Thursday, November 12, 2009

this is possible!


holy shit i love makeup

lydie:

"l...checking your messages while walking to your familiar spot under the trees...as you know 'I have my what would Lydia do in this case moments 'and that's when I hear you and" a woman wrote that on your facebook and i liked all of errors, i believe her
ask me about the boots
talk to you about american idol even though i don't watch it

coffee in a cardboard cup
and that weird model from

remember when you were carpentarsdream? i never understood the misspelling or the reference, we could chat online about frivolous stuff. we had the luxury of such casual communication, of getting up from our desks and coming back, watching tv, chatting with others, knowing that the other would be there to respond whenever. whatif i had recordings of your laughter on the phone. your laugh traveled WELL that way. it was a beautiful thing.
i regret my lifelong discomfort with the phone, but am relieved to remember that as much as i tried to get off the phone with you, you kept me. what the hell were we talking about? i can't remember everything. ridiculously, i remember talking about American Idol, the first season it was on TV.
i wear your makeup and the motorcycle boots you gave me, and your deodorant. the loss of you has taught me that life can really suck, it's fundamentally not easy in a way I didn't know about.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Monday, July 27, 2009

Merce cunningham

I'm so glad I saw his final piece, opening night on his final birthday. And the lecture later, at the Guggenheim, on the process of chance. I was as exposed as possible I guess, and I was charmed.

My favorite piece by Cunningham is Winterbranch from 1964. It was performed in black sweatsuits and a footballer's facepaint, largely in darkness with roving spotlights, with drilling, abrasive music (design by Rauchenburg and music by LaMonte Young I'm pretty sure). The dance was about falling, ways of falling and getting up. There is repeated impact of all the joints on the floor, or sliding down without an impact, or a sudden trust into a backwards spin he must've learned with Martha Graham and then made more violent. It looks like a disaster. I love this photo of it because it features Carolyn Brown, the most incredible modern dancer I've ever seen on film. Plus she is beautiful. Merce is center in this photo. If you ever find a copy of Winterbranch you should see it and I would like to see it again too.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

after

the kids have really sunburned necks and watery eyes, but Lilli's always looked spaced like that anyway. She's really skinny and was wearing a sweatshirt down to her knees. Gabe was clearly angling for a sleepover, sprawled on the couch. In a few energetic minutes they shot fireworks out the front windows, onto the street.
no one knows: lydia's friends are still checking in "Stay strong, love you" on Facebook. My mom proposed not having a service. She was just tired probably, impossibly tired. It was her little sister. I checked, she was just recently turned 43 years old.

Friday, July 17, 2009

free to be...

i don't wanna change because i still wanna be your friend foreveranever

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

pina bausch



Pina Bausch died today in Wuppertal, Germany, the industrial town she has enlivened since 1972 with the work of her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.  
Her work may be most known to the non-dance world by its appearance in the Almodovar film Talk to Her.  A scene from Cafe Muller appears in the opening.  Pina and another dancer wind around a room full of chairs with their hands out and eyes closed, wearing nightgowns.  A man tosses the chairs out of the way.  They cease on the wall stage right, and slide down.  Pina frightened me in that scene many years before I studied her work: she was very thin and severe, with great pain in her tense elbows, and a futile lifting of both legs just a few degrees from the floor before dropping them down to join the rest of her body.  Pina Bausch in that scene is depicted above. 
I have since been inspired by her other works, which depict people in bizarre action.  In Nelken, the floor is covered in carnations, and in one scene a man in a ball gown alone onstage is running around, shouting at the audience.  Another scene, I believe this is from Muller, has a woman in a very regular dress standing center, while ten or so men go about the deliberate work of touching her, dissociative and nonsexual, on the nose, the forearm, the skirt-hem, the hair, and her body sways from all the hands though they each only exert slight force.  She combines normal elements to achieve the absurd, or perverts a single action by its repetition to surreal effect.  All the dancers are acting as people, not anything ethereal, no dancerly proportion of distance, and that is what is absorbing about these scenes.  
A few of my favorite segments I could find are below. 




