These three pictures were taken in the course of 24 hours. The first was taken by the artist JJ Villard. JJ has a show opening at Ghettogloss Gallery on April 23rd. I’ll be throwing a party there for the launch of Some Girls and we thought it would be fun to collaborate. I think that the pictures JJ shot of me kind of look like an American Apparel ad as envisioned by Wes Craven.
The next two were taken by my friend Alison Dyer. I think the one in our white Ethiopian garb makes us look like a groovy cult family from the sixties. You know, in the happy days of the cult- before it goes sour and the feds move in.
The disparity of my many roles often strikes me as comical. Maybe all working mothers feel that way, but probably not all of them get to pose wearing vampire teeth quite as often as I do. And that’s not even mentioning the daggers and the goats’ heads. I had to leave some surprises for JJ to reveal…
I’ll be posting details about the launch party and the rest of my tour dates soon. Just over a month to go! I’m not sure whether to do a jig of glee or barf from anxiety.
I think it’s a requirement for existence or something to have a video like this shoved somewhere into a dusty corner of your garage. I expect this one to be excavated when they’re producing Tariku Shriner: Behind the Music.
Nothing is as interesting as watching someone else’s kid getting the Birthday Song sung to them, right? View Tariku’s moment in the sun right here, folks. Not once but twice! If you watch it through to the end, there’s the added payoff of mommy getting socked in the face.
Fashion magazine just named Some Girls one of six great airplane reads. I once had a friend in an awesome band who, when I admitted that I cleaned my house to her album, said, “That’s so great. I always wanted to write an album that people cleaned their house to.” In the same vein, I always wanted to write a book that people would read on an airplane. So I’m psyched.
I know I’m always about two weeks late to comment on anything topical, but that’s about my pace right now. My saintly husband took T on a walk this morning and I actually sat down with my coffee and read the February 15 issue of The New Yorker. “The Promise” moved me to tears and prompted a moment of unpleasant self-examination. I looked at the 1965 photograph of the marchers in Selma, arms locked, and I wondered- would I have been there?
By this I don’t mean to ask if I would have supported The Civil Rights Movement, because on that question I feel I know myself and I know my heart. But rather, would I have taken time out from my demanding life and stood with the marchers? Or would I have said- no, I have an interview with German Cosmo today. I’ve worked so hard for this moment in my career and I just can’t let it slip by. No, I have to take T to Traveltown. No, I have a mountain of paperwork on my desk and 300 emails in my inbox and I just can’t make it, but I’ll buy the t-shirt for the cause and wear it when I shop at Whole Foods.
Every time my family sits down to eat a meal, we’re living the fulfillment of the dream these activists had forty years ago. So what promise can I now make to my son for the betterment of the world in which he’s growing up? And how can I work toward the fulfillment of that promise? Now. Today. With 300 emails in my inbox and a demanding career toward which I’ve worked so hard and a family for which I’ve waited so long. I don’t have the answer. But I’m letting the question be my prayer.
As a side note, the talented Miss Melissa will be appearing in conversation with me at Powerhouse Books in Brooklyn on May 4. My plan is to convince her to dye her hair blonde so we can do a rousing rendition of “Two Little Girls from Little Rock.” Go to her facebook page and leave tons of harassing wall posts to help her see my point of view. It’s just a little peroxide…
My friend Robert Morgan Fisher sent me this old Soul Train video today and let me know that the female singer is Ethiopian. I clicked on the link late at night- exhausted, anxious, tragedy in Chile on my mind at the same time as all my petty concerns, which concern me nonetheless. The song brightened the room for a moment, so I thought I’d share.
I’ve always loved L’Origine du Monde by Courbet. The first time I saw it at The Musee D’Orsay, it stopped me in my tracks. It seemed revolutionary, even 130 years after it was painted, even after having seen Annie Sprinkle proudly display her cervix on a stage. There’s something arresting about the defiant beauty of it.
I wasn’t going to weigh in on this issue, but I keep driving by a Remember Me billboard three seconds from my house and every time I do, I get pissed off.
I know I’m late to the angry vagina party and that it’s old news by now that Rob Pattinson told Details Magazine, “I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vaginas.” But it just makes me furious every time I pass by his giant, lovey-dovey, romancey billboard face and think that twelve bazillion twilit tweens who are already struggling with their feelings about their bodies have to hear that the mere proximity of their genitals would cause their heartthrob to require an emergency shot of epinephrine.
Whoever you are, you came out of a vagina. I don’t care if you’re inclined to be sexually interested in vaginas or not, you should love vaginas regardless. So fight the powers that be and join me in loving a vagina today.
Yesterday, I played a dead ballerina in Margaret Cho’s outrageous new music video. I can’t say too much about it, but I can say that it shocked even me. It was directed by my friend Liam Sullivan, better known as Kelly, of “Shoes” fame. Here’s a picture of Penny Starr Jr. and me as we waited for our big moment.
Music video sets can be dangerous, in that you sit around for far too long and sometimes wind up saying too much out of boredom. Kind of like a bar, without the drinking part. For instance, I sat down next to Ryan Heffington (only my favorite choreographer in the whole universe) and poured my heart out about all of my little girl dance-class-damage. Maybe it was the purple tutu that made me get emotional. Luckily, he was as lovely as can be and I walked away swearing to attend his legendary Sweaty Sundays dance class this week. And I will, darn it.
Whenever I have a few posts in a row about writing or ghosts or reviews or whatever, I inevitably get an email from someone saying: Um, that’s great and all, but can you please post some more pictures of the baby?
Here are a couple of pix from our favorite breakfast spot, Annia’s Cafe at the El Monte Airport. T likes it because he gets to say two of his favorite words over and over again. Eggs. Airplane. Eggs. Airplane. Eggs. Airplane.
This breakfast was particularly fun because T got to see one of his oldest friends, Lula Tarikie. It’s always special when we get a chance to visit with one of the other adoptive families with whom we traveled to Ethiopia. There’s something relaxing about not having to explain this fundamental piece of our existence. It’s not that I don’t like talking about our adoption. I love talking about it. But I also love just being understood in an arena where words often fall short.
Here’s a copy of my review of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde, posted at The Rumpus this morning in “The Last Book I Loved” section:
My framed, original Marilyn calendar has been glaring at me from my den wall ever since I finished Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde.
When I look at it now, I feel as if I was there when it was shot. I’m not sure if I was the camera, the photographer or the desperate, naked girl- doomed and luminous and ashamed of the soles of her feet. Whomever I was, I was so close to the action that I could smell the dirty fifty dollar bill that the blonde was paid for the job. And now the calendar itself, formerly one of my most treasured objects, seems like an odd piece of taxidermy.
Blonde is Oates’ fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe. Written in five parts and traveling a somewhat circuitous route from Marilyn’s awful childhood to her worse death, the gorgeous and grisly prose is comprised of voices channeled from a host of spirits, some famous, some not. Oates assembles her Marilyn collage from a constantly shifting collection of perspectives and moments. The most entrancing voice in the book is Marilyn’s, breathless and heartbreaking and almost audible. However, the perspective always shifts back to an omniscient narrator, who has already seen the film through to the end and beyond. The presence of this narrator reminds us, lest we become too hopeful, that Marilyn’s end was there from her beginning.
Not only is Blonde a success in its searing and constant poetry (over 700 pages worth), it’s also a triumph of humanism and feminism, in spite of its ghoulish finale. It is a profound feminist statement to take a woman who was owned by all and cared for by no one, who was the ultimate sex object to a public that both adored her and tore her to pieces, and give voice to her soul.
