Artist Jeanne-Claude of Jeanne-Claude and Christo has passed away at 74. I didn't get to see THE GATES or any of their works, but I do have a piece of fabric from The Gates tucked away in my box of treasures. It's like having a little piece of her hair.
Read more on NYTIMES.COM.
Labels: ART, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD
You can audit Yale's Philosophy of Death course from your bed. Click HERE.
What should my attitude toward death be?
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA
You've heard all the bad news over and over again, but when I'm assuaging my guilt for enjoying a cigarette or three I like to read THIS ARTICLE and remember the social and therapeutic benefits of cigarettes. So drop the guilt, cause feeling guilty will make it harder to put them down.
Labels: BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA
In 1518 a plague broke out in Strasbourg causing the residents to dance until they died:
She was still dancing several days later. Within a week about 100 people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance. The authorities were convinced that the afflicted would only recover if they danced day and night. So guildhalls were set aside for them to dance in, musicians were hired to play pipes and drums to keep them moving, and professional dancers were paid to keep them on their feet. Within days those with weak hearts started to die.
By the end of August 1518 about 400 people had experienced the madness. Finally they were loaded aboard wagons and taken to a healing shrine. Not until early September did the epidemic recede.(Source)
The theory is that the people began dancing because of the extreme distress caused by famine, disease, and poverty. The need to dance was so strong that when the urge finally overtook every reason not to dance it ended up killing them.
This reminds me of a documentary I saw in an experimental film class in university. The people of an African (I believe - might have been Haitian...?) village would set aside a day every year or so to go into trances. They would induce themselves into feverish and violent dancing and convulse until they frothed at the mouth, claiming spirits had overtaken them. Animal sacrifices were made. Child shamans spoke in tongues. Huge riotous gatherings took place. And then, the next day, everything went back to normal. People behaved as if nothing unusual had happened. Any indiscretions were not addressed. It was as if it simply did not happen.
Apparently this was a way for them to release stress - these trance dance rituals. They ascribed a higher power to the act of dancing so that they could completely release themselves and be as violent and frenetic as needed without being self-conscious about their movements. I guess it's the same reason that people drink before they feel comfortable dancing. It would appear that the need to dance is inherent, but only when we're either completely desperate for it or we are sure our movements will have no consequences can it really be released. Looking at these examples, it seems that dancing is not at all a frivolous or unimportant activity. A night out on the town could very well save your life.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, YOUTUBE
Every once in a while I break up with myself. It's painful, but it has to happen. For the dumper side of me it's a relief and I look forward to moving on to bigger and better stuff. For the dumped side of me, I go down the rabbit-hole and am forced to painstakingly analyze everything I've done wrong. I'm like a Mini Wheat. A soggy Mini Wheat.
I was once told by someone who I thought mattered that the most interesting thing about my photographs was seeing my discomfort as a photographer reflected in the expressions of my subjects. I clung to this deduction like it was the only thing that made me unique, and I've just realized that it's something I've been hiding behind.
Ever since I began making images seriously I've bounced back and forth from using just my camera and the sun to making HIGHLY CONTRIVED and constructed work. My struggle for the past few years has been trying to define myself as an artist. How do I reconcile my aesthetic and thematic disparities?
I've often blamed my eclecticism for my difficulties in getting shows with my own work or for failing to get grant money for short films I've written and photo series I've proposed. I thought having done ad work made people think of me less as an artist. I got a big head and thought I was too big for Toronto. But recently I came to the realization that maybe it's not them, it's me (see, it really is like breaking up with myself). And, although I have to keep doing what interests and excites me, maybe I need to grow up a bit, too.
I admit that I like the look of distrust in my photographs, but it's gotten me into trouble. I've always found it more interesting and engaging when my subject doesn't look pretty. I've never been interested in making the people who sit for me look good; I've been interested in making a compelling image. Avedon's images of a despondent Marilyn Monroe are more interesting to me than any other image of her. I've never requested "fierce" from someone I was photographing. It just doesn't thrill me. I find it so disposable. But I've often been unfair to my subjects. I've objectified them because I believed it was more interesting. While I stand by my photographs, while I think they say as much about my insecurities as they do about the subject's, I now understand how cruel I can be.
