White on white, translucent

The greatest movie. Too bad I only have it on VHS. Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead plays during the opening credits which is why I initially picked it up other than needing to partake of this Bowie/vampire combination. It perfectly sets of the drama of the song. Peter Murphy is sort of playing one of the crazy chimps featured later in the movie, which opens in a Slimelight sort of goth club circa the early 80s, which contains every example of why edgier punkier goth was so terribly cool, and fleeting and possible only then. The Lydia Lunch type vamping in the fog, Deneuve pulling her cigarette away from her red mouth -

The movie is essentially the faulty love story of Deneuve and Bowie, Deneuve and Sarandon, Deneuve and all of the companions she had known through the years. She is a kind of vampire, an ancient Mesopotamian queen or Egyptian priestess who has survived into 1980's Manhattan. At no point is the plot too stupid and flowery to accept, though. Everything falls apart for her in the end, an institution that seemed like it would never end. Deneuve is so epic and beautiful. This was the first time I ever saw her, and when I saw Repulsion a few years later, I could not believe that she could possibly have been around that long.

This was also the first time I heard Schubert's haunting and lovely Piano Trio in E Flat. Intense. Also Lakme.

just because you have a sixth finger...

what a sweet little dulcimer. and poor anne. my interest in english history is as follows: romans, tudor melodrama, and "haunted" sites. i have always had a special interest in anne boleyn based on her entry in "how did they die?" a grocery store paperback that i read as a kid. it told of her soberly steel nerves on the scaffold when the executioner, probably freaked out at having to murder la boleyn, missed on his first stroke. he cut the top of her head. anne said, allegedly, "please try again."

another reason i am interested in anne is because she was simply too much of an intense bitch to be queen to henry. she was opinionated, spoke out of turn, had an explosive temper, and constantly meddled in affairs of state. the vivacity and individualism that made her so fascinating to henry in turn caused him to hate her when she became his wife. oh the ironies of life.

lady jane seymour, the only one he considered to be his "true" wife. she died from complications of childbirth and is rumored to have been the prettiest queen in the stable, though that isn't saying much. she was pale, blonde, conservative and terribly catholic. i am thinking of angela from the office. she banished all traces of showy, lavish anne from hampton court and taught henry to embroider, about which he became particularly enthusiastic. the people liked jane, and henry officially mourned her for three years instead of his standard week and a half.

Ask Henry. this website is mildly amusing and painstakingly historically accurate as only a batshit historian can maintain. you may address questions to king henry and he will respond.

hey!

this video kind of fixes my life. but only for two minutes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz7IjXu0DfQ - she has disallowed embedding. fascist. but it's the best quality version on youtube.

&

"Here is some priceless footage of George watching the Beatles performing 'This Boy' from years before." sidenote, his child looks exactly like him. exactly exactly. I really love George's obvious enjoyment and mirth at watching the then seemingly older-than-dirt video of a past life, and singing along and all. I just love him.

oh &

i really like the name julia, and it is probably because of this song. this song makes me think of this picture, of pretty dark-haired edwardian girls spending the day at a seaside carnival, swimming in their heavy bathing costumes.

i have a paper to write, still. today. FML. i hate this fucking fucking fucking class. it's actually fairly informative blah blah blah, but i have to read excessively for it and i just do not want to. it is very dry. i am writing about article 27 of the mexican constitution, and the pros/cons of "diplomatic recognition". super fuck that. i just want to eat in bed and look at pictures of george harrison from the mid seventies on my day offfff aaahhhhh is that so much to ask!

melt! siouxsie retropective comprised of five songs.

thinking about siouxsie lately thanks to TSY's latest or latestish post about westwood & 70s british punk fashion shenanigans.

sometimes i forget that she's some kind of cleopatra-akasha goddess, alive but made of marble, glorious and severe and compelling.

