Jon Flee – R.I.P.
by angeliska on December 24, 2010
Hey Flee-flee, long time no see. I’m not sure how else to do this, but in my usual way, which always seems to help me a bit – and sometimes others too. Maybe if you’re out there somewhere, a buzzing column of light still flitting around this plane for awhile more, you’ll find your way into this ether and be able to read this. I can’t believe you’re gone, and you probably can’t either.
I’m guessing one minute you were making some dinner, or fiddling around with a project, or reading, and the next – some guy was up in your house with a gun. I know your bravado, and I’m sure you tried to defend your home, and maybe deal with this person who was, no doubt, in some way involved in all the recent robbings, violence and attacks. I wish it was him and not you, kid. He put a bullet in your head and left you lying in a pool of blood for your roommates to come home and find. He’s still out there, and will probably do it again, if given the chance – and there will be loads of chances, because all our friends are basically sitting ducks. Unarmed, in shoddily protected old houses that aren’t hard (apparently) to get in to. Meanwhile, the police are no help at all. I heard that last night, they arrested one of your friends who was freaking out with grief. What the fuck is that? They also tried to say that your death was a suicide, which I, and everybody else who knew you know is utter bullshit. Not to mention your neighbors who told the cops that they clearly heard multiple gunshots. Not to mention the fact that you didn’t own a gun, and that you had so much to be living for. I know you did. I wish you had the chance to live it.
I wanted to say that I’m sad that we hadn’t gotten to sit and talk in such a long time. Every time I ran into you over the past few years, it was a quick hug in the middle of a parade – you looking stunned, and me rushing back so as not to lose my companions in the flood of revelers. Just the other day, a bunch of your pals and I sat in my warm kitchen, admiring these photobooth self-portraits you made, and telling stories about you. I asked them to give you a big, sloppy kiss for me, and I dearly hope they did. You might not know this, but I’ve treasured this little strip of photos for years, and loved seeing your face every day on my refrigerator. Now you’re on my altar, candles lit.
I wanted to tell you thank you, again – for being so good to me when I first moved back to Austin right after Katrina. I remember that night outside the Carousel Lounge, at the benefit we’d put together. You came up to me, so determined to help me with whatever I needed. You offered to bike over with dishes and silverware the next day. You showed up and put in the elbow grease when few of my old friends made any effort to help. You came over almost every day to lend a hand with painting, moving furniture, and later, cleaning mold off of the treasures I was able to salvage from my house in New Orleans. You were there with me when Myrtle called to tell me that she’d been in my house, and that the roof had blown off. You held me when I fell apart, steered me to the movies to see Mirrormask, in hopes of distracting me from my despair. You put me to bed and sat silently near me, solid and full of empathy. You went to New Orleans later, and brought back a bag of mix tapes I’d bemoaned leaving behind. You shimmied up my rickety, blasted balcony and busted into the ruins of my old apartment to retrieve them for me. You were the only person I know who would do stuff like that, selfless, dedicated and sometimes foolhardy acts of love. Thank you for being so beautiful, so kind, and so good.
Wolf-eyed brother. Stray puppy with the hungry face. You tried to look tough, but anyone who knew you will remember how your pale face would crack in two with that crooked little boy grin of yours. Your busted up teeth later proudly replaced with silver, now soon to be ash. That terrible-ass tattoo you got on your skinny white chest – a gnarly pirate sneering beneath the words “If you ain’t a pirate, then you ain’t shit”. That’s the kind of tattoo guaranteed to make a mother weep, though I know now she’d give anything to see it again, to see your face.
I feel so heartbroken for your family to get this news on Christmas Eve. Anytime would be bad, but this? It’s just not right. How can this be?
It hasn’t really sunken in at all that you’re gone. That I won’t run into you at the St. Roch Tavern, or here in Austin. The pieces don’t fit. You worked so hard to do right by people, and this is what you got from humanity in return. It’s really hard for me not to be bitter right now. I don’t understand what is happening in New Orleans, but it kills me that so many people I love are bearing the brunt of this cycle of violence. I’m so scared for our city, for all of our friends. Please watch over them.
I know how much you loved it there – how at home you always felt in New Orleans. It’s your final home now, and although I hope you can pass smoothly onward into being part of everything, a part of me hopes that I’ll see a shade of you sitting on a leafy back-stoop like this again. I love you, Jonny Flee – thank you for loving me.
Imagining you being dead isn’t really the hard part, you know. I just always thought that if it happened, it would be some gory train-hopping incident, or a bike accident, or, I don’t know – pirates or something. Not murdered. Not shot in your house right before Christmas. I’m sorry you went this way. I was hoping to see what kind of old man you’d make. Now you’re a lost boy, forever – waving a wooden sword and swinging from vines in Neverneverland.
