"Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order." Samuel Beckett

Do you think dyslexic people have difficulty dancing to "Y.M.C.A."?

I'm already grown up, i just get older

Alternative fashion inspiration, mildly pervy, whatever you wish to label it, Natalie Portman in Leon is pretty much the coolest kid in the world, and she dresses pretty damn well too!






Mathilda: How old were you when you made your first hit?
Léon: Nineteen.
Mathilda: Beat you!

Write club, Je convoite pour vous

Last week at open mike night, my friend Alex performed a rap about how he wished he was Jewish, and a rather racy love poem, for which he requested a 2 syllable name from the audience. I Yelled mine out and he performed the poem to me, which was hilarious if slightly embarrassing. Afterwards i thanked him, and he said that one day he would write me an original. Fast forward to last night at Write club, a society for writers of short fiction and poetry which we both attend, and he stands up, explains what happened at open mike night, and tells the group that he's written that original poem just for me.
Here is the poem, which i heard for the first time in front of about 25 people, most of whom i don't know. It was one of the most embarrassing and hilarious moments of my life thus far.

When I saw the one called Lucy,
How I wished she would seduce me,
Kiss me with those Thurman lips,
Straddle me with those Hayek hips,
Thinking of her, one on one,
Late at night, I’ve had my fun,
Down I go like the setting sun,
I can’t wait to make her – Whoa!
A little soon, I would say so,
This Lucy girl, she is no whore…

…Her homemade dress falls on my floor,
Dammit, I’m a man undone!
It’s a little weird for everyone,
First I rap ‘bout Judaism,
Now I’m rhyming ‘bout my jism,
Sorry all for all this filth,
It’s her that mused me! Blame the lilf,

Anyway, back to the song,
In all its many shades of wrong,
This Lucy makes my heartbeat restless,
Her Seberg body leaves me breathless,
I know that I’m no Michael Cera,
And that this poem will prob’ly scare her,
But I’m a cheeky little fuck,
And so I hope with any luck,
She’ll break my post-poetical tension,
Satisfy my crude intention,
See my spritely smiling face,
And let me get to second base.

I absolutely love it, and have a copy posted up above my desk. I especially like that details of our conversation last week have found their way in, like how i was wearing a dress i made myself, that i love Jean Seberg and kind of want to be her in Breathless, and that i have a deep and enduring love of Micheal Cera. Utter genius!

Je T'aime

I thank God, Allah, Buddha and Zeus for Longchamps new ad campaign.






Shame about the ugly blonde girl in it though, otherwise it would be perfect!

New Obsession

"Possibility isn't limited by technology. And it's certainly not limited by human imagination. What makes something impossible is the lack of cold, hard, cash." - Rob Beschizza

My beautiful and terrible best friend Kelsea-Jane introduced me to lookbook.nu, and now i have no life! As if i wasn't having trouble dressing myself already, seeing as everyone who inspires me sartorially is about 5 foot 2, size zero and has no breasts to speak of, and my 5 foot 8, size 12, boob and booty-liscious frame can't really carry off the same style. Now I have to look at cool Swedish and German people with perfect hair and impeccable fashion sense, before getting dressed into my uninspired wardrobe and facing the harsh climate of October on the south coast.

I've been obsessed with the sartorialist for some time, but that was always ok, because i knew i couldn't afford anything that those people were wearing, and if i could then it was probably being worn pre or post show by some infinitely enviable model or other. The people on lookbook are my age, sometimes even younger, and their clothes are affordable. This makes the whole thing so much worse because i know that i could get the clothes, probably the exact outfits, if i really wanted to, but where they look cool, relaxed, un-put-together and endlessly sexy, i would look like a desperate try-hard trying to dress like someone cool, relaxed, un-put-together and endlessly sexy. The distinction is obvious and very depressing.

If you're curious who i'm actually speaking about when i say these things, here's some fashion porn for you, direct from lookbook and my mildly fetishistic dreams. Enjoy.






The person who i really love, and who i check up on every day, is Nouk B. He makes a real effort with his photos, so that they do more than just showcase his amazing style. He is quite possibly the best dressed man in the entire world and i quite want to marry him. Can you blame me?