After spending a couple weeks in San Francisco with photographers at different stages of their careers I was thrown for a loop. Of course I have been around photographers I think are amazing for years, but I mostly went to school with them. I saw them do crap and I saw them do great things and I saw their insecurities and their strengths grow and change as they did. And they saw mine. Being around Parker, Ryan, and Luke changed my mind about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I'm sure they all have their insecurities, but unlike my colleagues in Toronto, I didn't see them grow, I just see them now, and I'm humbled in different ways.
PARKER is a brash young thing heading into his first year at California College of the Arts. He's one of those photographers who loves having a camera in his hand and takes it everywhere. He's going to kick my ass big time and he's going to do so well in school. I'm so excited for him and can't wait to see what he'll do. It makes me remember how people who had taken time between high school and university did so much better in the photo program because they really knew they wanted to be there. Parker's really unselfconscious with his camera, he trusts that people want to be photographed and want to be photographed by him, as well they should. I've never had that confidence. I always felt like my subjects were doing me a favour rather than getting anything out of the experience themselves. Watching Parker shoot with such excitement for the medium was both inspiring and disconcerting. I felt like I didn't get nearly as much out of my education as he will. The lucky thing is that I'll get to go back to school this fall. I can't wait to approach my film education with a fervor and understanding that I lacked in my undergraduate experience.
LUKE, who I didn't get to spend a lot of time with but hope to get to know better in New York, is fresh out of UCLA and blowing up the photo world. His work is really fantastic and beautiful and original and varied but coherent - something I aspire to but take too far in some ways.
RYAN is a well-known young photographer who did his MFA at SVA and watching him photograph was so fascinating for me. We use the same camera, but not in the same way. I am sure that in some ways the style of my university education gave me this complex that I have to have a set or a gimmick going on in my photographs in order for people to be interested in them. I've felt like just having my camera wasn't enough, and I felt that from the people who asked me to take photographs of them. I didn't think anyone would trust that my photograph was going to be interesting unless I had a stylist and an elephant on hand and we were going to a treetop village in the Amazon. Watching Ryan trust himself and trust that a camera was all he needed was fascinating. And when I sat for Ryan I suddenly understood how unfair I could be with my subjects. I totally trusted Ryan because I knew his photographs and I knew he would not be unkind to me. It was when I was sitting for him that I understand why people might have been reticent to let me photograph them knowing that my photographs were all about what I wanted them to be, not about who or what they really are.
I have not been a subject for anyone for about six years. I didn't really understand what it was like to be in front of the lens, which I now realize is something a photographer must experience seriously. I thought I knew what it was like to be a subject, and I had disdain for subjects who (I assumed) wanted to "look hot". Both Parker and Ryan photographed me, and while I'll never ask them to retouch an image of me or have the delusion that I'm a model, I see how vulnerable it can make someone feel to be photographed.
So, moving forward, my overarching modus operandi is becoming clearer. When editing my photographs from San Francisco I went down the rabbit-hole because I was afraid others would think them boring landscape photos. But, for once, I'm going ahead with what I believe in rather than what I want people to think is exciting and fresh. I resisted the urge to hide behind digital gimmicks or design tricks and just edited the straight images from an intuitive place.
I see these images as a continuation and purification of what I began in London. London was an accidental beginning to a theme that carried through the photographs in Are We Having Fun Yet? When I went to Mexico I expected this theme to continue, but I mostly just found good people genuinely wanting to enjoy themselves with their families and getting along and having a good time, so the focus shifted. My own solitude began to leak through as I felt on the outside of this group of people I didn't want to judge anymore. This came out as well as a methodical and almost meditative way of photographing. A centre-heavy, Bernd & Hilla Becher informed framing of the subject emerged. I was compelled and excited by this somewhat boring regimented style of photographing. This style reappears in the San Francisco photographs and is even more methodical and unapologetic in its wistful prettiness. I think this way I'm photographing is a foil to the gimmicky pictures I do. It is the most consistently recurrent style of photograph I have taken over any period of time. And it's not to say that I won't have fun with photography and image-making ever again, but I'm really trying to pay attention to what these are and why I'm doing them.