Thursday, June 25, 2009

Saturday, June 20, 2009

all i want

all i want to hear right now at all is either Going to California or the singles from 50 Cent's first album. I'm eating a excessive number of figs because they are outrageously delicious. Figs and milk and 50. I really miss years like 2003. Looking forward to my dad's commentary on whatever Power 92 is playing when I get home and we're driving somewhere together.

Friday, June 19, 2009

what goes on

Wednesday I'd slept at Jason's to avoid the miserable L train construction. We woke up and Stella went to work, I bought eggs and bacon and we used pancake mix I'd found in the bins at my old dorm and made a big breakfast. Dan and J were a lil grumpy until they got their little mcgriddles in their bellies.
We each swallowed an adderall from the upstairs drug dealer and walked from their apartment in Bushwick to Ridgewood, Queens. The porches looked like Urbana or the small brick homes looked like Chicago, and the desolate corners of expressway entrance ramps and car dealerships looked like Jefferson Park, Chicago. We turned south-west, walking through blocks and blocks of factories where there were no other pedestrians. Everything felt good, I guess that was the drug. I had energy and wanted nothing.
Walked to the Williamsburg Bridge, crossed into the city (walking the bridge takes 28 minutes). We'd walked something like nine miles when we landed on the Lower East Side. Jason found a batgammon set that I only just now remembered and realize I left at Home Sweet Home later.
Then were did we go... joined by Michael Quattlebaum and a boy named Nanu we walked to a zine release party, and then the Soho Grand Hotel. I bought a tank top; my shirt had stayed just slightly sweaty all day (the shirt was left at the club too, shit). At Nanu's place in TriBeCa there was a boy that looked like Willem Defoe and also a girl who looked like ugly Lady Gaga and is an alleged thief and a Japanese girl named Sayaka and a Mexican boy named Tom Pipol. I liked those last two a lot. We all drank. I had 2 drink and was wasted because I hadn't eaten. We went to Home Sweet Home for the goth night but I was too drunk to tell if it was fun or not or how long I stayed. When I left it was raining. Couldn't be bothered to untie my jacket from my purse, walked from below Delancy at Christie to 26th and 1st in that tank top, couldn't feel a thing.
It was a big New York day, and I was happy for it. I was so happy for so much of it.

Later I learned how sick my aunt Lydia is, and have felt very badly ever since. It is my intention to go back to Chicago after my class ends to spend time with my family; they are hurting very badly.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

choices

Being home is so emotional. I tried to think of how to start this post and I started crying, nostalgic for something that happened a few hours ago. Sometimes the things that happen to me feel like they occur in memories already, I am looking at myself from outside and knowing that the whole scene will kill me, already kills me.
Tonight it is the scene after my parents left Seth's sister's condo, where we'd hosted them for dinner, and I went to gather my belongings to meet them down at the car. I was kneeling on the floor while Seth said goodbye to them, then he raced down the hall, and we hugged there on the floor, laughing from the relief and joy that the thing had gone well and my parents had warmed up.
I hate this, wondering whether I am doing the right thing. A little, I want to stay in Chicago where I don't have a job or any worries, only friends and family and the only task is to see them. Though this place isn't isn't easy; already I feel my own distance everywhere, and I feel terrified. I try to remember my life in New York as anything but uncomfortable lonely and difficult.
This has been the most acknowledgment I've given these feelings so far. I decided not to unwind all of it for as long as possible, because I know after I've thought everything out to myself I'll be a sobbing mess for the rest of my little time. Such small things can set off my regret.
My parents were themselves a bit choked up at the same moment I described earlier. As they left to bring the car around they observed to one another that now, I had had them over for dinner for the first time. Everyone's a big baby over here, everything is heartbreaking in Chicago. Maybe I'll be better, distracted at least, once I'm back on my grind in New York. I don't know what to do.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

where-i-want-to

My bike tire needs to be changed. I hope when I go home I am at least as cute and cool as folks remember.
Today during my break from work, I walked over to Everyman Coffee with Sequoya and Logan, and we ran into Margo and Mike D. The place is becoming our breakroom away from work, all of us with our shirts changed for 40 minutes of sitting around listening to Sequoya talk about things that make him laugh (The Far Side). It was the first time I was late coming back to work. As we strode up the stairs we heard pages over the intercom: "Will Mike D report to register 11, Olivia report to register 9" and laughed and felt naughty (maybe just me on the latter). Tonight I am going to "girls' night" at Kristen St Claire's in Bed-Stuy, I bet we're going to talk about work crushes and eat ice cream :)
Friends in Chicago should be advised that I'm looking to have a potluck in a park between the 11-14th. Not all of the days, just one of them. So keep 4 days of your schedule clear until further specification.

Monday, June 1, 2009

yeschterday

The last week was a pain in the ass because I worked too much and drank too little. I kept trying to call my boyfriend but he has a million friends and is always doing things like inviting people over to watch things on the projector at his sister's condo (where he is house-sitting for a couple months). I felt very alone sometimes, even when people were around: Jason slept over one night but just KEPT SLEEPING, all day I was alone in my room, unable to leave or convince him to wake up. To compensate I keep collecting dumb crushes, one-per-week.
This week will be better because I'm going to Bennington today for a couple days, and finally at the end of the week I'll be home again. Just picked up some crisp white tees (they are all I wear, and my present ones are getting dingy or as my mom would say "Irish white") and some dip-dyed ankle socks for my journeys. See you soon, everyone I love.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

neighbor bro

My neighbor and I ran into each other. He was wearing a dude tank top and an ipod strapped to his arm, home from jogging along the East River Path, and I was wearing an NYU shirt and bike shorts, wheeling my new bike and still flushed from the yoga class. He mistook me for one of his own and invited me to a party this thursday. Should I become a 26th St bro?

eee

Monday, May 18, 2009

334 E 26

I moved into my new room yesterday. Jason dragged himself to Manhattan to help me mid-hangover, pushed a cart of my belongings for 15 blocks through a street fair and a PETA protest, and passed out on my bed before I could get sheets on it. He is a really good friend.

I live on the 18th floor, with south-facing windows to look at downtown and the East River. Here is a picture I just took of myself. You can see, what, Greenpoint across the water.

I'm coming to Chicago June 6-15 and I hope you'll spend some time with me if you are reading this, because it means you are one of maybe three very close friends.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

week of j lee

jason's birthday is probably over by now. tonight's party at jason adam stella dan's place was great because it had several versions of birthday sex by jeremih. it's 6 AM and i am moving today.
am i really unfun or very open and dreamy? i keep getting conflicting impressions from otherZ

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"whole fucking summer", 2008

last summer i made a meticulous journal of every day of my summer, starting with crying in murphy's pub and ending with a sweaty first day in my nyc dorm. today was my second day of summer, 2009.
yesterday i dropped off my last paper, which was about wile e coyote and americans and shit. i worked 1-9 and then i went to karaoke with Jason and all his friends in new york. It was an unprecedented ball even though i didn't get to sing "i will always love you", the dolly version (i had practiced). today i woke up early as usual. i borrowed a horrific Alaskan ID from patty for jason's birthday celebrations.
michael quattlebaum jason and i raided the bins of stuff people from my dorm tossed. michael got three rugs and two mattress pads and a cleopatra halloween costume. jason got an amazing set of speakers and an ipod alarm clock. i got a ton of shit that is now daunting because i have to move out sunday, including some dishes, a wooden spoon, an unopened dvd of Il Postino... the most astonishing thing we found was a pack of Plan B birth control, which for those of the ladies who haven't been there, is 50 dollars a pack. Why some lazy girl threw it in the bin, I will never understand. I took it. hope it isn't expired and i get pregnant :X
Anyway we made fish tacos and went out to party. the alaska ID did not work. the night was chill; considering it's a tuesday i think that's allowed. after the party i came home and raided the food bins: got a lot of popcorn, pasta, olive oil (considering my episode earlier this week when i broke an entire quart on the floor, i deserve this one) and trader joes natural pop tarts. time for my nightly bicycle crunches regimen, and a pop tart.