Jonathan Hall – “Flee” – May 2, 1983 – December 24th, 2010
To everyone else reading this, and feeling sadness and fear for the violence in New Orleans, please – whatever you do, don’t write the city off. It terrifies me to think of any more loved ones being made victims, but at the same time, I don’t want them to abandon their home. After Helen was murdered, I had to stay away for a while. The fear and despair overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t be there to celebrate Mardi Gras because of all the dark dreams I kept having. I regretted not being there, and promised myself I would never miss another one. I’m keeping that promise, and I hope that things will change soon, somehow. If you live there, please be careful, be canny, be safe. Make sure that your house is secure. If you plan on getting a gun to protect yourself, please learn how to use it responsibly. I can’t help but agree with friends who are wondering if the police turning a blind eye to the rash of robberies, rapes and murders in the 8th Ward recently aren’t somehow in cahoots with the thugs who are doing this shit. Sounds crazy, but when you look at this video from last month, and then look at all the violent shit that’s gone down, it’s hard not to draw lines. These attacks have all been on our friends – punk rock kids with nothing, no money, really, to take. So why are they being targeted? To get them out? Or maybe it’s just random. Maybe the ten dollars from a bike-delivery kid on a shitty night is worth it to them. Worth murdering for? It doesn’t make much sense. At the very least, the cops and the city aren’t bothered that people are being predated on, especially since those people are “transients”
and “rowdy punk kids” who they don’t want here anyway. Much stranger things have happened in New Orleans, where the city government and police force are so mind-bogglingly corrupt it’s hard to believe it’s not Juarez. Watch this video and tell me there’s not something wrong with this picture:
“Cops call them a nuisance. Residents say they’re dangerous.
Now, some are wondering why transients, or gutter punks as they’re
often called, congregate in the St. Roch neighborhood.”
I call bullshit.
Winter Solstice – Blood Moon
by angeliska on December 20, 2010
(This photo, and all others in this post, unless noted, is by the marvelous Sofia Ajram)
Dark times, my loves. Dark days before the sun returns to us. Tonight even the moon
will hide her face, turn the color of blood, turn away. I’m ready to honor this solstice,
this turning, and bring back the light. The past month, and in particular this last week
has held so many bleak moments, more for those I love than for me directly –
but something about the nature of the various tragedies experienced by those
in my circle lately has been especially devastating. My heart hurts for my friends
that are hurting. I’ve been so sad for my ladies, especially. Something tells me we
need to stick close together through all this, be there for each other, and nurture
each other. I lit a pink candle inscribed with names of all my sad girls, my hurt
and wounded girls. Sometimes, it feels like what happens to one of us, happens to
all of us. I’m heartbroken for the violence against women that’s been happening so
rampantly in New Orleans of late. Men are the victims of muggings and shootings
there as well, naturally – but women are in a particularly vulnerable space there, and
there’s no real protection from the police. Someone I love a lot was raped recently,
and I can’t stop thinking about her, and what she must be going through. My words
fail me – I’m struck dumb and shattered when I try to process that information. It has
cut me to the quick, and made me so angry and sad that this could ever happen, to
anyone. I think of all my friends that have been raped, assaulted, or sexually abused,
and I realize with horror that very few of the women I know don’t have a story to tell.
It’s happened to me, too. I’m still working on how to talk about this, how to share my
thoughts, all these stories – but I’m glad to think that some of this pain might be the
catalyst for a space to come out and talk about this subject without shame, without
hiding. It feels important, to create that openness. I hope it will make for some healing.
I’ll post more as things progress. For right now, I also want to honor the life and death
of Magnolia Shorty – an amazing woman, and New Orleans Bounce queen, who sang
proudly and loudly about love and sex and what it means to be a powerful woman.
She was shot and killed today around 4pm. This excerpt from an interview she gave
when she performed in Austin during SXSW last year makes me so sad:
What inspires your lyrics?
My life, period. It’s about how women are towards other women, things that men do
to women that hurt them. I just give a woman a message that she can relate to.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I’ll be in Hollywood.
We need strong magic right now. We need to be together.
It’s so easy to withdraw, to curl inwards – I’ve been doing my share of that lately.
Hibernating, waiting for spring, for brighter days. It’s good to do, up to a point,
but as much time as I take to process, I must also try and spend in communion
and celebration with the people who make my life as amazing as it is. I am very
lucky to be surrounded by magical, beautiful people who are like a family to me.
I have to remind myself to come out of my cave, and see their shining eyes, and
hear the sound of their laughter, their singing. I realize that there are so many
out there who do not have what I have – the strong community, the dear friends.
So many people in this world live in such isolation. It’s not what we were built for.
We need these circles, these solid friends to share with – it is the most important thing.
(Photograph by Alicia Carrera)
I’m doing the work. Weaving the circles of protection and healing. Digging my hands in between
the roots, sending out green shoots of love and light to all those with trouble in mind. I want to
fire balls of glowing light to float over the bodies of loved ones who need surgeries, who need
their bruises to fade. I wish I could hold my hands to their brows, and wipe away their sorrows.
In half an hour, I will join a small circle of powerful brujas to honor the winter solstice,
the full moon, and later, to view the total lunar eclipse through telescopes. Tomorrow,
I travel out to the hills to continue that work, and to embark upon a spirit journey that
I hope will bring me some clarity and insight. I’m ready for more light, and for longer
days from now on. This is the time. I hope I can stand up to greet it bravely, serenely.
Ancient Origins: Winter Solstice
First Winter Solstice Meeting With Lunar Eclipse In 456 Years
The Winter Solstice in Prehistory
Lunar Eclipse – a great article from Mike Brown at Boing Boing
Pink, pink, pink moon.
Related posts from days of yore:
Winter Solstice – Messe de Minuit
Winter Solstice – Dark Season
Sylphide Treasures – Gypsy Honeymoon II.
by angeliska on December 13, 2010
This flock of blue morpho butterflies seems to be exploring…
Gypsy Honeymoon is one of the special spots on my list of pilgrimages whilst visiting San Francisco.
