Sweet treats for the literary, the musical, the feminine, and the generally filthy.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Udder Disdress

Taking a suggestion from a friend, I've added studded tears to Brigitte Bardot's perfect face. I also ended up just tearing up the sleeves after I realized the material was too thin to properly stud in a sort of box formation.


Boohoo

Monday, August 15, 2011

On To the Next One


There's much can be said for unemployment, I suppose. To say nothing of increased boogying activity abouts town, my little studio has grown. This new tri-leaf wooden table has upgraded my living situation tenfold, doubling as a writing desk and craft bench. At the moment it is strewn with strips of cotton, English standard silver studs, scissors, pliers, pens and notebooks.

One of my latest projects has been slicing up some shirts for a friend who screenprinted his own designs onto American Apparel tees, but was dissatisfied with how neat and boxy they are. Fabric is nice and thin, supersoft 50/50 cotton/polyester, which makes it nice to cut into drapey and distressed styles. So far I've played with his Brigette Bardot prints, and am eager to get my hands on his palm tree Jesus prints.


(check out that sweet racerback!)


Today I went out and found an Xacto knife to make the business of studding a pair of leather boots that were gifted unto me much less painful. I am grateful also to Artichoke Haircut for providing me with incentive to produce my poetry. I think it's the combination of high-level proficiency among the editorial staff, the professional look of the chapbook itself, and the encouragement to be utterly batshit weirdo and humorous in approach that endears me to its monthly reading series. Brand new turds on Jukebox. Word.

Also completed the first step in my introduction to Henry Miller, vis-a-vie his 1930 novel Tropic of Cancer, containing some resonating passages I've rewritten in my journal for the penstroke experience. I'm also fifty some pages into The Colossus of Maroussi, a literary 180, about Greece. Decidedly more upbeat. In fact, some of the passages on his "bliss" are starting to irritate me. But presumably he deserves it. His time throughout Cancer is addled with syphilitic prostitutes, vomitus, lice and homelessness. This is also why I like it. I just imagine a Paris, entering the second decade of the twentieth century stretched sooty with growing pains from the Industrial Revolution, where people used many of the same endearing expressions of disgust and nuances common to our day. I will find some and list them later. But here are a few literary gems:
(from Tropic of Cancer. Henry Miller; 1961 Grove Press, New York, NY.)
"I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul."

"Let us have a world of men and women with dynamos between their legs, a world of natural fury, of passion, action, drama, dreams, madness, a world that produces ecstasy and not dry farts." (257)

"Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates." (254)

And:

"If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world." (248).

Yeah, he's got a thing for verbosity and that thing I do, the list of ever-expanding images and adjectives within one thought. It's just that once you put down what you think is a good word, there's a better one to follow it, and a better and a more perfect and a perfecter, and all of them seem to reflect one another's glow. Word addition as opposed to word choice, maybe. Word Addiction. Or just over-choiciness. Whatever. This is Miller country. If it weren't a little messy it wouldn't be beautiful.

Another beautiful thing I've discovered is this band Lost Tribe, kind of goth punk out of Richmond, VA. Not just because I'm so wooed by the idea of subcultures as tribes, but listen to their samples on their page.


And when they played at Golden West on Saturday night I wasn't disappointed. In fact, even though they were opening for Ice Age, a Danish hardcore band, who are also pretty awesome, a lot of us thought maybe Tribe was better. I noticed the lead singer right away, with his Hendrix fro, light brown skin and sweet studded boots. Their set involved A LOT of fog. I mean, we were choking on it in the front row. The drummer and bass player all but disappeared, and they were all backlit by one single white spotlight.

The guys from Ice Age are teenagers, which may be why Tribe struck us as a little more put together--they're like ten years older. But doesn't mean that I didn't sustain a bunch of arm-bruises and soreness from pushing around a bunch of sweaty dudes during their set. And check out this homemade video they did.

The lead singer is pretty adorable, but also commanded the stage and audience with a true-blue death glare and spitting range. (There was also a guy behind me spraying beer out of his mouth onto us. It was a salivatingly good time.) Nice to see exciting live music, especially hardcore/ish and Euro to boot.

I will have to write a love poem to Baltimore someday soon.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Um...

Still not sure how I'm supposed to watch this video by Best Coast without giggling. But I dig her tights nonetheless. And, you know, the whole absurd West Side Story a la Drew Barrymore thing.