Rhododendron is a Nice Flower

Christian Bale, still from "Velvet Goldmine"

When I was a pre-teen I remember listening to bad 70's pop - Bay City Rollers, ABBA (I didn't realize that they were pop geniuses at the time, I wasn't that musically sophisticated at 13, nor am I at present), and a lot of other forgettable AM radio fluff. I don't intend to trivialize my banal taste in music as a pre-teen, part of what I listened do I did so because it was on the radio, in my friend's mothers' car, in a store, at the beach, wherever. The other part was what I grew up with as the youngest of four children, with my two oldest siblings being 7 and 8 years older than I.

Growing up and sharing a room with my sister, I was exposed to a lot of 60's/70's folk-rock, singer-songwriter music. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Carole King, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, Gilbert O'Sullivan (yes, good lord, Gilbert O'Sullivan, if anyone remembers him). I group them together not by the degree of musicianship or originality, but by the range (there is a chasm from Joni Mitchell to Gilbert O'Sullivan) that I was exposed to. All that in addition to the requisite Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin, Dylan and Kinks.

My oldest brother was listening to Bowie, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, Franz Zappa & The Mothers of Invention, Roxy Music, and Brian Eno (with Roxy & solo). When I first heard the lyrics to "Do the Strand" I wasn't interested in the particular meaning of he lyrics, it was the stream of consciousness that attracted me. It would start for me an attraction to absurdism, stream of consciousness, and randomness that is still very much with me.

I went with a friend last night to see a screening of Velvet Goldmine at McCarren Park Pool in Greenpoint - an out of use public pool that in recent years has transformed into a performance space. I hadn't seen it since it had come out in the late 90's, and it was as good, and as cheesy a guilty pleasure as I had remembered.

Roxy Music were, in the early 70's anyway, were ahead of their time and their musicianship was head and shoulders against most artists considered Glam, but I think the sheer show of Glam, both good and bad, appealed to me because I am a visual person. Yes, I had crushes on pictures of George on Beatles' album covers, and thought Eric from the Bay City Rollers had gorgeous eyes,but the package of Bowie and Roxy Music and T Rex was to me something uncontainable.

When I became more aware of music, particularly how it made me feel, I was listening to the Mo-dettes, the Clash, UK Ska, Joy Division, X, and local Boston bands like the Neighborhoods, Boy's Life, Human Sexual Response and Mission of Burma. I subsequently subsumed the influence that the music of my older siblings had on me. I was pretty immersed in the local Boston scene at the now defunct Rathskellar (The Rat) in Kenmore Square and by the mid-80's the scene was overcome with neo garage bands like the Lyres, Prime Movers, Dogmatics and others. At the time I was heavily into how I looked - I wore 50's party dresses and 60's mod outfits, all to be had for cheap from the local Goodwill/Morgan Memorial and Salvation Army stores. I teased my hair up with Aqua Net and wore a lot of black eyeliner. Music and fashion have always been a likely couple, and even though a lot of the neo garage bands were wearing jeans, t-shirts and sweaters, there was still a retro fascination at the time, especially with the 50's and early to mid 60's.

I don't think it was until I moved to New York that I began to appreciate the music I had shelved for some time. When I look at Marc Bolan, glitter in his hair and on his face, smiling like the Chesire Cat, I think about his music and when I listen to his music, I think about how he looks. The same is true for me with Bowie and Roxy Music - it's the whole package.

Leaving the movie and coming home, I wanted to take out my cd's and blast them, but having house mates, and being a respectable age, I wasn't able to at 11pm on a Tuesday night.

Seeing the movie - with it's laughable, fictional account of David Bowie and Iggy Pop's relationship, and campy original songs ("somebody called me Sebastian"?) - and wanting badly to listen to the first Roxy or T Rex tape or CD I could get my hands on - put me in the mood. Sadly, not having a partner right now, all I could do I could was hum Virginia Plain in my head and dance around my room, pretending to be a glitter queen, while my cat looked on, a bit puzzled. Having just landed a really good job and knowing things are changing for me, I have to believe that part of my life will turn around soon as well. Until then, I can do the strand...

Stickin' it to the Man, 12-year old style/Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls

still from "Radio Riot"video on youtube


It was my friends birthday last night, and I headed out to the old Tobacco Warehouse at Brooklyn Bridge Park for an evening of physics and music, sponsored by Union Hall, a bar/club in Park Slope. I had not heard of the opening band, "Tiny Masters of Today" prior to last night, and I'm more than happy to report that they should have been the headliners, and kicked the asses of the other bands. Well, I only stayed for about 1/2 song by the headliners "French Kicks" and the other band sort of careened between ambient and pop, and then ended up just playing pop. I saw Sonic Youth on July 4th for the second time in my life. The first time they were truly sonic and I was in an auditorum, so the feedback ricocheted off of the walls, and I was enveloped in it. I was gleefully dazed afterwards and while I never bought anything they recorded, I left the show thinking it was the best live show I'd ever seen next to the Ramones at the old Channel club in Boston. The July 4 show this year was good, but I didn't feel the same energy, maybe because I'm older, they are older, or I just found them sounding the same as anyone else. I still have a girl crush on Kim Gordon in that 'I want to be just like her, but I'll never be as cool' way. Last night I found that a bunch of 12 year olds (well, the drummer looked maybe 16 or 17, and I'm still unsure if it was a boy or a girl, like the old Barbarians song goes) rocked harder than Sonic Youth, and were a whole lot more fun. To be fair, part of my reaction was "holy shit, they are so young, and so skinny, and who are their parents?" There is a novelty factor there, but it wore off and the music took over. The sound wasn't great as the vocalist, Ada, was drowned out by the guitar and drums at times, but I could still here her barking out the lines in straightforward song-speak whine. They even did a brilliant cover of House of Pain's "Jump Around." At one point Ada asserted herself, asking the audience to stand up, because seeing all of us sitting down depressed her. Nearly everyone stood up. Kim Gordon move over, I want to be as cool as Ada! Here is a link the their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/tinymasters