I met the ravishing owner, Gabrielle Ekedal the first time my grandfather and I dropped in, and we
instantly felt a deep kinship. She is a very magical woman, and her shop is a perfect reflection of her tastes,
(which are very refined indeed.) On our last trip to Gypsy Honeymoon, we trucked up many hills –
me burning off Tartine’s croissants while pushing my grandpa in his portable wheelchair past block
after block of stunning painted ladies. The trek was worth it, happily, and Grampa snoozed in a sunbeam
while I nosed into glass drawers stuffed with frippery and wonder. In the interim between our visits, the
shop has traveled closer in, and now adorns the strip of bohemia on Valencia in a glorious new space.
I liked the old incarnation very much, but it was rather small, which is not a problem in the current shop,
with its spacious expanse and elegant high ceilings. It feels more, airy – calmer. I love it in there.
These hairpins are made from kingfisher feathers. They are beyond words.
The store’s motto is: “Find what has disappeared”, and with Gabrielle’s eye
for exotic treasure, you are sure to find it here – whether it be exquisite alabaster
pendant lamps that once hung in grand ballrooms, or ancient carvings from foreign
lands. There is a strong appreciation here for things well-made, and clearly loved.
Any object designed or created with an love of beauty, and a desire to make things
that would last a long time. Between these solid, comforting pieces flits the ephemeral,
taking the form of a faded love letter, or a shattered-silk parasol. I’ve been to hundreds
of antique shops, and there are certain ones that really just get it. The aesthetics, the
passion, the joy of the hunt, the deep browse – it’s not an easy combination to nail,
and very few actually even try. I love a dusty, ramshackle hodge-podge any day,
(especially when the prices fit the atmosphere) but those are a dying breed, and
sadly few and far-between these days. More often than not, you find the neon-lit,
sterile antique mall filled with aisle after aisle of overpriced depression glass and
arrays of offensive saltshakers. Or, it’s the quaint “shoppe” run by a coterie of biddies
on a straggly small town square. I prefer these to the former, but the aroma of potpourri
and desperation can be overwhelming. When I tell people I deal in antiques, I always
wonder if they flash to places like these. I imagine many picture one of those fancier
places, always very quiet and chill, with never a speck of dust on the perfect Edwardian
sideboards or exquisite carpets. I guess there’s Antiques with a capital A, junk, and um-
“junque” (oh yes – I see it all too often in some “shoppes”) which can be identified by
sponge-painted country geese. Thankfully, a new breed of curio shops has emerged
from the detritus that manage to combine the rare and fine with the imperfectly exquisite.
Natural objects like wasp’s nests might find themselves priced alongside woven gold tapestries
with the same reverence for the genius of both their makers. I’ve been lucky to have worked and
sold in one of the best – Uncommon Objects, where I’ve learned so much about all the beautiful
things humans have loved or used long enough to treasure, and the business of dealing in them.
The Tree of Life mural on the back wall was painted by Gabrielle’s mother, if I remember
correctly, (& I may not.) I love the lamia tucked up in the branches on the left-hand side.
Sailing away to a fantasy-land of flapper beads and reliquaries!
Lichen-love.
I want these girls to be my doll-friends. I love picturing them flopped on pillows in elegant boudoirs, clutched to the
feverishly rouged cheeks of sleeping jazz-babies. Stuffed in trunks of rotting satin, awakening here – together.
I would wear this heart on my hip everyday – paying respects to Marguerite Royer rather fabulously.
I like my saints softened with pink ruffles and frills. It suits him, don’t you think?
This guy is my wax boyfriend. He’s very quiet, but I like the way he looks at me.
The perfect setting for a tea party where only absinthe, cockle-shells and silver bells are served.
La belle Gabrielle, lost in thought, more luminous every time I see her. She comes from the moon.
We ladies: myself, Gabrielle, and Mlle. Dana Sherwood.
Oh, and I can’t resist sharing my favorite picture of Miss Ekedal (age what, 16?)
I’m guessing snatched from a high-school yearbook. What a wild elf! Gorgeousness.
Go and see her:
at Gypsy Honeymoon
1266 Valencia St
(between 23rd St & 24th St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 821-1713
Maraschino Honey
by angeliska on December 1, 2010
★ This interview with Patti Smith in Japan just rocks my world.
She is so raw, and unafraid – totally unfiltered, totally high.
This world needs more role models like her.
“I might be 31 years old, but I’ve just begun.”
She is forever my hero.
★ This incredible interview with Sleazy is prefaced by an almost even more wonderful
introduction about counter-culture in the 80’s and early 90’s. Really, really good stuff:
This Mortal Coil: A Final Report on Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson
★ 2012 The End of the World – from Information Is Beautiful
Curious about what might happen in 2012? This fabulous infographic pits the skeptics
against the believers and analyzes the evidence from both that might save you a lot
of time spent combing through articles about geomagnetic reversal and consciousness shifts.
★ The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook
“…Mr. Selig said there was something extraordinary, too, about those corn-syrup-happy bees
that came flying back this summer. ‘When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings,’
he said. ‘They were slightly fluorescent. And it was beautiful.'”
(Vintage 19th c. marbled paper, Gold vein Overprinted over Spanish moiré on Turkish pattern
from the University of Washington Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection.)
