girlontape

some people get by with a little understanding

FB wonders, girlontape recently reconnected with one of her loves of yesteryear. The kind that changes you, launching you on a whole new sequence of adventures

(in that case, it was the transition from uptown to downtown, activism to art, low-rent aspirations to buying real estate on Avenue C:

different sorts of self-definition, not that there is ultimately any separation, but at that age you feel it's just so important to draw those fine, non-existent lines)

and I told him "I'm heading to Berlin to reconnect with the rock n roll spirit I once knew in NY" and he said, "You are still rock n roll Stef"

which made me happy,

in the way that only the perception of someone who has known you this long can make you happy, and yeah I want MORE

the one and only kat by the one and only kat

"robert was concerned with taking the picture, i with being the picture" (patti smith, just kids)

self-portraits by kat ziegler

in praise of the worth of women

artist painting a musician's portrait, by marguerite gerard (1761-1837)

"I say that everything men can understand, women can too; and where a man’s intellect can penetrate, so along with it can a woman’s.

If you study ancient and modern history -- although men have always been very sparing in their praise of women -- you will find that there have been women who waged wars and won glorious victories, governed great kingdoms with the greatest prudence and justice, and done all that men have done.

As for learning, cannot you recall reading of many women who knew philosophy, of others who have been consummate poets, others who prosecuted, accused and defended before judges with the greatest eloquence?

Who does not realize that without women we can get no pleasure or satisfaction out of life, which but for them would be more uncouth and savage than that of wild beasts?

If we really consider the truth, we shall also recognize that in our understanding of great issues, far from distracting us they awaken our minds, and in warfare they make men fearless and bold beyond measure."

baldassarre castiglione, the book of the courtier, 1508

sometimes i see you with your shiny dirty black hair...

... and your clothes, your clothes they just don't make no more! television

house and techno and rock n roll...is all my brain and body need

laika & stef listen to whitney weiss

no al voto di scambio

via roberto saviano

jafar panahi, berlinale, solidarity

... i got all my brethren with me

what can i say... every time this DJ uploads a new set, i feel like taking pictures again. music is still my only guide

ground control boomeranged...

... as so many of them are wont to do.

The passage of time has its advantages, among them, acquiring the sure & certain knowledge that, if it was good for me, it was amazing for him; if I felt passionate, he felt even more so. No matter how they behave after… especially if they behave badly afterwards.

A year after Ground Control brought my spaceship back to earth, he materialized once again out of the welter of being and nothingness. In a club, of course. Where he cornered me, and the following conversation ensued:

Ground Control: Do you remember me?

Stef: Of course.

Ground Control: And… do you remember… last year… in the morning… I gave you my number?

Stef: Uh-huh.

Ground Control: Yeah, so… I was wondering if… maybe… you lost it?

Stef: No. Why do you ask?

Ground Control: Because I waited for days for you to call, and you never did. So I thought maybe you lost my number.

Stef: You said such awful things to me as you were writing it down, that I threw it away as soon as you left.

Ground Control: You’re kidding… what did I say!?!?

Stef: You said… blablablabla.

Ground Control: I did not.

Stef: Did too.

Ground Control: Jesus. I can’t believe I was such an asshole.

Stef: I couldn’t either. Especially since I thought we had a nice time.

Ground Control: I had a great time. In fact, it was the best I had before or since. After meeting you I went back to Paris and I broke up with my girlfriend.

Stef: C’est la vie…

Ground Control: I'm thinking about moving to BA... do you have a boyfriend?

Stef: How beautiful you are… sorry gotta split!

Ground Control: Give me a call if you’re ever in Paris!

vintage girlontape, for a friend who recently broke up

The Intergalactic Space Traveler's Return

Jumping back into the ring after five years of marital fidelity is akin to an astronaut’s re-entry after a long, arduous intergalactic mission: the blue planet is coming up fast, and as I punch in the landing sequence and pray that ground control hasn’t lost my coordinates I worry about my fate in a world grown unfamiliar in my absence and in which, hampered by a now quaint skill set, I'll inevitably be quarantined into geekdom.

My first discovery is that my knowledge of the boy-beastie is far from obsolete, because evolution has been a non-issue in the light years that I’ve been away. Case in point, the friend who hits on me four days into my separation, ergo while I’m still on the ground, visibly hemorrhaging from multiple and aggravated wounds. I explain that look I’m really not up for this I hope you understand etcetera. He replies somewhat huffily what do you take me for, besides I’m madly in love with so-and-so and anyway I consider you a friend repeat friend stop and drops out of sight.

