Category: Blog

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How to get your body caftan-ready for summer

The boys at work have been playing (and singing!) this song:

…which will forevermore remind me of the excellent article from which I stole the title of this post, thank you :

1. Select a caftan of your chosen gauge and length. Stroke its gauzy fabric and whisper into its folds.

2. Let your flesh settle into the crevices of your comfortable, comfortable caftan.

3. Crumbs? Let them fall where they may, swaddled in your caftan.

4. Throw out your razor.

5. Throw out your bra.

6. Throw out the aloe vera lotion you bought last summer. You will not be getting sunburned this summer.

7. Release your inhibitions. Feel the rain on your skin.

I’ve been itching to write about, in no particular order: the time I thought I needed to buy all new clothes to be more “feminine” because I had internalized all this male gaze crap and even went so far as to send emails back and forth with a few different personal stylists I was going to spend $$$ with and install a frikken wardrobe app on my phone and almost decided to grow my hair out, and then I randomly stumbled across an article by Cynara Geissler in The Establishment entitled ‘Toddler Grandma Style,’ The Fashion Approach That Will Set You Free: Continue reading “How to get your body caftan-ready for summer”

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Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit

I am still really shaken by something I experienced / witnessed last Saturday night at a concert. Don’t want to read the distressing details? Here’s the take-home message:

DECENT MEN: if a friend of yours, or any guy you witness, is behaving like a #metoo wrecking ball at a show, or anywhere, let him know that what he’s doing is not OK. At the very least, check in with the women he’s preying on to make sure they’re alright.

***

I had been looking forward to the Unknown Mortal Orchestra show for a while, and reaallllly wanted to enjoy it. (A note for the uninitiated: they are NOT an orchestra!)

…but very unfortunately, the whole night was tainted by the behavior of a predatory dude working the floor where in the area where Scott and I were standing. We watched him making the rounds, repeatedly going up to women and attempting to manhandle them (embrace, kiss, and literally pick them up, dragging them away from their friends).

Then came the moment when I had to physically shove him away from my own body.

Continue reading “Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit”

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Leisure, a poem by William Henry Davies

My friend Nadim just shared what tells me is his favorite poem, and has been since he was a child. Kinda hits me in the stomach:

Leisure
by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Source: Songs Of Joy and Others, published in 1911 by A. C. Fifield (accessed via Wikipedia on 11 Sept 2018).

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Keeping the baby AND the bathwater

We are complicit with everything we buy and click on and watch.

I’ve been struggling for months (if not years? decades?) to make sense of where to file the work of once-favorite actors, artists, comedians, scientists, authors, thinkers, etc who turn out to have done some very awful things (see: #metoo).

A couple weeks ago, someone suggested that I consider integrating both the baby AND the bathwater, rather than trying to figure out what to keep and what to toss. The idea of this approach appeals to me… but how?

This Art Assignment video does an excellent job of both articulating the conundrum and describing what’s actually at stake / why what we choose to do matters. Host Sarah Urist Green outlines a few approaches (including some both/and AND either/or options), and poses some very relevant questions to ponder as we each grapple with how to appreciate someone’s content, even as we condemn their behavior:

In addition to the quote I included above, here are a couple more that stood out to me from the video, but I highly recommend you watch it all if you’re at all interested in these issues.

Who reaps the financial rewards of our attention?

The context of this one was the question of whether or not to watch the latest controversial YouTube video, but the larger point is that these choices have impacts in any genre:

I can’t bear to think that I’ll… contribute financially in any way to that person and their fame. Our attention matters, and it’s also being closely monitored, amounting to ad dollars and influencing boardroom decisions about what kind of stuff gets made.

 

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Digital Desk + Analog Desk + Day Bed = My Ideal Creating Space

My new workspace arrangement has completely transformed my room from a place I rarely used to a place I can’t wait to come home to / spend all evening / all day getting creative / hanging out in.

IMG_20180908_160300

Ever since Scott helped me set it up, I’ve had these words from a Jean LeLoup song stuck in my head:

Mon lit est un navire
Un atelier où je vais pour l’éternité

…which roughly translates to, “my bed is a ship / a studio where I’m going for eternity.”

