The Hook Upon Which Everyone Hangs

The new Joanna Newsom album, Have One on Me, is appropriately epic in size - 3 discs, 18 songs ranging from 1:49 to 11:02 - and scope - Bill Callahan! Gold Rush! Fame! Her voice has mellowed out, apparently from vocal nodes, but it is to our benefit: the brash grating ("dying babies") of Milk-Eyed Mender and the occasional wince-inducing shrieks on Ys have given in to softer, more gracefully sung songs that are no less unique in style. Similarly, the precociousness of the first album and the melancholia of Ys has yielded an audible wiseness from Newsom that is no less ambitious, and maybe even more beautiful. It's a little boozier, jazzier, sadder, stronger and more vulnerable at once. I feel like Joanna is in a strange way the female counterpart to Leonard Cohen for her poetic, lyrically dense style - music to listen to in the foreground, over and over and over.
There was a good piece in the NY Times Magazine last week here.
This stunner track so far kind of just kills it. As Matt said, YES:

There is no video yet, obviously... But that piano! Those backing vocals! Thank goodness for Joanna Newsom. I'm sick of looking backwards for good music.

WORKZ

I'm starting a workshop with Tahni Holt tomorrow that I am very excited about. Former classmates and teachers of mine will be in it, as well as people whose work I have admired from afar. Exciting! Tahni sent us these ten statements her friend Alice Chauchat wrote that she often returns to when thinking about performance and performance making. I like:

1. A work is not about its author. It is not about something. It is something.

2. Mental activity is a dance. A particular thought process is a choreography, and produces a dance.

3. Don't represent ideas, provoke ideas. Whatever ideas led you to do something, a piece is not there for the audience to understand your ideas.

4. Ideas are all types of experience which possibly can be reflected upon.

5. The coherence of a work is not dependant on a direct relationship between process and product. Coherence is produced by a constant oscillation between the doing of a thing and the observation of this doing.

6. There is not one way to justify decisions. The particularity of decision-making is part of the work's identity.

7. Each work demands a new definition of dramaturgy and defines itself through it.

8. Each work demands and defines itself through its own methodology.

9. Codes and conventions pre-exist work. But work also creates codes and conventions.

10. Be your own audience. Focus on what you want to do / show rather than on what you think others want you to do.

Also, I wish I could have been there for this:

DARCELLE XV, bitches

I want to be a drag queen.
Think about it: It's the most amazing job ever. Wearing sparkly outrageous outfits and wigs, pounds of make-up and glitter, dancing and lip-synching to your favorite songs and getting tipped like a stripper without having to show anything at all. I don't care one-way or the other about gender impersonation, but you know, whatever.
I'd love to put on a revue!

The Mercury has a piece on Darcelle's, the legendary twice-nightly show in Old Town. Read it here. Also, you should go. It's fun. Look at my face! That's a face having fun!

Crystal, Matt, Erin and I with Darcelle XV.



Matt with some of the ladies at Aunt Charley's in SF. Totally different, but you can't argue with a number that included roller skating down the bar to Melanie's Brand New Key.

Tears

Something came over me tonight and I suddenly became obsessed with hearing this song, which luckily my ipod delivered. So good. Not live performance, but I wish it was.

WE CAN ALL BE WHATEVER WE WANT TO BE

thanks to The New Yorker for pointing to me to this footage. kind of inspiring actually.
and i believe this is the final version:

VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS

Tonight there will be a screening of the Czech vampire film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders at Holocene with a live score created and performed by Nurses, Gulls and the Slaves. I am not super into the whole vampire thing generally, but I do really like this film and its sexykreepi imagery. Matt and I saw it when we were planning the Estonia project and really wanted to do something related, but it never really came to fruition. Anyway, come Portlanders, 8:30 tonight, and free! My favorite word.

TEENAGE DAYDREAM

Once and for All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen

From Belgium, the Ontroerend Goed companys wild rumpus about adolescence, conveived by director Alexander Devriendt with the thirteen members of the cast. Currently playing in NYC as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Wish I could see it.

