Inquisitions

Somehow in the last week I've ended up watching two somewhat disturbing films with religious persecution as their main theme. Both were difficult to watch, and yet both resonated with me very deeply. These are the 'horror' films that I like to watch. They are period movies, but based during very frightening times.



The first is Ken Russell's The Devils, made in 1971. It is interesting to note that Ken Russell also directed The Boyfriend, a campy musical that starred Twiggy that I often rented from the library and watched with my siblings growing up. It stars a young Vanessa Redgrave as the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne of The Angels, who fantasizes about Father Grandier, played by Oliver Reed. It follows the true story of a group of nuns in Loudon, France, who claimed to have been posessed by the priest. It is based off a book by Alduous Huxley that I am interested in finding. The dialogue is incredible, the production and direction is heavily stylized, and the acting is superb. For those of us raised with any Christian values, some of the footage is going to be truly disturbing, but overall is completely worth it to see a flame haired Vanessa Redgrave flailing around on the ground with her freakish hunch screaming "I'M BEAUTIFUL! NOOOOoooo I'M BEAUTIFUL!!" I literally COULD NOT get up from the couch.





Goya's Ghosts came out in 2006, and it starred Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem. While the film boasts gorgeous set and costume design and a heavy dose of beautiful Spain, it suffers from an 'aimless' narrative. The story itself is unconventional, but should still work, were it not for the very conventional score. The music in the film is TERRIBLE, and I believe, what truly prevents the flick from reaching its full potential. Even though the plot doesn't have the traditional arc that we are used to seeing onscreen, (none of the characters really change or evolve except for the worse, a lot is left unexplained.) this formula could still work. It is a very unique and unexplored time and place in history, and rather than letting the events unfold, the music sets us up for things that don't happen. I was furious- it pisses me off to see a good period piece ruined by cheesy music. If the film was scored by Philip Glass, it would have received MUCH better reviews.



More on Goya's Ghosts and tragic beauty here.

Up Dates

I've been completely missing from this end of the blog world lately. I doubt any one even reads this any more, but in case they do, I thought I'd share a few links to what I've been up to.

You'll most likely see more of my blog updating happening on the official website for my dolls, The Kouklitas. Here is the direct link to my daily updated doll blog.

I'm also twittering. Still haven't quite got the hang of it.

Just finished reading




Still waiting for my hair to grow out



Also stay tuned my new tumblr page for my new performance art piece, beauty.underground

Inspiration

Fashion Weak!

So, as regular readers of my blog know, I tend to disappear for the months of September and February as a result of my involvement in fashion week. And for the first time in five years, I wasn't exclusively working for one company-- ahh, the beautiful life of a broke freelancer! So, for a few weeks, I put the dolls on hold, and dove in.

Last year I did a shoot with David Roemer for D magazine. The other models were Coley Brown and Caroline Trentini, and somehow, by coincidence I worked with both of them again for the Spring 2010 shows.



Coley had to get zipped up into a Petrou/Man bodysuit that was inspired by the original photo shoot I did for Nicolas' line back in July. The men filled a black room in the garment district, and stood on a platform over sound bites of space ships and whistles. It was haunting, eerie, and beautiful. The clothes were flawless, and the effect striking. Most of the models were good sports, standing for almost two hours completely zipped up-- afterwards Coley and I caught up a little and he gave me a paper from the recent exhibition from his first photography show, Growing Up, a collaboration with Patrick Tsai, a friend of mine who I met in Taiwan some years ago, and who Coley recently met in Japan (coincidental? The Universe moves most mysteriously!)



Coley getting dressed and ready to stand for two hours fully dressed and zipped.








Me and Coley, all suited up.


I also had the opportunity to do some freelance sewing and embroidery for Ranjana Khan, the wife of designer Naeem Khan who recently started her own collection of costume jewelry and accessories. They had their presentation together in their gorgeous 36th street showroom. Naeem's amazon girls were all standing on platforms in the main space, with their 'punk raj' gowns aglitter, while Ranjana's girls lounged on sofas and ladders in an adjoining room filled with flowers, live butterflies, and jewelry portraits. I was surprised to see Caroline Trentini, another D magazine vet, lounging as well.


A work in progress.


A glimpse of Naeem's show.


Reunion with Caroline Trentini



It was fun, and a lot of hard work-- like most of fashion. It was early to rise to help Nicolas with alterations and last minute presentation details, and late to bed for three days of non stop hand work for Ranjana- straight from the hangover of Nicolas' faboo after party at Apotheke.

