everyday is a child with teeth #7: small strands
I had been feeling a low-level, constant anxiety all weekend because I hadn’t been able to find time to sit down and write. Then earlier today, on our way to see An Enemy of the People our car broke down, so we ended up just sitting there for two hours waiting for the tow truck (we did not make the play). It felt very ironic in an Alanis sort of way; You wanted time with nothing to do? Well, here you go! Here are your free hours. I didn’t feel like writing in the broken down car, so I just fumed. But an hour and a half in I said ok fine and just started writing on my phone. I never used to write on my phone until I got my current job. It’s still not my favorite but on some level it takes away the preciousness of the process and forces me to just bunker down and do the work (LOL). I only ever do it with reviews for shows that I have to turn around right away, and I guess now, when the time spent waiting for a tow truck to show up is the only free time you have in a day. (I guess this is also being a parent.)
Last week I think it was, I randomly came across a post on Instagram about how it was the anniversary of Liars’ They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, which I wrote about here some weeks ago. I shared it to my stories and when I came back to Instagram some time later saw in my notifications that the two people who had “liked” the post were two of my friends from when I was going to school in Philly. We all loved the record. I don’t keep in touch with many friends from that time but I loved seeing that it was “still us” who that record meant a lot to, belonged to. An instant thread to the past. Later, I was listening to Rachel Kushner on the Apology podcast and she said something about having “proprietary feelings” about a book, which I loved. (I think this can be confused with being a snob but proprietary feelings come from love not from a sense of superiority).
I thought about connecting threads again for entirely different reasons. I was at work discussing a collection (fashion week is still going on) that I found completely lacking in relevance, modernity, or the knowledge of real life-women, when a Fiona Apple bit suddenly snuck in my brain—“I went crazy again today/looking for a strand to climb/looking for/a little hope.” In the process of looking at show after show after show, I realized that this season I am searching for connection through a level of awareness or recognition. Not necessarily about the state of the world (although absolutely about the state of the world), but in the sense of producing something that is grounded in (a) reality. I’m not looking for my own reality; just a level of humanity.
The designer Matthieu Blazy, who designs for the very luxe Bottega Veneta, spoke of “desert flowers that bloom after the earth is burnt,” which stuck with me. His collection was opulent (as the market demands) and yet restricted, a stark contrast to last season when the clothes instead showed turbulence at the end of a relationship with textures upon textures. I know that looking for humanity in luxury can be oxymoronic, but you know, it’s like Fiona quoted Maya Angelou as saying (yes I’m going there): “We, as human beings, at our best, can only create opportunities. And I'm gonna use this opportunity the way that I want to use it.” (This was followed by her legendary “THIS WORLD IS BULLSHIT” which I think about at least once a week). Meaning you communicate your truth using the means at your disposal. At Comme Des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo showed a collection full of black leather voluminous shapes; jilted, exploded, folded this way and manipulated that way. From the videos people posted on Instagram I saw one model walk down the runway, stop and then menacingly get in the face of a show-goer that was in the process of taking her photo. Another stomped down the runway holding up her big gown covered in black knots (not bows, not coquette), stopped half-way, threw the gown from her hands, then picked it up again to finish her walk. Today I saw the notes from the show. A single sheet of white paper that read:
ANGER.
This collection is about my present state of mind.
I have anger against everything in the world,
especially against myself.
On Friday night I went to see Mary Timony at Bowery Ballroom. She has an excellent new record out called Untame the Tiger. I am not a hardcore, completist Timony fan but there are different parts in my life that have been exclusively soundtracked by her voice. In 2001, it was “Hole in the Ground,” by one of her earlier bands, Helium, which I discovered through the soundtrack of the criminally underrated movie All Over Me. It is a perfect song for teen disillusionment, breaking free of the expectations and demands of some deadbeat boyfriend but also maybe society. Then in 2011, it was “Something Came Over Me,” from another one of her bands, Wild Flag, that carried me through the first few months of my Return of Saturn, and an affair that kicked off a year of LIVING. And now this new record which I listened to on repeat all through December and January. This time around, it’s not her lyrics that I’m the most drawn to, but her music and melodies. They feel oddly familiar and like whatever sadness may live in me at any given time has seemingly found a kindred spirit. At the show, while she was shredding in the middle of a song, I closed my eyes and started dancing in place, wanting to get lost in the sound. I was surprised when in the darkness of the back of my eyelids, an image of my daughter appeared before me. It caught me off guard. I opened my eyes. That’s new, I thought. Of course my most inner place of joy now includes her. I imagined us going to shows together when she is older. It felt like a small strand of hope into the future.