Photo-negative

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage,
including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage
daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe
disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his
standards?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair
while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to
pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable
organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five?(The Keating Five
were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989,
igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and
Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included
discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many
occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected
reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close
as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes
positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities
in another when there is a color difference.

Vote for change.

We can work it out.

I'm feeling down, and when i feel down there's no better cure than a Dave Eggers short short story.
This is the one i'm in the mood for.

I'm not the one to ask about this. Lately everyone's been saying, Hey, man, what's the deal? Why do all the bears of North America dislike EM Forster? And they expect me to have all the answers. Just because I hang out with some bears sometimes. It's messed up. I don't know. I don't know much, I really don't. OK, listen, this is what I know: a while ago, some bears and I were gathered at Yosemite, which is where bears sometimes gather. It's loose, it's whatever. They were all there, all the important ones, some black bears and brown bears and a few grizzlies, and they started talking about Henry James, and for some reason that led into EM Forster, and these bears just started going off. It was ugly. I honestly haven't seen them like that since someone brought up Austen. Yeah. If you think these bears hate Forster, you should hear them on the subject of Emma. Man, they hate Emma. I don't get it. So don't talk to me about Emma, or Forster, or early Dickens. God, early Dickens makes them insane. Talk about Dickens, and they start eating bark, and sometimes tyres. It's so messed up how angry they get. But if you're looking for answers, don't come to me. I can't keep up with all the questions from you people. I want to help, but I don't know how. Believe me, I wish they were more mellow about this stuff. I can say this: the brown bears are less dead-set against Austen, and the grizzlies really only have a problem with The Pickwick Papers. I don't know if that helps at all, but there it is. In the meantime, I'll keep track of where they stand on all this, and I'll make inroads where I can.

Don't you feel better now for having read that?

Keepsake

I've been keeping this one for a while. It makes me feel kind of bittersweet nostalgic and uplifted at the same time. I don't really know why it makes me feel nostalgic, but it does.

Preludes

In my opinion this is one of the most beautiful poems ever written, and the reason i love T.S. Eliot. Enjoy.

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

was it all a coincidence?

Almost 2 years ago now, i went to the Fischli and Weiss retrospective at the Tate modern, and it's still playing on my mind. My favourite room was more of a darkened corridor between two exhibition rooms, where 4 slide projectors had been set up. These projectors were all changing slides at different times, and th enoise of them was almost hypnotic. The slides were a series of questions asked in English, French, German and Chinese, all overlapping each other, fading in and out, interspersed with doodles of pigeons and cars. I think in total i spent over an hour in there, and during that time i copied down some of the questions. Here is a selection of my favourites for you to contemplate and enjoy.

can everything be thought?
would it help me if i dug a hole?
is normality an indication of laziness?
would i like to be a mysterious person full of secrets?
do i know almost everything about myself?
are there false feelings?
why is everything so radiant?
do i like a good brawl?
should i launch an investigation?
are my feelings correct?
is this brown lump edible?
should i build a tower?
why won't they let us talk about what we don't understand?
would anybody look for me if i disappeared?
why is everything so far away?
will children sing songs about me in 100 years time?
do i have to envision the universe as foam?
am i my soul's sleeping bag?
is an invisible person in my bedroom?
is everything a dream?
can ghosts see me?
am i somebody else in private?
am i naive?
am i an eccentric?
is indecisiveness proof of free will?
will everything come out?
is the world there when i'm not?
is hunger an emotion?
am i beautiful?
what if happiness is looking for me in the wrong place?







Here's what they said about it:


Hundreds of questions, handwritten in four different languages, are projected onto the wall in playfully undulating patterns. Combining grandiose metaphysical speculation and the mundane problems of everyday life, Questions (2002-03) explores the point where the profound slips into the ridiculous. Fischli / Weiss have described them as questions that don’t demand a response but instead make you wonder what kind of person would ask such a thing. As one impossible question follows another, they begin to suggest the workings of an incoherent and restless mind. ‘In a certain way, it leads to a dissolution of the self if all of these things simply whirl about unanswered – a feverish, disoriented state that’s upsetting because it’s unstoppable’, Weiss has said. ‘We did in fact imagine a presence at the centre of this multitude of questions, and we made speculations about the person. Most likely it was a man who lets everything run through his head before falling asleep – thus the projection of questions in the dark.’