★ The ever-marvelous BibliOdyssey always has just the thing to float my boat:
Marbled Paper Designs
I’ve been obsessed with marble paper ever since I was a child. I got it from my mother,
who collected anything marbleized. It is totally psychedelic. Making it is basically the
most fun thing in the world (if you’re me, that is.) The first time I visited New York, I was
around seventeen. I was staying with a friend of friends on the Upper West Side and it
was Christmastime. I just happen to be wearing the exact same carrot oil face cream
that I had found during that time to combat the moisture-sucking dryness of the radiators
in Tom Piechowski’s apartment, and I’m having a powerful olfactory memory which I think
I’ll share with you now. Whenever I smell this stuff (it’s Burt’s Bees, and it really does work),
I am instantly transported back to that moment in time. The cold tiles in the bathroom, all
of Tom’s exciting books, the homemade chocolate chip cookies someone had given him,
and my first northern winter. It was so cold, that every exposed inch of skin would shriek
in pain until you got indoors. I had just read Nicolas Christopher’s Veronica and so insisted
on finding Tibetan restaurants that served bocha, hot black tea with yak butter, and smoking
clove cigarettes. Veronica is a good book to read if you happen to be in New York in the winter
(another one is A Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin.) This story does actually have to do with marbled
paper – bear with me if you have a minute. I was spending a lot of my time wandering alone around
the alien, snow-muffled city streets, much like the characters in both of those books, and this one day, I had
an epic walking adventure, that began with me “taking a short-cut” through Central Park, where I consumed
most a bottle of very good French wine that Tom had foisted upon me, and tried to sit and write letters on a
log by a frozen pond. My fingers were too cold, and the winos were circling, so I ended up leaving the rest by
a tree, and heading to the Guggenheim to commune with my boyfriends, Mr. Cornell and Mr. Bellmer.
When I left, it was quite dark, but I had it in mind that I needed to try a Lexington Avenue Egg Cream,
which I found at the Lexington Avenue Candyshop. It had by then become exceedingly cold,
and I was a bit lost, wandering around aimlessly until I spied a very interesting-looking bookstore…
The owner was an old man, very intense, animated, and quite rude. He seemed to be playing a game
of chess against himself, which he was none to happy about me interrupting. His store was a wonder,
filled ceiling-high with beautiful first editions and remarkable hand-bound books he had created, with
tooled leather covers and marbled flyleaves. Being a book-binding enthusiast, I began to ply him with
questions, which he seemed happy enough to answer as long as it served to keep my grubby fingers
off of his pretty books. I have this odd talent, it seems, for taming the orneriest and most curmudgeonly
of shopkeepers. The trick is to show them empathy and appreciation while continuing to ask them more
and more questions every time they make motions towards kicking you out and closing up. Eventually,
I had him more or less docile, and I inquired as to whether he might have any marble paper scraps lying
around that I might have. He hemmed and hawed and grumbled and grizzled, all the while leading me
down a rickety little elf staircase to a basement workshop where all the book-magic happened. He flung
his hand towards a vast heap of the most gorgeous examples of marbled paper I had ever seen, and told
me to take as much as I could carry. I stood stunned for a minute before scrambling to gather up big
sheaves and loaded up a garbage bag full. I have no idea how I managed to lug it all across town!
Did I take a taxi? I doubt I had any money for one at the the time. I still have some of that gorgeous
paper – a bit of it survived Hurricane Katrina. The rest was used for countless art projects, gifts,
collages, and eventually my own experiments in bookbinding. All my New York stories are shaggy
dogs, because you can’t just get somewhere there. You have to go through all sorts of adventures
and turnings that make what you find at the end that much more rewarding. I have lots of stories like
that, but this one was brought to you by my acute olfactory-memory triggers, and by the letters N, Y and C.
Full set of marbled paper designs on flickr
★ My new favorite vintage paper ephemera blog: Agence Eureka (mille merci, Cousin E.!)
✷ I adore Forgotten Bookmarks,
a beautifully presented blog from Michael, who lives in Oneonta, NY. He works in a bookstore,
and keeps a record of all of the odd things he finds tucked into the old books. I once asked a
librarian what were the most unusual objects used as bookmark she had every come across:
she told me the best was a hundred dollar bill. The worst – a piece of cooked, greasy bacon.
✷ I recently stumbled back across this piece from Two Four Flinching on photography in New York’s
graffiti-covered subways in the 1980’s, and thought it was too special not to share. What a different era.
Beautiful images from Bruce Davidson, John F. Conn, Jamel Shabazz and Martha Cooper:
Subway, lifeblood.
“I wanted to transform the subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images
that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that
ride it each day.” In “Subway”, passengers of the city’s subterranean world are portrayed in detail,
revealing the interplay of its inner landscape and outer vistas, set against a gritty, graffiti-strewn
background and displayed in tones that Davidson describes as “an iridescence like that I had seen
in photographs of deep-sea fish”.
✷ My Top Ten Favorite Psychedelic Folk Songs
by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
This is a treat, especially as I was raised on some of this stuff!
Definitely worth digging up, as these songs provide an excellent
soundtrack to paisley-wearing psilocybe picnics on the moors.
✷ One of the things on my “must do in this lifetime” list is see the aurora borealis.
In the meantime, these might tide me over:
Breathtaking photos of the aurora borealis by Jónína Óskarsdóttir
(Many thanks to Maria Popova at the ever-awesome Brainpickings for this!)
Tsariwa Mama (The Mother of the Tree) – 2009
30 in. x 40 in. – Oil and egg tempera on panel
✷ My dear friend Madeline von Foerster has a new show up:
RELIQUARIES
Nov. 12 – Dec. 18
Vernissage: Nov. 12, 7pm
Strychnin Gallery
Boxhagenerstrasse 36, 10245 Berlin
There’s a great piece on her work from Coilhouse here: Madeline von Foerster’s Reliquaries
“This new series of artworks grows out of the artist’s fascination with reliquaries:
the jewel-covered statues and treasure chests where remains of sainted persons —
from bones, to scraps of clothing, to vials of blood — are enshrined. Old, beautiful,
and mysterious, reliquaries often become objects of worship themselves. The impulse
to preserve and make precious seems to represent a common human urge, spanning
across many cultures, and not only confined to religion: we create reliquaries for vanquished
cultures in our Natural History Museums, and living reliquaries, in the form of zoos,
for animals all but extinct in the wild.