The Giant Ashtray

This last Thursday afternoon my friends and I decided we were going to the beach. Like most beach plans the day was set aside in advance, and we were determined to make it to the ocean, rain or shine. Even though the sky was heavy and gray and the air was cool, we trooped on; sailing to Coney Island on the Q train, over the Manhattan bridge, underground and overground through the tree lined streets of south east brooklyn.



We lucked out. The rain turned out to be a few modest drizzles, and the gray skies frightened the tourists and locals who would've been competition for a spot in the sand. We relaxed, read, talked, watched the skies. I dipped my feet in the water, but it was cold and the sand was full of broken glass and cigarette butts. The mood was melancholy and contemplative, we simply existed in the face of the ocean and sky, vast and silent, except for the groups of screams and whistles from the far off park. After a few hours we packed up camp and made our way to the Wonder Wheel, where we packed ourselves into a red metal cage and swung around for a little while, pointing out the cityscape on the horizon line, the people below.



By the time we continued on our walk to Brighton Beach, I felt fully enraptured in the moment. It's not something I can easily articulate, but I felt a certain oneness with our walk, with the air, and the strange people we passed.

And then my eyes grazed across the skyline and I saw the thin beautiful brown arms of a woman adjusting her sari in the fluttering wind. When the scarf came down an emotional tide rippled within me. I knew those arms, that cornrowed head. It was Key.

Key used to work in a shop on the corner of Prince and Mulberry by the Young Designer's Market, where I stood on the corner and passed out cards my first year back in New York. I maintained a job during the week. We immediately became friends, I stopped in her shop on an almost hourly basis every Saturday and Sunday to gossip about the neighbors, our love lives or lack thereof, and our sadness and dissatisfaction with our careers. We were two artists, bound together by the prison of the paycheck. We fantasized, we sang, and we laughed. We waited for our husbands, we waited to be discovered, we waited for our lives.

And then one day, Key left. The shop owner refused to pay her, and she was gone. We had phone numbers, we texted, we talked, but it was mostly through the other locals in the neighborhood that I found out about Miss Key. She was working at the Mercer Hotel, I eventually left the market.

In the ensuing two years, despite facebook, myspace, emails, or telephones, we lost touch. Life caught up with us, and whirled us into different directions. We didn't see each other once. She called from a payphone in the rain one afternoon. I called on a walk to meet friends at Astor Place.

And then there she was. I called her name, and when she turned around I was consumed with emotion. I felt her sadness flood into me, and for a moment we didn't speak, we just cried and held each other. She was having a bad day/week/month, hiding out on the Coney Island boardwalk, eating a pile of deliciously greasy food. And I was one with the universe. So much has changed for me since those times I spent warming up in her shop during the cold winter Nolita mornings. My art has become my work, and I was surrounded by some of my closest friends- and had a beautiful boy on my arm. Life has been good. She kept saying how much she needed to see me at that moment, and I couldn't help but feel some greater force making it happen.



After we said our goodbyes, I couldn't explain the sudden outburst of emotion to my friends. How do you explain something that just is? A feeling. Rushing water at the bottom of our wells. Dark, and moving. Our souls know each other, our hurt knows each other.



I don't think it will be another two years before I see Miss Key again. Read her beautiful words at her blog, Lady Plum.

The Purple Diaries

Many people who know of Mary Astor associate her with the infamous scandal of 1936: The Purple Diaries. It was a divorce case that involved both of my great-grandparents battling it out over a custody battle for my grammy Marylyn; and it was also one of the first tabloid divorce cases to hit front page newspaper.

Dr. Franklin Thorpe, my great-grandfather, alleged that Mary kept a diary whose pages were scrawled with purple ink, that noted all of her dubious affairs with many hollywood bigwigs, but mostly in relation to her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman.
While looking around on the internet for other things, i stumbled upon an article from the LA times blog, in their regular Movie Star Mystery Photo section. I posted a few things from the link below, fun read!!



Pages from the diary??




Ms Astor in court. Work the eyebrows!




Ms Astor on the far left, Her lawyer in the middle whispering to gossip queen Ruth Chatterton.




Fascinating article from the time--click for a larger read!!

Wednesday Matinee

NYC has blessed me with an insane amount of self motivated work lately. This means projects and deadlines that I am left to meet--enforced by myself; which is something I begged the universe for during the last three painful years I was working in the glamorous fashion industry. But, because I am my own worst enemy, this also means I have been spending waaaaay too much time taking advantage of my wonderful party promoter friends and their seemingly endless supply of SVEDKA and good music. Which means spending waaay too much time being hung over on the couch every day, not working, watching my young life flash before my eyes in a succession of television hours and facebook masturbation. It was one such morning that I caught a charming commercial on LOGO (the gay channel) for THE JEFFERY AND COLE CASSEROLE, a half hour long series of sketches written/edited/produced by Jeffery Self and Cole Escola, two very talented NYC based writers.

