Tuesday, April 29, 2008

nature of thoughts

"It is in the nature of thoughts to follow upon one another." Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. I sure hope so. Photo, Gypsy Rose Lee 1941.

three things

Three things I like about Liz: she reads Francesca Lia Block; she reads Angela Carter; and instead of having an imaginary friend, she has imaginary boardshorts.

more mociun

I would wear these everyday. Actually I did (1980).

Monday, April 28, 2008

in the beginning

The new Contemporary Jewish Museum will finally open in June. The SF Public Library is having a series of lectures about the Daniel Libeskind-designed building. Talk about a destination neighborhood. Within a few blocks, we'll have this, the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, Yerba Buena, MOMA, and The Museum of African Diaspora. And did I mention the Samovar Tea Lounge in Yerba Buena Gardens?

the empty bed

“Here's a trick I found for how to finally get some sleep. I sleep in my husband's bed. That way the empty bed I look at is my own.” Amy Hempel, "Nashville Gone to Ashes." I'm carrying around my copy of Hempel's The Collected Stories. Photo by Anne Kristoff on Etsy.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

blind date

"A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o'clock, I am not going to answer the door." Amy Hempel "Tonight is a Favor to Holly." Cover from Bon Magazine.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Friday, April 25, 2008

surprised recognition

"You can't show anyone anything he hasn't seen already, on some level - any more than you can tell anyone anything he doesn't already know. It is the function of the artist to evoke the experience of surprised recognition: to show the viewer what he knows but does not know that he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition." William Burroughs.
"Untitled" by Gottfried Helwein, from ZYZZYVA, Spring '06.

borrowed dress

"...like a pretty dress for a party, which, once worn, changes the life of the one who borrows it." Ann Lauterbach, The Night Sky. Found Lauterbach via the pitch-perfect Either the Drapes Go or I Do. Dress from saltwater.

fear of flying

A shirt for flying dreams. y-3 at Oak NYC.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

oba

There were many amazing things about Naropa in the late eighties. But magic, real, heart-pounding magic? Don Cherry was magic.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

ligne claire

"I essentially spent two years locked in my garage, hidden from the world, and living the interior life of a teenage girl." Phoebe Glockner wins a Guggenheim award. Via Maude Newton.

Monday, April 21, 2008

cannery row

Two people I'd love to know: Olle Lundberg and his wife, Mary Breuer, live aboard the Maritol, a decommissioned Icelandic car ferry docked at Pier 54 in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. More pictures and article at NYTimes.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

everybody is ugly

All I want are cutoffs.Alexander Wang. Probably easy for a designer to make the perfect cutoffs.
This is from Everybody is Ugly. She's a master of the cutoff (and she has amazing clothes. Look at this white Helmut Lang blazer. A white Helmut Lang blazer? Heavenly.).

Monday, April 14, 2008

transient

Evans says of the transience of fashion, "Everything new and beautiful seems to arrive already haunted by its own demise." Someday soon I will stop checking this book out from the library and buy my own copy.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

a place where everyone is famous

My most favorite film that I haven't seen yet. Click here to watch the trailer. Mister Lonely is opening in the US on May 2. Via Starworks.

Friday, April 11, 2008

secret games

"People's conceptions of children are very far from who children actually are..." Wendy Ewald.

One of my heroes, I first saw Ewald's work at the Whitney Biennial in 1997. It wasn't a photo taken by Ewald, but one created -- like the one above -- by a young girl. Ewald is a collaborator as children photograph their dreams.

I like fashion. I like toast.

My goddaughter and I love Fashion Toast.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

modern friendship

Clara believes that I edited Lopate’s quote too aggressively. Here it is in full: "Still, it was not until the age of thirty that I reluctantly abandoned the Best Friend expectation and took up a more pluralistic model. At present, I cherish a dozen friends for their unique personalities, without asking that any one be my soul-twin." So, instead of a soul twin, it's more like a soul tribe. A cacophony of catastrophic personalities (Modern Friendship).
Image from Janfamily via touchy-feely.

twilight of the superheroes

Looking at a painting takes a certain composure, a certain resolve, but when you really do look at one it can be like a door swinging open, a sensation, however brief, of vaulting freedom. It's as if, for a moment, you were a different person, with different eyes and different capacities and a different history—a sensation, really, that's a lot like hope. From "The Flaw in the Design," by Deborah Eisenberg.
Painting: Seascape (Contrejour), 1969 by Gerhard Richter.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

jack and rose

My grandfather's entry in his sister's graduation book, circa 1915.

disparitions

Feeling both expansive and confined this morning.
Sans titre n°89, disparitions series, 2005, by Mathieu Bernard-Reymond.

Monday, April 7, 2008

inheritance

In the 1970s, my friend Holly was the coolest girl who ever left Newark for Tucson. She was wicked-smart, beautiful, and had a library of ironic t-shirts. This weekend, Holly bequeathed three decades worth of the paper thin, rock & roll shirts to her daughter. Emily slipped one on, stuffed the rest in her backpack, and hit the road.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Saturday, April 5, 2008

bowl cuts

In honor of Milano Chow's t-shirt, I've decided to dedicate the weekend to bowl cuts. Fernande Barrey had a beautiful bowl cut, although when Modigliani painted her it looked more like a bob. Ugly Earring, maybe the best blog ever, has a great post about Barrey's 1917 meeting, love affair and marriage to Tsuguharu Foujita.

Friday, April 4, 2008

blood is the new black

I bought this t-shirtBut I wish I bought this one (click it to view)Milano Chow knows her way around a bowl cut.

soul twin

I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately. That gummy jungle. Maybe I cling without reason to the adolescent ideal that a best friend is a soul twin. As Phillip Lopate says, "Best Friendship promotes such a merging of identities, such seeming boundarylessness..." In his thirties, he writes, he gave up the Best Friend model for a more pluralistic one.

I'm in my thirties. Maybe it's time for me to give up.
(Photo of best friends, origin unknown.)

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

if wishes were horses

Then I would buy this painting by Mark Rothko. White Center, 1950, will be sold by Sotheby's on May 15. Via NYT.