ARE YOU BORED YET

Thursday, May 7, 2009

mr lonely

my name is naomi. do you have a friend?
no. we just moved here. i don't have a friend.
i don't have a friend. and irving gland across the street doesn't have a friend either. we play together because, neither of us has a friend.
let's have a club. only people who don't, have a friend, can belong.
we'll call it the no friends club.
okay.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

addicted to your light

i like Halo by Beyonce so much that it is impairing my ability to do homework. The song itself is astonishing to me for some reason, but then there's this live performance which I can't get over. I like the way her face crunches down on the oohs at 3:45, and I like the way she pulses on 2:37, I like when she kind of doesn't hit the note at 1:28 but she does it anyway. Her gestures feel like church to me. Is this my evangelism? She's so happy and beautiful. I didn't think pop stars could give such good live performances.
I really hope I can concentrate on my Juarez paper now that I've gotten this out.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Is To Be

I performed my first long piece yesterday.
There were little clamplights in all the corners of the room, so it was dim in there, and the black curtains were pulled to cover all the mirrors. I entered in a white tank top, ace bandage, and underwear. I performed a solo where I did a pose on the ground covering and uncovering my mouth how some people smoke cigarettes, and a low knee bend for crotch-shot effect, and crawls where my legs and arms alternated against the ground, and walks where my head weighed closer and closer towards the ground, and I'd catch it, and then it'd drop to the ground. I put on a sweatsuit, and wrapped a big teal blanket over my head, and bent my needs open again slightly. The last part was improvised and everyone laughed. This had something to do with the climax of M'appari, performed by Pavarotti.
The next part was titled Waltz with Emma Sartwell. Another dancer who is a smaller girl with short hair came in on her elbows. Meanwhile I put a bandanna on my head. I picked her up and we stood on one foot for a while, her foot behind her in her hand, mine crossed over my supporting, bent knee. We slow-danced, with her melting gradually down my body. I'm Not Saying by Nico was playing now; both pieces of music were played tinnily by my tape recorder. Emma left shortly.
The last two sections were solos without music. The first was titled No-Swan Pas De Deux and I used the choreography I mentioned making in an earlier post, from the Petipa Swan Lake adagio, but removing the female dancer. (When Emma saw this section in rehearsal, she said she was deeply disturbed and saddened by it, that it was more moving than I thought.) After that, I performed a steady and slightly athletic, manic dance of aloneness, involving squats and planks, scratches of the ground by my toes, walking, a repeat of a pose Emma'd done on the ground with her legs held up in a sideways V, and more walking. The walking brings my head to the ground and it does not touch, then I walk normally, with purpose, then the purpose dwindles, I am close to the audience, slowing, and I stop.

I like this piece and I wish more people could've seen it. It is my hope to make more full length work and my dream to include people from my life, such as my boyfriend and any willing other friends. I think my tendency for the theatrical is ok. I hope friends this summer will make work together.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

text i recieved

We all need to make sure we wash hand s alot esp you tri cuz the kid s and public and kel because college kelly go buy one of those anti bacterial things the swine flu is so bad and is now here

Thursday, April 9, 2009

fucking ballet

Part of my dance has to involve the first 2 minutes the man does in this piece. I just transposed it and it makes no sense and took all night.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

HELLO!! I am nineteen.

I am making a new piece of choreography. It is about some men, and it is my hope to impersonate them and become a man. I am always male. The following is the first draft of one chapter.

DFW

four bicycle crunches

bounce on balls of feet, swing L shoulder forward (w/ arm down but resembling a tennis volley)

crawl, on back pushing w/ feet and head touching the ground/// swing body into standing as in Laura’s piece

stand at a lectern. posture is wrong to be leaning on something that isn’t there. look up intermittently. take time

pose on side like a big man, but also like a Chinese sage, a sexy female. reach behind for cig. roll onto back and wiggle.

brief kickline (still on your back, on the floor)

rapid crawls where opp. arm and leg extend and pull in like a caterpillar or Alvin ailey

stand, then go to ground lead by the head weight, if being borne down, hands hold it at the last breath, head to ground


Wednesday, February 18, 2009

@@@8^)

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

1967


If you know my dad, it is really strange to see him so adorable in the red suit (5 yrs).
top row: Patrick James, Yaya holding baby Gerard, Phelim, Jimmy with no head (which is too bad because he is the handsomest), bottom: John, Brendan, and Kathy

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

my new conquest



next time you see me i will be singing this to myself