storefront for postcard

^ "Look at me here, here on my own again, up straight in the sunshine..."

I had a curious dream this morning. It seemed to be set in the early 60s because of the clothes we wore, dungarees and windbreakers and bright pastel colours, almost like West Side Story. I was close friends with this one fellow (no one I would know in real life) and he and I had a history together as platonic friends. Then he befriended another young man and we three hung out together. But then it looked to be my friend was getting very close (non-romantically) to his new friend, to the point where he ignored me more and more, even when the three of us were together.

In the evening we went into this shop along a riverfront and they sold postcards and other paper goods, the entire place was practically dripping with cards from floor to ceiling. There was no clerk to be seen. My friend and the new friend were laughing and joking together while looking at the merchandise and completely forgot all about me. I was so upset by this that I left the shop and stood by the water and eventually went home.

I then found myself the next day passing by an empty shopfront in the city and stopping at the window. I knew somehow that that space was accepting proposals from artists who want passersby to see their work from the street. So I took them up on it and had a large foam core sign made up that featured comments from me about how sad I've been because my friends had abandoned me, and I hadn't heard from them and I had since done other things, like help poor homeless people and other socially progressive work. I placed the sign in the window. Next to it was a large photographic print of myself standing at the riverfront in jeans and my windbreaker, my face blacked out but still showing my head bowed down.

People began to stop and look and read the words. I knew that it was just a matter of time before my friend would see it, but that if he didn't I had to move on, but at least the world would know that I had passed through and did things.

personal anthem

Hit 'HQ' for high quality | Alternate source (lyrics only)

High | Lighthouse Family

When you're close to tears remember
Some day it'll all be over
One day we're gonna get so high
And though its darker than December
What's ahead is a different colour
One day we're gonna get so high

And at the end of the day
Remember the days
When we were close to the edge
And we wonder how we made it through
And at the end of the day
Remember the way
We stayed so close til the end
Well, remember it was me and you

'Cause we are gonna be forever you and me
You will always keep me flying high in the sky of love

Don't you think it's time we started
Doing what we always wanted
One day we're gonna get so high
'Cause even the impossible is easy
When we got each other
One day were gonna get so high

And at the end of the day
Remember the days
When we were close to the edge
And we wonder how we made it through
And at the end of the day
Remember the way
We stayed so close til the end
Well, remember it was me and you

'Cause we are gonna be forever you and me
You will always keep me flying high in the sky of love

'Cause we are gonna be forever you and me
You will always keep me flying high in the sky of love

This is my song. It is what keeps me looking up and towards the horizon, keeps me buoyant even as I feel I'm drowning in misery and I know I must stay afloat. This song has seen me through turmoil, heartbreak, moments of inchoateness, and fatigue from the weight of life. It's who I am. Many times I tear up listening to it.

For every time I feel like I'm slipping again, there's this song. And I sing it to myself, a serenade for me to pull through.

"you must normalize..."

LCD Soundsystem is the musical side project of producer James Murphy, co-founder of dance-punk label DFA Records. The music of LCD Soundsystem is a mix of dance music and punk, along with elements of disco and other styles. LCD Soundsystem is particularly popular in Britain, with two albums reaching the top 40 of the UK Albums Chart...

- Wikipedia

This particular track, Get Innocuous, an uncompromising and surprisingly elegant composition of thrashing percussion, hypnotic synth base, and seductively masculine choral voice work, is among the featured tracks in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. The group earned tw0 2005 Grammy nominations for their talents in the electronica category, then another Grammy nomination in 2007 for best work in the Best Electronic/Dance Album arena, and that's on top of heaps of critical acclaim by some of the best music critics for influential publications like The Guardian and Time Magazine.

Dance in front of your screen at your own risk.

smooth operator: sade

I first discovered Sade in the early 80s. Back then there were many excellent bands, the competition for my ears was fierce in the arenas of new wave, punk, industrial dance, alternative, and American and British pop.

But Sade, in her own way, trumped them all on her own terms. Why? Because she was the exact opposite of all the exuberant, in-your-face dramatics of pop music. She had one of the rarest of qualities: cool.

This statuesque former model, part Nigerian and part English, possessed a smooth unwavering voice, a decidedly distant yet not icy personal style, and a unique talent to circumnavigate the limelight of paparazzi and other media intrusion that constantly subject us to the pummeling of celebrity gossip and drama of the entertainment world. When all we heard and saw (whether we want it or not) were the tabloid headlines of Whitney Houston and Madonna, nowhere to be seen was Sade. She simply made herself out to be too "boring" to sell millions of magazine copies for the publishers. Which in the end rendered her that much more intriguingly mysterious.

