2/2/16

cookie time

I can't believe I'm here. I mean you are too. I can't believe we're here, together. The new year drew to a close and I got my shit together. I mean I didn't; I've been a mess, but making progress. I haven't known for the last few months, and I still don't know, what's worth saying, thinking, feeling, noticing, remembering. For who, even? Right?

I did Dry January and there is romance in my life and I feel much less urgently hopeless than I have in maybe a year. Retrospect is funny. I'm still really frustrated by some things though. I wish I was performing more. A weak, stupid part of me wants attention for the sake of attention. What part of the person, the personality, is it that craves identity, existence. What evolutionary impulse was perverted into narcissism? Which biological imperative has mutated such that I don't know if I exist anymore?

That's not fair. I know I exist I'm just not doing it the way I have been and I feel alternately awful and great about it.



I want to be doing more readings. I want to do more poetry readings and performances but maybe
with a mask on? I want to do more ukulele shows. Read more. Talk more. Just... I don't know. Show up more. Disappear less. Have somewhere to disappear from, and to.

I'm performing in Austin, Texas this month, where I've never been and am quite excited to go. I'm doing a revamped version of The Good Daughter. With only the best songs. My idea for this performance is also me working through a question my therapist asked a few weeks ago:

Why Make Everything Harder for Myself Than It Needs To Be?

Why not just perform the things you want to perform, right? Why go looking for trouble? There are legitimate reasons, I guess, to look for trouble. In general. But for me, right now. I don't need to. Being cautious, cognizant of risk, that's not the only affect that I have inside of me.

Went to see the Mickalene Thomas show Muse at the Aperture Foundation last week. I'd mostly known Thomas as primarily a painter and have long liked her collage work as well. The photos in the exhibition were awesome.


Racquel Leaned Back

The photo set used as a background in many of the images was installed in the gallery. A wood-paneled, cat-decorated carpeted living room, seemingly straight out of the 1970s. Replete with stacks of records and fake houseplants. To the extent that I'm familiar with her work I really love Mickalene Thomas' art. It's vital, exciting, and gorgeous. She also has a penchant for the Comme des Garçons clan (she named her kid Junya Rei), so I feel an affinity there as well. If I were to decorate my own room/fantasy photo studio, it would probably look a look like the space she used. It's a fantastic show and it's up through March 17th and worth seeing.


Negress with Green Nails

I feel like the last year I was so worried about how bad I was. How worthless. And I don't feel contrary to that anymore, but now I feel sort of stupid in a good way. Like; I might have a use. I might be good at something and I don't even know what it is and I might find out. And that feels good.

Some things feel good. Really good. Maybe even too good to get into here, yet.

Speaking of Comme des Garçons I liked seeing the new collections from Paris last week. The COMME DES GARÇONS HOMME PLUS Fall collection had the theme/title "Armor of Peace":





It's complicated, the continued explorations of armor, peace, war, etc. I'm not crazy about the sleeves but I AM crazy about the floral flower-power hippie shirts and I hope she makes a t-shirt version. It's weirdly moving. Not weirdly. Just that it's so much, it's so immense, if you think about it. The scale of the creativity here. It's in a way admitting it's limitations, reveling in them, even.




and the COMME DES GARÇONS SHIRT / SHIRT BOY presentation:










Like, what even is a shirt, right? I'm really into the crazy tartan SHIRT BOY things that opened it. I like the feeling of basics being expanded, being blown open and redefined. I like the extent to which shirts can become a kind of metaphor or symbol for youth, masculinity, identity, history, whatever.





thanks mom




as I was finishing this thought, the Girl Scout cookies I ordered arrived.



I'm thrilled.

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