Nothing New

I was standing in Borders Books in Seattle last week looking at the shelves, wondering why anyone would spend full price on these books when you can get them for half the price, maybe less, on the internet or in thrift stores.

This was a slightly fucked up thought, because I was also feeling sad about Borders closing.  I was spinning on chain bookstores closing, and little independant bookstores closing and mom and pop shops closing and even video stores closing, and how sad it all is.  This phrase, "democratization of culture" keeps popping in my head.  I don't know if it means what I think it means, but to me it's how everything is getting more general, less unique, more mass produced, made with less care.

I just looked it up.  Well, I half-heartedly looked it up.  I don't think it's inappropriate.  What gets me down is the idea that everyone is becoming so insulated in their little worlds eventually no one will experience anything really new or real.  Everything will be purchased on the internet and shipped to your home.  Your relationships will be most meaningful in cyberspace, and your consumption of art or culture or life will happen through a screen, rather than with other people in the world.  The meaningful part of loaning someone a book will be lost, because no one will read books anymore.  You won't borrow my dog-eared copy of Ender's Game, you won't feel in your hand that I must've read it at least six times, and wonder about who else I've loaned it to.  You won't see where I folded down the pages to go to sleep at night, and my underlinings won't cause you to go back to reread a section you might've skimmed otherwise.

You won't go out and exhaust yourself dancing all night in a sweaty bar with your friends, you won't go experience live dance or theatre with all their flaws and gems, you won't take in your neighbor's garden while you walk to the store.

Some where out of this spin came the idea that I shouldn't buy anything new for a six months.  I realize that it seems a bit counterintuitive when I've just been talking about bookstores closing.  And I also realize that for me this is not an unthinkable task.  I like other people's used things.  I have a reputation for it, in fact.  I guess this is motivated by a number of factors.  Our throwaway culture is one part of it.  People buy things and get rid of them without a second thought.  If everything is replaceable then nothing is special.  I am sort of a pack rat, but I think there's virtue in my hoarding.  I remember who gave me these earrings, or passed this tee shirt on to me.  I remember who I was with when I got this bag, or the store and maybe even the day where I bought this book.  I think about those people or those times when I hold that item.  Things shouldn't just be thrown away.  Our world is cluttered and full of trash.

I am also financially motivated.  Obviously times are tough, and this will make me look at whether or not I really need something.  And if I can't find something used, it will force me to be inventive and to use my imagination.  Not a bad thing.

There are exceptions though: food (obvi), undergarments (obvi), shoes.  Also, I will make targeted exceptions in cases where I specifically want to support something.  An author, for example.  Admittedly, I don't buy a lot of new books anyway, but there have been times when I specifically purchased a book new because I wanted to support that author.  Artists have got to look out for each other after all.

So I'm starting now.

7 cups of coffee

Thursday morning I walked down the carpeted stairs of my parent's house their old dog woofed quietly up at me, calling my mom to come down for his morning walk.  I went out with them through the neighborhood where I grew up, checking out the changes of the past ten years, waiting for an old dog to catch up with us.  When we got back Mom made half-caff as a compromise.  I added one and a half spoons of sugar, a liberal dose of my Dad's ever-present half and half (he doesn't drink coffee though; he puts it on his cereal), and took it into the living room for some quiet time.  Quiet time was interrupted a little black and white cat sucking on my hair, purring loudly in my ear.

Friday morning I wandered into my brother Eric's kitchen, where he informed me that I was making my coffee wrong.  The Coffee Mate should be added to the cup before pouring the coffee in.  "You make your own choices," he said.  He went off to work, and I went to hot yoga with Ivy.  When we came back his great Danes were sleeping on my bed.  Naughty dogs.

Saturday morning I woke up in a little hole of a bedroom in Alicia's basement.  I had slept very soundly.  I went up two flights of creaky steps to the communal bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.  No one was awake, so I walked down the hill to Roy's Coffee and Tea and ordered a soy hazelnut latte.  I sat on a bench and read The Stranger.  A woman arranged two stuffed animals on the table next to me and walked away.  When I got back Alicia informed me that  Roy's is a Starbucks.  Go figure.

Sunday morning I woke up in the same dark hole at Alicia's.  Upstairs I roused Colin from the couch.  Whiteloaf wandered up from another couch, and we started tidying the party's aftermath.  When everyone was all assembled we went to Brian's (George's).  We drank champagne and ate cheese.  When I tried making coffee in the unfamiliar coffee maker it started spilling all over the counter, but I took the lid off the carafe and wiped it up.  When it was ready I put in sugar and rice milk.   I drank it out of a giant mug.  Then I had a bloody Mary.  Breakfast!

Monday morning Matt's dog, Bella, stuck her nose in my crotch as soon as I opened the door.  When I came out of the bathroom she was laying down on my futon.  Matt made us coffee, but he didn't have any sugar.  Just skim milk.  Joy had green tea.  Then she and I took Bella for a long walk on the beach.  We looked at Washington's mountains floating on the horizon, and found jelly fish melting on the rocks.  The air was fresh.

Tuesday morning my mom peeked in early. "What time is it?" "About a quarter to seven." "Okay," I rolled over and went back to sleep.  When I got up later I threw on whatever clothes I had brought that were still clean so I could do laundry before going.  In the kitchen I found my mother and brother.  She offered coffee and I took it, wondering if it was caffeinated or not, but not asking.  Again: sugar and half and half.

This morning my very affectionate cat stuck his little claws lovingly into my chin.  He missed me.  I pushed snooze for an hour.  When I finally got out of bed I stumbled around my apartment, gaining my bearings after my week away.  I made my coffee and doctored it with my usual sugar and almond milk.  My favorite mug greeted me from the dish drainer, right where it always is.

Art in the Streets!

  Sharon and I went to the Art in the Streets exhibit at the Geffen on Monday.  It was free courtesy of Banksy (thanks!), and we squeaked in on the last day.  It was an awesome experience.  There was almost too much art to take in; it makes me wish I had gone sooner, so that I could have gone more than once.  I knew that it would feature graffiti (obvi), but I didn't really appreciate great a scope that could have, and also how many other forms of expression could qualify as street art.

   My idea of "what is art" was totally challenged.  Art can be anything, and it can be made anywhere.  It doesn't have to be something beautiful and pristine on a wall painted by a dead guy 200 years ago, it can be something tangible and raw right here, now.  The bags from the gift shop said, "you can touch things".  We didn't buy anything, but I almost would've just to get one of those bags.  Of course, this is ironic since we got in trouble three times for touching the art.  One time Sharon was spoken sharply to for standing too near the wall. 

That's right.  She wasn't even touching it.  She was just having her photo made.  So much for that "you can touch" thing.

   One of my favorite portions was a section of lost pet posters collected from Beverly Hills.  The artist, whose names escapes me, said he was moved by them because they were an unpretentious, unselfconscious expression of someone's raw emotion, condensed into an image and some text.  That really hit me, because I have been there, papering the neighborhood with "Have you seen me?" fliers, my heart on my sleeve, worrying about my cat.  No photo, sorry. 

       Another artist said of her photography that she was moved to take pictures because what if it would never be like this again.  I love that.  There were clips of graffiti films from all over the world-my favorite being a German film where a crew painted an entire subway car in the 5 minutes it was stopped.  There were instruments set up that anyone could be a musician.

   I am not doing justice to this exhibit.  Here are the rest of my photos-I'll let them speak for themselves.



Plenty to look at waiting to get in





Banksy stencil on a wooden door.  I love the collage aspect of his work.

Strange hall of mirrors.  I certainly know what it's like to look in the mirror and feel crazy though.

There were a lot of awesome murals.  I don't know why I didn't take pictures of all my favorite stuff though... 

This kid personifies punk rock for me, he really brought those photos to life.  I stole his picture.

Anything can be made into art

More Banksy!

Ironically I got in trouble right before this. 

Awesome light installation by artist Swoon.  It was housed in a sort of tent, so that the walls of the room were part of the piece.  I felt like my brain clicked into place when I realized that.  Again, art challenging my ideas of how it should be viewed or what it is.

Later in Echo Park I was much more aware of the street art all around me.  I dig this cityscape.

Tempted to try stenciling...



Curious Museums of LA

I've found a new website to haunt: http://www.rentfoodbroke.com/.  Take a wild guess what it's about. They have an awesome calendar with events around the city that cost $0 to $10.  It's pretty awesome.  It drew my attention to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  I had heard about this place before, and it's only a $5 suggested donation, so my friend Pra and I went to check it out this weekend.