unfortches i cannot find any of the personally iconic photos of siouxsie that i counted with my eyes like rosary beads when i needed a little reinforcement back then. isn't it funny how kids deify people? i stumbled upon the blog of some 13 year old who counts (her quote) bowie and robert smith as her patron gods. it is cute and dumb and makes me jealous all at once to be able to create and live in your own little universe like that, undisturbed by outside concerns, a complete refuge made of frozen pupils and smeared lipstick.

actually, poppy z. brite addresses this teen state of psycho-love really well in lost souls. i think she is a little too outre to get proper credit for being a creative master of description, taking you to her place whether you want to go or not, and then freezing that moment in your brain for the rest of your life. obviously i am still returning on occasion. she is among the few writers to give me a physical response. that is sort of my high water mark for otherworldly incredibleness. the curious may know that the two other writers who have done this to me were EAP and anais nin. he shocked me (the black cat - but i was young, never re-read to make sure) and she made me want to throw up (birth, from under a glass bell...still upsets me).

if you are a fan, PZB is a fairly prolific livejournaler here: http://docbrite.livejournal.com/ i stop there once in a while, but it was a particularly epic read during and following hurricane katrina, as she lives in new orleans and has all the violent visceral love/defense for the place that you would figure. really my only complaint is she talks about foie gras a lot and as you can imagine, this offends my hysterical animal-luv tendencies. i don't give a shit if other people eat meat, and you will never hear me making some shrill-ass vegetarian bitch comment to anyone about any of that because frankly i don't care and no one listens anyway, HOWEVER, foie gras is not fucking ok.

there; i said it.

i believe the internet has voted this best live performance in general, ever. i have posted it before. WATCH IT AGAIN.

this is a pretty good song but was never a favorite when i was actively listening to siouxsie. now i am in love with it. i generally find my favorite bands' earliest efforts to be my favorites. maybe they are less tainted by goals and expectations and management. i don't find this to be the case with the banshees. in fact i like the later stuff a bit more than the earlier stuff, which is a little jangly for me and just reminds me of foggy underaged goth club times. see: red light. actually, i do love that song, it's the stuff as from juju (everyone else's favorite) that i feel quite whatev about with some exceptions.

i really liked the rapture. this is from that:

melt! from a kiss in the dreamhouse. why do i keep making qualifications about not liking some siouxsie eras? that's fucking retarded. this song is incredible. dang. i feel a mega siouxsie jag coming on (even more) and me having destroyed my car ipod thing. like, fuck.

oh god i forgot how great this cover is:

black moon

hoo boy, new moon tomorrow. i mark the passage of time by this cycle, because what else am i going to use? the seasons and months are different in the desert. most notably, THEY FUCKING SUCK, it's feast or famine. 7 months of kill-yourself heat followed by 5 months of glitteringly beautiful leafy green chilly days.

yes, there is an app for that. this is an image of the current moon as it appears from my particular latitude and longitude. it is the tiniest sliver ever because it's new and black and obfuscated by the bracken of space. this is a good app. apparently it has a "werewolf warning," which i have turned on, but haven't experienced yet. i assume i'll get a small alarm on the next full moon suggesting i take care when wandering through the woods at night.

not necessarily for preternatural creature worries, but i need more of these outlook reminders for life. they keep my days (mostly) punctuated by efficiency and timeliness while my personal life completely unravels afterhours and i can't even remember to pay my fucking bills online.

more tales of the communist aristocracy

oh, good. a four-inch volume of mitfordian letters for me to read instead of doing whatever i'm supposed to be doing.

decca mitford's letters are published.

i forgot that her daughter had a name other than dinky. constancia! dinky was the name of my step-mother's horse. a popular name for the small and fair.

there are so many more mitford memoirs and biographies now than there were even five years ago. what happened? was there a movie or something?

uncanny, no?

remember scary stories to tell in the dark? the "cat's paw" story didn't freak me out, but the illustration did.

my gram, the ex-witch.

speaking of crystals, i wish i could find this set of photos i took at my grandmother's house while "cat-sitting" last year.