Whereas a reliquary represents the end of a worshipper’s pilgrimage, von Foerster’s works are
an entryway to contemplation, rather than its terminus, and provoke questions rather than provide
answers. Do we value things more in these contained and decorated settings than in their natural state?
Why do we make such efforts to preserve what is gone, instead of living with respect for what is robust?
Can we venerate the living as well as the dead, the natural rather than the supernatural?”
She is beyond amazing, so if you’re anywhere near Berlin, please go see her work
(so that I can be terribly envious! Oh, if only I could!) Seeing these pieces in person is
a revelation. She has incredible skill, and is also one of the sweetest ladies in the world.
I wasn’t able to figure out the source and artist for this lovely scratched face girly, or for yonder
fancy bird-head, or for the nice mineral collection (I think it’s from a textbook.) Got any leads for me?
Oh yes, and p.s. – I’ve been nominated in two categories for The Austin Blogger Awards!
I’ve never been bothered about having or wanting any kind of award or notoriety for what
I do here, but you know what? I’ve been at it a long time, and I love it immensely, and it
seems that some of you love it too. If that’s true, then I’d be most grateful for your support!
It would tickle me pink to have some recognition for ye olde Gazette! If you have a minute,
please vote for me for Blogger of The Year and/or Best Art/Design Blog – and thank you!
Also, check out all the other rad writers nominated – I am proud to be included in such good
company! My girl Amelia of Vintage Vivant is nominated for best Style Blog, and if you
haven’t yet seen her vintage finery and naughty embroidery, go take a peek –
you’ll agree that she definitely deserves to win! Oh, and – the deadline for this stage
of voting is 5pm, on December 3rd!
Votey-vote-vote please & thanky-danke-gracias-merci!
Magic Windows #20
by angeliska on November 29, 2010
More Magic Windows photos from my New Orleans adventures:
This house was decorated so wonderfully for Hallowe’en + Dia de los Muertos,
I had to stop and gawp at it for a bit. I wonder who lives there? I like them already.
A view from the back of Rusty Lazer’s trusty minivan, on the morning we left
New Orleans: my bike was secured by ropes, my bed was an amazing vintage
Peter Max quilt, my breakfast – a delicious Hubig’s pie. The factory is a street
over from my old house, and I miss standing on my balcony and breathing in
the sweet aroma of juicy fruit-filled fried pies being baked in the morning. Hu-dat!
This is my new boyfriend, Orestes. He and his sister Electra belong to Pandora,
and they are super high-fashion designer glam movie-star cats. They’re famous.
Miss Pea’s kitchen is a minature ocean, sailing high above the rooftops.
Her red-ribboned leather shoes share space with bottles found in her excavations.
Flying fish made from sequins.
You can sing sea-shanties while you do the dishes and swab the decks.
Rabbit lace! Do you swoon? I swoon.
I was invited to a miniature tea-party hosted by velour-flocked rabbits, but all they
served me were anise pastilles, arsenic and dust. I had a pastille. Wouldn’t you?
Vultures + Persimmons
by angeliska on November 26, 2010
Yesterday afternoon, we made the journey over hill and dale on the first
of our familial holiday pilgrimages. I hear all the time complaints about
the lack of seasons in Texas, and our pitiful lack of autumn – untrue, I say!
The oaks are wearing russet cloaks, the sumacs scarlet, and the fields
are molten gold with fat hillocks of hay. It is indescribably lovely.
Having just witnessed the glory of a flaming October in Vermont, I can
admit it’s true that we are less majestic, less postcard-worthy, though
there is a peculiar magic in these hills and groves that I adore. Maybe
it’s my fondness for jolie-laide, for things that aren’t unapproachably
perfect – the crooked teeth in the landscape, the broken noses of
cruddy clapboard houses along desolate highways. It’s a hard-won
beauty. You have to squint, look closely, and be willing to wander
in creek-bottoms and over barbed wire fences sometimes to find it.
You have to be willing to get your hands dirty – but when you do,
it’s that much sweeter for it. Beauty that comes too easy makes me
skittish. It dazzles me, and I just gape like a filthy child at a shiny shop
window. It’s hard for me to feel like I have a place in all of that, I guess.
Like kissing someone so outrageously gorgeous that you can hardly
believe they even exist on the same planet as you. I revel in imperfections
and anomalies. They make me feel at more at home, somehow.
You see strange things hurl past you at high speeds on those backroads.
Faded signs whose obsolete messages you still struggle to make out,
beautiful abandoned houses, and dead trees that read as sculpture against
the big sky – black-limbed and bony, reaching up in agony with hundreds
of twisted wooden witch-fingers. I wish all the time that I could just bring them
all home with me to hang blue-bottles from. There’s got to be a way to do that.
