rose hips and the lunar eclipse

Potatoes in my purse and pleased to meet you.

2012-02-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

The other day on Facebook, a mysterious event notice: A design collective a few blocks from my house hosting a "potato lunch" on Friday noon. "Bring a potato or a topping," Facebook suggested. Having stopped working Fridays, I thought, "Well, I will!"

When I checked for it again, the notice was gone. Like shops manned by magical gnomes, Facebook events appear and vanish suddenly. And the more unlikely or unreal they seem, prompting you to want to verify them--the harder they become to find again.

Since I couldn't know whether I had really read it right, I threw two raw potatoes in my purse and headed over to the place, dressed in generically stylish solids: grey jeans, black shoes, a turquoise top with a massive mod-ish cowl neck and a dark wool peacoat. Clothes, I thought, that strangers could not hate. I asked the front desk girl with black hair and black glasses frames: "Is there something about potatoes today, or am I insane?" and she briefly clouded. "Is it only for people who work here?" And she said, "Oh--no. Have you got a topping?"

I promised to go back and get some pesto and took off down the cobble-path through the homeless park, back home, starting to sweat. I changed my earrings then changed them back, thought about ditching my coat--but a total stranger must remain consistent in her dress if she expects to be remembered from one minute to the next.

You know, I often worry that creative people will be pompous and aloof, but I think that's just a few particular assholes I've been running with--or rather into--for the last few harrowing years. Must remember most other people are not awful at all. These potato purveyors? So nice! For a minute there I became conscious that my coat was making me sweaty, and the sweat was making me look nervous, and the nervousness was making me look a guilty strange stalker--but once I took my coat off everything was completely fine again.

I met designers and interns and various thingmakers.

I got to hold a four-foot hammer.

I heard a first-person account about winning a statewide speedwalking championship.

We talked shop about how it's impossible to give a truly thorough and absolutely infallible arts critique--and yet hunches are pretty damned important.

And then we ate russet potatoes!
(My potatoes were reds, so I left them in my purse. I'll save the racier nightshades for when I know folks better.)

Grey Anne fans are like the Yeti. Scattered accounts, but no conclusive proof.

2012-02-10T00:12:00.001-08:00

Somebody owes me a lifetime of Fridays & Saturdays.

2012-02-09T18:48:00.000-08:00

There's a reason that I turned 30 late, and it's not the usual lady vanity flimflam.
I actually stopped the clock for a while, Miss Havisham style, to recoup a lifetime of stolen weekends.
You know how the tooth fairy takes your teeth? Well, church deacons spirited away my first 18 years of Friday nights and Saturday noons in a shiny collection plate. And, dammit, I had plans for those.

I was going to be crushed into blissed-out snapshots of giddy hugs with friends at stupid slumber parties. I was going to wear ringlets and be a townsperson in a Dickens play, and the next summer I'd be ready to debut as Dorothy. I was going to hit the beach, the mall, the alleys or the gas pedal on some borrowed convertible car. I was not going to sit around eating soup by candlelight on a teenage Friday night, being coaxed to harmonize on hymns and share prayer requests. It wasn't my plan to spend Saturdays in a floral dress hearing how the apocalypse was pending.

Now to the ledger to settle accounts: Sunset Friday to Sunset Saturday technically spans one day of time but kind of nixes two days of fun. If I'm owed 52-104 days per year for 18 years, the total amount of time I need to recoup is between 2.5 and 5 years. I think rounding to 3 years is more than fair--although bear in mind that if I just plonk three years onto my twenties, most of that time will be drudgerous weekdays. Workdays. Not even roughly equivalent to adolescent weekend madness. But there's no fix for that, time being linear, my peers being adults, and rent being expensive. So it's the best I can devise for score-settling. Or maybe I should go ahead and push for the 5.

Maybe as penance for thwarting my preteen theater career, the prophets and saints seemed to reach down from the heavens with their milky hands of mercy and preserve me at just under 30. At this point it's a token, but I'll take it. Door Guy, you can rigidly believe my driver's license age if you like, but by decree of a divine settlement, I'm technically entitled to several more irresponsible nights.

Ghost-hunting at the Hollywood Theatre.

2012-02-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

I have to save my thunder for the monthly, but suffice to say, last night Stephen and I were guided around the theater's many spooky back rooms by the guy from the Paranormal Society. I saw a disassembled pipe organ, a rusty ceiling-hole large enough for a person but leading to nowhere, ladders, narrow stairwells, and various backstages. I do not think I saw a ghost--but it was definitely interesting.

A resentment zen koan:

2012-01-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

If you were falling from a cliff,
I would be loathe to lift you up,
because no,
I'm not sure you're a good enough person.

Rules for writing:

2012-01-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

1. Entertain.
2. Inform
3. Sooner die than lie or pander.

Home-mended clothes are not shabby; but rather a badge of skill and resilience.

2012-01-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

I pass the lesbian couple on the sidewalk-- (thoughts on Portland's surreal style)

2012-01-20T13:40:00.000-08:00

I, leopard-print tights, three complementary colors of shirt and sweater, eyeliner; they, cat-print umbrella, flapper hats, scarves, a vintage dress. In the neighborhood around us, all the houses' bold contrast trim is freshly painted, wind-chimes adorn porches, gardens are tastefully pruned, not overly manicured, so creepers can still creep and grasses can still spurt. There is thought and time poured over every aesthetic thing.

Such scenes are not rare here, they're commonplace. That's why people often say Portland is surreal--because everybody's styled like they just stepped out of The Wardrobe Department. (Even bums have a bizarre classicism, wafting around with shopping carts piled high with plastic-bagged parcels like river-barges. Undeniably surreal.)

When I first moved to Portland, I must admit, it's "styliness" struck me as pretension. I now understand it for what it is: personal contribution to the public atmosphere, the creation of aesthetic richness to compensate for relative cash poverty. Style statements also often stand in for bolder verbal statements that sheepish white liberals are reluctant to make. A bold tattoo or a kooky shoe is supposed to say it all, leaving its wearer at leisure to recline shyly against the wall at parties. (I confess that in this mode, I've been complicit.)

People who visit Portland and see conscious aesthetics everywhere, often assume that its citizens are rich. They delve into the Pearl District with a platinum card trying to find out where we're getting all the awesome stuff we're sporting. In truth, we're mostly underemployed, time-rich, cash-poor, bold, and clever, "getting away" with style through tireless thrift rummaging, DIY alterations, and a willingness to take up rejected merch and withstand some pointing and laughing until it gradually becomes cool again.

Some persons self-righteously dismiss discussions of fashion, claiming it's non-essential, but only bare-ass nudists can rightly make this case. Fashion is an encrypted language of values and priorities, and Portland, I like the ideas you're wearing, often even more than what you verbally say.

“The most important thing in life is style. That is, the style of one's existence, the characteristic mode of one's actions, is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing, then style is doubly definitive, because style describes the doing. The point is this: happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating, it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content, and underscores the primacy of style. It is content, or rather the consciousness of content, that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us, to move us; it is style that makes us care.”

~Tom Robbins*

* Incidentally, Tom Robbins was briefly married to my third-grade teacher. She was a prize; I don't know why he ever let her go.

It's easier to enjoy life if you're not busy being immortalized.

2012-01-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

Man makes god, then makes everyone god. Man exalts rock stars, then everyone's rock stars. Who gets the next pedestal, and how long 'til it topples?

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

A reverie of old Florida washed over me unexpectedly this morning at the vintage store.

2012-01-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

I was looking at a shelf of lamps that were all big-skirted ladies, which you rarely see in the Northwest but I saw in Florida all the time. This was even a day-job for college-age gals: sitting in the park in a fluffy up-do, spreading out your hoop-skirt into a perfect circle of ruffles and roosting in the middle flipping a fan, sipping sweet tea, and posing for pictures with tourists. When I was quite young I yearned to be one of those ladies.

Never liked Scarlet O'Hara though. Pretty lady? Sure. But she always struck me as 10 pounds of melodramatic self-interest in 20 pounds of green drapery. But every culture has ladies like that, who swoon and beguile while ruthlessly shoving their way to the front of the line.

The storekeeper and I got talking, about pageant culture versus goddess worship, about the puzzling construction of Southern Belle dresses, with their soft squishy breast-baring come-hither center, then a massive perimeter of ruffleskirt that says "Stay back!" I told her about my other childhood dream job, mermaid--which is also a real paycheck-maker in Florida. Even after 12 years of northwest living and 4 years of college, I still practiced holding my breath underwater and swimming with my feet together, vowing to use these marketable skills upon my return to the sun-lands.

I am still not 100% sure how a feminist grownup goes about ringing her inner belle, although in my music-playing days I've staged many experiments. In some rooms for some people, glamor can be bravery. For others (Scarlet!) it's a manipulative ruse. I'll keep trying things, thank you--just leave me my giant hula-hoop of personal space.

Playing w/ my nephew....

2011-12-29T17:11:00.000-08:00

On the ownership of one's face.

2011-12-22T14:56:00.000-08:00

Occasionally in this postmodern life, someone will ask you to "be the face of" something. As someone who's tried to comply with such requests for both money and love, I can tell you that it never takes. No matter whom I aim to please or what I seek to gain, my face will only ever be "the face" of my own brain.

Some days, the thoughts come far too fast to process.

2011-12-22T00:43:00.000-08:00

...at which point it seems wiser to pull a fedora low over your brow, pretend it's a planetarium and in the pinpoints of light, seek the Pleiades. Things will sift out as they should eventually, or an apocalypse may vanquish us all, in which case none of us would be needed at the office. So this much I know: it's not the end of the world.

The relative merits of unpredictability.

2011-12-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

I first saw Dead Poets Society when I was arguably too young to watch a handsome college student recite Shakespeare, then blow out his brains on a floor. Be that as it may, the thing that haunted me more was this: the thought that the professor had, in his own college days, been voted--not "best dressed," or "most likely to succeed,"--but "most likely to DO ANYTHING."

I knew even then, as a spandex-clad preteen, that that was an accolade that I wanted to earn in my future life. Compared to the stuckuppy "succeed" or the fleeting and laughable "dressed," it was far and away the best. Now, a caution: "Anything" really means anything...from winning the Nobel Prize to offing yourself with a gun you grabbed from your dad's mahogany desk-drawer.
But that was a risk I was willing to take,
because nine out of ten dead poets agree,
that unpredictability is power.

This is also, come to think of it, a principle of nature. Animals with erratic patterns of feeding and migration are just that much harder to hunt. That's why I often walk to and from work at different times of day, and I sojourn at not one, but five different coffee shops. Like a wily antelope with many watering holes, I change my routine to stay ahead of the preds. Also, how powerful are natural disasters? So. Their rip-roaring impact is only diminished by our ability to predict them. (The Richter scale is rumbling, duck and cover...the lava is flowing, run...)
Five out of six swaying buildings also agree, unpredictability is power.

Someone once wrote to me and said, "I heard you set your accordion on fire." I wrote back and said, "I'd be a fool to refute that rumor," because unpredictability is power, and setting instruments on fire is--well--downright Hendrix. But also undoubtedly bad for business, at least in the short term. I imagine that back in the throes of rock and roll glory, bookers bemoaned having to mess around with a fire extinguisher when they could've just gotten that nice Pat Boone to show up on time and comb and croon. Transcendental vision quests can be bad for your décor, but mundane routines can sedate the brain, so I guess it's all a matter of priority.

That said, predictability (or reliability) is the single strongest selling-point, the best positioning, the cunningest way to court Lady Luck. "Eighty percent of success is showing up," says Woody Allen, and boy howdy, is that true. If you keep consistent business hours, always bake exactly enough pies, or, like Woody, say something witty and kiss a twenty-years-younger woman every film, then people will feel it's a safe bet to seek your services. "If you stay in one place long enough, your luck knows where to find you," wrote Roger Hedden in my second-favorite screenplay of all time, Bodies, Rest & Motion.

A couple summers ago, I started saying to myself every single night at 8, "Time to do dinos." I strapped on my headlamp and tested my toy candles and counted my change and toddled on down to Potato Champ, or on Tuesdays Crush, or on Sundays Rontoms. I started showing up, and much luck followed me.

Even now, every day that I work a job for which I'm paid, I feel like a rescued pet, so lucky not to be literally hungry, not to be literally dead. Never to have fallen quite off the precipice into a brain-blowing Shakespearean despair. Of course luck is relative; by third-world standards I am a princess, and by first-world ones many of us are serfs, more every day; at this rate we cannot afford to travel or have any babies, but I digress. Lucky to exist. Lucky to get fed.

"Four feet on the ground," I might say to a dino client. "Stable, reliable, down-to-earth. Possibly also stagnant or stubborn."
"Two footer," I sometimes proclaim. "Eager to move and change. Plenty of initiative, progress, momentum. Possibly restless, unsatisfied, unsafe."

For my own part, I would like to be reliable enough to be standing in line when they hand out the money and love, yet unpredictable enough to inspire awe and evade pain. Perhaps I can calculate the perfect ratio, but thus-far I've too often missed both marks.

Oh, Amelie, you are much too fond of stratagems. Just kiss the boy. Ride the moped. Bake a plum cake.

Behold The Ramayana, patched together by collective modern memory.

2011-12-14T17:37:00.001-08:00

There's an especially great heartbreak scene at 51 minutes. A rare depiction of feminine anger and grief that doesn't condescend.

Four things I dislike in shoes:

2011-12-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

When the rubber sole is creeping up on the supple upper like lava trying to consume it.

When there are forty eyelets threaded with a giant long lace, but then there is a secret side zipper. Cheater!

When it has so many vents, strips, strands and perforations that it looks like a basket from camp craft class.

When the ankle is purposely hecka wide, affecting the glamorous grandeur of a lunchbag.

Merry Christmas, Emily Dickinson!

2011-12-10T03:12:00.000-08:00

Poor Ms. Dickinson. She had that birthday/Christmas combination that means all your relatives cop out and give you one gift to cover both. I guess I am no exception. Anyway, here is a thing I've made, an unholy combination of Christmas Carols and Dickinson poems cheekily called "Dickinson's Christmas Carol." Hopefully you listen to it lots, and if you like it, you may buy it. Happy holidays!

Leading a rich astral life.

2011-12-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

In the past twenty-four hours, two different people who don't know one another and hardly know me, separately said the same thing:

You were in my dream last night. We were near the ocean.

said one:
It was a freighter ship in the Pacific ... no! the Atlantic. And you were giving silly fact-filled tours of the engine room and boat compartments to tourists.

said the other:
I think you were just kind of...there.

Now on the cusp of sleep, I ponder who else's aquatic dreams I may invade. Can I control it? I would prefer to visit islands or bridges, rather than ferries or freighters. I suppose if I couldn't die, I wouldn't mind the underwater either.
As it is, though,
so dark and vast,
you never know what's under there.

When the heater's on, it's too loud to record, and when it's off, it's too cold. Must finish Dickinson's Christmas Carol edits before her birthday.

2011-12-05T21:36:00.000-08:00

Holy shiz, guys; it's hopeless.

2011-12-05T17:27:00.001-08:00

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-extremely-disappointing-facts-about-popular-mus

Ashia's new video

2011-12-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are tired of trickery, of smoke, mirrors, pretension and lies can believe it or not: Ashia is exactly like this in real life. Ashia is a doll.

Choked up at the Old Church.

2011-12-01T12:18:00.001-08:00

Ashia said my coffee was the culprit, but I'm not sure. I was singing one of the Dickinson's Christmas Carol* songs, a poem about a nervous bird set to the tune of I Saw Three Ships, and as I pictured the nervous bird and tried to conjure his fluttery little spirit, the twitchy pulse moving beneath his smooth plumage...

...it worked too well, and I became suddenly nervous too. My fingers seized up like little claws and couldn't pick the chords. "I'm sorry," I said to the patient people and tried to explain about the invisible bird. It's not everyone who comes to a near-empty paganized church on a weeknight to hear poetry concept songs...so probably this self-selecting small crowd completely understood.

*coming soon on Bandcamp; on or before Ms. Dickinson's birthday 12/10

Frolicking with Loly in Ladd's, taking pics with her pinhole camera.

2011-11-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

I feel like a dragon who, having already pillaged the village, is reluctant to leave her lair.

2011-11-26T01:02:00.000-08:00

Today the mere air in the vegan café bore so much raw onion and cayenne that I cried.

2011-11-23T15:31:00.001-08:00

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You be the stripper and I'll be the monster.

2011-11-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

"I'm at a video shoot with strippers and monsters," tweeted my friend Virginia. "Guess which one I am?" Yesterday, we both posed as monsters in Virginia's friend's video, dragging dollar bills along the bar to bait the impossibly skinny strippers, who were not nude, but wearing equally skinny strips of cloth. Some of the zombie types did a lot more roaring and screaming, but I mostly loomed in the background leering, spreading out my fingers like creepy claws. Though I'm sure it looked like a proper freak show, the atmosphere in the actual room was completely easygoing; there was a convivial camaraderie between the monsters like myself and the slender sylphs in the giant hoof-like heels.

See this face they gave me? They said it was inspired by Carnival of Souls. A couple runs through a sprinkler, and I could've been a Heath Ledger Joker. Being sort of a "handsome woman," it's not the first time I've gotten made up like a man. Que sera, sera. One could do worse than the Annie Lennox treatment.

I do believe that stripping can be an art form, in case anyone wants to step up and argue (although I dare anyone to step to this fearsome face). I even believed as much before recently reading the cheeky Memoirs of Miss Viva Las Vegas. After all, it requires acting and dance--two out of three of the Broadway basics. Viva often says, "Thank you for supporting the arts." I say, "You're most welcome."

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The story I told Sasha.

2011-11-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try to tell you the story I told Sasha, so imagine you also have a seemingly bottomless glass of chai. On the tabletop there's black-stained woodgrain that twirls like map topography, and I am drawing my finger in circles as if to outline islands, continents, and other chunks of terrain.

This is a very simple story, really--only it takes place across two generations and three countries. Hence, you will find it more stimulating if, as you follow along, you try to feel warm and feel cold at the appropriate times. Here goes.

My dad lived all over the place when he was a kid, but he wanted to go to college in California, and become a medical doctor. His dad and all their relatives were from Newfoundland, so my dad made one of those famous doctor deals with the Newfoundland government where they pay your way through school as long as you promise to work in the middle of nowhere for a while. So, my young married parents who'd been living in California, dressing in sixties styles, going to a megachurch...

moved to Newfoundland, and not just Newfoundland, but a tiny island of it called Fogo, where every winter the ocean froze. The island was so small that nobody kept their sheep fenced in, instead they put up fences around every house to keep the wandering sheep out. My parents learned to drink powdered milk and boil hard-tack and sing chanties, and on especially windy days (of which there were many) the women on the island would scold my mother not to go outside lest she blow away, and they were only half-joking.

There was another doctor on the island besides my dad; they split shifts and dealt with everything: Smashed fingers from fishingboat accidents, baby deliveries, alcohol poisoning--you name it.

Two years before their time was up, my parents had my sister. They say they laid her in an orange-box when she was very little. When she got bigger, they decided they wanted to warm up, so they moved to Florida and had me. And for me it was gingham bikinis and hibiscus flowers and a backyard pool and a down-the-street lake, and sunny every single day. It is possible this is why my sister and I harbor different expectations.

The other doctor stayed in Newfoundland longer, and he had two daughters, too. We went to visit his family and met his daughters Justine and Janet on a mossy mound of rock overlooking the ocean. (It was midsummer so nothing was frozen). Justine, the elder, lost no time telling us a hundred lies, like Don't touch the pitcher plant. One time, I was out here [on the bog-land] and I put my finger in a pitcher plant and the pitcher plant sucked me into a quicksand tunnel and when I came out I was in the middle of the ocean. And some fishermen picked me up and brought me back to shore. But the bigger lie was, Janet's face is dirty because she's been eating jam. Justine's sister Janet had not been eating jam; she'd had a purple mark all over her mouth from the day she was born. She didn't say anything, and I didn't meet her again until I was 20.

When I met Janet again, her family was living in England and I was going to college there for the year. Janet had gotten most of her birthmark painfully and gradually zapped away with lazers, while Justine had matured into Barbie-style beauty. Janet had a boyfriend and school friends and I met them and they took me around their town. They taught me British idioms, like what it means to go "on the pull." It's impossible to say whether Janet's horrendous birthmark had made her a better person--but she was a very good one. I instantly considered her a friend. I met Justine for a minute; she was unjustly modelesque and seemed distracted. She airily promised she'd show me around London sometime. "She won't," growled Janet in her English accent. "She just says things like that but she's really so false."

I hadn't remembered their parents at all, but when I met them again I realized they were the most truly in-love old people I'd ever met. Peter and Sue would dance in their cobblestoned kitchen and he would dip her. They would throw back their heads laughing. They were academics now, historians who knew everything about the town of Winchester. They wrote essays and gave "ghost tours." Peter would flap around cemeteries in a cape telling people all the somber stories from the historical archives. They were great.

I was only in England for one school year and then I came home, but I thought of them sometimes. When I was 25, Peter had a stroke and completely lost his delightful mind. My mom heard from Sue a lot and told me that Janet seemed depressed. I imagine she already knew life was unfair on account of the birthmark, but here was some more bitter unpreventable injustice. Everything got weird with her dad; he forgot people, he was in a nursing home, and sometime's he'd lash out and get violent.

When I was telling Sasha, these isolated facts fell into a chain like an archipelago of islands. Now as I tell you, I'm not sure. The news since the tragedy has gotten more mundane. Sue moved houses, Janet switched jobs...though no matter what's changed, I can scarcely imagine them outside a terrain of mossy brick and stone because at all times that's where I saw them. They are also stone-set as some of my favorite people, which is why I never bother to write or call. This way I can freeze them how they belong: Justine being eaten by a giant pitcher plant, Janet having finally lazered the hateful jam from her face, feeling for the first time beautiful, holding her boyfriend's hand and going off to college. Her parents dancing in the kitchen. Her dad, done being a doctor, finished fixing fingers, still having his health, dashing around in his spooky cape.

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tonight walking home I got caught in a Mary-Poppins-force wind.

2011-11-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

My brand-new ShedRain™ "wind-tunnel-tested" umbrella reared up and flapped like a hell-bat, then tore like a tissue.

Security is a ruse. Even Rihanna's umbrella was useless when Chris Brown came calling.

The Golden Rule Lookbook Videos: My songs and my dresses and pretty girls who are not me.

2011-11-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

Even though my friend Wynde's boutique The Golden Rule recently (and semi-famously) closed, some vestiges of its glory remain. When I go around town, I'll see a garment or a necklace here or there that I know was sourced from the store...and then there are these videos, which fold several dresses from my personal collection into Wynde's aesthetic visions. (The blonde girl is my favorite because she looks the most like me. Like they say, "If horses worshipped gods, they would look like horses.")

But enough talk. Music! and clothes!

GOLDEN RULE GALLERY MAY 2011 LOOKBOOK VIDEO PT. 1 from GOLDEN RULE GALLERY on Vimeo.

GOLDEN RULE GALLERY MAY 2011 LOOKBOOK PT. 2 from GOLDEN RULE GALLERY on Vimeo.

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Dino Tarot: Shy quadrupeds at Holocene

2011-11-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

As the guy in a fur vest and green hotpants pleaded for his audience to get up and dance, they stubbornly clung to the walls as if to say, "You can't make us. And anyway, your bad self could dance us into the ground." (I was in the side-room slinging dinos like I do. And people were, at first, shy about that too.)

It was a night of quadrupeds and flyers. Very few hoppers, only ONE large carnivore (T-Rex, the powerful but error-prone). It was also a night of romance that sought some 'splainin'. "There are two kinds of romances," I heard myself say at least three times. "There's the kind where you're similar creatures, and your attraction is based on mutual understanding. And then there's the kind where...you each admire strengths in the other, that you lack yourself. Between the two of you, you're able to divide and conquer more of what the world throws your way."

("And then there's the kind where...it doesn't work," I didn't say. Why say? That part, they already know.)

