Breath

I need to watch more films by Kim Ki-Duk.

This is a trailer for the movie "Breath." Even if you can't understand Korean, I think you'll get it.



Here is my best attempt at translating the written parts:

"if loathing is breath we inhale
forgiveness is breath we exhale
if hate is breath we exhale
understanding is breath we inhale
if jealousy is breath we inhale
love is breath we exhale
we have to breathe

until we suffocate"

Infinity of Sound

Maya Deren

The party scene is just mesmerizing...


Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)

NINA 2008

NINA II

a lighter and a firework- the equation like mathematics with its precision cuts, rather explodes, quite appropriately. there's smoke, loud noise and sparks ranging in sizes from small, medium, large, x-large to xx-large on especially special occasions such as celebrations never to do with a living breathing being but someone dead or better off dead. but no one you nor i would know, for heaven's sake, i certainly should hope not. the problem that lies after an equation is easily solved, theoretically, until it lands on your front steps. there are papers weeks old even months old, majority in the process of rotting away. odorless but nonetheless appalling to pair of eyes expensively trained in the world of aesthetics in the finest of schools (which has lead to the replacement of soil with debt when burying one alive.) this is not preferred backdrop for romance or tragedy but it is more often than not in these inappropriate backdrops inappropriate acts do stem, appropriately so. then there are introduction of chemicals foreign to the body yet so comforting, like a mother, abusive yet blood-tied and demanding the boiling of said blood with each swallow. this rise in temperature leads to fire leading to memories of and/or real time passion to spill over and out of crevices like eyes that begin to water, ears that amplify breath, and mouths that salivate with lips glistening and open, four between the two. there are knots in her hair, tar black with patches of sunset and sunrise sewn in between- here, time loses all meaning. so then the present could be the past. could the past then, be the future? put forth the dilemma in terms of a scientific experiment where a hypothesis is given the authority of truth, at least until proven wrong. as long as the experiment itself is prolonged and the unveiling of the results postponed the imminent future shall not affect the present. it is with manipulation of logic that we may reach satisfaction, which should be noted is always better than bending of the senses. with this said, go on and wake up.

Deena Metzger on Anais

I found on YouTube videos from Anais Nin @ 105 at Hammer Museum. I was there in attendance this past February in Los Angeles. It was quite a beautiful night. Deena was my favorite speaker and I'm happy to have come across this. On YouTube you can find videos of all the other speakers as well. I came across these when I was originally searching for Ian Hugos' films on YouTube but none seem to be there, however I am right now uploading "The Bells of Atlantis" which is inspired by House of Incest and features Anais. You should feel my heart beating right now... I'm about to hear her speak, be, alive. Wow.

random sexy music men post

Elvis Costello




Jarvis Cocker

Make Art not Drugs

I don't do drugs, I drink very moderately. I always felt these things that supposedly heighten for some the experience of life, whether by blocking certain inhibitions or create other worlds to go into, sharpen sensory experiences, was unnecessary for myself because I live this way without the aid of anything outside of the self. Anais Nin participated in an experiment when LSD was still a newer drug (1955) for a professor who wanted a writer to be a part of it to be able to describe the experience more articulately than others were able to. The pages in the diary where she describes her "trip" are astoundingly, wonderfully beautiful, overwhelmingly sensational and breathtaking. But it should be said, not any more than her normal writing. After description of her experience she goes on to write this which I agree with 100% and is another case of Anais saying so much better how I feel about everything in life-


I reached the fascinating revelation that this world opened by LSD was accessible to the artist by way of art. The gold sun mobile of Lippold could create a mood if one was receptive enough, if one let the image penetrate the body and turn the body to gold. All the chemical did was remove resistance, to make one permeable to the image, and to make the body receptive by shutting out the familiar landscape which prevented from invading us.
What has happened that people lose contact with such images, visions, sensations, and have to resort to drugs which ultimately harm them?
They have been immured, the taboo on dream, reverie, visions, and sensual receptivity deprives them of access to the subconscious. I am grateful for my natural access. But when I discuss this with Huxley, he is rather irritable: "You're fortunate enough to have a natural access to your subconscious life, but other people need drugs and should have them.
This does not satisfy me because I feel that if I have a natural access others could have it too. How did I reach this? Difficult to retrace one's steps. Can you say I had a propensity for dreaming, a faculty for abstracting myself from the daily world in order to travel to other places? What I cannot trace the origin of seemed natural tendencies which I allowed to develop, and which I found psychoanalysis encouraged and trained. The technique was accessible to those willing to accept psychoanalysis as a means of connecting with the subconscious. I soon recognized its value. But then there is also the appetite for what nourishes such a rich underground life: learning color from the painters, movement from the dancers, music from the musicians. They train your senses, they sensitize your senses. It was the banishment of art which brought on a culture devoid of sensual perception, of the participation in the senses, so that experience did not cause the "highs," the exaltations, the ecstasies they cause in me. The puritans killed the senses. English culture killed emotion. And now it was necessary to dynamite the concrete lid, to "blow the mind" as the LSD followers call it. The source of all wonder, aliveness, and joy was feeling and dreaming, and being able to fulfill one's dreams.

from Diary Volume 5

NINA
She is Breton's Nadja but far more eloquent. She is Nijinsky before he plunged to earth pushed by his earth wife.
She took her bracelet off. She braided her hair. As if the street at midnight were her own chamber and she were preparing to sleep.
Jim could not bear to leave Nina wandering about at two a.m. and took her to his apartment.
Before that, Jim told me, they had seen some giant pipelines resting beside an excavated street. Nina bent over the opening and laughed into the drainpipe and then ran toward the other end of it to see if her laughter would come out of it.
Arriving at Jim's apartment she said: "The room is too small." Then she opened the window and said: "Oh, but there is so much more to this room than I thought. It is enormous."
Then Nina asked for silver foil. "I always glue silver foil paper on the walls to make them beautiful."
She wanted to mop the floor with beer. "The foam will make it shine."
"Do you want to sleep?" asked Jim.
"I never sleep," said Nina. "Just give me a sheet."
She took the sheet and covered herself with it and then slid to the floor saying: "Now I am invisible."