Parker told me that when we went to photograph together that he felt he totally was not a part of my process, that I was working alone. It's true. It needs to be a solitary act for me. I need to get lost in it, I need to feel uninhibited and not judged or scrutinized.
In the end I still haven't been able to pin down what I'm going for, but this way of photographing is leading me by the hand to somewhere I want to be. It's taking me back to the photograph and the medium itself. Kind of purifying it. And it's still me. There are themes that I've always imbued in my work - loneliness, smallness, boredom, apathy, bleached or faded vibrancy, existentialism, and a kind of hush and stillness or stasis beyond the obvious stillness of the photographic medium. I think these themes are not hiding behind anything else anymore. I hope they're not so earnest, that maybe they're a little more natural.
Though all this was a tricky mind-trap to navigate I feel better, lighter, and ready to move forward. I'm still proud of the things I've done. Some things more so than others, but it's all brought me here. And though my work may sometimes be schticky and sloppy, I'm glad to say that I've never approached it from the side of irony.
So for now this Mini Wheat is floating alone, but sugar-side-up in a warm bowl of milk.
Labels: ART, BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, PHOTOGRAPHY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
The answer is at your fingertips: WWW.HASTHELARGEHADRONCOLLIDERDESTROYEDTHEWORLDYET.COM
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
By PAUL CHAN from his exhibition at the University of Chicago until April 12.
These free FONTS are pretty great too.
Labels: ART, DEATH AND DRAMA
I was watching Big Love (here comes a spoiler if you haven't seen episode two of the third season) and I was at the part when Barb is talking about dying "taking great comfort in knowing what her family will look like in the celestial afterlife" or however it goes. This made me think about whether or not I'm afraid to die. I don't believe in an afterlife, and basically think that when I die I'm dead that's it. I won't remember anyone or anything from my life, it will all just dissipate and disappear.
This made me recall that horrible movie "Paycheck" starring Ben Affleck. In this movie Ben's character decides he is going to have something done to him which will make him forget the next three years of his life.
I often wonder what it's like to get amnesia or to "not remember" events. When I was a kid this boy from the neighbourhood, Ray Oakley (or maybe it was his brother Chad...either way, good names), got hit by a car. When he recovered I remember him saying that he didn't remember anything about the accident, though he was physically conscious and responsive throughout the whole experience. He said he remembers going out on his bike with the other kids, but doesn't remember leaving his driveway.
But this is the thing - if you're about to go through a horrible experience but know you won't remember it, are you still afraid to go through it? I mean, you still have to experience it even though you won't remember it. Say, for example, you made a deal where you would have a wish fulfilled, but you had to witness a murder. You wouldn't remember anything about the murder but would the terror of going into that situation, even knowing it wouldn't stay with you in any way, stop you from going through with the deal?
So anyway, back to Big Love and dying. I guess I'm afraid that I will feel like I didn't get done everything I wanted to do and it will all be for nothing, and that none of it will matter because everything I know and remember will just disappear with me, and here I sit making sticks with hair that spin in space.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, MUSIC
Next up: "iTunes Essentials: Black People Music."
When are people going to stop doing shit like this?
Lord almighty.
Labels: BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MUSIC, REALLY FUCKING GAY
IT'S A SAD DAY. I suppose POLANOID will become a graveyard.
Here's one of my favourite Polaroids that I took way back in 2003:
I will miss Polaroid...but damn if only the film wasn't so expensive!
RIP
Thanks to Tim for the tip about Polanoid.
Here's one of my favourite Polaroids that I took way back in 2003:
I will miss Polaroid...but damn if only the film wasn't so expensive!
RIP
Thanks to Tim for the tip about Polanoid.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON.
I made a one minute short for THE FUCK DEATH FOUNDATION for their screening and fundraiser:
Friday, January 25th
8PM
Camera Bar
1028 Queen Street West
Toronto
$5 Cover
My short will be shown before the main event - Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal".
Come kill death.