The tiny sketches, such as a pecking bird and a van with its headlights blazing, are like casual doodles, adding to this sense of a mind wandering. According to Fischli, ‘they’re like decorations on a Christmas tree; one doesn’t really need them but they somehow spread a good mood anyway.’

This installation was the culmination of a series of works composed of absurd questions, including a book called Will Happiness Find Me? The use of text is reminiscent of the Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, in which the physical art object is less important than the ideas that it embodies. It also emphasises the philosophical character of Fischli / Weiss’s art, a willingness to question the world that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Your manias become science

As anyone who knows me (and i assume that the very small amount of people who read this blog do know me, because why else would they be interested in my inane ramblings) will undoubtedly know, i have a fetish.

This fetish is not anything to do with rubber, whips, chains, animals or children (despite what i may sometimes allude to when bored or in the mood to shock or offend). No, my fetish is much more severe. Not recognized by society, shunned to the backwaters and byways of sexual misconduct, it is my burden alone, a lust i must carry around furtively, lest i am discovered for the deviant i undoubtedly am.

"What is this twisted fascination for?" i hear you whisper (you little perverts, desperate for your latest taste of the taboo!). Well, my little chickadees, let me tell you now, gather close, this must travel no further. My object of lust, that which i cannot live without, which i crave regardless of the strain on my wallet and my social standing, is none other than the humble notebook.

This may sound tame, but think of it this way; looking around my roughly 6 by 12 foot university dorm room i can see no less than 11 notebook, obviously not including those which i use for my classes. These 11 books are purely for extra curricular note taking, and have been painstakingly chosen by me, taking into account how they look, what the paper inside is like, whether they are lined or blank, if they are lined, how close and what colour the lines are, and most importantly whether they are a pleasant weight.

There is no real reason for this mildly perverse post other than to share some notes from these vaulted tomes; quotes and notations which make me smile or think or remember. Some of them i've had written down for years, some of which i may have written down yesterday. It makes no difference, they are mine to share with you.

My smallest book, which i bought while at NYFA in Paris, and which consequently makes me think of Karima and Zane, has mainly quotes, mostly from art pieces in the Centre Pompidou. A select few include:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

Cursing and fumbling
with flesh
smelling flesh
clutching flesh
sucking violently
on flesh
cleaning up flesh
smiling at flesh.

Into some dessicated realm of beauty
the hand desired
but the heart refrained.

Something good will happen.

Another notebook of mine, dating from just before i moved to Bahrain, and containing embroidery and drawing as well as writing, contains the following:

"He who approaches the temple of muses without inspiration in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs." Plato.

An A5 sketchbook which i stole during my first week at Frensham, which is full almost to bursting with stuck in photos and articles, contains more wise words, such as excerpts from Romeo and Juliet:
"If i profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
my lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand
to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."

And from the great American novel, The Great Gatsby:
"I wouldn't ask too much of her" i ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
"can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously, "why of course you can!"

A description of Marylin Monroe from the last photo shoot:
"she was the wind,
that comet shape that Blake draws blowing around a sacred figure.
She was the light,
and the goddess
and the moon.
The space
and the dream.
The mystery
and the danger

A quote i loved from "The Wide Sargasso Sea"
Made for loving?
Yes, but she'll have no lover,
for i don't want her
and she'll have no other.

And very finally, a Mel Brooks quote, which i think sums up everything quite nicely:
Tragedy is when i get a papercut.
Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

Enough rambling, it's past 3 and i have a lecture in the morning, for which i get to break in a whole new notebook!

do you wanna go to the oyster-fest?

They may not be well known, and they may not be particularly cool, but i love Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, and i want the world to love them too.

As long as they don't love Luke, because he's mine bitches!



Spread the (beard) lust.
x

Dating strategy

Dimitri martin is the sex.

Oh you got all that charm goin' for ya

And it makes the youngsters want to be like ya.







(and yes, that is Arthur Miller in the background. Don't you wish you were alive in the 60's?)



"Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown."
Paul Newman.

Great actor, great director, great man.