch an aerial attack for so long. So long. The body forgets what to do with the odd yellow warmth from the sky that peaks out with such infrequence and brief duration. Oh, god. A shadow. I almost forgot what their limits looked like. A true squint, not just lazy-liddedness. It's amazing what you can get used to, even convince yourself you don't need...until it comes upon you again and you grasp it like gasping for air after an ill-advised and myopic submergence of soul and body and intellect into a muddy mountain-fed pool of icy northwest reserve.
Shiver. Put on an oversized sweater. Hold a cup of coffee up to your nose with both hands. Wrap your half-numb fingers around a free-flowing pen. Get the fuck out of this town. Or embrace every last drop. Curl your tongue around it like your kitten, tail to nose in your lap.
There is no other way. Love it, love it. There is no leaving.
the weather shifted. The apples are on the ground. The hammock is wet. The light shifted. Its white and blue, not yellow, except inside.
And the insides are all red and warm as blood. Books and crafts and soup and coffee and hot toddys. I lean on coffee and spoon with whiskey. nothing crisp about this time of year. Chills. The dying of the light here is a muted affair. With damp seeping in every corner. The greenness darkens and the greys become saturated. I choke on the gulp in my throat. Hot liquid brims over my vision.
But its a different elation streaked despair. There is a soft gathering-in here. Of bounty, friends, creative energy. A promise of lush productivity throughout the coming dark months. Kale in february. So distant from the childhood joy of hazy heat breaking into clear, sharp, rainbow-leaved glory of the shedding of summer's hard-won fruits. The last big push of life before death masks all, shrouding with a crystalline blanket for cold comfort. But darkness at 4:30 wasn't so bad if it was preceded by even snow-glare-false brightness.
It's the greige I fear. The endless, merciless clouding of senses. The forced introversion where the mountains peak out only a handful of times in 6 months. Projects can be saviors of sanity. They bring functionality to a dysfunction of climate. A fortress of weather barring your path to anything resembling healthy contentment. Aah...despair, you are seeping in so quickly. Bedfellow of anticipation these days. Dangerous...
if only there was the promise of respite. Experience is a harsh teacher. But this time I feel ready. I myself. Not relying on outside forces. I get it now. The drive to create equaling the will to survive. That necessity is never stronger than the first of the year, looking back at 3 straight months of greige and ahead at another 4? 5? yeah, the perpetual growth of everything around you can help stretch what little you have left--its heartening to see flowers on trees superbowl weekend. Spring encroaches on the ground early, but doesn't launch an aerial attack for so long. So long. The body forgets what to do with the odd yellow warmth from the sky that peaks out with such infrequence and brief duration. Oh, god. A shadow. I almost forgot what their limits looked like. A true squint, not just lazy-liddedness. It's amazing what you can get used to, even convince yourself you don't need...until it comes upon you again and you grasp it like gasping for air after an ill-advised and myopic submergence of soul and body and intellect into a muddy mountain-fed pool of icy northwest reserve.
Shiver. Put on an oversized sweater. Hold a cup of coffee up to your nose with both hands. Wrap your half-numb fingers around a free-flowing pen. Get the fuck out of this town. Or embrace every last drop. Curl your tongue around it like your kitten, tail to nose in your lap.
There is no other way. Love it, love it. There is no leaving.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
i love my family
so, i just recently got on gmail. (finally, i know.)
and both of my brothers and my sister in law are already on gmail.
so last week i get a note from allison that tells me to watch out for the "vanek attack" which is when three vaneks are online and two of them simultaneously gchat the other one with the phrase "vanek attack!" so (for those of you who dont use gchat) when you are the one attacked, two chat windows pop up and two alert noises hit you at once. and then you have to try to 'fend off' (or converse with) two siblings at once. it hasnt happened to me yet, but i assume a lot of copy/pasting goes on...
so yesterday, seth and i attacked nate, our older brother, and he responded in what i felt i could hear as badly dubbed kung fu movie ninja-speak. it was great, but we were all at work, so it didnt last long.
however, later, nate and seth had this gchat conversation (seth just emailed it to me. oh yeah, they call me rach/rachel. heh.):
1:34 PM Nate: if you an rach are thinking about ninja attacking me
again you better forget it. I've learned 5 new kung fu styles
since our last encounter
[5 minutes pass]
1:39 PM Seth: uh oh
is one of them the one where you jump kick us both at the same time?
like chuck norris?