MORE INFO
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
I haven't been posting much crap-garbage I find around cause I haven't found much crap-garbage that I care about at the moment. So I'm just gonna write some junk. And I'm gonna continue to do what I bitch about on other blogs...I'm gonna post more pictures of me...but they're from the trouble years so it's worth it.
I was on the subway today when I finally realized it's 2008. You know how sometimes things to do with dates and time changing take a while to sink in? Like after your birthday you'll say you're 7 when you're actually 8 and you win a colouring contest in the wrong age group and you go up to the front of the school to accept the award for best drawing in the 5-7 year old category and your classmates stand up and yell "He's not 7 he's 8!" and they strip you of your title of "Best Colourer of a Muskoka Winter Scene" in front of everyone? Grade 3 sucked.
Anyway, I realized it's been 10 years since I left to go on an exchange to Switzerland for a semester of school. It was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I worked and paid for my flight out of my two-horse title-stripping town, lived with a francophone Swiss family, went to a francophone school, saw Milan and Paris and Zurich, snowboarded amidst avalanches, ate breakfast and dinner every day with a view of Mont Blanc from the table, showered after gym class with a guy I nicknamed "horse-cock", and began to come out of the closet. It was terribly liberating, and the return to the misery of Gravenhurst was a prison sentence. I specifically remember standing in the hall a couple weeks after I got back, staring at the alternating brown, orange, and green lockers, paining for my European life, and thinking "In 10 years, I will not miss Switzerland at all." That devastated me.
At that point in my life my experiences overseas were the most important thing. There was nothing bigger or more important than those memories, and there was nothing better than those memories. And for some reason I recognized that one day they would not be the most important things in my life, and I dreaded not missing Switzerland. I anticipated THE DEATH OF MISSING.
And it faded, the missing. I went to school in a bigger town where they had photography classes, I found friends, a boyfriend, got my driver's license, and so on. Then other missings took over. Friends moved, boyfriends moved on, I moved to Toronto. A series of missings and renewals, all the while Switzerland became a sharp point in my mind. I wrote to my host family less frequently, I stopped looking through the album, I stopped watching the video, I just stopped missing it.
The most interesting thing to me in The Death of Missing is that by the time missing dies it doesn't hurt anymore. You fear losing those emotions, but in losing the emotions you lose the pain. There comes a time when thinking of something you used to love doesn't cause you to well up or get excited or swell in the heart (or another) region. When I break up with someone I have loved (okay...when I get dumped) I at first dread the day I won't long to feel him beside me. But it just fades...and in the end it doesn't hurt.
I know it's neurotic...to miss something is one thing, but to fear not missing something is entirely another, then to dramatize the fading of that feeling is beyond reason...but that's how my ticker tapes (what?).
I won't say I'm not nostalgic about things even when I don't miss them. I can't say that plowing through my packet of photos from Switzerland didn't swirl up some sludge in my black heart. But it just doesn't kill me like it used to.
I wonder what I'll miss in 10 years. Maybe if they stop making Twix bars I'll miss those.
Anyway, here are those pics:
^Me with my lesbian retiree haircut and exchange partner Maria at the Creux du Van.
^Standing on the balcony of my room at my friend Estelle's ski chalet.
^Eating chocolate on the boardwalk in Morges.
The photo at the top is from the window of my host family's dining room. Mont Blanc is between the V the mountains on the right make. The mountains on the right are where Evian water comes from. Oooooooooooo!
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
I'm back after holidays and the flu.
I had a dream last week that my teeth were falling out. According to online dream dictionaries either something great is going to happen, or something terrible is going to happen. So I'm going to continue spending my time alternating my mindset between "excited" and "terrified".
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, EW, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM
Or you'll end up like Freddy Mercury (that's apparently who is depicted in the last image) in Moscow's Anti-Drug Wax Museum.
From the now defunct YDA.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Peta set up THIS WEBSITE to trash the Olsens for wearing fur.
You can watch a Full House spoof video, send "The Trollsens" a message, or DRESS THEM UP.
In case you haven't guessed I love those chicas. Have I told you about when I rang up Ashley's purchases once and asked her for ID when her credit card wasn't signed? Oh yeah, I probably have. Best day of my life. She didn't think it was that funny.
