the list of now

- seeing Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing today (!!!)

- Springlust. every day. all I want to do is be outside.

- reading the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind  manga series by Hiyao Miyazaki (currently on Book 2)

- doing a lot of random drawings, preparing for some new paintings. oh! and I finally finished this one:

- not into tv at all lately. there are many good shows I’d like to catch up with (Mad Men, Game of Thrones), but lately my attention span just hasn’t been there. I will say that this season of Scandal has been truly phenomenal television. And Revenge - so disappointingly – did an early and way unexpected shark jump a few eps into the second season. sad.

- started writing poetry again. unsure that it will turn into something I can do again or if it’s just therapy right now. we’ll see.

- missing Chicago, Don’s, Standees, the lake, the skyline and pieces of myself from those days.

- missing New York, my rooftops, Alphabet City, Cinema Classics, smoking (only sometimes, I know, ew), and pieces of myself I was in those days too.

— thing is, I don’t want to live in either of those places anymore and I’m actually feeling really “in place” for now in Boston/Somerville… but also scattered.

- it’s been a surreal last couple weeks. the day before the bombings, we were hiking in Rochester with good friends. in the middle of a beautiful forest, watching deer running around us and feeling on the edge of the best part of Spring. on the drive home, we found out. and then time got all wonky and even though the weather has been amazing  and I’ve really loved seeing people in my community come together and talk about important issues, supporting each other and being overall kind of amazing – I still don’t feel like time and life have completely settled again… yet.

- I started playing my ukulele tonight. I am going to learn or re-learn a song on that or my guitar everyday, to get back in the habit of playing again. tonight I mostly learned “dream a little dream of me”. it made me happy and sad at the same time.

- I’ve been going to the gym a lot. (which is good) but sometimes it feels like a pure tension flush. it feels urgent and angry. sometimes I feel myself at the gym fighting for my body to heal… sometimes (a lot of the times) I feel like I’m fighting against my diseased body. sometimes I feel like the contents of my brain won’t settle if I don’t get energy out, feelings about myself and other people. feelings about work and the nature of work and my projects and my art. sometimes memories I don’t want to remember. sometimes daydreams I want too much.

- it’s been too long since I wrote on here. it’s been too long since I’ve put serious time into my book. it’s been too long since I’ve been able to let people read my writing.

Spring is time for everything to change again. that is how it happens, right?

decide to go out to dinner earlyish. start getting ready around 4:30pm. take a long shower. take your time. take pictures of the dog. listen to music. don’t rush.
there is a place you like to walk to, two blocks up the hill. you can just show up. that’s it.

walk up the hill when it’s dark out but still bright. walk over train tracks and feel in love with your neighborhood. show up at the restaurant around 6:30 when it’s packed and don’t even mind that there’s a 45 minute wait because you are drinking gin and there is good music. you used to care about standing around the bar, taking up space and wondering if this place was too cool for you. you don’t anymore.

feel deeply in love with the person standing beside you. talk about the Spring.
talk about things you still want to learn. talk about being in love (again. still. so long) cheers to the favorite gin. cheers to the Spring. cheers to luck, as absurd a concept as how far you’ve made it when you never thought you could.
cheers to feeling too old to be cool. old enough not to care.

“if you’re feeling sinister” comes on the jukebox.
think of old friends. old apartments. perfect albums. and what you know to be true.
remind yourself you know who you are.

remember when you couldn’t enjoy food. remember when your hands shook holding forks in front of cute girls.
put your hand on her knee under the table, smile, and enjoy the fuck out of this amazing dinner.
drink a cocktail you hope was named after Buckminster Fuller.
share bourbon pecan pie for dessert.
tumble out into the night where it’s still Winter, but it smells like Spring is close. bundle up and walk really fast back down the hill, anxious to be home.

nap. nap because it’s a weekend and because the bed you bought 8 years ago for the move to New York is still (somehow. magically. impossibly.) the best bed ever.
get up and decide to go grocery shopping because it’s 10pm on a Saturday night and you have a  certain kind of quiet energy.
turn the music up to trembling volume in the car. sing even louder. listen to headphones in empty flourescent-lit aisles.
get all the food she likes.
prepare for the week on autopilot until you are back in the car.
decide not to go home yet.

turn the music back up and drive towards the skyline and the water. feel the bass buzz where your thigh rests against the car door. drive down one side of the river and turn around by the boathouse. the better view is on this side.
pick music you don’t have to stop to change. pick music you feel from inside your ribcage. music that makes driving feel enough like dancing.

remember yourself through many cities: count them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 2 again, 5 again, 1 again. remember meeting 7 and wonder if it’s next. remember showing up in 8 where you are staying for a while. fold all your selves neatly back into this moment. sing your favorite part of that one song.

listen to it again.

say hello and goodnight to Boston.
turn towards home and feel in love with being this old.
feel like you maybe never before have known – this much – who you are

IFC Films, 2011

I watched this film last weekend. I’m still having difficulty formulating what I want to say about it.