I saw an old black limousine with bashed in windows parked in the middle of
a tawny cornfield. It looked like a lost still from The Reflecting Skin, and made
me think again of some of my favorite films that take place in the weird liminal
space that is a fallow field. They are all tied together in my mind – that one,
and Tideland, and also Malick’s Days of Heaven and Badlands. All favorite
films of mine, and all masterpieces of wrongness set in tall yellow grass
with decrepit old houses. A lot can happen in the terrifying wide open of
a prairie. That grass can whisper to you of terrible things. All of those films
come from this place, I think:
Turkey buzzards overhead as Amethyst Deceivers played (our traveling
soundtrack was nearly exclusively Coil, both before and more poignantly,
after we learned of dear Unkle Sleazy’s passing…) I saw a giant carrion
bird gleefully gnawing on a smear of roadkill while listening to these lyrics:
Pay your respects to the vultures / for they are your future
I felt happy remembering that – that we are all one day fine feasts
for vultures and worms. I love the completeness of these cycles.
I wish less was wasted – time, material, energy. I wish sky-burial
could happen in Texas as well as Tibet. I’m happy that Sleazy’s
shell will be treated in accordance with his wishes in Thailand.
It is my dream that one day, we will all be able to complete that
cycle with our bodies, and feed something else with what we
leave behind. Our systems for dealing with death, and our grief
and burial rituals severely need massive restructuring, and soon.
Thanksgiving feast for a lone butterfly…
…and also for me!
I love how persimmon trees look festooned with bright ornaments on cold days.
Despite what might seem like morose maunderings, my Thanksgiving was
remarkably sweet and filled with good company, and much comfort and joy.
I am extremely blessed to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving twice,
with two amazing families – (both my own, and Colin’s) and to be
able to enjoy caffè corretto alla grappa and discussions about nuclear
physics in the parlour with Colin’s papa, and stay up until 3am talking
about everything under the sun with his mama. They are so lovely.
My own folks also just blow me away with their strength and positivity –
my dad’s dealing with chemotherapy right now, and he’s been taking
it all in stride and maintaining his jovial nature. Send him a good wish,
won’t you? He’d be very grateful to you. I am so thankful to be a part
of such good families, and to be surrounded by so many amazing
friends. I love my life. I am so glad I chose it, and that I get to share it.
Thank you for reading, thank you for being a part of it. Goodnight!
Related posts:
Huexoloti Honey
Russet + Bone
Lone Grove Lullaby
Eulogies for Sleazy:
From Coilhouse – So Long, Sleazy
From John Coulthart – Peter Christopherson, 1955–2010
New Orleans Hallowe'en
by angeliska on November 18, 2010
Before too much time escapes through my glass, I must give you
a little peepshow into the depraved and delightful scene that was
our New Orleans Hallowe’en. It was actually a shockingly mellow
night, aside from the total shitshow that was Frenchmen Street,
where hordes of rat-like zombies swarmed around canisters
of nitrous, falling over in the street clutching their balloons.
We split quick to avoid having a crowd-induced heart attack
and escape all the slurring dudes asking “So, what are you
supposed to be?” which is my least favorite question ever.
Figure it out, fool! I get sad when people refuse to use their
eyeparts and their brainparts, and instead want to have every
single thing immediately explained to them. I find it to be a
really bizarre reaction. When I encounter something new,
different or interesting, I tend to take a little time to check it out,
explore, and come to my own conclusions before I start asking
a bunch of questions. It’s not just about this particular series of
instances – it’s something I notice often. Maybe it’s the immediacy
of information, whatwith google and all? People seem to have
lost their interest in the hunt, in the journey. Do you find that to be so?
Anyway – Halloween! It was a very chill, family-style night on St. Claude
Avenue, sort of aimlessly hobnobbing with old pals who of course had
the best costumes anyway. In retrospect, perhaps we ought to have
headed deeper into the Quarter or wandered further afield, but my
headdress was heavy, and it was nice just to be surrounded by people
I love and hadn’t seen for far too long. What did you do for Hallowe’en?
Pandora as Icarus, golden boy, cinder-scarred and eschar pink.
Colin made this incredible mask in a few hours, using random stuff
he grabbed from the hardware store. Yes, he is a terrifying genius!
Aluminum sheet, bristle-brushes, round vents and yaki pony came together
to form this seriously brutal bionic dinosaur predator creature. So bad-ass!
At some point over the last year, I had this vision of a Buffalo Ghost
Warrior Woman, and I wanted to make her real. There’s a little Japanese
kabuki, and Mononoke thrown in there for good measure, and though I
never thought to get a picture of it, there was a carved mask with the face
of an old man on the back of my foxfur headdress. Two-face. Oni. Demon
who steals scalps and eyes. The ghost who defends the memory of thousands
of slaughtered buffalo, left to rot on the prairie. She who avenges the native
people pushed off their land, killed like dogs in the dirt. All that, and sassy
fringe boots. I made the wig that day, and it was alarmingly weighty and warm!
I found the most perfect vintage buckskin dress ever, which fit me perfectly,
and feels amazing to wear. It’s the kind of garment that makes one think
seriously about wearing nothing but buckskin always and forever. If only!
I loved these guys the most. They were so impeccable with their perfect
faces, and perfect church-lady hats. Creepster twins, who are you?
Delaney Flytrap! How perfect is she? Very.
Yeah, so meat as clothing is so done and whatever, but hello!
It takes balls, man. This kid looked great. It was a good look for him, right?
Corinne Patrice Loperfido + her perfect boob(s) suit!
Miss O. – Mantis Queen
Nina Carolina!
Buttonface!
Miss Calamity
Gummi Medusa
Jean Wilson – Black Crow
Miss Angie – Prances With Coyotes
Critter bite at the end of the night!