I had been doing a project that required more space than my little desk could accommodate, and had brought a whole pile of books / post-it notes / big sheets of paper / pens / my computer out to the dining room table. Several days later, it was really bugging me to have all that clutter in our living space, but I still wanted everything to be accessible… so I decided to move my big table from the garage and into my room.

After trying out several configurations of furniture, Scott suggested I leave BOTH desks in there, move my wine-box bookshelves (which hold all my writing and painting tools in addition to books) next to the main desk, and move the bed under the windows. And there’s still tons of room for yoga in between.

Having two desks means that I can now implement an idea Austin Kleon suggests in his book Steal Like An Artist: keep separate digital and analog desks. Continue reading “Digital Desk + Analog Desk + Day Bed = My Ideal Creating Space”

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Hey Ya, Hey Ya

Someone at work just shared this Hey Ya cover, and I’m kind of blown away by the sound mix. It’s just so… vast.

I’d never heard of KAMAU so did a bit of poking around; in addition to discovering that he’s Canadian, I found his observations about this song via SoundCloud:

Hey Ya is the epitome of absolute duality between the energy and content within one song. It’s, sonically, the happiest song, with the saddest content that we can all relate to, a breaking heart…a sinking romance. Andre 3000, almost prophetically, foresees the fact that nobody will pay attention or even notice that he’s in pain “Yall don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.”

Continue reading “Hey Ya, Hey Ya”

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Clear as mud: Black Willow, Mississippi Mud, and FBI informants

LomaScott very rarely plays songs more than once in a sitting, so the fact that we’ve now listened to Loma‘s Black Willow six times in a row is no small endorsement. I agree: it’s infectiously beautiful, darkly haunting, the lyrics are provocative… definitely worth playing over and over, and there’s something about the album cover art, too.

I finally decided to look for a video and Lo, not only does one exist, it’s in a similar vein as the ones I have posted twice before:

And the plot thickens! The video’s first comment on YouTube is from (actor, producer, and writer) Daniel Martine, who points out that the song sounds eerily similar to a song called “Mississippi Mud,” a Black Blood and the Chocolate Pickles song with a grim history:

In his comment to the Black Willow video, Daniel continues:

The story is about the death of black students who protesting [sic] at Jackson State in Mississippi in ’70. Not long after Kent State shootings happened. But it didn’t get the press of Kent State, because they were black students.

I can google up no evidence that Loma may have meant Black Willow to be a straight up homage to the song and/or a rememberance of the events that took place at Jackson State, not to mention the inequality of the response thereafter compared to shootings of white students. But I could understand that the band could have gone there Continue reading “Clear as mud: Black Willow, Mississippi Mud, and FBI informants”

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Creativity = (Stock and Flow) + (Morning Pages)

I’ve been digging Austin Kleon’s work lately. There is so much excellent fodder in both Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, and I highly suggest subscribing to his e-newsletters for a regular dose of even more goodies.

The concept he stole-then-shows that intrigues me the most is that of Stock and Flow:

Stock&Flow
A page out of Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered; I stole this image from his blog.

Being the nerd that I am, I pored over the original Robin Sloan Stock and Flow article he references, along with its excellent comment thread, which then led me to Continue reading “Creativity = (Stock and Flow) + (Morning Pages)”

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Life is Magic, Where is My Rabbit?

I’ve been playing Fraser Ross nonstop the last couple days. Scott figured out that he’ll be playing a house concert in our old neighborhood next week AND there were still tickets available, so I’m very excited about that.

The whole album is rich and melancholic and lovely and there are more upbeat, fun moments as well, which remind me a bit of parts of the Farallons’ Outer Sun Sets EP.

If you want a quick taster, here’s one that makes me want to jump around:

 

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Watch Cold War on a big screen

ColdWar Though we missed most of the New Zealand International Film Festival because of our trip to Maine, we did catch Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War on closing night. I loved it even more than Ida (every shot in both is composed like a photograph I’d want to spend time in front of at a museum) because of the music. Highly recommend you see these in a theater if you can!