Anyway: What is a man…what’s a kiss…what’s sex? I wonder as, much like an amputee feeling her missing limb, I become aware of a blank, curious gap: something essential has been taken away, and while it doesn’t hurt, its absence, I know, makes me a cripple. Don’t worry, you’ll snap out of it. You just have to give it time my friends tell me kindly, in the tone people use to recommend chicken soup for a lingering cold. I nod, faking agreement, then run home to check my intergalactic space travel instruction manual anyway. God forbid I missed some key point in the landing sequence or, worse, an entire section titled MIND THE GAP. But all it says is: thinking is pointless, dancing essential. Like what I need right now is a freaking fortune cookie,

like I have a choice. Cut to 5am, my favorite nightclub and the stranger who lives by the motto my heart belongs to my girlfriend, but my body belongs to me. Since here I am floating in a tin can, convinced that my circuits must be dead, at first I overlook the signal coming in loud and clear that THIS IS GROUND CONTROL. He’s locked on to my ship, and he’s bringing me in. He's hot, he’s articulate, he gets me, I get a thrill, yes, cab, home:

as I step gingerly over the threshold with another man I’m fully expecting the earth to open up under my feet but the dreaded crossing is smooth, flawless, delightful, for ground control with his verve and grace, movie-star looks and wicked rock 'n roll hair, deep sexy kisses and whipsmart banter, has unquestionably been designed to spec and flown in from Paris exclusively for me, solely to be deployed at this precise moment and no other. (con't)

the passion of lovers... the glory of bauhaus

if Lord Byron, Keats and Shelley had had electric guitars... they would be Bauhaus:

A gut pull drag on me
Into the calm gaping we
Mirrors multi reflecting this
Between spunk stained sheet and odorous whim

Calm eye-flick shudder within
Assist me to walk away from sin
Where is the string that Theseus laid?
Find me out in this labyrinth place

come on dragon... show us what you've got... let's ride

any time is fine, just as long as you'll be mine

i'm the top dog in this bed... i think...

en esta cama la que manda soy yo... creo...

when i was a child i knew...

As a kid I used to say: "When I grow up, I want to be...."
1. a painter
2. a writer
3. a dancer

Now I say: "In the next life, I want to come back as..."
1. a detective
2. a doctor without borders
3. a DJ! Like this:

art is a time machine

John Singer Sargent with his Portrait of Madame X, Paris 1885, photographer unknown

Some works of art enter through the eye into the mind and heart, and stay there forever. For example, John Singer Sargent's paintings. It's been years since I last looked at them in New York, and no matter: they communicate an indelible living world, in which his sitters from another century continue to breathe and give off their own special light.

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles, Baudelaire wrote in 1857 of the interconnectedness of human experience across space and time; a truth everyone may glimpse to varying degrees, according to their individual sensibility, but which only a work of art, like Keats' Grecian Urn, can clearly spell out for us, in a way that we can all understand. The urn is a time machine from Mediterranean Antiquity, held inside another time machine, the English Romantic poem of 1819.

In 1617, Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant gazed at certain trees and wrote a poem called La Solitude. Katherine Phillips translated it into English in 1664, Henry Purcell put it to music in 1684, and the countertenor Andreas Scholl, like me a huge Purcell fan, sings it to us in the 21st century.

Every time I listen to this song I think: "That's true...when I look at trees I feel the same way. How precious they are - how mysterious and life giving and perfect! I could lose myself in them - surely only a divinity could design such marvelous entities...?"

What content is mine
To see these trees, which have appear'd
From the nativity of time,

And which all ages have rever'd,
To look today as fresh and green
As when their beauties first were seen.

So Sargent's sitters, upper class 19th century women and men in their stuffy, complicated corsets and customs, whose particular private experiences were light years away from my own, nevertheless appear to me intelligible and graspable: I can relate to them, because his brushstrokes, just as the notes of Vinteuil's petite phrase - itself one of many time machines within the meta time machine of Proust's novel - did for Swann, pluck something of the living essence of their psyche and ferry it to us, whole and intact, all the way across the constant streaming of space and time.

Those who have stuck with me across the galaxies know that, whereas I once used to spend most of my time taking pictures and dancing, I now practically live in the fields with my dogs. Which is where, just yesterday, I saw a woman communing with a tree. She was alone - no dog or human companion. She was leaning into the trunk, and yes, kissing it. Does she know Purcell's song? I wondered, feeling a tiny thrill...

my pictures are still in BA... even if I'm not

groundbreaking DJ Carla Tintore at the legendary Cocoliche... be there or be square

I heard it on the facevine

Alexandra: Feed a spirit, starve an ego.

