Lux Lotus

On Practicality

A full day of meetings and then I'll return to Adelphi University's SoHo campus late this afternoon for the second year, by invitation to talk with students in the graduate creative writing program about how to create a life in letters. I'll go for a weekend in the country another time. As my fabulous intern points out, these things are best kept for the spring.

On Snapshots

I'm pirouetting around the living room, having enjoyed the better part of a bottle of chenin blanc at dinner, informing my sister, who's doing her homework for Italian lessons –– and practicing, You look amazing, like the gods –– that I"ll be spending the weekend at the Lake Como, PA, farm of my portraitist. "Did you know that when I took ballet in Ithaca, they said that I could come back and dance en pointe?" We agree: bad for the ankles. 

On Words

Emma says, "Lauren Cerand writes Lux Lotus, which is amazing," which reminds me that Roxane said, "I am also a big fan of Lauren Cerand. She’s not a writer, necessarily, but her blog and Twitter feed are as endlessly readable to me as anything else I read. She is a constant reminder that magic and elegance are alive and well if you make room for them in your life." Later this week an upstart publication that I respect will run my thoughts on "glamour," and I am working on a commissioned piece for another on "elegance," and one about blancmange. But first, I'll sleep 'til eleven or noon. 

On Sleep No More

Last night I went to Sleep No More, the much-discussed dramatic immersion that spreads actors and participants over five floors of an artfully deshabille Chelsea warehouse, made over to resemble a 1930s-era hotel. The dozen or so actors, who are differentiated from audience members by the fact that the latter wear masks and move in complete silence, weave in and out of the elaborate domestic tableaux, acting out scenes in a movement-driven interpretation of Macbeth. This experience can be entertaining or life-changing, depending on how much theater and avant-garde art you enjoy on a regular basis. Although I had a companion, my favorite element of the evening, which starts at midnight, was how much the experience is heightened by the individual's degree of interaction with the rapidly evolving environment. We followed along most of the time, and spent the last couple of hours in the show's point of origin: Manderley, a sort of house cabaret bar, drinking Lillet punch and Scotch respectively, listening to a singer glide through her repertoire of torch songs. Today I'm reading Shakepeare After All for the notes on Macbeth.

Up Next, "Upstairs..."

"Patrick Melrose has survived. It was never a sure thing," says the Wall Street Journal. At Last is "beautiful and startlingly hopeful." Observes Slate, "St. Aubyn, a direct descendant of William the Conqueror and godparent to Earl Spencer’s son, writes what he knows." I'm excited to note that we'll have Edward St. Aubyn as our guest at the next edition of "Upstairs at the Square." He's been praised, by the New York Times, for "a style of social comedy more reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell or Nancy Mitford than of anyone writing today." Our musical guest will be Joseph Arthur, whose album, The Graduation Ceremony, the Times deemed "elegantly wounded," and who just appeared on David Letterman. His new double-album, Redemption City, is available for free download on his site, and a sublime companion to the books. Join us, February 15th, at 7pm. The show's one hour, with our host, journalist Katherine Lanpher, and it's free.

Above, an illustration by Lux Lotus reader Gary Michael Porter.

On Motivation

Received today, a formal invitation to a party at what could correctly be termed a private palace in London, in the spring. Written post-script: I'm commissioning a painting especially for you.

The Lux Lotus Little Book of Style (Men)

Tonight I went to the Kitchen to see the intensely provocative play, World of Wires, with Matt Reilly of Japanther fame. People ask me what looks best on a man; one winning look would be a slim black suit, crisp white shirt, thin black tie, and a wolf mask.

On Answers

My friend Austin wrote this morning to say he had lunch with my brother (huzzah!), and to ask a question, which he had kind of already answered himself, and I just affirmed. He took it to heart:

Lux Lotus Reader Dream of the Day

A novelist reports–– You were in my dream last night. We drank coffee, sitting on a sidewalk on a hill, in San Francisco, wearing fancy dresses. 

On Abstraction

Yesterday, between engagements, I dashed into MoMA for a last chance to glimpse the de Kooning retrospective. While that experience was underwhelming, a few floors down at the Fluxus show, Joe Jones' short film, "Smoking," stopped me in my tracks.