This could be explicit...
Tonight, I found myself in the Bronx with no phone and no money and really no idea where I was or how to get home.
I haven't been in that position of real isolation and financial desperation since December 16, 2009 the morning after a Christmas party that I had built the costumes for the hosts and the staff or the party. It'd been a successful night, but I'd spent everything I had in my bank on the expenses leading up to the event and hadn't received my pay yet, then my phone died. Even though I had earned money on its way- the sensation of having nothing in that moment was/is crushing.
Money is linked to the first chakra, the root chakra, the color red- it's located in your tailbone at the base of the spine, it's your ass. So I'm like 'what the fuck is wrong with my ass?'
Tonight was a night where I felt absolutely everything was wrong; in these moments the preceding catapulting moments flush over me. What was the turning point? The decision. The choice.
'In those ten minutes, going so hard to finish your project you think of all those times you could have been sewing but instead you got drunk or dicked around and you're like 'FAAAACK why did I do that?' -F. Burke. (genius designer- Bazzul)
All those times- those seconds- that lead to the present moment... Was it when I left him? When I left her? When I tried to kiss him? Because he couldn't kiss me back?
Or should I have done that painting? But my ego couldn't handle it- didn't trust something of the relationship? Should I have made that jacket? Or should I have hired someone to sew long ago instead of tirelessly trying to understand the craft by building everything? Should I have drawn instead of jerked off? Not gotten drunk? Not gotten high? Or have gone through with whatever?
In writing this it all seems rather petty. I call myself on it & I judge myself on it and rationalize it and apologize for it.
This is city life: Everything and Nothing. Glamour- looking amazing but not having $10 in your pocket and hoping the bar takes credit...
'Within and Without'
(Fitzgerald)
Go see The Great Gatsby. It's a brilliant and beautiful film. Baz Lurhmann is an incredible artist and I love all of his films. I know exactly the feeling Nick (Tobey Maguire) has as he looks out onto the city and sees the 'inexhaustible variety of life.' I totally look into every window I can. I'm curious. Curiosity is an integral part of being an artist and I need to be more curious than I am- or channel it in a different way than it's been of late. Within and without. I have always been able to observe and see things: be sensitive and intuitive to situations and been able to understand things but not really be involved. Intimacy exists through the melting of two- 'does it say pick out your cloud?' (Tori Amos)
Hell no.
It says give me your everything.
'I traded fame for love without a second thought'
(Madonna)
Tonight catapulted the flashbacks of the orchestration of my decisions that have me here. New York City. I love every light. I have no regret. I am an artist and I've done what I've felt is best, or at least what I could do for my art. My work. I've slept with pins and sequins in my bed, sewn all night, sewn on the floor, slept on the floor, sewn on the subway, sewn on the bus, wrote the bill on the plane, gone out with paint and oil and thread on my clothes, unshaven, spent every penny for the art, made it without spending anything, made the mess I needed to regardless of who the space belonged to (sorry). This work is in me like 'the night in my veins' (The Pretenders). Every artist has this. This work inside awaiting to pour out however it might. I have this work in me and I'm desperate to work every day. To create.
I think that was the point of this night. I walked home (It was only a 30 minute walk over the Harlem bridge). When nothing is right everything becomes light.
Clear.
I'm here
to show you the beauty
within
and without.
ps- nothing to worry about actually :) I am secure but I had a moment and felt obligated to speak about these steps on this journey which are not always quite as glamorous...lovematters=creation
Tuesday 14 May 2013
Tuesday 2 April 2013
Words
Words.
On a webpage.
Typed by my hands- from my mind- from the faerie that gave the words to me... I've been denying this outlet for some time and I'm really sorry- to said faerie and to you who may come to this page to see what I've been up to or making and not really able to find out what the hell happened since September.
I am here. I am alive. Very much alive. Trying to plug in to a New City. The City. Staying connected with the Creator, the Body, the Mind, the Heart, the Spirit- they can be harmonious but sometimes when we take or plug more energy into one the others suffer... There's always a sacrifice.
Truth be known, in the times that I might have been writing I've been obsessively netflixing Buffy The Vampire Slayer... one of the greatest shows ever made... ever. It's actually felt rather significant to have one of my best friends back in my life in a way at a time when my adult life is in full test effect (and grown up living is really really hard). When I say best friend I do mean Buffy, her as a character but also the show as a whole- which evolves brilliantly. I watched her when she first came on YTV on Friday nights (that's a Canadian channel). I was 12. I cried when Angel went bad. Unfortunately I sort of zoned out of the show towards the end of the series as my Friday night became more important for going out and less for celebrating the solo time I'd get on the weekend which I loved. My time alone is still really important to me. However I've always felt I never got to move on with Buffy. I haven't seen the last episode yet, I've just started season 6. Watching the show again has been really interesting though because now as I watch the relationships evolve, Buffy's heartbreaks (Sarah Michelle Gellar is fantastic), I can relate to and not just fantasize about having. Funny to fantasize about the broken heart- but it is beautiful- strings in the background- tears, drama, hurt, a lesson, a phoenix rises, a playlist made, Joni Mitchell finds her way there too.
The first Joni Mitchell music I knew was her Turbulent Indigo record... it's from 1994 and she's basically a tenor at that point- it's beautiful but I didn't know the full story. The first JONI I heard was maybe a year later, a sunny day, my mom and I were cleaning in our kitchen and she played a cassette tape of Court & Spark. The title song is unreal and a piano always gets me. Anyway she keeps a place in the soundtrack of my life pretty much always.