Quadrupeds are hesitant to move, prefer to stay put. And flyers like to pull back and observe from a distance, occasionally swooping in for a bite. Green Hotpants had his work cut out for him to drum up a dance party. I wish he had asked for a reading; he'd probably freshen up the field with a few more carnivores. Then again, you never know....

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I quit Myspace and it felt good.

2011-11-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

World, do not think me naive enough to believe that any of these sites have completely pure motives. (Google, I'm talking to you: pay your taxes. And now I'm turning around and telling myself: You're using Blogger, so you obviously also want something for free.)

That said, there's been a trend in social media sites: Social media magicians wave your friends in front of you to attract your attention--and then when you're not looking, they replace them with advertisers. With Myspace, this transition was avalanche-quick--an easily perceivable downward slide. With Facebook, it's been subtler. Each "change" in the interface wedges in more room for Events, Ads, Games...and less for Friends. If it goes too much farther, I'm out.

But, Myspace having SO LONG SINCE jumped the proverbial shark, it was well past time that I jump ship. I know, I know. Myspace is THE virtual parking-lot for band and music entities. For the press (of whom I am a member as well as a patron) having a Myspace page, too often equals proving your existence. So. Is this virtual musical suicide? Oh well. Bang.

I attempted a few half-measures first. But when I tried to delete my songs and leave my profile active, the songs mysteriously remained. And when I tried to augment the site with a link to the new Bandcamp--it kept morphing into an indecipherably long internal Myspace url. A site is not a person anymore than a corporation is, but both entities are capable of seeming creepy. I determined that Myspace was being a creep, and I have no patience for creeps, real or virtual.

Myspace is a warehouse, and so far Bandcamp is a boutique. Same with YouTube v vimeo. I would rather support these boutiquey sites, with nice-looking interfaces and fair-seeming artist dealings, than the other kind.

With the exception, I guess, of Google, which has a motto I love ("Don't be evil") and a tax rate I hate (less than zero).

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Oh, Portland elves and fairies, you are so beautiful but for me, so very small.

2011-11-09T15:12:00.001-08:00

Where are my people? The ones who are magical but also very fierce and large, like valkyrie and minotaur?

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Kind of obsessed with the "Occupy" movements. Here's some relevant stuff.

2011-11-08T08:31:00.000-08:00

An article I wrote about Pink Martini's "Occupy" stand.

Some signs I transcribed from a Portland rally.

<a href="http://greyanne.bandcamp.com/track/riddle">Riddle by Grey Anne</a>

Remade the Bandcamp site. facts n figurines is there now.

2011-11-08T01:12:00.001-08:00

You guys don't really need to worry about this. It's for, like, people's uncles in Adelaide Australia who suddenly discover this record.

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Radiohead + Hemingway + Ecclesiastes: A pack of sandwiches of nothin'.

2011-11-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

A recitation of three texts that all say the same thing: Nothing matters. :)

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Insatiability is overrated. It's okay to just say when you're sated.

2011-11-06T01:13:00.001-07:00

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Treasure Trove (for singalong practice)

2011-08-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

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2011-08-14T23:06:00.001-07:00

Tonight on the Burnside bridge, the moon was yellow and huge. The widget says it was full last night, but it looks pretty close tonight, too.

I want to succumb more to magnetism. Things that repel me, drift away from. Things that attract me, move toward.

Me: You seem cool; what's the catch? Him: I get depressed. Me: Aw, that's a natural side effect of too much noticing.

2011-01-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

helium, ether, fifths and octaves.

2010-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson once said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."I feel pretty much the same way about music. Songs which seem unconstrained, surprising, exhilarating, puzzling, surreal, stimulating, transcendent, airy, heady, and ephemeral--are my favorite kind. I suppose this is why I like psychedelic elements in music. More than thirds, I prefer fourths and fifths and sevenths and octaves. Melodic phrases that seem to overstretch the typical number of measures. Choruses that spill right out from the side of verses, as though the verse got talking, and realized it had more to say than was allowed in a verse-long space. Like Ms. Dickinson said, when it feels like it's too spacious somehow, to fit inside the confines of your head.