(insert heartbeat here)

"Forget her. Or pray to God!"

Every now and then I go to the Dandyism blog. Here I can get out a few inspiring ideas for wardrobe as well as read somewhat amusing articles/thoughts. Recently there have been couple posts about a new film by Catherine Breillat called "The Last Mistress." I can not say I am familiar with her work, but now I certainly would like to be.

THE LAST MISTRESS is a smoldering adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s scandalous 19th-century novel. Set during the reign of “citizen king” Louis Philippe, it chronicles the surprising betrothal of the handsome, aristocratic, former libertine Ryno de Marigny (newcomer Fu-ad Aît Aattou) to Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida of FAT GIRL), a lovely, young and virginal aristocrat.

Lurking in the margins – and in the imaginations of high society’s gossip-hounds – is de Marigny’s older, tempestuous lover of ten years, the feral La Vellini (Argento). Described as “a capricious flamenca who can outstare the sun,” La Vellini still burns for de Marigny, and she will not go quietly.

Anaïsm applied to Life-

"At times I do feel like a snail who has lost his shell. I have to learn to live without it. But when I stand still, I feel claustrophobia of the soul, and must maintain a vast switchboard with an expanded universe, the international life, Paris, Mexico, New York, the United Nations, the artist world. The African jungle seems far less dangerous than complete trust in one love, than a place where one's housework is more important than one's creativity."

-Anaïs Nin


I'm going to buy tickets for Paris ASAP. Then I'm going to somewhat reasonably (by that I mean through my reasoning which means unreasonable to some but to me really it means just do as I dream it) set plan for the other 3 tentative trips to Argentina, Italy and back to Spain within the next year. Thank god sometimes I'm so easily influenced by amazing, inspiring souls.

Native Korean Rock

Native Korean Rock is a side project of mine comprised of a body of love songs written over the last two years, to be performed with a motley crew of NYC natives. Expect high drama, high stakes in two intimate performances.

Does Native Korean Rock have anything to do with Yeah Yeah Yeahs? NO

Are these the leaked demos of years ago? NO

-Karen O.



This is making me very happy. Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeah's side project- Native Korean Rock. (Karen O's mom is Korean f.y.i.) I love her use of photographs of the Korean women divers (more on her MySpace.) I heard a very inspiring and heartbreaking broadcast once on NPR about these women, everything from the history of to current struggles. I sat in my parked car for an hour at 2 in the morning just to hear their stories. Korean women are something else. I can say this because I have one of the most incredible woman as my mother and yes, she is Korean folks.

Anyway, check out these songs. Can't wait to get my hands on them. Korean + Emo = 2 of Michelle's favorite things.

Native Korean Rock MySpace

Shawn Barber

From the "Tattooed Portrait"series which seems to be on-going since 2005. I'm personally loving the paintings of just the hands. Go to his website to check out many more portraits.
















Speaking of tats if I was hardcore I'd get Anais Nin tatted on my entire back with all the volumes of her diaries stacked and spilling into all my limbs!


Shawn Barber website

Jan Vormann- Dispatchwork

Porous Walker

owltooth (Porous Walker)

Why we write/create

I'm reading Nin's diary and re-reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (among few others. Go team ADD and making it work!) Within days of one another I come to read both amazing writers speak about why one writes. No doubt Anais has read Rilke, in fact she describes a young man she meets with the said book tucked under his arms and comments on it in one of the diaries, though her writing on this subject at this particular time is definitely her own. What they both (and many others) speak of is a bit of a universal truth, I believe and hope for all artists, so the similarities certainly are not surprising but still feels damn good to read these passages every time, all the time.



Anais Nin from "Diaries of Anais Nin Volume 5"


Letter to a writer who asked: "Why does one write?"

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me: the world of my parents, the world of Henry Miller, the world of Gonzalo, or the world of wars. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and re-create myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life, we write to lure and enchant and console others, we write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth, we write to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely. We write as the birds sing. As the primitive dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write. Because our culture has no use for any of that. When I don't write I feel my world shrinking, I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire, my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave. I call it breathing.




Rainer Maria Rilke from "Letters to a Young Poet"


You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity, your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...
So, dear sir, I can't give you any advice but this: go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question os whether you must create. Accept the answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness without every asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

dream furniture

Yes please.



Children's play furniture by Little Red Stuga

from the Diary

Someone said to the painter Rousseau:
"Why did you place a sofa in the middle of the jungle?"

Rousseau answered:
"One has a right to paint one's dreams."

William Hundley

I'm loving his sense of humor and casualness. I'm a believer in taking things easy and having fun in life so this makes me a happy girl. (I was even quoted this week screaming "I love fun!" Oh, and I do.) No doubt there's time to be serious but we all could agree majority of folks should really consider pulling out that stick up their asses from time to time.

He's got tons of stuff on his site but I am especially loving his "on cheeseburger" series. Just amazing. Just look at the chihuahua!!! How could anyone not love this!










William Hundley website

Attila Richard Lukacs

A contemporary Canadian painter (Happy Canada Day.) Powerful work. Amazing painter.