While the pop stars of the 80s often times dressed in the most outlandish ways to sustain the attention of whoreish media and fans, Sade had always been at the far end of the spectrum. She was almost always photographed in stark black, clean tailored lines, turtleneck sweaters, backless cocktail dresses that caressed her lean model's frame, long black silk gloves, dark trousers, hair slicked back to a long pony tail. Such style is eternal and can never be tethered to an era or decade, least of all the ostentatious and overripe 80s.

Sade's music, naturally, aurally extends and embodies this cool, confident style. Her forte was jazz, the iconic kind so easily recognized in its native atmosphere of smoky nightclub patronized by elegant elite clientele serviced by bartenders with combed back hair, starched white shirts, and waistcoasts. Subsequently she inflected her rhythms with African beats or subtle hip hop influences, but ultimately the sounds never shout at you and instead invite you to lounge and enjoy a nicely mixed martini, as smooth and intoxicating as Sade herself, her creamy voice crooning over the cradling bass and purring saxophone.

Cool incarnate is Sade. No one could, can, or can ever, touch her, even as she touches us.

redux deluxe

C'est Comme ça | Les Rita Mitsouko. 1986. Directed by Jean Baptiste Mondino.

money can't buy it | annie lennox

Beautiful. Powerful. Disturbing. Resonant. Haunting. Unique.

rite of passage

^ New Order - Krafty

I wish I had lost my virginity this way. Simply, beautifully, poetically.

la séduction d'une ville

^ Bryan Ferry's Slave To Love, shot on location in Paris in the mid 80s. Like fine vintage wine, the writing of Colette, or the visions of artist Odilon Redon, the romantic art direction and sepia toned dreamlike photography are eternal and will always inspire me to dream.

Paris...Chicago...Petaluma...South Pasadena. I just read an old blog post from my good friend N., while by coincidence listening to a song from Carla Bruni (or is it now Madame Sarkozy?) , and thinking about the fact that my niece K. has yet to experience Paris (preferably on her own, one must experience that world for the very first time on one's own, it's absolutely necessary). What a confluence!

So I leave my suburban homestead each morning, walk a few metres and catch a bus, where a nice portugese man greets me every morning. I ride to the local SNCF station, sit on the train for 20 minutes, surrounded by a melange of strange African languages that I have never heard before, wake up to the Eiffel Tower on the left and arrive in the center of the city. I have no sense of direction in the circular flow of things in Europe...I am accustomed to the grid-like structures of modern-day American cities, thus I have purchased a compass and have honed my intuitive skills even further. I am Rudolphe the red nosed reindeer. Guess I look like I know what I'm doing because people ask me for directions all the time. If only they knew...

I have befriended a few fun pals from all over the place. A gal from Pasadena, a boy from Trinidad, and Spaniard, a Texan, an Algerian and a Parisian. Imagine that. My first day here I met a 65 year old Parisian man who offered to buy me an apartment in Paris so I could stay here. Hmmmmmm. WEIRD! Then there are the Japanese business men on the CHamps-Elysees who want to give me 1000 euros cash to go buy things at Louis Vuitton to help them smuggle back to their boutiques. Then there are the men in Montmartre who grab your face and want to paint you. I haven't come up with a good comeback yet but I'm working on it. They're really irritating. It's all just too weird. Everything. But oddly enough, why do I feel more at home wandering these streets then I do in the USA?

- from N.'s blog J'y pense et puis j'oublie...

N. and I share similar passions over Paris. She is of French descent but of Midwestern upbringing, and I having been there a few times years back for work and pleasure. N., much to my jealousy, has actually lived in Paris for a while, something I plan to do in the future, preferably making art, writing, blogging, and of course, experiencing. I think N.'s blog post sums it up well enough that I needn't do so myself, she speaks for me just as much.

Paris must be experienced for the very first time alone. You must be alone (even if already partnered). That is when everything opens up and invitations cascade at your feet and you can pick and choose, or let fate choose for you. Once in the city, an itinerary is about as useful as a prison cage with a view. Throw it out and get lost - literally. Only then will the city begin its slow and gradual seduction and you have no choice but to float along. "Let your pleasure be your guide", as Jeanne Moreau tells Anne Parillaud in the French action thriller La Femme Nikita.

^ Carla Bruni - Those Dancing Days Are Gone

K., and for that matter another good friend of mine, J., have never been to Paris. They have only the experiences of others to live through vicariously until they themselves can go. Paris, I tell them, is an entirely different state of mind if you allow it. When you're there it is not a holiday, it's not a sightseeing tour (not the way N. and I experienced it). Rather, it is a tonic, a seduction, a lover's hot embrace, a swig of whiskey, an aphrodisiac, a sensuous wafting.

And then you wake up back home, and the hangover is magnificent.

missing