#jolie laide

[antodreamy]

palms together 🙏

[bitter69uk]

“Rumpled, tattered, unkempt, hirsute, Smith defies the rules of femininity. Soulful, haggard and emaciated yet raffish, swaggering and seductive, she is mad saint, ephebe, dandy and troubadour, a complex woman alone and outward bound for culture war.” Camille Paglia on Patti Smith.

Born on this day: fierce high priestess of punk poetry, beatnik earth mother, shamanistic visionary, musician, playwright, role model, personification of jolie laide androgyny and the woman Salvador Dali once likened to “a gothic crow” – Patti Smith (Patricia Lee Smith, 30 December 1946). No one asked, but my favourite Patti Smith song is "Pissing in a River” (followed by “Dancing Barefoot”). Pictured: portrait by Lynn Goldsmith.

[lagrenouillere]

[beautyarchive]

Oddly beautiful Sally Hawkins in Paddington (2014).

[ashtrayfloors]

The past couple weeks have been pretty intense, emotionally. Good, bad, weird, all three, but intense all ‘round.

The Monday before last, E. shared a post of J.L.’s on Facebook & I had to go thru the thing I’ve gone thru so many times already: Do I tell her he abused me & risk her disbelief & the loss of our friendship? Or do I say nothing & just feel super super gross forever & probably lose the friendship anyway because I’ll feel too uncomfortable hanging out with her while knowing she’s friendly with him? I decided to tell her, and ultimately she responded the way I’d hoped she would, but I was up half the night feeling nauseous & panicky. This is like the fourth or fifth time I’ve had to go through this re: J.L. Which, I guess, is not shocking; he’s a well-known guy in the Milwaukee DIY/arts scene. So yeah, not shocking, but it still sucks that I have to keep going thru this.

In the wee hours of that Monday night/Tuesday morning, just before I finally fell asleep, was the blood moon/eclipse. & when I woke a few hours later I was bleeding. That day was the midterm elections & I wanted to make a joke about I’ve got your red wave right here or something. Speaking of—boy, am I glad that the promised red wave did not happen.

That day, and for a few days after, I went thru a bout of mania the likes of which I haven’t seen in a while. There’s still a part of me that wants to fall back into the old self-destructive tendencies. Y’know, they get manic & wanna get stupid drunk about it, or fuck a stranger about it, & they get a little ornery that they can’t. But it is fortunate that, these days, I can sometimes harness my manic energy in more positive ways. I used this bout to get a bunch of housecleaning done, & work on my novella, & then... I was listening to Endless Possibility, the tribute to Jack Terricloth, & there were all these clips of him talking, & in one of them he said: It’s hard to live in the past, it’s hard to live in the future—we live absolutely in the moment. Now is the only time. Do not ever wait. The only answer is yes. & hearing that spurred me into beginning to put the finishing touches on the revised & updated edition of What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk.

Saturday the 12th we celebrated D.’s 11th birthday. His actual birthday was the 13th, but we decided to celebrate with my parents that night, at my mom’s studio, so we could watch the holiday parade. My mom saw my new haircut for the first time. She’d seen me a couple times already since I cut it, but I’d hidden it with a scarf or hat because I knew she’d make a comment & I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. Sure enough, when she saw it, she visibly winced, then said: “Oh, Jess, really? I keep thinking you’ll grow out of doing that kind of thing.” My response was: “I keep thinking you’ll get used to me doing this kind of thing.” Then she said: “I mean, it’s your hair, you can do whatever you want, but you look so pretty with normal hair.” I just shrugged, cuz we’ve had this ‘discussion’ (& other, similar ones) approximately 5000 times in the past 28 years & she doesn’t get that I’m not trying to be pretty. I mean, yes, I like to feel pretty sometimes, but a. I certainly don’t want to be pretty in a conventional way, and b. overall, I am not going for pretty. I’m going for jolie-laide. I don’t want to be merely pretty, I want to be hot & a little intimidating.

I don’t know. She & I have been having some problems lately, in general, & they’re all the same troublesome dynamic we’ve always had. I love her but sometimes her comments & passive-aggressiveness just exhaust me.

The next day, between cooking, reading, & playing with the kiddos, I had several moments of professional jealousy/envy. I got really down about the trajectory of my career vs. other people’s careers & felt too sad about it to work on my novella that day (though I did work on a prose poem about why I wasn’t working on my novella).