It's amazing how in listening to these songs for some years now how the memory and the feeling in them is no longer me imagining how it'd feel to miss someone or want someone or long for something but these themes I now know- they are memory and they are present and they are visceral. And the nomad that I am has led me to some truly great great loves in my life with some precious people that I don't get to see everyday and I miss them.
I miss what it felt to only know renting a movie with my grandparents on Friday night. I miss my grandparents, they are alive and healthy, and a phone call or email away but amidst my busy metropolitan life- the excuses are created and so is the longing. And the fantasized drama is manifested...
'The further I go letters from home never arrive.'
Patty Griffin. Rowing Song.
That song was given to me by Alice in 2010... she would run to it. If I ran I'd probably run to it too.
Now I am bringing all of this up because I was asked recently about my design philosophy and somehow my answer involved nostalgia. And on the note of missing people- I do take full responsibility for being bad about keeping up to date on my facebook and blogs and emails and calls and birthday wishes. It's my own drama which I get caught up in that doesn't allow me to follow up on all those lovelies. We are so connected via iphone or whatever device yet the human connection requires much more effort making our culture be a nostalgic one. As much as we are moving forward we long for our past. Or if we don't long for it- we stay in it. Or we create it again and again and again. So much of our glamour or what we view as glamourous gives us an impression of Marilyn, the New Dior look from 60 years ago. We rely on these ideas to create beauty for ourselves. I rely on it. I call upon it. I rely on the history and how it made women feel then and how it makes them feel now. I rely on the music in my life to get me through as it did then. I rely on Buffy. I rely on my hands. My hands make my art, my clothes, my words.
I've been sewing a lot- making great things for a variety of projects which I'll tell more about soon and pictures as I can but I think this page will be taking a more words based place for a little while. Read until I'm boring. :)
xo
M
On a webpage.
Typed by my hands- from my mind- from the faerie that gave the words to me... I've been denying this outlet for some time and I'm really sorry- to said faerie and to you who may come to this page to see what I've been up to or making and not really able to find out what the hell happened since September.
I am here. I am alive. Very much alive. Trying to plug in to a New City. The City. Staying connected with the Creator, the Body, the Mind, the Heart, the Spirit- they can be harmonious but sometimes when we take or plug more energy into one the others suffer... There's always a sacrifice.
Truth be known, in the times that I might have been writing I've been obsessively netflixing Buffy The Vampire Slayer... one of the greatest shows ever made... ever. It's actually felt rather significant to have one of my best friends back in my life in a way at a time when my adult life is in full test effect (and grown up living is really really hard). When I say best friend I do mean Buffy, her as a character but also the show as a whole- which evolves brilliantly. I watched her when she first came on YTV on Friday nights (that's a Canadian channel). I was 12. I cried when Angel went bad. Unfortunately I sort of zoned out of the show towards the end of the series as my Friday night became more important for going out and less for celebrating the solo time I'd get on the weekend which I loved. My time alone is still really important to me. However I've always felt I never got to move on with Buffy. I haven't seen the last episode yet, I've just started season 6. Watching the show again has been really interesting though because now as I watch the relationships evolve, Buffy's heartbreaks (Sarah Michelle Gellar is fantastic), I can relate to and not just fantasize about having. Funny to fantasize about the broken heart- but it is beautiful- strings in the background- tears, drama, hurt, a lesson, a phoenix rises, a playlist made, Joni Mitchell finds her way there too.
The first Joni Mitchell music I knew was her Turbulent Indigo record... it's from 1994 and she's basically a tenor at that point- it's beautiful but I didn't know the full story. The first JONI I heard was maybe a year later, a sunny day, my mom and I were cleaning in our kitchen and she played a cassette tape of Court & Spark. The title song is unreal and a piano always gets me. Anyway she keeps a place in the soundtrack of my life pretty much always.
It's amazing how in listening to these songs for some years now how the memory and the feeling in them is no longer me imagining how it'd feel to miss someone or want someone or long for something but these themes I now know- they are memory and they are present and they are visceral. And the nomad that I am has led me to some truly great great loves in my life with some precious people that I don't get to see everyday and I miss them.
I miss what it felt to only know renting a movie with my grandparents on Friday night. I miss my grandparents, they are alive and healthy, and a phone call or email away but amidst my busy metropolitan life- the excuses are created and so is the longing. And the fantasized drama is manifested...
'The further I go letters from home never arrive.'
Patty Griffin. Rowing Song.
That song was given to me by Alice in 2010... she would run to it. If I ran I'd probably run to it too.
Now I am bringing all of this up because I was asked recently about my design philosophy and somehow my answer involved nostalgia. And on the note of missing people- I do take full responsibility for being bad about keeping up to date on my facebook and blogs and emails and calls and birthday wishes. It's my own drama which I get caught up in that doesn't allow me to follow up on all those lovelies. We are so connected via iphone or whatever device yet the human connection requires much more effort making our culture be a nostalgic one. As much as we are moving forward we long for our past. Or if we don't long for it- we stay in it. Or we create it again and again and again. So much of our glamour or what we view as glamourous gives us an impression of Marilyn, the New Dior look from 60 years ago. We rely on these ideas to create beauty for ourselves. I rely on it. I call upon it. I rely on the history and how it made women feel then and how it makes them feel now. I rely on the music in my life to get me through as it did then. I rely on Buffy. I rely on my hands. My hands make my art, my clothes, my words.
I've been sewing a lot- making great things for a variety of projects which I'll tell more about soon and pictures as I can but I think this page will be taking a more words based place for a little while. Read until I'm boring. :)
xo
M
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)