I’ll start with some context. Wim Wenders was working with Pina Bausch on a documentary about her life when she suddenly died. The intended film was replaced with a new vision for a moving tribute by her company, who perform several of her most celebrated pieces and talk about their experience with her. This collaboration produced a masterpiece that works on so many levels.

Dance on film has been done very well, (especially in classics) and done very poorly (although I still love the cheesybad ones). I don’t think I’ve seen anything on film that approaches the level of cinematography and theatricality that Wim Wenders accomplishes directing dance in “Pina.” It’s fucking astounding. These dancers are not on display. There is nothing passive about this. Film as a medium is choreographed here, into the pieces themselves. It’s transformative.

Now that I’ve gotten the technical aspects out of the way (ha!), can we talk about my feelings? One of the company members recounts Pina telling her that her fragility is her strength. This could be a metaphor for the entire film as Pina’s pieces constantly play with trust and intimacy issues. Age, gender, and body image, as well as physical connection, are present issues in almost every piece, but not in any overarching distracting ways that leave the viewer attempting to “figure out what it’s saying”. It just flows. It’s just real.

Elements and energy are huge factors as well with dancing in water and dirt, on public transportation, at commercial intersections, in (literal) glass houses – this would be gimmicky it if wasn’t so visceral and blunt. The settings anchor the movement, which is so much about bodies, not at all pageantry. The diversity of this company is also striking. You see dancers in this film that you don’t commonly see in mainstream American companies – older dancers (over 40!), people of color, of many different ethnicity and speaking their native languages. You see intense vulnerability with male dancers, dancing with each other, as partners, which is so rarely done that it sometimes seems downright profound.

There is a weight to what they are doing, emotional and physically heavy. Again, this is the depth in displaying fragility. These dancers DIG IN. Their bodies are all in, in a way that seems to be a direct subversion of showy, airy, “proper” prettiness that popular convention likes to demand that dancers display. Have you ever watched a tiny ballerina produce exacting, perfect movements, just wanting her to just do something crazy? Sometimes I think it’s painful knowing there is a powerhouse beneath, that this body has  incredible strength and gives excruciating effort to produce the appearance of tidiness andweightlessness. It can be lovely, but I also kind of hate that. I find it boring. It is fucking delightful to watch dancers break that convention into pieces and this company brought it to a level that I haven’t seen in a while.

For me, almost any art is more fun when the artist has shown their work somehow. Watching this film you hear the dancers thanking Pina over and over for pulling at their fragility, fears and vulnerabilities. And then you watch them pay tribute with their entire bodies and selves. It’s breathtaking.

One company member notes that Pina danced as if she had a hole in her belly.  That line is what I think about when I can’t stop thinking (feeling) about this film.

Yes.

More of that.

Exactly that.

Visit the official site for the film here. (Watch the trailer!) Pina is currently streaming on Netflix if you have a subscription, but it was also recently added to the Criterion collection and is available on DVD. Find a way to see this film!

favorite books read in 2012

I meant to write little review posts about each of these and never did. I still might, because I have things I’d like to say about each of them. This year was a totally indulgent reading year. I gravitated towards pure mood and pleasure reading most of the time. These were the notables:

 

me on GoodReads »

favorite writing online in 2012

I actively enjoy reading on the internet as a hobby and consider it a valuable use of time, as much as sitting the newspaper on sunday and reading books – same enjoyment, different moods. I remember someone tweeting a joke about google reader graveyards last year (like who still follows entire blogs anymore? uhhh. I do!)  I’m one of those holdovers that transitioned (just barely and way recently) from my feed reader to a neverending instapaper holding cell.

In 2012, it seemed I couldn’t stop discovering great online projects, zines and columns to follow. These were standouts to regularly check:

 

  Storychord – a Sarah Lynn Knowles project featuring consistently fantastic writers, artists and musicians.

Self-Made Man  - a column (on The Rumpus) by Thomas Page McBee, who is doing some of the most insightful and important writing about gender, bodies and otherness to happen in the last decade.

Brain Pickings - Maria Popova is the apex of curation culture online. Utterly addictive and delightful.