But, the very next evening, I attended Library of America’s (virtual) lecture & Q&A with Todd Tietchen & Jean-Christophe Cloutier, the editor & translator, respectively, of LOA’s book The Unknown Kerouac. It helped me get past feeling sorry for myself. For many reasons, not the least of which was their mention of Jack writing: I hope it’s true that a man can die, and not only live in others, but give them life. Which in turn made me think of Sarah Manguso’s essay about the true purpose of being a serious writer: If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job. It made my envy of others’ successes seem petty, made me remember— My purpose is not to receive accolades, my purpose is to write & to get my work out there so that the people who need it can find it, & it can give them life.

So, after the Q&A ended, I got back to work on my memory project. (Kerouac considered his entire oeuvre a memory project, a la Proust, & I see myself/my work in that same lineage.)

Thursday, I went to the Racine Art Museum with my mom. We did that last year near her birthday, too, and it was so nice that it has become our new tradition. I always love going to RAM; I feel so blessed that we have such a great art museum in this mid-sized midwest town. The new exhibits that have been added since I went there back in August are phenomenal. & the zodiac-themed virtual community art show my piece is part of? They had an iPad mounted on the wall, scrolling thru all the pieces in the show, & it was really fucking cool to see mine there. I know it was only on a small screen, but still. To see my art in a real fucking art museum? Kinda mind-blowing.

In other news:

Some of my nearest & dearest have been going thru some health scares. (Thankfully, I now know for sure that one of them was just that—a scare.) Little C. has been relentlessly moody, & I guess I’ve been pretty moody, too. I’ve been horny a lot & also sad a lot.

I’ve got a new crush. I know nothing can, or will, ever come of it, but I don’t mind so much. Crush energy, much like mania, is something I’ve learned to harness in more positive ways, most of the time. I don’t need to pursue my crush, I don’t need to pine, I can make them my muse & channel the energy into writing & art. & I’ve been deep in nostalgia—what else is new—longing for a hundred thousand people, places, moments from my past. Currently, I’m missing the winter I worked in a flower shop in Chicago, & the winter I ice skated once a week in downtown Milwaukee. But, at least nostalgia is another energy I can channel into art. My whole life is a memory project.

[marlini]

that striking girl keeps sitting opposite me in the seminar... must she continue to torment me with her profile

[clipstone]

Jolie Laide

Jolie Laide Pinot Gris Sonoma, USA 2022 Pinot Gris

Jolie Laide translates to unconventionally beautiful and their wines are exactly that.

In this Pinot Gris, the grapes are picked early and foot trodden before short maceration. Fermentation takes place with native yeasts and the naturally high acid in the fruit sourced from sustainable growers allows for very little SO2 to be added.

A pink hue with a touch of spice, it is highly perfumed. On the palate it has a chalky texture with fresh acidity.

Tasting notes: bergamot, peach, tarragon, orange blossom

Pairing: spicy food, cured meats, pork

[fawnonthelam]

I want to design a house only out of what everyone else said was ugly, at the suppliers. Just out of everything that was rejected and abandoned. And only those things.

This house will be so filled with ugly things, that they will be like garishly costumed dancers in a ballet, uniting in a grand scheme of peculiar beauty that is the graceful sum of its awful, ugly parts. Like some giant, beautiful fungus cocoon that blooms in the right weather.

Yup. That’s what I’d like to do…

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to musician Nina Nastasia. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Nina began writing songs in 1993 but initially had no real ambitions to be a professional musician. She ended up recording many of those songs with Steve Albini, and they became her debut album Dogs, which was released in 2000. Albini sent the record to John Peel, who championed it on his radio show, and Nina began to garner both fans and acclaim. Since then, she's recorded and released seven albums on labels like Touch and Go and Fat Cat Records, and her latest project, Jolie Laide, is a collaboration with musician Jeff MacLeod, and their self-titled debut album was just released on Oscar St. Records!

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

Permalink RSS Feed                  Facebook                           

[antodreamy]

clay girl

[bitter69uk]

“Some singers belt and some singers murmur, but Serge Gainsbourg taught the world the value of heavy breathing. An icon of French debauchery in the ‘60s, the late Gainsbourg devoted a noble career to lounge lizard glitz. He couldn’t really sing, but he could both huff and puff and he cast a spell over pop music … Vive le sleaze.” / From the May 1997 issue of Details magazine / In Memoriam: Serge Gainsbourg (né Lucien Ginsburg, 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991), the raffish and dissipated dirty mouth (and dirty mind) of Gallic popular culture, died on this day. Pictured: French pop’s Marquis de Sade as the world’s least likely cowboy.

[chocolatepot]

bestie it was the most streamed show on the web for weeks

[dozydawn]

Eleanor Parker attends the Golden Globes, 1970.

[porciaenjoyer]

my terribly ambivalent nature. my malcontent demeanour

[hoyatype]

hot people do not care about cable management. and the hot people who do need to recenter themselves and use their allure for the greater good