Full set of Hallowe’en photographic depravity right here:
New Orleans Hallowe’en 2010
Tail of the Yak
by angeliska on November 14, 2010
There is a very special place, tucked away in the blossom-bedecked
avenues of Berkeley, California – a little boutique where you must
ring the bell to gain admittance, where you will find yourself surrounded
by the most wondrous, most delectable, most glorious treasures imaginable.
Tail of the Yak is one of my most favorite places on earth. It’s a bit
like walking inside an enchanted cake – or, what it might be like
if you could shop inside my brain. It’s probably a very good thing
I live so far away from it, because I’d likely bankrupt myself there
five times over – their stock is constantly changing, and yet it
always seems to be just what I want. Alice Erb and Lauren
McIntosh are the owners, both very magical women, who have
made it their mission to create a little piece of heaven, populated
by gentle-faced saints in paper dresses, cooing doves, and very
exquisite taxidermy. They travel to the far corners of the globe,
collecting the most wonderful goods and curious objects.
I was cursing myself for not picking up one of these clever white journals!
My red moleskine wandered off somewhere, and I’ve been lost without
a daily planner. I like these because they are not dated (you can fill in
your own, and start any time.) I prefer that, as I have my own unique
sense of chronology. Also, I am saddened by piles of unsold and obsolete
planners and calendars half-way through the year. Unfilled, unfulfilled.
I did indulge in this perfume from Ortigia (Fico d’India)
though I’m sad I couldn’t afford the get the black amber also.
Alas! I’ve been craving a good dark amber perfume, and that
one really blew my whistle. Maybe they’ll still carry it when I
make my way back there. Fingers crossed. Oh, restraint and regret!
The angel of fine papers watches over, protecting from ink-spills + silverfish.
Is this not the most majestic chandelier? I would like to marry it,
if I were also a chandlier, or perhaps if I were a jellyfish. Either, really.
Joss papers from China for luck, burning and art-making.
Explosions of paper flowers everywhere! Like fireworks, hana-bi.
Magic cicada ink! I had to buy three, because they were so amazing.
I also went a little crazy with the Maison Bouche chocolate bars, as you can see.
In my defense, some are meant for gifting… Probably! It’s hard not to gobble them
all. I got Tilleul, Absinthe, Violette, and Pain d’Epice. I’m also such a sucker for
pretty packaging – they use shimmery metallic papers and colored foils. Le sigh!
My darling Miss Dana Sherwood inspecting the jewels. Tail of the Yak
has the most splendid selection of jewelry – Victorian mourning, Georgian
rose-cut diamonds, Edwardian intaglios, Bohemian garnets… In other words,
every thing I’d like to have a strapping collection of, one day. Marvelousness.
Oh, the agony of not being able to buy every single thing…
Also, my crown is very, very heavy. O dolorosa!
Lauren McIntosh also makes wonderful paintings, and has the most
exquisite calligraphy hand. I’d love to take classes with her one day.
Here’s a nice peek into her world: Studio Visit: Lauren McIntosh
Also, here’s another look around from Poppytalk,
and some glimpses from my last trip out that way:
The Barbary Coast
I recommend a pilgrimage:
Tail of the Yak
2632 Ashby Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
(510) 841-9891
Magic Windows #19
by angeliska on November 9, 2010
“I alight at Esplanade in a smell of roasting coffee and creosote
and walk up Royal Street. The lower Quarter is the best part.
The ironwork on the balconies sags like rotten lace. Little French
cottages hide behind high walls. Through deep sweating carriage-
ways one catches glimpses of courtyards gone to jungle.”
– Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
The Moviegoer was recommended to me by my friend Mr. Whittier, quite a while ago.
It wasn’t sparked by our shared love for New Orleans (where the book is set), but
by a conversation about “how travel is as wonderful as it is terrible”
– he sent me the following quote:
“Not in a thousand years could I explain it to Uncle Jules, but it is no small thing
for me to make a trip, travel hundreds of miles across the country by night to a
strange place and come out where there is a different smell in the air and people
have a different way of sticking themselves into the world. It is a small thing to him,
but not to me. It is nothing to him to close his eyes in New Orleans and wake up in
San Francisco and think the same thoughts on Telegraph Hill that he thought on
Carondelet Street. Me, it is my fortune and misfortune to know how the spirit-presence
of a strange place can enrich a man or rob a man but never leave him alone, how, if a
man travels lightly to a hundred strange cities and cares nothing for the risk he takes,
he may find himself No One and Nowhere. Great day in the morning! What will it mean
to go mosying down Michigan Avenue in the neighborhood of five million strangers,
each shooting out his own personal ray? How can I deal with five million personal rays?”
Oh man, have I been feeling this lately. More than ever before. It’s a strange feeling.
I once loved it, and perhaps I will again – the sense of anonymity, of being a stranger
in a strange land. It makes me want to return to China, or go anywhere where the
language is totally incomprehensible, where I am an alien. Maybe it’s the oddness
of coming back to so many familiar places, and finding them changed. New Orleans
is mine, and not mine. She’s the lover you come back to, sadly, wistfully – finding her
worse for wear, touching old scars, grazing new wounds, evidences of bizarre
reconstructive surgeries. There are other people in her bed, resting their heads
on the pillow you embroidered your initials on, and they look at you blankly,
thinking you a new visitor, a tourist. It’s very discomfiting sensation.
This weird building on Upper Decatur has windows made from red mirrors.
Very creepy. The fern hanging in the atrium kind of looks
like a severed head, if you squint just right. ‘Twas the season.
