Lux Lotus

The Undomestic Goddess 10

The Undomestic Goddess interviews me.

Windowlicker

I'm not into snakeskin -- I think it's bad mojo to wear an animal you wouldn't eat, unless it's vintage and then, fine, it's recycling -- but I am into Wild at Heart (I began dating my college boyfriend at the precise moment we discovered our shared ecstatic enthusiasm for the film) and Sailor's classic line, "Did I ever tell you that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?" To which Lula replies, "About fifty thousand times..." I say, it can't be said often enough.

[Fendi 'To You' Snakeskin Bag, $1000 at Overstock]

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

Please Step Back, Downtown

 

Tonight Ben Greenman gave his final scheduled reading in New York, as part of his tour for Please Step Back, at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca. He and Todd Zuniga of Opium Magazine turned into a three-ring spectacle with my approval although I didn't want to know beforehand what was going to go down. In the first photo (all were snapped by TZ on his iPhone), Ben attempts to set a world record for writing the longest story in sixty seconds. In the second, I am sitting in the front row between star-on-the-rise Megan Branch and Lauren Elkin of Maitresse, who enviably splits her time between Paris, Hong Kong and New York, if you can believe it. She showed me the book she's reading, an anthology of new hip scene Inculte, and we talked about Oulipo, and I've gotta get to Paris, soon! Afterward a bunch of us strolled up to Walker's for a drink, standing around talking shop at the bar; a perfect New York evening. Todd's taking Opium's Literary Death Match on the road to Paris, London, San Francisco, LA and Chicago, in addition to the current issue of the magazine, which is almost sold out thanks to all the global press it's been getting (the cover boasts a nine word story that won't be revealed for a century). I love it when cool people mingle. The more, the merrier.

Gracious Vigilantes

Check out Gracious Vigilantes, a new project my friends make.

Pictured: Urban Skate Warrior.

Flash

Today I read This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record by Susannah Felts, and it was a perfect story about a girl's life over the course of a summer and then fall, and it captured exactly that sense of coming into your own as a person and that dizzy thing when you're a teenager, those close, too-close enraptured friendships that start with suspicious envy and progress through borderless adulation, and then you drift apart, on bad terms or none at all. And sitting in the park doing nothing really. The only thing about the book that felt out of step with my personal experience was that it more accurately described my life when I was twelve. I was about five years ahead of the heroine. I've been thinking a lot about summer, and friends, and cities, and doing nothing really, and where I'd like to do that, long-term. For now I think I'll stick around New York. I can't shake it, there's something in the air around here lately, bright as the glow of a firefly in your hands on a hot night; that unshakeable sense that maybe there's a few adventures left in this town for me yet. We'll see about that.

Photo: William Eggleston, who's moved on to Paris from Memphis.

The Thing About Your Friends

I have had some really brilliant adventures with D.E. Rasso (pictured: us in Quimby's photo booth) but honestly, the aspects of our friendship I am most grateful for are mundane. She's reading next month at The Slipper Room when The Dollar Store Show rolls up in the Featherproof van (which I fully expect to be like Scooby Doo), and I was looking through email to find people I should invite and found this exchange:

L: ...I should have replied, who are you, Yayoi Kusama? But I was hopeless then -- Also, don't make any tree sprite jokes. I am in a vulnerable place today...

D: [replies, and then replies again] When I don't hear from you at times like this I grow concerned.

L: Oh I am just listening to Baltimore club music.

Anyway, come on out July 12, NYC, for the party of the summer!

Artcrush: Tobias Zielony

I first encountered the work of Tobias Zielony when I publicized a show that the Goethe-Institut New York presented with C/O Berlin in 2007, the opening of which the Berlin in Lights Festival blog reported as "certainly the liveliest event I’ve been to yet," and he has remained in my mind as one of my favorite contemporary artists since. He is known for photographing young people hanging out at night in cities like Bristol, Marseille and Los Angeles, and, even given the occasionally time-worn aspects of that aesthetic, his work is as seductively compelling as an endless evening with no agenda and the possibility of broken rules.

Like the Boys

Windowlicker

Part of the reason shoes make such a frequent appearance is because they are the one item I seldom buy. I am not a shoe person in the way that I am say, a bag person. Sometimes I will tuck one purse (my grandmother's black velvet clutch) into another purse (my tobacco brown Anna Corinna tote) because I can't decide. But you can't wear two pairs of shoes, Punky Brewster! I already have a pair of Birks from college (the very tempting appeal of these: the Helen of Troy meets I Am Curious - Yellow vibe). Reminds me of when a friend called the other night to ask if I wanted anything from Sephora; I was all, "Well, I got some Cherries in the Snow in Chicago, what else could I need?"

[Antique Gray Woven Leather Sandals, $130 at Birkenstock]

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

Luxloves: Dot Dot Dot

When I'm in New York, I mostly schedule my life so that I can walk everywhere. Today I had to take the subway so I wanted something to read and grabbed Dot Dot Dot (issue 11), an art journal I'd picked up at Dexter Sinister, a terrific little bookshop that's open Saturdays on Ludlow Street, a year or so ago. What a fantastic object I'd allowed to languish, and how I've despaired at creating my own peril! Mostly, I'm delighted that I discovered it today on an otherwise grimly overcast, muggy wall-to-wall work day. There's too much emphasis on criticism by and about dudes for my taste, but the essay on The Fall's Mark E. Smith is essential reading (related: Badly Drawn Boy told a memorable story at "Upstairs at the Square" about encountering him in Manchester as a teenager), as is the entire issue, lest you miss one of the sharp little details, as in comparing the graphic design of The Sex Pistols to early avant-garde journal Blast, the aggressive cover design of which was made possible by a "chance encounter with an alcoholic ex-printer." The writing and editing is top-notch and Dot Dot Dot overall meets my true standard of excellence: I can hardly bear to part with it, but will gladly give it to a friend as soon as possible.