in the 70s, 80s and 90s, my grandmother and my great-grandmother were very exploratory. they attended workshops, meetings and lectures about anything and everything, so long as it was different from the roman catholicism they had known as children. metaphysics, spirit guides, nutritionists, psychics, edgar cayce, dr. bob martin, whatever. they never became devotees of anything in particular, other than to nutrition, but rather embraced random elements of the movements of beliefs they had investigated.

my great-grandmother remained the most traditional, preferring to adorn her house with photos of jesus and to recite the lord's prayer before bed each night. but she also kept little charms hidden around the house, most of which i didn't know what for. i would flip through the strange books on her shelves, little leather volumes with gold embossed symbols on the covers. some of them i still have. i always kept them under my mattress. she gave me a copy of the prophet when i was a teen, and after it became evident that i wasn't going to read it, she said, "fine, then put it under your mattress. it'll help you whether you want it to or not." she taught me little chants to say when i was upset or confused and in need of some fortification...from the universe. she bought drinking water from the grocery store, but kept it at room temperature in big glass bottles, each with a crystal inside, to purify it.

my grandmother, on the other hand, dove in. when i was growing up, her house was packed with strange things. photos of spiritual leaders, crystals, triangles. for years, a triangle made of thin brass tubing with a rose quartz stone embedded in the top hung over her bed. she had little metal cards in various colors placed around the house, each color meant to heal something. her refrigerator was full of flax meal, bags of wheat germ, vitamins and supplements, and cactus juice. she made her own dresses and leather belts. any time i tried to describe her at this time, i just said she dressed like stevie nicks. stevie nicks at 65 with a penchant for purple. stone rings and wire-wrapped crystal pendants, etc.

oddly, as soon as she retired, much of this went away. she became political. she stopped wearing flowing purple dresses and started wearing jeans. she started going to rallies and weekly meetings held by various liberal organizations. she even started participating in the mothers against war group, the ones who would stand on the street, immobile and silent, wearing black veils. the gurus and strange recordings went away, but the crystals are still around. except now, they're not displayed prominently on polished tables - they're shoved to the side or set on the floor beside the table, which is now covered with newspapers, take-out menus and tv guides.

i sort of resented her kookery when i was a kid because between she and my great-grandmother, i was tired of being bossed around about whether i was putting enough positive energy into the universe, or eating enough almonds. every week, my great-grandmother (grammy) would call me with something new she heard on dr. bob's radio show that i wasn't supposed to eat. i'd look around at my school friends and their dumbly normal families, gorging on fast food or midwestern comfort foods 3x a day, and then i'd look at my little single-mom-family-dinner, which was all steamed vegetables and no soda allowed, and i would be pissed. why can't we have pizza! etc.

now i'm glad, of course. but i sort of wish my grandmother would be weird again.

incidentally and allegedly, my grandma took my mom to a psychic when she was about 20. the psychic told her she would be married with children as she desired, and described her husband and future child. i don't remember how detailed she got, but she said dark-haired and dark-eyed, which is true. my mother is fair with blue eyes. OMG PSYCHIC! more specifically, when my mother went into labor, my grandmother said she'd be done at 3:30 that afternoon and that i would be ~an olde soule~. the 3:30 part was right. PSYCHIC GRANDMOTHER. i think that was the first and last time she predicted anything, however. my other grandmother, not my grammy but my dad's mother, my beloved and terribly normal catholic old grandma alyce, told me that story. when i asked my stevie nicks grandma for confirmation, she didn't seem to want to discuss it. that was 5 metaphysical phases ago, i guess. she doesn't want to talk about hocus pocus bullshit anymore when there's a war and a recession goin' on. and i guess i can dig that. we are no longer living the clintonian fantasy life in which one can spend all their money on crystals and sage and feel all right about it.

books about spiritual self-help, primarily.

these are lying around everywhere.

bloody, bloody crystal

COME ON.