intellectual properties

Gibbous Love

via kottke, i started reading this NYT piece on Courtney Love and her fashionista cred (it’s way more interesting than you might think) and was about 80% of the way through it when i was completely surprised by this:

After that Paris season, she went through what she describes as a “kook” phase, during which time she cut up her vintage dresses and some of the signature grunge pieces once worn by her and Mr. Cobain, and styled the scraps as ruffles and patchworks in the vein of Gibbous Fashions, a San Francisco collective that specializes in recycled fashion.

whoah! congrats to Selene for the mention!

07.18.10

for Miss G designs @ Evolution [of Fashion], July 18, 2010

photo PhatCatPhoto.com

headpiece by Caley Johnson/Miss G (SF)

top – vintage/reconstructed

skirt – BadUnklSista couture (SF)

heartbeat amplifier/supperclub/miss gigglemonster

more

morning, Oakland, Lake Merritt

morning, Oakland, Lake Merritt, originally uploaded by arlington avenue.

after seeing some dawn scenes in a film (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), i had a mad craving for dawn over the weekend but never managed to get up to get some. this photo only makes the craving more intense, and i should get down to the lake for some dawn soon (sunrise now at 7:20am…it’s possible.)

thx eye on blogs for the photo.

QOTD: ‘i had to draw the drawing’

“i’ve always lived it as big as i could… my brother is married and retired and lives in staten island. and that’s good. his kids are all college educated. i had to do things. i had to draw the drawing, not look at someone else’s drawing and say ‘yeah, that’s a good drawing.’ since 1987 i’ve lived in a commune in brisbane called the annex. it used to be sex, drugs, and rock and roll. every sunday there was an orgy. we called it sunday services. man, that was fun. we had partners—that’s how my daughter was born—but the orgies were disconnected from that and it was fine. now it’s more about pasta dinners all together, and i’m a personal trainer and my roommate laura is a yoga teacher. do you know how high pasta is on the glycemic index? what i’ve learned is this: all the things other people think matter don’t matter. things other people see as sins. we’re all human. there’s a connection to it. as you get older you realize none of that stuff matters.”

- an SF cab driver, via scenes from my hood. it’s so San Francisco, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

red strings and rabbit holes

“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!“

- Alice, in Wonderland

i love synchronicity, even if oblique.

as posted, BadUnklSista, the butoh performance group i often dance with, is doing a 2-night production in SF this weekend @http://counterpulse.org/ , a double-bill with The Carpetbag Brigade, an unlikely composition of amazing performance artists who are currently doing an extremely mad take on Jack and the Beanstalk. while some of BUS performances are loose, organic pieces that we rehearse very little for, this one was choreographed, and because i was back east visiting my family last weekend, i wasn’t able to attend the rehearsals and therefore wasn’t able to participate as a performer. we went as audience members last night instead. jay asked afterward why i so like abstract performance art – what do i get out of it/what do i love about it? (a side topic being that i don’t think people can choose what kind of art (including music) moves them. you can try to make yourself like an art form, but really i think you either do or you don’t, n’est-ce pas?)  i can’t explain how much it moves me, every time, but i’ll try.

do you have those dreams, where nothing makes sense, you’re not even sure who/what/where, but you wake up with a feeling as though you witnessed something so deep it meant everything? i have them often, and the Carepetbag Brigade’s “You Don’t Know Jack” performance was as such, with people doing odd things with unexpected objects, saying things that on the surface sound like mad gibberish but when digested, when it all hits you as one piece, as a whole, seems so universal that it means everything.  the poetic dialogue and songs were interwoven in odd but meaningful ways, the words carefully chosen, the physicality rich and directive, and at the end i felt as if awaking from one of those dreams. i couldn’t quite grasp what had happened, but i felt changed by it.

and then, Bad Unkl Sista’s performance, which i won’t even attempt with the details. most prominently, I am completely in love with Totter Todd‘s music right now (the dark place inside that you act from but never look at/swallow your fear, swallow it whole/you’re killing yourself with your own beauty).  BUS performances are always an honest and intense look at that which we are, the pieces of ourselves which we hide, which we let eat us from the inside, and the joy at relieving ourselves from such self-inflicted prisons.  there’s a certain part of myself that i am really not liking these days (in short: judgmental, and vocally), which is often exacerbated by visiting my family, and the performance last night brought a lot of that to the surface.  i am thinking i need a long strand of red string to tie around my wrist as a reminder of a few things i need to work on for a while (in the performance, such a string was used as a representation of your fear(s), which it is suggested in both song and action that you ingest, digest, and then regurgitate into something that tastes like relief).

thank you Bad Unkl Sista for always bringing such beauty, whether i am inside it or watching from afar. there’s another performance tonight @counterpulse in SF, which i’m sure will be similar but different. if you like intensity and songs and dances and abstract dreams that seem to say almost nothing directly but mean everything, i highly encourage you to attend tonight.

what does this have to do with rabbit holes and synchronicity?  the new Alice in Wonderland opened in SF this weekend, and we have a large crew (30+) who will be going to see it tonight, many of us in costume. and while the Disney version is just fine, those who have read the original texts know that Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass are much more than childrens’ stories, and are quite philosophically intricate and more than a little bit metaphysical.  it’s obvious why the psychedelic community latched onto its metaphors.

so with all the anticipation for the new film and mind wandering in that direction for this past week, particularly visiting my mother, who has an enormous collection of Alice in Wonderland memorabilia in her dining room/living room cabinets (indeed: dolls and figurines and books and all sorts of collectors items), walking out of the performance last night felt like the start of a weekend-long visit down the rabbit hole. then after another night of intense, crazy dreams, waking up this morning, it’s true: i’m really not sure i am the same person i was when i went to sleep last night, and if not, who that means i am today.

bad unkl sista: the study of soft: march 5&6 2010

hopefully i’ll be performing with BadUnklSista both of these nights next weekend – it should be intense, and beautiful.  come check it out, esp. if you’ve never seen BUS.

The Carpetbag Brigade and Bad Unkl Sista present two kaleidoscopic double-bill evenings of fun, disturbing physical theater and Butoh.

In “The Study of Soft”, featuring live music by Totter Todd (of Heavyweight Dub Champion), Pym (iampym.com) and F’kir Elderfae (Bad Unkl Sista), Bad Unkl Sista fuses multi-genre dance forms, live and original produced music, art installation, video and couture costuming into a continually evolving Butoh-based performance experience. For 2010 Bad Unkl Sista has begun a year long study of soft, and brings a different show to CounterPULSE each night.

The Carpetbag Brigade’s “You don’t know Jack” returns to CounterPULSE taking a Jungian twist on “Jack and the Beanstalk” with a dash of PTSD to create a surreal, comic tragedy of an alcoholic dead man and the shadow of his wildly dysfunctional family. Inspired by Robert Bly’s “The Sibling Society”, this funny, nightmarish fairy tale is a potent brew of physical theater, dance and a live musical score created by the ensemble cast.

tickets are $15-25 at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/100860

miss velvet cream/metamorphica in NOVO Mag

photos from a Metamorphica figure drawing workshop i did almost a year ago with miss velvet cream as the stylist just turned up in print in NOVO magazine’s current fashion issue:

(that’s me on the right)

the next Metamorphica is on Feb 26th with BadUnklSista as the stylist, which never disappoints.  if you or someone you know enjoys figure drawing, check it out.

lov3sick3: the modern primatives

photo: del geronimo

clothing: gelareh design

event: lovesick III produced by alexandria von bromssen

video: Fashion Feud SF, Jan 2010

a short little youtube video from last months’ Fashion Feud in SF, at which i was a guest judge:

one of my few speaking-on-stage-in-public-moments in life, captured there on video. great event – good job everyone! congratulations again to the winner, GB Shrive Designs, and thx SF Fashion and Merchants Alliance!