A few weeks ago, I lost my voice.  And I don’t mean the raspy voice we all know and love; you, literally, could not hear me.  When my house guest left for LGA at around noon, I was able to both say and hug her goodbye.  However, when I showed up in the East Village that night to hear some music, I had no voice, unbeknownst to me. 

I live alone, and while I do sometimes talk to myself, I must not have that afternoon.  I hadn’t seen one of my friends in a while, and when he asked me questions, I answered on a napkin.  Then I asked the waitress what was on tap.  One friend began writing back to me.  I started to ask other people questions.  It became what one of our friends nicknamed, “napkin poetry.”

The city is not really that big.  I used to be surprised when I ran into acquaintances on the subway, now I’m surprised if I meet someone and we don’t have mutual friends.  However, it’s a busy place filled with a lot of busy people with ambition, for better and for worse.  It’s inspiring, but everyone’s always moving, and sometimes when someone asks your name and what you do, what they mean is, “Are you worth spending time on?”  Of course, there’s a lot of really lovely, genuine people, but it had just been Fashion Week, okay?

So when your surrounded by people who will slow down, just a little bit, to read your responses on a napkin, it means you were lucky enough to happen upon some really good people.

(Photos by R.J. Valeo http://transelectronic.net/)

Yesterday I went to PS 1 with one of my favorite people.  We focused on “The Talent Show,” a look at modern art, participation, and voyeurism and the Laurel Nakadate exhibit, a groundbreaking work.  The artist is brilliant, but she is difficult and complex. I struggle to write about her.  I admire her, and at times feel she’s being manipulative.  But I think she is a genius.

This was taken at the end of “The Talent Show,” a stirring exhibit and perfect compliment for Nakadate’s retrospective, “Only The Lonely”.  I kept forgetting it was Valentine’s Day, though I blogged a picture of a Crush Can in the morning.  Last year, my brother and his now fiancee took me out for an excellent Argentinian steak and Malbec.  The plans we’re made because it was a Sunday, but I was more than happy to spend part of a day about love with them, even if none of us cared that it was Valentine’s Day.  I used to care about Valentine’s Day, or rather bemoan it if I was single.  So many things feel more important to me now.  My films, my family, the fact that it was sunny and warm in Brooklyn in February!

After the museum, we had a lovely dinner with lots of laughter and red wine.  Another best friend from college is in town for Fashion Work Week and her friend who has recently moved to Brooklyn from San Francisco joined us, and I adored him by the time we were all taking the L train home, surrounded by more than one heart shaped balloon. 

Maybe I don’t care about Valentine’s Day because I feel pretty surrounded by love all the time, from my family and my friends, whom I love.  I love all the artists in New York and Brooklyn who inspire me.  I love days spent with my writing.  These things, at this present time, sustain me. Of course, everyone has their bad days, I have bad weeks, bad boyfriends, and I’m pretty sure there was a really bad year in there around 2007, so there’s really no need to throw Valentine’s Day into the fray.  Yesterday, I didn’t feel pressure to be in a relationship or forced to feel bad for myself.  Those are things you are probably all ready doing or feeling on some level if Valentine’s Day makes you feel that way.  We’ve all been there, but you can leave that town behind.  Hint: If you are a current resident, put on Joni Mitchell Blue.  Cry.  Repeat.  Begin to heal.

Both exhibits spoke to our need to be loved, or just viewed, or honestly, just have our existence recognized.  And then made sense of, which is staggering. Nakadate’s likes to subvert everything you know, things you didn’t know you know, things you’d rather not know: she’ll make you laugh, ponder, and then she’ll make you squirm (Good Morning Sunshine).

(Laurel Nakadate in I Want to be the One to Walk in the Sun)

Lucky Tiger

She shows how the male gaze dominates and damages, and then employs it herself, often at the expensive of men, and sometimes on her fellow women, which I am not fully comfortable with (Again, Good Morning Sunshine).  She subverts the male gaze expertly in Lucky Tiger, where she posed like a pin-up and then had men pass the photographs around, after they’d stuck their fingers in ink, and her video of coitus with imaginary lover(s) in Tokyo hotel rooms is staggeringly impressive and brave.  Often she seems to want to be loved, or at least she wants you to experience that perception of her.  She creates experiences and invites you into them.  She is one of the most provocative, awesome artists of our time.  Of course this wasn’t supposed to be an art theory post…

It was a truly great day.  It was filled with art, friends, music, red wine, and quite a bit of love.  As Kurt Vonnegut once explained the meaning of life, “If this isn’t good, what it is?”

If you’re reading this, I love you.  Seriously.

XO,

womanofsteele

I won’t be the first reviewer to call Camp Wanatachi, a musical about lesbian sexual awakening at a Christian summer camp, subversive, and it is, but it is also masterfully subversive and poignant.  Written by Natalie Elizabeth Weiss (of Unicornicopia) and directed perfectly by Matt Cowart, they never simplify, or worse, pander to the emotions of the pre-teen and teen set, rather recognizing that their emotions are both complex and straightforward because one hasn’t yet mastered (do we ever?) how to handle them.  And sexual awakenings, in any form, can be pretty confusing. The play shows its campers struggling with the concept of doing the right thing while still being young enough to believe it is just that simple, and then painfully learning it is not; which I’d argue, is a beautiful process.

Marissa O’Donnell as Jana, is the play’s emotional center, and a shoe-in for Wanatachi princess, until she starts questioning her beliefs when she falls head over hormones for Titi, played by the charismatic, Krystina Alabado, a girl who wears “heels to summer camp.”  Alyse Alan Louis, in Goth-garb as a Freak for Jesus, is hilarious but never one-note, and Keaton Whittaker plays Lauren, a cheerleader and Jana’s BFF who feels misplaced once Titi arrives on the scene. 

 Camp Wanatachi is hilarious and moving and backed by an electronic score (composed by Weiss with the electronic music from glitch-hop, lovestep pioneer Travis Stewart -aka Machinedrum and half of Sepalcure) that is as forward thinking as the musical itself.  This electronica is steps (okay, miles if you want to see my condescending side) above what you’re likely to hear in the average club, but can certainly be found if you know where too look. The lightning design, from Marc Janowitz is phenomenal, and the cast is pitch perfect with a great sense of comedic timing, impressive, as most are teenagers.  Weiss, who also stars as the girl’s music counselor, Corky, delivers an upbeat performance that straddles the world Britney Spears did no service to in the song “Not a girl, not yet a woman.”   During music class/worship service, my sense of propriety was the only thing keeping me in my seat and not dancing along with the Christian campers.   Thom Miller plays Joel, Corky’s love interest at the neighboring all boy’s camp, and he delivers a highly comedic performance in a role that takes an unexpected but not wholly unsurprising twist.  A scene in the camp’s mess hall shines and shines a light on the precarious relationship between girlhood and food.

 Camp Wanatachi just finished it’s run at La Mama etc with sold-out performances, bad news if you snoozed on tickets or are just hearing about it now, but the good news is, their success should guarantee them many runs to follow.

Woman of Steele is having a party!  All door cover proceeds will go to help with production costs of my short film Audience, about sex, vulnerability, and modern technology.  Details on the film are here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Audience