They could skin a white tiger and wear it for half an hour then throw it in a tub of acid for all I care. As long as they're happy.
Hilary Alexander says "As long as you don't use endangered species, I think it's perfectly acceptable to wear fur."
Link via DLISTED.
Labels: BAD DOG, DEATH AND DRAMA
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA
Artist PINAR YOLACAN went to Central St Martin's, Chelsea School, and Cooper Union. Then she
Above is from Pinar's latest series and below from an older work.
Via INSTINTO GUAPO.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, BUY ME THIS, DEATH AND DRAMA, EW, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Skip to the end if you want to see a funny picture.
Otherwise, read on if you dare. I warn you, it's gonna get a bit "free-flowy."
You know how sometimes a theme pops up in your life? A bunch of coincidental things happen in a row and it feels too unlikely that it's just a coincidence? I love that. Even though it probably just is a coincidence or you're thinking about something so you're more atune to other happenings of the same nature.
Anyway, my most recent theme is the relation between consciousness and physicality - mind and body (sort of).
If you've ever been high, whatever your drug choice is, you know that physical reactions cause mental changes. Drinking makes you drunk, smoking pot makes you paranoid or giggly or lightheaded, taking ecstasy makes you euphoric, heroin makes every pain melt away. Even smoking a cigarette causes a mental change.
I'm reading "Theatre of the Mind" by Jay Ingram right now. He used to host "Daily Planet" on the Discovery Channel and "Quirks and Quarks" on CBC. I saw the book at my friend Claire and Jaron's apartment a while ago and decided to buy it recently. It seemed a more plausible read than my perpetually half-finished "Godel Escher Bach" endeavour (that was an inside joke for GEB-readers) that started 4 years ago.
I'm not that far into "Theatre of the Mind," but it's about trying to understand what consciousness is, if it is tied to a specific physical part of our bodies, and why we are conscious of ourselves. (The book talks about animals being alive and thinking about getting food or escaping harm, but that animals don't stop and ponder themselves. Their feelings are direct responses to the present.) Ingram often talks about how our conscious thoughts seem to appear behind our eyes. When you recall a memory or think of what an apple looks like, the image seems to present itself one or two inches back from the centre of your eyes (AKA, the "Theatre of the Mind," the stage on which your consciousness plays out). Why don't these visions materialize at the back of the head, or a couple inches outside of the skull? Is it possible to have out of body experiences by moving your conscious
Apparently, ancient cultures believed the heart to be the centre of consciousness because it is where the physical response to conscious thought most obviously appears. I have always struggled to understand why thoughts I have can cause physical pains or aches in my body. I also am trying to understand why drugs and alcohol can make those pains disappear.
This brings up when I first thought about separating my consciousness from my physical self. After a mind-bending (read inebriated) summer, I had a thought about the idea of Heaven. I have always thought that Heaven would be pretty damn boring. I mean, if you have to do boring things and follow The Bible or whatever doctrine you choose to follow in order to get into Heaven or Nirvana then chances are you have to keep doing those things once you're in. SNORE. I always find the best things in life are the opposite of religious ideals. Namely sex, drugs, and all those other deadly sins. My idea of Heaven is a bareback massage orgy in chocolate sauce followed by cancer-free cigarettes and champagne with HENRY CAVILL (shut up he's hot) on the couch watching endless all new episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program and throwing my best actor/director/screenwriter Oscars at the screen when we don't like a joke one of the ugly gays makes (I have a LOT of Oscars in Heaven). At least that's one version.
So, if being free of all those wonderful sinful things on Earth is what gets you into Heaven, then you must have to do those things in Heaven. And if that's all you do in Heaven, then shouldn't the people who do those things on Earth be in Heaven already? Heaven on Earth? Shouldn't they be so blissed out by being good Christians that they have no pain in their lives? If not, what's going to make them be blissed out in Heaven? What's going to be different? That's when it came to me. Heaven, if it does exist, is a place where no matter what you're doing you're enjoying it. That's exactly what drugs are. Why else would it be so much fun to be pure?