1:43 PM Nate: more like jet li, where i jump, bring my legs up to hit
you both in the chest and then back flip over in time to roll onto the
floor gracefully like I'm doing the centipede
Seth: ah yes...
in a chat style, of course
Nate: well yeah
the word version of that.
1:48 PM Seth: i must warn rachel
1:53 PM Nate: yes.
send your quickest messenger with the scroll telling of my power
1:56 PM Seth: will do. gotta go
and both of my brothers and my sister in law are already on gmail.
so last week i get a note from allison that tells me to watch out for the "vanek attack" which is when three vaneks are online and two of them simultaneously gchat the other one with the phrase "vanek attack!" so (for those of you who dont use gchat) when you are the one attacked, two chat windows pop up and two alert noises hit you at once. and then you have to try to 'fend off' (or converse with) two siblings at once. it hasnt happened to me yet, but i assume a lot of copy/pasting goes on...
so yesterday, seth and i attacked nate, our older brother, and he responded in what i felt i could hear as badly dubbed kung fu movie ninja-speak. it was great, but we were all at work, so it didnt last long.
however, later, nate and seth had this gchat conversation (seth just emailed it to me. oh yeah, they call me rach/rachel. heh.):
1:34 PM Nate: if you an rach are thinking about ninja attacking me
again you better forget it. I've learned 5 new kung fu styles
since our last encounter
[5 minutes pass]
1:39 PM Seth: uh oh
is one of them the one where you jump kick us both at the same time?
like chuck norris?
1:43 PM Nate: more like jet li, where i jump, bring my legs up to hit
you both in the chest and then back flip over in time to roll onto the
floor gracefully like I'm doing the centipede
Seth: ah yes...
in a chat style, of course
Nate: well yeah
the word version of that.
1:48 PM Seth: i must warn rachel
1:53 PM Nate: yes.
send your quickest messenger with the scroll telling of my power
1:56 PM Seth: will do. gotta go
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
johnny depp's eyeliner
been listening to nirvana and hole and the soundtrack to 'about a son' all day. been talking to saunia about how much kurt and courtney queered gender roles and what it means for a man take on the trappings of beauty usually reserved for women...and yes, johnny depps hot self and his penchant for wearing eyeliner came up.
it started with the question (by saunia) of whether i felt the queer gender performance by kurt (and courtney) was more an expression of themselves, or their desire to say 'fuck you' to the dominant paradigm in every way and so they destroyed gender norms as well as sobriety and cock rock and all sorts of things. i thought this was a very insightful question and said that i could really only speak from my understanding of kurt (as i havent studied courtney as much) but i feel she might have been operating from more of a fuck-you-to-everyone sort of place. that i felt maybe kurts actions (more so than his art, but that too) started out as dealing with his own gender expression, but possibly due to being in the spotlight it became more of a 'fuck you'.
that you start out understanding your gender and understanding that its not what people want from you, so you repress it. then you realize its who you are and no one has a right to tell you to repress it, so you let it out. and when you do that, the feeling of defiance that comes from going against what others wants can get you high and so you go really far with it and say 'fuck you' to anyone who cant handle your (albeit in-your-face) expression. hence kurts defensive tone, but his insistence on doing things like wearing a pink ball dress to the 'headbangers ball' [for those of you too young to remember this, it was this weird show in the 80s and early 90s on MTV about music and musicians moderated by this weird (kinda effeminate) long-haired headbanger type who was totally into heavy metal (cuz wasnt everyone back then?)]
but male expression of feminine beauty is much more acceptable in the mainstream now than it was then. if it werent for kurt, antony couldnt exist in the mainstream. and [this is where i need saunias help with reconstructing the conversation] somehow, this led her to mention johnny depp and his fantastic eyeliner. how its subverting gender stuff, but definitely making him super-hot. i think the point was that his visual appeal is tied up with his androgyny. that his cheekbones lend themselves to something really femininely beautiful and his use of eyeliner can accentuate this. the thing about JD is that his form of hotness is also really tied up with a tim burton-esque aesthetic, so its kinda dark and either depressing or smoldering, or both. and that has a sense of danger in a not very effeminate sort of way. well, i guess it depends on the character. edward scissorhands was kinda effeminate, he was even a hair-stylist...
saunia was using the word ambiguous to describe the use of traditionally feminine beauty products to up the hotness of a male. that subverting the dominant gender-role was hot because it wasnt clear what the purpose was, whether it was necessarily to make the male person look feminine. i had a hard time with the word ambiguous. i felt like this action is sort of obvious in its queering of gender and still showing how fucking gorgeous someone is, no matter if they are male or female, no matter if they are performing masculinity or femininity or something in between. i think we were arguing semantics about 'ambiguity' and 'androgyny' and 'queering gender', but i also think there are distinctions that we couldnt really articulate to each others satisfaction.
and its funny we even went to johnny depp cuz we could have stayed with kurt in this argument. he wore eyeliner a lot. and changed his hair color and length all the time (even got extensions). and was always kinda defensive when people brought it up. and a lot of times was beautiful, but also (i think he worked at this) at times was scary. not so much in the tim burton way, just in the 'i dont fucking care what you think, im gonna have 3 day old stubble and eyeliner and keep my hair in my face.' and that could be super-hot. and it could be grotesque. and i think he wanted to have both of those affects. i think sometimes he specifically wore a dress with a beard to highlight peoples belief in the absurdity of men wearing dresses and i think at other times he wore a dress to look beautiful, with spaghetti straps on those thin, muscled shoulders. (im thinking of the footage from the concert in brazil very late in their career. sure, he stuffed, and you could tell, but hell...lots of drag queens make quite a bit of the difficulty of keeping up the facade...)
speaking of drag queens, saunia brought that up in her defense of the word 'ambiguous'. that when drag queens put on their eyeliner, they arent trying to queer anything, they are specifically working to perform the feminine gender. i am assuming she was saying this is as a shorthand to say that drag queens go all the way to be specifically not ambiguous by adding all the other trappings of feminine beauty so that there is no doubt as to what they are doing. and when johnny depp and kurt cobain put on eyeliner and dont do anything else to specify feminine beauty, they are being much more ambiguous with their choice of gender expression. and i guess in some ways i agree with this, but i think i still dont like the word. i think they are very specifically and unambiguously showing their gender performed as they want it to be seen. as not fully masculine, and not fully feminine, but with an androgyny that they (or at least i) dont want to be thought of as synonymous with vague. who knows what they think, really.
i also have a problem with the word androgyny, by the way. prolly cuz the dictionary has multiple definitions that i feel are very different. therefore its confusing to use the same word to describe 'having both masculine and feminine characteristics' and 'neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance'. i dont think having both cancels out either and it kinda disturbs me when people make that leap. i have striven hard in my life to imagine what genderless would look like. and maybe to figure out how to portray it. but i dont know that that is healthy for anyone, cuz im starting to believe its impossible and unnecessary (no matter how much i might still want it). at this point i might be getting into another whole set of things that this blog wasnt supposed to hold, so i think ill quit.
quick post script: i am not, in any way, against ambiguity when talking about or performing gender. i think its awesome, and as much as possible, i try to take advantage of it in my own life. its partially why i love michael stipe so much. he stayed within the ambiguous, even vague sometimes, in his descriptions of himself and his gender identity and sexuality. i appreciate people who dont feel the need to be specific in their choices to all and sundry. and most of the time, i dont fucking care who you are fucking. okay, maybe i do, not cuz i want insight into your psyche, but cuz i might know them...(at least in this town, sheesh!)
it started with the question (by saunia) of whether i felt the queer gender performance by kurt (and courtney) was more an expression of themselves, or their desire to say 'fuck you' to the dominant paradigm in every way and so they destroyed gender norms as well as sobriety and cock rock and all sorts of things. i thought this was a very insightful question and said that i could really only speak from my understanding of kurt (as i havent studied courtney as much) but i feel she might have been operating from more of a fuck-you-to-everyone sort of place. that i felt maybe kurts actions (more so than his art, but that too) started out as dealing with his own gender expression, but possibly due to being in the spotlight it became more of a 'fuck you'.
that you start out understanding your gender and understanding that its not what people want from you, so you repress it. then you realize its who you are and no one has a right to tell you to repress it, so you let it out. and when you do that, the feeling of defiance that comes from going against what others wants can get you high and so you go really far with it and say 'fuck you' to anyone who cant handle your (albeit in-your-face) expression. hence kurts defensive tone, but his insistence on doing things like wearing a pink ball dress to the 'headbangers ball' [for those of you too young to remember this, it was this weird show in the 80s and early 90s on MTV about music and musicians moderated by this weird (kinda effeminate) long-haired headbanger type who was totally into heavy metal (cuz wasnt everyone back then?)]
but male expression of feminine beauty is much more acceptable in the mainstream now than it was then. if it werent for kurt, antony couldnt exist in the mainstream. and [this is where i need saunias help with reconstructing the conversation] somehow, this led her to mention johnny depp and his fantastic eyeliner. how its subverting gender stuff, but definitely making him super-hot. i think the point was that his visual appeal is tied up with his androgyny. that his cheekbones lend themselves to something really femininely beautiful and his use of eyeliner can accentuate this. the thing about JD is that his form of hotness is also really tied up with a tim burton-esque aesthetic, so its kinda dark and either depressing or smoldering, or both. and that has a sense of danger in a not very effeminate sort of way. well, i guess it depends on the character. edward scissorhands was kinda effeminate, he was even a hair-stylist...
saunia was using the word ambiguous to describe the use of traditionally feminine beauty products to up the hotness of a male. that subverting the dominant gender-role was hot because it wasnt clear what the purpose was, whether it was necessarily to make the male person look feminine. i had a hard time with the word ambiguous. i felt like this action is sort of obvious in its queering of gender and still showing how fucking gorgeous someone is, no matter if they are male or female, no matter if they are performing masculinity or femininity or something in between. i think we were arguing semantics about 'ambiguity' and 'androgyny' and 'queering gender', but i also think there are distinctions that we couldnt really articulate to each others satisfaction.
and its funny we even went to johnny depp cuz we could have stayed with kurt in this argument. he wore eyeliner a lot. and changed his hair color and length all the time (even got extensions). and was always kinda defensive when people brought it up. and a lot of times was beautiful, but also (i think he worked at this) at times was scary. not so much in the tim burton way, just in the 'i dont fucking care what you think, im gonna have 3 day old stubble and eyeliner and keep my hair in my face.' and that could be super-hot. and it could be grotesque. and i think he wanted to have both of those affects. i think sometimes he specifically wore a dress with a beard to highlight peoples belief in the absurdity of men wearing dresses and i think at other times he wore a dress to look beautiful, with spaghetti straps on those thin, muscled shoulders. (im thinking of the footage from the concert in brazil very late in their career. sure, he stuffed, and you could tell, but hell...lots of drag queens make quite a bit of the difficulty of keeping up the facade...)
speaking of drag queens, saunia brought that up in her defense of the word 'ambiguous'. that when drag queens put on their eyeliner, they arent trying to queer anything, they are specifically working to perform the feminine gender. i am assuming she was saying this is as a shorthand to say that drag queens go all the way to be specifically not ambiguous by adding all the other trappings of feminine beauty so that there is no doubt as to what they are doing. and when johnny depp and kurt cobain put on eyeliner and dont do anything else to specify feminine beauty, they are being much more ambiguous with their choice of gender expression. and i guess in some ways i agree with this, but i think i still dont like the word. i think they are very specifically and unambiguously showing their gender performed as they want it to be seen. as not fully masculine, and not fully feminine, but with an androgyny that they (or at least i) dont want to be thought of as synonymous with vague. who knows what they think, really.
i also have a problem with the word androgyny, by the way. prolly cuz the dictionary has multiple definitions that i feel are very different. therefore its confusing to use the same word to describe 'having both masculine and feminine characteristics' and 'neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance'. i dont think having both cancels out either and it kinda disturbs me when people make that leap. i have striven hard in my life to imagine what genderless would look like. and maybe to figure out how to portray it. but i dont know that that is healthy for anyone, cuz im starting to believe its impossible and unnecessary (no matter how much i might still want it). at this point i might be getting into another whole set of things that this blog wasnt supposed to hold, so i think ill quit.
quick post script: i am not, in any way, against ambiguity when talking about or performing gender. i think its awesome, and as much as possible, i try to take advantage of it in my own life. its partially why i love michael stipe so much. he stayed within the ambiguous, even vague sometimes, in his descriptions of himself and his gender identity and sexuality. i appreciate people who dont feel the need to be specific in their choices to all and sundry. and most of the time, i dont fucking care who you are fucking. okay, maybe i do, not cuz i want insight into your psyche, but cuz i might know them...(at least in this town, sheesh!)
kurt's a girl
[this is the first draft of my first time writing about something that i kinda, not so secretly, think about writing a thesis on....gimme yer thoughts, but be generous. its written more like an inflammatory stranger article than a thesis prospectus.]
(deep breath) Hi, my name is Ray Vanek, and I'm obsessed with Kurt Cobain. (there, I said it.) Maybe that's not so weird. What's weird is that this all just started a year and a half ago. Very notably not 17 years ago. Or even 14. Nope, this obsession started the spring I was 28 years old. Not 14. not 17. or even 27, for that matter. You might wonder how a disaffected and angsty sophomore in high school could get away with not becoming obsessed. I do. I can't remember why he didn't grab me and pin me to the floor back then. I think he was too angry. And I was too goody-goody. Listening to the Beatles and (gulp) Phish and (double gulp) Dave Matthews Band. His snide interviews and violent performances did not amuse me. I was much more into decorum and innocent fun.
I was in the closet and not really even aware of it. I was bound by the strictures of society's gender role for me and had somehow managed to turn a blind eye on the chafing. I think I resented his showing the burns.
Because this is the premise of my obsession: I think Kurt's a girl. Okay, lemme rephrase. I feel like there is quite a bit of evidence, from his life and his work, to theorize that his gender identity was quite feminine. (is that blasphemy?)
There is the story about 'Kurt smells like teen spirit'. This doesn't bring up images of pep rallies, like the music video, but scents of the girlie deodorant 'teen spirit' that came out the same time as Bleach. Kurt smelled like a girl.
And how about the commercial that played on Mtv when In Utero came out? (how about the name 'in utero' and all the fetuses in his music videos and the babies on the back of the album?) Do you remember this video? You can youtube it, but you have to sign in to make sure you are 18 or over in order to view it. Its the three of them in dresses, lying on a classroom floor with their legs in the air, giving birth to copies of the cd. Popping them out like seahorses do. Yep. Kurt giving birth.
Speaking of which, he loved the seahorse image. Which by the way, is the only animal that the male 'gives birth' to the young. Its really an incubation thing, but the image of a male seahorse popping little seahorses out its protruding belly is really striking. And Kurt drew it in his notebook and used it as a t-shirts design.
Okay, how about songs he wrote? Rape me. Heart-shaped box. Penny-royal tea. On a plain. Been a son. Dive. Listen to the lyrics of these songs. For reals. 'Dive in me.' 'She should have been a son.' 'I love myself more than you' (masculine) 'I know its wrong but what can I do' (feminine). 'I drink pennyroyal tea to still the life thats inside of me.' (you know that shit is a natural abortion inducer? And dont tell me those are courtneys lyrics. he still sang them.) 'umbilical noose?' lets be real here. He was always talking about birth. How is it no one is talking about this? I know it wasnt a big thing to talk about back then, but for pete's sake.
I mean, im not trying to move to the northwest and tell you I know more about your dear boy than you do, but maybe it takes an outside perspective? I mean, im not saying, im just saying...
He was so fucking excited to have a baby. So excited. He said it gave his life purpose. I mean, come on. Why do you think the media were so freaked out by him and courtney? Cuz it was a beautiful example of gender role reversal that I feel fit their identities really well. He is actually smiling in the photo shoot where they had him sitting on her lap. He liked it. I mean, im sure they had their share of dominant-culture-stereotypical-gendered situations and fights and whatever, but who was wearing the pants in that relationship? Kurts been quoted as wearing a dress around the house all the time cuz it was comfortable...
yes, fine. He also said that he wasnt gay. That he wished he were gay. That he stood in solidarity with gays. There has been endless supposition around this. Fine. Im not saying he was gay, im saying he was genderqueer. Which has very little to do with who he wants to sleep with. Tho, if he identified more as a woman, and was sleeping with women, then, actually, he was stealth-gay.
Dont tell me that no one who identified as a woman would write such heavy, intense, violent music. Dont make me laugh in your face. (and please dont make me mention courtney again.) He wrote about pain. Deep, personal pain. He got angry at his lot in life. He threw tantrums when people wouldnt listen to him how he wanted them to. Ladies, sound familiar?
okay, okay, have I pissed you off yet? Well good. Kurt was pissed off most of the time. Im pissed off most of the time. Oh, and please dont even pretend to give me a 'youre queer, you were looking for this kind of thing'. Cuz I wasnt. Its been since coming to this realization about someone like Kurt that I have been able to come to a lot of realizations about myself. Maybe it took someone who has felt his specific kind of pain (albeit in reverse) to hear it. Someone who didn't have every nanosecond of In Utero memorized before this sort of analysis was possible for them. And yes, im defensive, of course im defensive. This hits really close to home. And sounds kinda crazy. And im writing this in seattle, of all places. Jesus christ, who wouldnt be?
Certainly not Kurt. He was always defensive. If you listen to some of the things he says, you wonder why he sounds so annoyed/passive- aggressive/pissy. But if you think about a response being something that he would say as a girl, but is misinterpreted as being a boy, it makes more sense. There is a great example on the unplugged album. I think its after penny-royal tea. He plays it by himself, which he was obviously nervous about doing, and when he's done krist (I think) says 'that sounded good' and kurt responds by saying 'shut up' in what sounds like an aggressive, bullying kind of way. But imagine it was a shy female up there, one who cant figure out how to take a compliment and so goes kinda coy on you. You would know she doesnt mean 'shut up' but a grudging 'thank you'. Thats what kurt did there. See it? am i right or am i right? (Im not crazy, I swear...)
(deep breath) Hi, my name is Ray Vanek, and I'm obsessed with Kurt Cobain. (there, I said it.) Maybe that's not so weird. What's weird is that this all just started a year and a half ago. Very notably not 17 years ago. Or even 14. Nope, this obsession started the spring I was 28 years old. Not 14. not 17. or even 27, for that matter. You might wonder how a disaffected and angsty sophomore in high school could get away with not becoming obsessed. I do. I can't remember why he didn't grab me and pin me to the floor back then. I think he was too angry. And I was too goody-goody. Listening to the Beatles and (gulp) Phish and (double gulp) Dave Matthews Band. His snide interviews and violent performances did not amuse me. I was much more into decorum and innocent fun.
I was in the closet and not really even aware of it. I was bound by the strictures of society's gender role for me and had somehow managed to turn a blind eye on the chafing. I think I resented his showing the burns.
Because this is the premise of my obsession: I think Kurt's a girl. Okay, lemme rephrase. I feel like there is quite a bit of evidence, from his life and his work, to theorize that his gender identity was quite feminine. (is that blasphemy?)
There is the story about 'Kurt smells like teen spirit'. This doesn't bring up images of pep rallies, like the music video, but scents of the girlie deodorant 'teen spirit' that came out the same time as Bleach. Kurt smelled like a girl.
And how about the commercial that played on Mtv when In Utero came out? (how about the name 'in utero' and all the fetuses in his music videos and the babies on the back of the album?) Do you remember this video? You can youtube it, but you have to sign in to make sure you are 18 or over in order to view it. Its the three of them in dresses, lying on a classroom floor with their legs in the air, giving birth to copies of the cd. Popping them out like seahorses do. Yep. Kurt giving birth.
Speaking of which, he loved the seahorse image. Which by the way, is the only animal that the male 'gives birth' to the young. Its really an incubation thing, but the image of a male seahorse popping little seahorses out its protruding belly is really striking. And Kurt drew it in his notebook and used it as a t-shirts design.
Okay, how about songs he wrote? Rape me. Heart-shaped box. Penny-royal tea. On a plain. Been a son. Dive. Listen to the lyrics of these songs. For reals. 'Dive in me.' 'She should have been a son.' 'I love myself more than you' (masculine) 'I know its wrong but what can I do' (feminine). 'I drink pennyroyal tea to still the life thats inside of me.' (you know that shit is a natural abortion inducer? And dont tell me those are courtneys lyrics. he still sang them.) 'umbilical noose?' lets be real here. He was always talking about birth. How is it no one is talking about this? I know it wasnt a big thing to talk about back then, but for pete's sake.
I mean, im not trying to move to the northwest and tell you I know more about your dear boy than you do, but maybe it takes an outside perspective? I mean, im not saying, im just saying...
He was so fucking excited to have a baby. So excited. He said it gave his life purpose. I mean, come on. Why do you think the media were so freaked out by him and courtney? Cuz it was a beautiful example of gender role reversal that I feel fit their identities really well. He is actually smiling in the photo shoot where they had him sitting on her lap. He liked it. I mean, im sure they had their share of dominant-culture-stereotypical-gendered situations and fights and whatever, but who was wearing the pants in that relationship? Kurts been quoted as wearing a dress around the house all the time cuz it was comfortable...
yes, fine. He also said that he wasnt gay. That he wished he were gay. That he stood in solidarity with gays. There has been endless supposition around this. Fine. Im not saying he was gay, im saying he was genderqueer. Which has very little to do with who he wants to sleep with. Tho, if he identified more as a woman, and was sleeping with women, then, actually, he was stealth-gay.
Dont tell me that no one who identified as a woman would write such heavy, intense, violent music. Dont make me laugh in your face. (and please dont make me mention courtney again.) He wrote about pain. Deep, personal pain. He got angry at his lot in life. He threw tantrums when people wouldnt listen to him how he wanted them to. Ladies, sound familiar?
okay, okay, have I pissed you off yet? Well good. Kurt was pissed off most of the time. Im pissed off most of the time. Oh, and please dont even pretend to give me a 'youre queer, you were looking for this kind of thing'. Cuz I wasnt. Its been since coming to this realization about someone like Kurt that I have been able to come to a lot of realizations about myself. Maybe it took someone who has felt his specific kind of pain (albeit in reverse) to hear it. Someone who didn't have every nanosecond of In Utero memorized before this sort of analysis was possible for them. And yes, im defensive, of course im defensive. This hits really close to home. And sounds kinda crazy. And im writing this in seattle, of all places. Jesus christ, who wouldnt be?
Certainly not Kurt. He was always defensive. If you listen to some of the things he says, you wonder why he sounds so annoyed/passive- aggressive/pissy. But if you think about a response being something that he would say as a girl, but is misinterpreted as being a boy, it makes more sense. There is a great example on the unplugged album. I think its after penny-royal tea. He plays it by himself, which he was obviously nervous about doing, and when he's done krist (I think) says 'that sounded good' and kurt responds by saying 'shut up' in what sounds like an aggressive, bullying kind of way. But imagine it was a shy female up there, one who cant figure out how to take a compliment and so goes kinda coy on you. You would know she doesnt mean 'shut up' but a grudging 'thank you'. Thats what kurt did there. See it? am i right or am i right? (Im not crazy, I swear...)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Heck / HER, i dont even know her!
listen to this
hollow earth radio is my life now (just got on the board) and the weekend at Heck fest was a revelation. super-freaking-awesome. listen. especially to the interviews, they were so great.
the line-up for today, Part One: Wednesday July 30th 2-7pm PST
2:00 Real Live Shipwreck Survival Story told in honor of "Shipwreck Day" in Anacortes during Heck Fest.
2:10 LAKE at the Department of Safety and interview with Ashley of LAKE, 60 second interview with Blow & Tender Forever
3:15 Rich Jenson Intensive
4:10 THE ICE CREAM LADY INTERVIEW!
4:12 Little Wings
4:40 MORE ICE CREAM LADY INTERVIEWING!
4:45 The Moore Brothers and Owl and the Pussycat
5:15 Random Interviews: World History, American Field Recordings, etc.
5:25 Dennis Driscoll on Guemes Island and Interview afterwards
6:25 Mt. Eerie
sooo good!
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