Lux Lotus

Midnight Somewhere

I went to Brooklyn today for coffee with novelist Jonathan Baumbach, and then ran into Bud Parr en famille. Later in the same neighborhood I had dinner with filmmaker Craig Macneill. On my way home, it felt like eleven but it was only eight, so I stopped by Project No. 8 and got a pair of midnight blue ankle boots by Swedish label HOPE Stockholm. As one does. When my friend told me how they were supposed to send brown instead and that I'd be the only woman in New York with them, I laughed as it was hardly a selling point. I am always that girl (even when I'd rather be ordinary)!

P.S. There is an interview with Ben Greenman, one of my current publicity clients, in The Villager, and he has many gorgeous insights about "the lost art of letter-writing." And Anne Landsman's at Maud Newton on "the curse of the second novel."

Windowlicker

Lately dim economic fortunes have been occupying everyone, and especially those in my inner circle (my siblings work in finance and retail). My long-term dreams of capitalist splendor are less in jeopardy, because, well, I've never had any. I've been freelancing for five years and forfeited security for enhanced possibility a long time ago. My thoughts about future trends tend towards total personal and professional reinvention, as in, I'll move to an obscure European city for a while, or find a little house somewhere in the U.S. and that will require many new things, not so many material but chief among them in the latter scenario, a car.

[1971 Jaguar E-Type Coupe, $59,900]

Previously: My Life in Pictures: Weekend in the Country.

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Out + About

Tonight, just after a confab over coffee at the bar in Le Meridien, I went to another dazzling board meeting for The Writers Room and it was lovely. Then Anne Landsman and I went to Essex House (I would happily live in a hotel) and caught up over a drink as I am publicizing her new novel, The Rowing Lesson. And it was all very nice. Whenever I have to go to Midtown, I like to wear my best interpretation of what I might have worn in the 1950s if I were a woman with (at least) as much power as a man. In this instance, it was: black python Walter Steiger heels, black dress with Anne Demeulemeester sash, Burberry tweed-lined trench, little black hat from Paris, and under-the-radar purse.

My Life in Pictures: Tuesday, 9:58PM

Quoting myself, earlier: what great champagne! did you even know you could buy emeralds at kmart?

Windowlicker

Man, I'm such a romantic today. Isn't it Byronic?

[Set of 4 "Lord Byron" Small Cards & Envelopes, $11.50 at Etsy]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Pick Crust

As you know, I am publicizing Crust, the new novel from Lawrence Shainberg and everybody's valentine, Two Dollar Radio, and its pretty hot... Time Out Chicago is into how it "provokes us to ponder the relationship between our public and private selves" while The Village Voice describes our hero as "Half DeLillo's Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at College-on-the-Hill, and half Christopher Hitchens," plus more, while Jacket Copy, the must-read book blog of The Los Angeles Times, considers Crust along with the global bestseller Wetlands, and asks, "Is going grody the new edgy?"

Darling!

There was nothing to forgive, and the flowers are exquisite. Everyone else, happiest of weekends to you. Mine is already off to a glittering start. XO.

IT MUST BE AN ART CRUSH: McMasters-Milroy

Last night I went to a party on Great Jones Street, hosted by my friends Kelly McMasters, who is the author of Welcome To Shirley (it's totally Gilmore Girls meets Silent Spring plus an appearance by Anna Wintour) and her husband, the painter Mark Milroy. The occasion was an informal cocktail party full of good-looking people and surprisingly good wine, on hand to view his work. His style is beautiful, focusing on dense brush-strokes and uncommon portraiture, and my two favorites had rich tapestries of birds and flowers as their background. And the subjects are captivating! When I caught up with Kelly I said that I would now devote myself tirelessly to becoming a millionaire so that I could have my portrait done by Mark. And she said, "Oh, he doesn't really take commissions. He just does whatever he wants."

Windowlicker

I used to have a great many songs on my computer (over five thousand last time I checked, in 2005), and then, the day after I returned from ten days of meditative reflection at an ashram this spring, my laptop bit the dust. When I bought a new one, I didn't have my digital collection transferred because I was so headed for the hermitage in terms of deep positive thinking that I was like, why would I want to listen to music when every pop song is a diary of longing for someone who's left you? The only song that I truly miss is one that someone recorded for me. Le sigh... that's this life, though; fleeting. These days, I still listen to music, online, mostly on artists' sites or at Hype Machine (especially after I read one of Ben Greenman's essays like this one at Moistworks), or the odd CD, but rarely do I add anything to my iTunes, which currently has exactly 67 songs on it. Lately, though, I've been returning to the idea of a soundtrack, especially when I travel, and gravitating towards tunes with a little wear on them (like "St. James Infirmary" or the blues, like Muddy Waters, or Lightnin' Hopkins' "Baby Child," which captivates me into silent reverie from the first note). I have a cherished gold iPod Mini, but it's a little heavy to tote around since I've mostly quit carrying a purse (I feel like I've said this before -- ha, I did, exactly that -- but girls, there is a reason that boys are running the world and it is: pockets). I am désolé that the iPod Shuffle doesn't come in violet or high-gloss black or a Paul Smith stripe edition, but one must suffer, I guess. We can't be so pretty all the time.

[iPod shuffle, $49 at Apple.com]

Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - appears on Tuesday and Thursdays at 10am EST-ish.

Men on Film

"During the writing process Dick and I consumed coffee -- bad coffee, brewed on the electric ring -- and suffered from sexual tension provoked by one of our neighbours in the hotel. We never knew who, or even where, she was, but if we angled the slat-opening windows of our writers' roost just so, they'd catch the reflection of this woman who spent every day tanning on her balcony. She was dark-skinned and voluptuous, with a very small bikini, and every day she would lather herself with sun-tan oil and lie there on the plastic sun-lounger provided by the hotel. Sexual tension quickly became the screenplay's main concern."

--Alex Cox discussing Straight to Hell in X Films