So then, if Heaven is the same thing as drugs, then why not just do drugs all the time? Why not just alienate yourself from everyone and chase the dragon off the cliff? Get higher and higher till you die. You'd be in Heaven on Earth, and since I don't actually believe in any afterlife, why not experience it now? It's a complete separation of your mind from your body - or at least an alteration of your body by your mind.
This is the idea of Tantra and Tantric sex as well - using your mind to create bliss in your body.
Same with trying to attain Nirvana - you're attempting to free your mind from the constraints of the body. My friend Ariel just went to a retreat and meditated in silence for 10 hours a day for 10 days straight. She wrote to me:
"Back from meditating. I'm enlightened, wheee!
But really, I am changed. Life changed. Clear. Inspired. I have learned how
to release and free myself from misery."
Thank God it worked cause I didn't do the website changes she asked me to do while she was gone.
My friend David was looking at himself in a reflection on the streetcar. He said he feels better knowing he can see himself. He said it would be great to be able to get past the idea of the reflection as only a narcissistic object. I told him that I remembered looking into the mirror as a kid, really looking. I was only 6, and it was the first time I thought "Why am I in this body?" It's funny how shit you figure out or think about as a kid comes back up in university, and you think "Oh, I really was touching on some deep crap when I was 6." Anyway, I remember it really freaking me out that my conscious mind seemed to be this alien peeking through my eyes and analyzing the physical form of me that I could see in the mirror. In that last sentance "I" becomes a manifestation of two beings - the physical "I" and the conscious "I". This is something I recognized when I was 6.
So then I just watched PAPRIKA, an Anime film about a machine that allows you to share your dreams - the actual experience of your dreams - with other people. People are able to visit other conscious minds. The dreams meld into each other and soon the physical world and dream world meld and switch. People act out their dreams in real life and die, people get killed in the real world from dream-wounds, and dream-objects enter the real world. It touches where Nightmare on Elm Street and The Cell could not.
Then while listening to Anna Karenina (I bought the audiobook to listen to during the drudgery of housework - thanks to CORRIBLE for the reco) yesterday a few characters discussed whether or not "a line should be drawn between the physiological and psychological experience in man. And if so, where?" They go on to talk about how if they can't even understand the psychological experience (consciousness) then how could they denounce religion/spirituality? That freaked me out. Anna fucking Karenina was preaching to me about consciousness and Heaven.
Finally, tonight, I went to see a movie. I'm completely ashamed of myself for wanting to see it, and for actually going to see it in a theatre. If it makes you feel better I didn't have to pay for it. I went to see..........ENCHANTED! Heaven help me for admitting that on my blog, but if you've come this far I expect that you might be open to hearing what I have to say about it.
I went to see it with a friend, who shall remain nameless in order to protect his or her identity, because I needed something light and stupid and funny and kind of wanted to see Enchanted. So did my friend. Plus Amy Adams is such a fuckin great actress. We laughed at ourselves as we skooched past little girls and their fathers to find our seats. In the movie, a Disney princess is cast into our world by a wicked witch so that she can't marry the wicked witch's stepson, the prince, and become queen. I knew the premise before I went, but I didn't realize until we were in the theatre why I was drawn to see it (other than the fact that I've seen The Little Mermaid about 50 times). It hit me that it was all about physical and dream states. Also, a fairytale Disney romance is many-a-person's idea of heaven. This movie was a very simplistic take on reality versus dream, physical versus dream/spirit/consciousness.
So this theme of separating reality, mind from body, physical from conscious keeps presenting itself. It keeps challenging me to take it on. But what will be my weapon? Booze? Drugs? Meditation? Tantra? Books? Films? Love?
Fucked if I know. Look at the kitties!
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM, NOBODY LIKES A NERD, REALLY FUCKING GAY, SEX
How did Courtney Love not play NANCY SPUNGEN in SID AND NANCY
I still love you Gretchen.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA
Enjoy your weekends.