HYDRANGEA POWER

The one and only Orland Nutt. One of my favorite lunch companions and kitten print wearer.

Only When I from Orland Nutt on Vimeo.

Letter to Peter 12/20/09 from Orland Nutt on Vimeo.

SPACE SPACE SPACE

I am holding a workshop this January/February for the first phase in the creation of a new performance piece that I am writing and directing in collaboration with the ensemble that will form.

I am currently searching for a space to hold rehearsals in. I basically need a room that is decently sized, heated and fairly empty with bathroom access. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

Madonna/Whore

I have long been an admirer of Vanessa Beecroft's artwork. She primarily stages performances of live models in elaborate tableaus that are visually arresting, brilliantly simple and strangely uncomfortable. The models are often nude, vaguely bored and fetishistically fashion bound, the spectator observes voyeuristically. I have one of her artist monographs, and I once read all her writing in it, her personal statements and journal entries. From her writer voice I interpreted her as a bit of a fascist, neurotic, obsessive, domineering. She struggles with bulimia and is the type of person who takes no pleasure in food - completely controlling. There was no photo, so I imagined her as someone older, German, with crazy Vivienne Westwood hair. someone not beautiful yet obsessed with beauty.

I watched the documentary The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins by Pietra Brettkelly tonight. I had not heard about it, I found it randomly at Movie Madness. It chronicles Beecroft's attempt to adopt a pair of Sudanese twins that she meets in an orphanage and then attempts to adopt without first telling her husband. She is neither old nor German, although her hair is a bit crazy. She is in fact beautiful, with a lilting Italian voice and a large magnetic smile. Who knew?? Yes she is artistically eccentric, and manipulative, but mostly emboldened in her own self-absorption, she is not nearly as commanding as I imagined. Her demands and behavior are childlike in their naivitee, despite being selfish and potentially cruel. The focus Brettkelly shines on her only amplifies this disconnect.

At any rate, I still love her work.

Jerkin'

IN MEMORY OF A FREE FESTIVAL, OR, THE GLITTERHEARTS TAKE PWNW

I was much pleased.
It was one of those moments Saturday night when I felt like the people I knew were the people I was always meant to know, the things I was doing the things I always wanted to be doing. It was radical nostalgia in the making. I hope we have a second coming. The paintings at Valentine's got super crooked on my behalf.
Find full set of pictures HERE.
P.S. Someone said they wanted their kid's kindergarten class to see us - my kind of compliment.
Also, a little bird was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer yesterday and but what song should come on in the background??

(Sorry about the cropping... I resized and everything and still couldn't get everyone in!)

In the Closet

Jess did some performance art in my closet.
Also known as FOLK FENG SHUI.

MJ

This is a reminder to New Yorkers to go see I Fucked Mariah. This weekend! It features this beaut of a puppet.

THIRD SIDE

TONIGHT + TOMORROW



PERFORMANCE WORKS NORTHWEST, 67th between Holgate and Foster
8:00 PM


THE
GLITTERHEARTS

CORRINA REPP, vocals + guitar
ERIN PERRY, guitar classique
LINDSAY KAPLAN, keyz
EMMA LIPP, le bell

CHORUS:
KATY ALEXANDER
MICHAEL BUNSEN
JOCELYN FOX
JESS HIRSCH
NICKI ITTNER
MARIAH MAINES
JACQUELINE MENTION
ANDREA RAIJER

SING IT WITH US:
THE SUN MACHINE
IS COMING DOWN,
AND WE’RE GONNA
HAVE A PARTY.

STEALING:

MICHAEL BUNSEN.


(Borrowing from Lindsay Reef channeling Carl Sagan.)

BORROWING:

BEJART.

Channeling:

ZIGGY, UFO CULT, MOCIUN.

Frantic!

So this past Sunday was both Friend's Thanksgiving and the date of an epic walk Jess, Scout and I took that resulted in the loss of my cellphone and 400+ contact address book. Like a snake shedding it's skin I am relieved by the loss of so many past lives, although this means I no longer have your number. But the real tragedy of it is between searching for cellphone and basting my turkey I managed to forget it was Sunday, day of rest and New York Times bliss. And turned out it was a T Magazine day! Blast!

I don't really know how to convey how much I NEED this magazine, other than just that. It's my favorite publication on the planet. If anyone has a copy they can part with or has a neighbor with a Times subscription who hasn't taken the recycling out yet, please help. Portland has very limited Times outposts and I have called them already.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, eh?

Helping (Il)literacy

Heartbreaker

My friend John Doyle has conceived of a hilariously wonderful project called I Fucked Mariah, which he sent me a draft of and potential soundtrack to last year and is apparently going to be performed in December at PS160. I would have loved to be involved in this. Alas, New York, you taunt me again. New Yorkers: go see this.

Check it: I FUCKED MARIAH

Publication Studio

Patricia No and Matthew Staedler opened a small publication studio in the basement of the Ace Hotel's event space The Cleaners that is open 6 am to noon to help you make and print custom books.



I have been wanting to make a small cookbook/project book for the Estonia Adventure. Winter break, Matt?

In celebration of their participation in the Amsterdam Biennale, the Publication Studio will be having a morning fete this Saturday, that I will attend if the winery does not call first.
From their website, http://www.publicationstudio.biz/:



Amsterdam Biennale Opening: Drunk by Noon
Saturday, October 24, 2009, 11 am
@ Publication Studio, SW 10th Avenue & Stark Street, Portland, Ore.

The Amsterdam Biennale, which includes a Portland Pavilion featuring 20 books collaboratively made with Portland artists and Publication Studio, will open with a three-city real-time party and massive co-writing collaboration, linking Portland, Amsterdam, and Beirut. The co-authored text, written by revelers in all three cities, will be typeset, printed, and bound by Publication Studio as the party proceeds. Lots of Dutch gin, bitterballen, and koffie verkleerd will be consumed. This event is free and open to the public.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Speaking of the Virgin Suicides, is there any film that perhaps influenced Sofia more than Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock? But who could blame her... that music! the mystery! the fashion! I'm obsessed.


Apparently someone made it into a play. I'm going to have to order a copy.

Nostalgia

Bethany Ides is curating a night of short performance works for the Alembic series at Performance Works NW for early December that I am excited to be a part of. Dubbed "The Third Side," the program will revolve around mix tapes, nostalgia and TV flashbacks.

Something on my mind:

Chicken Fights

"Right away, I figured out that "pecking order" isn't just a figure of speech: they adhered to a strict social system, with each hen taking her turn at the feeder, and corrective nips doled out to any chicken that stepped out of line." Susan Orlean, "The It Bird," The New Yorker, September 28, 2009.

These feathered friends belong to the lavender farm where Jacqueline works. Aren't they beauties? That pom-pom hat! They are truly free range and can be found all over the property, cavorting with small children, assorted felines and odd dogs. They have quite the personalities and like to lay their eggs secretly in bushes and under trees where you are sure not to find them.

In Estonia we lived (as in, inside with us...) with a flock of fourteen baby chicks that turned into ten. Chick mortality, and chicken mortality as a whole, is apparently quite high. What was strange was that the babies knew when one was going to die, and would help the process along. After several small chicken deaths, I decided to give special attention to the next chick who was doing poorly. I held it in my hands, warming its feathers. I put it in a special box under its own heat lamp. I tried to hand feed it. But the little creature resisted, and squeaked to rejoin its mates, so after a period of quarantine I relented - nature is nature, after all. As soon as it was back with the flock it began to burrow itself under the others, literally throwing itself at the feet of the other chicks in a ritualistic death throw. The flock in turn began stepping on the tiny chick, assuring its timely demise.

Talk about pecking order.