Laura: I own a miniature model of the Costa Concordia – why?!

Laura’s friend: Tilt it, it’ll look more realistic.

Rob: Our relationship was like a Lou Reed song. Waves of Fear, or The Heroine.

An Argie health minister: She’s an 11-year-old rape victim, and she wants an abortion? Niet! Nature is wise…if she ovulated, she can handle a pregnancy.

Liz: If I don’t think he’ll be good enough for me in the future, why do I think he’s good enough for me now?

Cameron: ███ ██████ ██████ ████████ ██ ████ ██ ████ █████████  This status update has been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been removed.

Stef: Attempted pick-up by crashing bore at the club where I work: "I'd really love to know what's inside that head of yours... I'm sure there's something."

Jesse: Curiouser and curiouser…

i'll be your mirror

please, don't come any closer... my fantasy of you is so much more than you'll ever be...

what is a hero?

from moveon.org

jeff koons, yoko ono, christopher steadman @ cheim & reid

joe frazier rip

And now, a few words about boxing. I used to look down on it as nothing but a blood sport, a matter of brutish, brainless men, bashing it out before shady audiences of equally brainless, possibly mafioso punters.

“Boxing is an art form,” my first boss, Lucio Manisco, told me when I was in my early 20s. Lucio was the chief correspondent for an Italian TV network in New York, and I worshiped him, for he was a true maverick reporter, in the way that Clarence Darrow was a maverick lawyer. A passionate defender of human rights, he did things like regularly interrupting his live news feeds with anti-Desert Storm rants.

But much as I tried to understand his admiration of boxing, I couldn’t get beyond my repugnance, and while I loved films like Rocky, Raging Bull, and Million Dollar Baby, I favored the characters over the fight sequences.

Until I saw Tatanka. Based on the real life story of Olympic medalist Clemente Russo, as told by anti-mafia crusading journalist Roberto Saviano, it’s about how a boy from the wrong side of the tracks redeems himself from a life of crime through boxing. It’s not a great film, but for some reason, it made me understand what Lucio had said all those years ago.

I saw how all the true champions – Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Jake La Motta, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson – were great because they represented something greater than themselves. And how at its best, boxing is not just about a contest of brute strength, but also of heart and courage and passion and integrity.

So here’s to you, Smokin’ Joe. I think this fight is something to behold.

if you only had three days to live... where would you go, who would you see?

Maxi Aubert @ Cocktails & Bars Vol.2 by Maxi Aubert

christopher does seattle

spotlight on Christopher Steadman @ artconnectberlin

Video artist Christopher Steadman has just been selected for a show curated by Video Art pioneer, Gary Hill, at Seattle's Center on Contemporary Art.

Tell us about sounds and objects you work with?

The sounds I use are all recorded at the time of shooting. Sometimes I create the soundscape before the video. The sound for all my work, especially the more recent pieces, is as important as the visuals. Mostly they work in harmony. As far as objects, I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t use in a piece as long as it makes sense in context. I’ve used a cup of tea, rubber gloves, an elevator… When I shoot on location it becomes as much about the setting as it does about any subject material or theme.

Photo From 3-Channel Video Loops Installation "Micro Chaos". Photo: Christopher Steadman

read the rest of this interview with Video artist christopher steadman on artconnectberlin

this is the time the very best time

LCD Sound System Mini Mix by 2Clapps

how deep is your love?

The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love (Dimitri From Paris Erodiscomix) by dfp

december dogs & fields

plaidness falls

of dogs and men

Laika: When people show you who they are, believe them.

Stef: Did you just make that up?

Laika: It's Maya Angelou, silly.

Stef: Oh - right. But, the thing is... I Love Him!

Laika: Well he doesn't love you, he only loves what you give him.

Stef: Source?

Laika: Mina, of course.

Stef: Damn, girl. You're a regular treasure trove of quotations.

Laika: I can do it in Italian too, watch. Per lui non conta quello che sei, ma soltanto cosa gli daaaaiiii....

Stef: OK I get it - I get it! ***snif***

Laika: Maledetto il sesso, che picchia così forteeeee....

Stef: For god's sake shut up before my head explodes!

Laika: The road to sex is paved with good intentions.

Stef: Who said that??

Laika: You did. Remember? Way back in '86... you were standing in the kitchen at a party in Allston and suddenly, it came to you. And Joey was standing right there with you and he laughed.

Stef: Joey...Joey! What a monster he turned out to be.

Laika: Don't they all. Wanna go for a walk? I'm sure it'll make you feel better!

Stef: I'm beat...whatever you say.