Being at Brooklyn Bridge Park, I finally got to see the Olafur Eliasson waterfallls. When I tried to see them about a month ago, it had just turned 10pm, which meant lights out and water off. I've heard various accounts of how disappointing they are, and all that "well, it's just not like a real waterfall, and I have one at my country house" thing. For all of you who do look out on to a waterfall from your kitchen window upstate, great! But being a fresh air fund adult stuck in NYC for most of the summer, I found them to be lovely. The skeletal fragility of the scaffolding and the patterning of the water cascading off if it, and moving with the wind, was eloquent, especially the one in the distance on the Manhattan side from the Brooklyn Bridge Park. If you look at a natural waterfall, you don't quite get to experience the way the water cascades off the rocks, because you can't see it in the round. Eliasson's waterfalls allow you to do that; to focus on the flow of the water itself. I forgot my camera, of course.

Rocky Point Weekend

This weekend I had the good fortune to spend the weekend with my good friends at their family's summer place in Rocky Point, on the north shore of Long Island. We decided to fly in the face of the weather reports and go regardless of the thunderstorms in the forecast. We made it out at a snails pace, my friend driving for almost four hours, our backsides adhering to the car seats from the humidity. When we did make it to our destination we ate and unpacked, prepped for the next days barbecue and slept.

Saturday turned out to be not as wet as the MY9 news team predicted, but it did thunder and rain. We went to May's farm to pick up some more produce and they sky, pictured above, was pregnant with rain and hued in impending doom blues and grays. Gorgeous. Soon after this photo was taken the heavens did open up and intermittently showered down on eastern Long Island.

Later in the afternoon, friends caravaned from Brooklyn for the barbecue. We slept, read, walked and picked at cheese, crackers, fruit and other good stuff before the real meal began. While out for a walk after the rain seemed to have passed I spotted this lawn fawn stepping out of a bush of echinacea for some sun



















Back from the walk around sweet Rock Point, everyone awoke from slumber and rest and my friend and hostess got down to business on the grill. Eventually we all sat down to a great meal with many dishes, plus beer, wine, some really sweet sparkling wine concoction and other good stuff, leisurely becoming sated from all the food and good company.

Eventually the day guests left, going back to their houses, spouses and pets. Being newly single and having a house mate taking care of my cat, I was able to spend two nights with my friends. All I had to do was stumble into the bedroom and fall into a deep and restful sleep.

Sunday morning I awoke to sun and the promise of a trip to the beach. My friends got up and we drank some coffee, and played some badminton in the yard. Being of sad hand/eye coordination, I was able to play in, what I think my friend called it, a "judgment free zone." Or maybe that's what I thought of it. I forget how easy it is to play badminton and how much I enjoy it until I pick up the featherweight racket and the birdie and whack at it.

Eventually we make it to the beach later in the afternoon. My favorite time of the day on the beach is late afternoon into early evening, when the light changes a mid-afternoon glare to a golden-orange glaze. When we arrived, my friend and I took a long walk on the pebbled beach, and not wearing our footwear, toughening the soles of our feet on the tiny rocks. While on the walk we came across an impromptu shrine for a fallen bird, what my friends thought to be a Plover.

















On first seeing the dead bird I thought of paintings of the subject by Albert Pinkham Ryder and Morris Graves, and I also thought of Manet's "The Dead Toreador," perhaps because of the white breast of the bird and black wings reminded me of the toreador's uniform, or because of the way the bird was still plump and alive looking. With "The Dead Toreador" I always felt that if I turned away from the image, the toreador would get up, brush himself off, and saunter off out of the ring. Somehow there was something a bit unreal about this bird too, as if it were posing for a shoot, my shoot I guess. I was also moved by the act of someone inspired enough to weight the bird down, write "R.I.P" in the sand and leave a cross made of twigs above the beak. Perhaps it was a child or a teenager, I believe an adult would have been too self conscious, or if they weren't they would have added some ironic touch, too inhibited not too.

The rest of the afternoon we spent eating, reading and napping. We returned back at the house, which once belonged to my dear friends grandmother, who I had the good fortune to have spent time with when she was alive. One of those people you don't forget, diminutive, forceful, and very generous. I am grateful to be asked by my friends to return there in the summer.

After showering and having some coffee, we packed things up and loaded the leftovers and our weekend gear into the car.
















I was happy to be going back to Brooklyn, despite all the uncertainty in my life right now, a weekend in Rocky Point renewed my faith that I will find those things that I'm looking for, that things will be alright and that although everything I tried to make work hasn't panned out over the past few months that there new people and opportunities out there waiting for me. I just have to be open to them.