Somebody got their head punted into this French door,
right across the street. Or maybe they punched it.
There are parts of the Upper Quarter and CBD that have a weird
magical, unknowable quality about them. Maybe it’s because I
rarely had reason to go up there, or would find myself on the street
at odd hours – but it seemed to me that the buildings would rearrange
themselves secretly at night, forming confusing configurations, mazes
for the unwary wanderer. Anywhere that was once bustling, but has long
stood deserted has that feeling for me. Haunted, and perhaps sentient.
This is one of my favorite things in New Orleans. I want to drink one very badly.
Oh, how I long for a little gingerbread cottage, festooned with morning glories like this one!
This was a very good street in the Bywater. I forget which one it was, but the people who
live on it are very lucky. My friend Bunny lives in the house to which these sweet wheels
belong. There are cypress trees, and it’s very quiet and peaceful. The shade is unusual.
Mossy cobblestone banquette, interrupted by cypress roots.
Wouldn’t you like this to be your front door? I wouldn’t mind.
Oh and, I didn’t realize until I was halfway through The Moviegoer that
Walker Percy was the man responsible for A Confederacy of Dunces finally
seeing the light of day! Bless his name! The story of how it all came to be is
as ironic and tragic and funny as the brilliant novel that almost moldered
in total obscurity. Reading books about New Orleans that really and truly
capture the essence of the place, the heavy air, the strange characters,
the accents, the fragrances both sweet and foul – well, for anyone that’s
lived and loved there, it’s like coming home. Do you know what it means…?
Spookhouse Honey
by angeliska on October 28, 2010
I’ll be in New Orleans for Halloween and Day of the Dead,
so here’s a little more honey to keep you busy until I get back!
Hope you all have a beautiful Witches’ New Year!
Jack Mord from The Thanatos Archive found this gem in a box of photos
he picked up at a garage sale. Best score ever? It’s pretty amazing.
✷ NOW THIS IS GOTHIC
This is the best tumblr ever made. It has magic powers.
Makes me wanna buy a can of hairspray and go to town!
✷ This article on Witch House from Pitchfork has some nice tracks:
Ghosts in the Machine
and sort of related, is this great article from Zed Equals Zee
on bands like GL▲SS †33†H, ℑ⊇◊⊆ℜ and ///▲▲▲\\\
going intentionally under the radar with their ungoogle-able monikers:
How to disappear (almost) completely
✷ Morbid Anatomy
Is another one of my favorite sources for the macabre and marvelous,
run by the lovely Joanna Ebenstein, your go-to girl if you want to know
more about death, burial, murder, memento mori et cetera! Hooray!
✷ Omar Doom’s Halloween Mix 2010 is making me pretty happy.
✷ Human Hearts Found in California Cemetery
A Worker Found Half Buried Jars Containing Human Hearts with Photos Attached
✷ Package with cow tongue puts kink in morning trains
✷ Sacrifice to Ogun Slows Down Austin MetroRail
Package with cow tongue puts kink in morning trains
✷ Dissolving your earthly remains will protect the Earth
Aquamation Station!
✷ It’s Calling For Me Through The Trees…
Dear Chadling at Mon Petit Fantome never ceases to delight and inspire.
I am in love with these photos here took of his fog-laden bayou backyard.
His gorgeous new silhouettes are to die for as well! He’s a demon with those scissors!
✷ Illustrations by Harry Clarke for a 1925 edition of Goethe’s Faust
from A Journey Round My Skull
and his brilliant illustrations for
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination
(via John Coulthart, with thanks)
✷ Dance, Witch. – from the Pineal Eye
“Mary Wigman’s 1914 Hexentanz (Witch Dance) might rival The Exoricist’s
spider walk scene in terms of creepiness, but the German Expressionist dancer
is usually cited for influencing creatures like Murnau’s Count Orlok in Nosferatu.”
✷ Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops
Organza and taffeta and tulle, oh my!
Photographer Tim Walker takes haute couture
(and more) to a wonderfully wicked place.
I want to live in this fashion spread forever.
✷ The Ghost – By Elizabeth Gilbert
This article is ten years old, but totally worth revisiting. I have a weird connection
with Hank Williams, and Hank III because of that, but I won’t go into it just now.
✷ I adore After Dark In The Playing Fields, a fantastic blog from
On The Borderland & Ghoul Next Door.
Here are some goodies I’ve enjoyed from them lately:
Shrieks From Above and Other Improbable Difficulties.
Beautiful and curious gravestone iconography:
All Must Submit to the King of Terrors, But That Is No Reason to Look So Grave
Part I.
Part II.
Ghoul Next Door’s A Chilling Chosen Few:
12 Cinematic favourites for Haunting Halloween viewing
✷ Liane from Enhabiten wrote about black bouses, a while back –
the comments about Duane the Dentist’s black houses in Olympia are pretty funny,
if taken with several grains of salt. A bunch of my friends have lived in those black
houses. I think it’s a great project. Unfortunately painting your house black in our
southern climate is pretty untenable. Maybe the interior walls instead?
✷ Miss Anna Dorfman aka. Doorsixteen
makes black walls with black trim awfully enticing.
The Watcher in the Woods! Holy moly. I watched this recently, thinking I had
never seen it – but I realized halfway through that actually I saw part of it when
I was little, and it totally haunted me for years. The scene in the funhouse made
it all come back to me, and the pungent memory I’ve carried for so long of the
ruined abbey, the mysterious wind, the calling ghost. The alternative ending
is completely out of control, also – do watch it! Your mind will be destroyed.