Via MNMN
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
The following quote was lifted from ENCHANT AND DOOM's entry about SOPHIE CALLE'S piece on her dying mother:
On 15 February last year I received two simultaneous phone calls. One told me that I had been invited to exhibit at Venice. The other was from my mother: she had a month to live. I wanted to be there when she died, but everybody said: she will go when you leave the room, when you've wandered into the kitchen with a cup. So I set up a camera in her room and for 80 hours I stayed awake, changing the tape each hour, hoping to capture the moment of her death. It was impossible: I couldn't tell the moment. When I told my mother about Venice, she said: 'to think that I won't be there'. But she will be: my film shows the last 20 minutes of her life, it's called "Couldn’t Capture Death."
DDDDDRRRRRRRRAMMMMAAAAA!
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA
THIS DUDE gives me the creeps. It looks like he has trees growing out of his hands and legs and bark up his arms, but it's WARTS! I actually get the shivers just from looking at it...
Via !! OMG BLOG !!
Oh and I know it's weird but his son's really hot. What?! He's 18!
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, EW
My friendquantance, Lesley, told me about THIS EPISODE of THIS AMERICAN LIFE. It's all about breakups and divorce from different perspectives. A woman goes on a walking tour of her neighbourhood and all the things that remind her of her freshly finished relationship. An 8 year old girl speaks about why she doesn't understand her parents' divorce. And, most notably, Starlee Kine gets Phil Collins to help her write a torch song. Though I don't like the song she wrote, I like her recognition of every song taking on new meaning when a relationship has ended.
By the way, Phil Collins DIVORCED HIS WIFE BY FAX.
Image Source
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
My big boss lady took me out for a delicious dish last night (coz it's me birfday on Sunday). She told me about THIS ARTICLE written by Ian Curtis' daughter Natalie about the Joy Division singer's biopic, CONTROL.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA
I finally watched THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT. Since I feel like I've been a total Von Cunt lately (actually for the past few years) I wasn't surprised at seeing myself in Petra, and I wasn't as torn apart by this as I was by Ingmar Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA. To this day I'm a little frightened of watching more Bergman because Autumn Sonata sent me into such a depression.
I was also reminded of WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS, which is an adaptation of a Fassbinder play. All three of these movies are character based and take place in a single setting, like stage-plays often do.
Now it's back to work...but FEAR EATS THE SOUL sits on the table over there...taunting me..."You wanna play dirty?"
Oh and I also cried during the season premiere of Ugly Betty...sooooooooooo...
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
Did you know that SUICIDE and QUICHED are spelled using the same numbers on a cell phone. You'd be better off not knowing which one I was trying to spell.
This is a photo I found when I goooooooooooooooooooooooogled "QUICHE SUICIDE". "QUICHED SUICIDE" with a "d" at the end of "quiche" yielded no results.
That photo's real. I seen them on Oprah. It all comes back to Opie. Oh and the Iraq War mutilating your high school sweetheart. It all comes back to that.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA
Check out THIS INTERVIEW with Andy Warhol as channelled through john 228.
Who knew OLIVER LARIC was so cute?
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
Poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
Normally I don't post videos on here but I'm a bit a lot in love with Jaron and his work.
JARON ALBERTIN directs OUR HELL for EMILY HAINES & THE SOFT SKELETON.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DEATH AND DRAMA, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
A few interesting items that were listed under the FREE section on Craigslist on September 11 in New York City:
Free Chin Length Haircut (SoHo) img
5 book
CHAIN LINK FENCE !!!
Judaica Photo for free (Downtown)
FREE Blowout for someone with shoulder length hair on 9/11/07 (Midtown East)
Et la piece de resistance:
Twin Metal Frame
Free Chin Length Haircut (SoHo) img
5 book
CHAIN LINK FENCE !!!
Judaica Photo for free (Downtown)
FREE Blowout for someone with shoulder length hair on 9/11/07 (Midtown East)
Et la piece de resistance:
Twin Metal Frame
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, DESPERATE AND SAD
My dearest Claire (of recent FEIST STYLING FAME) styled these photos I took while I was in London. The model (though I hate to use that word for she was much more pleasant and fun to work with than any model I've ever met) was none other than the gorgeous Thorunn from FIELDS.
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON.