it began in 1995. joe and i fled san francisco and landed in a farmhouse on what had once been my grandfather’s farm. cleared land in eastern north carolina meant long, low horizons and one day we saw a blur streaking across the fields, a dog like none we’d seen before: a terrier, broad in the chest, daintily pawed (he seemed always on tiptoe, cantering like a horse), white with black markings. . . and that snout.
Continue reading dog is my co-pilot
A few days ago the Gold Dust Twins reached out from a crumbling wall and grabbed me by the eyeballs. They haven’t let go yet.
Continue reading kip and sadie and the gold dust twins (part one)
not only the story of two remarkable women, but of how stories are lost and found.
the death of edgar bronfman, a good guy, brings to mind a night in the mid-90’s when john owen and i rigged 50 or so candle-studded, lace-stencilled pumpkins on chains throughout the ceiling for a party (don’t ask). others were dubious, but after a test run proved the ‘safety’ of our cockamamie scheme, we prevailed. our test, however, took place without the air conditioning on, and when, with 250 guests present, the party heated up and the ac kicked in, great jets of molten red wax sprayed across the room. it looked like the prom scene from ‘carrie’ (ironically, as sissy was also there, emerging unscathed, thank god). mr. bronfman was wearing an heirloom dinner jacket of great sentimental value, which after that night would never be wearable again. his debonair grace throughout, and patient kindness as i jabbed at him moronically with toweling defined a near-impossible standard of gentlemanly behavior, which i from time to time still call on.
a class act, that mr. bronfman.
Gabe Silverman pried Charlottesville loose from the cold grip of Thomas Jefferson, who, if we’re honest, never cared enough about the town to grasp it. The town retroactively rearranged his glow for its own basking; Jefferson mostly treated Charlottesville as a supply depot, and then late in life as the thing between the little mountain and the academical village. It remained that for a couple hundred years, in sleepy thrall to its first visionary.
Until Gabe.
if you’re like me, well then a) prove it, and b) good luck with that, but also c) you’ve spent the last 24 hours on the spanking new, searchable, high def emily dickinson website zooming in on dashes. in related news, a burdock clawed my gown.
yes, again.
http://www.edickinson.org/words
stop.
please.
the only question is when you will take eleven minutes and forty-five seconds to have some things you think you know about ferocity, about performance, about fashion, about movement, about conventional beauty– shredded.
40 young american women. a paris fashion runway. 5 months of rehearsal. here.
speechless.
mesmerized.
we are proud to live in the georgia fifth district, where we enjoy the regrettably rare privilege of profoundly honorable representation. no matter where you are, our congressman is cooler than yours.
so you know those ‘young people today’?
i’m at barnes and noble and think i may have stumbled on the problem:
this is outrageous! protestors speak out against a high school production of ‘sweeney todd’ and the principal and school superintendent immediately–wait– what? they immediately speak intelligently in its defense and allow the show to go on? oh. well, okay then.
thank you, two guys in connecticut, for standing against what an old friend immortally dubbed ‘the philistine fallacy’, that is, the wrongheaded idea that portraying is the same as endorsing. the first piece of theater i ever saw was a high school production of ‘sweeney todd’, over forty years ago. it did not teach me to be a cannibal; it taught me to be an artist and that there is a space where our worst and best as a people can be safely and thoughtfully regarded. chalk one up in the column of hope.