I was immediately intrigued by the lo-fi feel of the show, and after watching a few daytime reruns, I realized it had been a long time since I had laughed so hard during a hangover. I did a little internet stalking and found out these boys were somewhat major league youtube celebrities, which is what must have cinched the deal avec Logo. They are known on the internets as the VGL boys, aka Very Good Looking Boys- which is very fitting as they are both quite adorable.

But I have been missing out on my casserole lately because something in the universe snapped and I suddenly have managed to get my life moving again, which means more selective and career beneficial partying (happy hour 'business meetings' that send me to bed by eleven), as well as hours spent doing the work I need to be doing to get my career as an artist going. Making the bloody dolls, taking pictures, going to castings, drawing, writing writing writing.

So you can imagine my pleasure when I was in Hell's Kitchen, having a cig after my last go-see of the day, when I noticed two VGL boys walking down the street. First I dumbly yelled "I LOVE YOUR SHOW" and then I asked to take their picture for yangabang. We got in a conversation about my tattoos, which inevitably led to me bragging about Mary Astor. Cole mentioned he loved her in a movie where she was the 'other woman' (Dodsworth!!! It was Dodsworth!) and Jeffery sighed wistfully, saying his great-grandmother was probably knitting tea cozies. It is my hope that someday we'll all be besties and they'll invite me and Snejana over to discuss politics and butt plugs...but until then, here's a few of my fave videos as well as links to their (well worth reading) blogs.







COLE ESCOLA
JEFFERY SELF

Lords & Pirates

Summer Reading has been somewhat hampered by the recent influx of projects I've taken on, some of which I'm actually hoping I'll get paid for. But there is always the subway train, and Housing Works, whose trays of dollar books are tempting for the literate and poor artist like myself. Here are my two most recent trappings, followed by a book I am halfway through.

A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Richard Hughes


first edition cover art

Originally published in 1929, a high wind in Jamaica is a captivating tale of pirates, children, and the savagery that both genres of humanity represent. It tells the story of two groups of children, who are sent from the hurricane torn shores of post-colonial Jamaica back to their 'native' England, a place they only know about through tales of their parents. On the way the ship is seized by pirates, and eventually the reader is left to wonder who is really in control of the story-- the pirates or the children.

The premise sounds somewhat ridiculous, but the intimate narrative tone reels you right in---giving us thorough views into the insights of the children, who think and act as children do (immediately connecting us to their characters, we were all savage children at one time) which can definitely be disturbing. Even though the book itself is a short and 'easy' read, every sentence is so saturated with poignant truth, that I wanted to reread the whole thing after finishing the last page. This was a book that made me want to write.

LORD BYRON & GREEK LOVE : HOMOPHOBIA IN 19th CENTURY ENGLAND
Louis Crompton


Lord Byron the Sexy

We've all heard about Lord Byron-- the great romantic poet who invented the term/lifestyle of the dandy-- but only in the last twenty or so years has his personal life been able to be examined in a completely unbiased fashion in regards to his own sexuality. By examining the social climate of 19th Century England, Louis Crompton paints a thorough portrait of George Gordon Byron as a tormented bisexual who's celebrity was at odds with the vicious treatment of anyone suspected of sodomy.

England was far behind other nations in terms of its treatment of homosexuals- where to be caught more or less meant death or exile. As Lord Byron grew up, and courted lovers of all genders and backgrounds, he was constantly haunted and tormented by the possibility of society discovering his love for men. Particularly fascinating were his personal letters to another closeted friend, telling of his love triumphs in Greece, where every thing is alluded to in a lyrical code. Boys names changed to flowers, trysts changed to prayer meetings. A fascinating glimpse into a time where money and fame couldn't save you from society's prejudices-- an issue still too familiar with almost two hundred years later.

THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH
Michael Chabon



I read a few reviews of the highly anticipated movie remake of this book, and when every one was outraged at the film's blatant cover-up of the sexual aspects throughout the work; I had to see what I was missing out on. I love reading books/watching movie books, sometimes in either order, and after picking this one up, it doesn't surprise me that they got it wrong.

The prose is layered and intense, and the storyline is at once nostalgic and immediately meaningful. If you're in the mood for a little bit of smarter summer reading, pick this one up. However, I'm only halfway through it, so it could all go down from here and I should probably stop writing...now.