Pra enjoying a snack before going in.

The museum has an unassuming facade on Venice Boulevard in Culver City, so I was sort of surprised when it was PACKED inside.  I was bumping asses and elbows with all sorts of strangers.  Fun.

As far as the content of the museum, I am hard pressed to capture it all.  My best advice for all five of my readers (don't think I didn't notice my two new followers!) is to go experience it yourself.  Except that you can't because you all live in other states.  So since you're begging for it I'll give you my two cents (I'm not that broke).

Readers of Neal Stephenson, China Mieville, and Neil Gaiman would love this place.  MJT poses as a historical and educational facility, but it's pretty much all fantasy.  The exhibits and collections supposedly date from the Jurassic through the present.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but Athanasius Kircher designed it.

An exhibit devoted to Athanasius Kircher, some sort of medieval super-genius included a giant magnetic sundial of some sort, lots of models like those in a 7th grade science fair showing things like water systems of Earth with holograms projected on them, and-most importantly, a 3D movie translated from German.

Caption to an engraving

There were micro-mosaics you viewed through a microscope (duh) of floral arrangements created from fragments of butterfly wings.  There were lots of random engravings and paintings and whatnot.
There was a pretty awesome reading room, where Pra and I wrote some book spine poetry.  I got the idea from Rainn Wilson's website, Soul Pancake (http://www.soulpancake.com/post/1519/book-spine-poem.html).  Our poem was not very awesome, and the picture was not very clear, but I will include it anyway:

For a handful of feathers,
the gold of Troy,
British biscuit tins
Time Detectives
Q.E.D.
zone
gladiators at Pompeii

I was pretty upset when I realized we'd skipped right past a book called "Catapulting" but oh well.

There was also an entire section devoted to archaic remedies, with some really weird visuals.  My favorite was a model of a child with a duck's bill in it's mouth.  Apparently the duck's cold breath was supposed to cure thrush or something.  Ew.  In this area I discovered this gem, "Mouse pie when eaten with regularity serves as a remedy for children who stammer." 

 One section had handheld viewing glasses, which made only the most minimal differences to the vectographs on display.  

Another room was devoted to collections found in Los Angeles trailers, complete with scale models of mobile homes.  


After a while my brain lost it's ability to try to make sense of anything I was looking at; I could only sit back and let the experience hit me in waves.  I'm pretty sure that's part of the point.  We try to so hard to be adults, to get things right, that we forget to play.  We have so little sense of wonder anymore that we need places like the Museum of Jurassic Technology to get us out of our heads.


Upstairs behind a door marked, "Fairly safely venture" Pra and I played cat's cradle for ten minutes.  Peppered throughout the museum were phone receivers and buttons, 90% of which did nothing.  I can only assume it was 100% intentional.  And to finish our visit we enjoyed tea and cookies in the tea room!  Actually I didn't eat any cookies; they had no gluten-free refreshments.  The nerve.


Like my visit to the Psychiatry: an Industry of Death Museum, I left MJT feeling bewildered.  This time though I felt more bemused at my confusion, rather than depressed and in need of a drink.  I am not sure what I was supposed to get from it, but maybe that's not the point.  

Summer Reading part 2

After reading all those fabulous books by awesome lady authors I ran out of women on my to read shelf by my bed.  So I looked at what I had:

I chose Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (not pictured here).  I wanted something kind of sexy, and that still fired up the feminist in me, and nothing else there really fit the bill.

Boy was I in for a disappointment!  I have looked forward to reading this book for a while.  I take pride in being well-read.  Not just in quantity, but also in a variety of time periods and genres, so this seemed like a classic that must be attended to.  But frankly I kind of feel like I wasted my time.  Lawrence spends a lot of time showing how most people are not connected to their bodies, how they leave the physical out.  This is an idea I can get behind.  It's something I have struggled with in my acting, and I feel like it's true in a larger sense for many people.  Ironically though, I found myself skimming through the end of the book because I didn't care for all the chitchat and higher ideas being discussed in the book.  It was too heady; it didn't tug at my core-where I feel my soul.  Check out the link to read my review on Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/186554294