Since I’ve worn “vintage” clothing since the early, mid-1980s, from high school on (mostly late 1960s to early-mid 1970s), I’ve got things that old I’ve hung on to. I’ve also always decorated/outfitted my apartments with period furniture, linens, dish ware, etc. first with Deco, then mid-century, then space-age Panton era stuff, too, so this stuff will find its way into the shop too. Hopefully, the recent passion for all things “vintage” – Gap adverts acknowledge its lure, promoting their “technologically advanced” fabrics as a way to counter the competition – has created enough of a competitive market for it that I’ll make some money:)            

People are certainly willing to pay a lot more than I ever did or do. Time will tell, and romanlovesgigi is still in its infancy, the process being quite tedious (I will never look at an online auction/individually owned business the same again), so vintage lovers check back often as I’ll be uploading new items every day.        

On a totally different note, I just finished reading John Edgar Wideman’s 1990 novel, Philadelphia Fire, a poetic, meta-narrative about the infamous MOVE organization, whose West Philly headquarters were infamously fire-bombed by the city in 1985, killing 10 people, and decimating many houses around them.

Its a rather elliptical rendering, with very minimal attention to the facts told through tertiary narratives that take the form of the narrator’s recollections of growing up in Philadelphia as an African-American, working-class kid who became a creative-class/academic. These quasi-biographical discursions nonetheless evoke the guts and heart of the people moving in and out of the shadows of this historic catastrophe, and Wideman writes them right after it happens, so it’s both very vivid and yet removed from linear time (not enough facts/reflection to draw from so soon?).

If you want to better understand the tensions leading up to the fire-bombing (imagine your city block suddenly attacked like that as a means of routing out the inhabitants of one house), and the cult nature of MOVE, they are very compellingly conveyed in this great 2013 documentary, Let the Fire Burn, which you can watch for free! Its comprised mostly of found footage, and is just as entrancing as Wideman’s book, which is its poetic corollary.
You really get a sense of how much John Africa, the very intelligent founder of MOVE, was able to marshall this rag-tag army of followers, and turn their refusal to live by social norms into a revolution of sorts. And the way the state responds. It got me thinking about Jim Baker, another guru/leader whose philosophy over time became distorted by power, evolving into its own incendiary form of anarchy, if not literally. There’s a 2013 doc on his cult (I use that word, btw, in its most neutral sense) , The Source Family, also free online.     Along with the renewed interest in vintage stuff, it seems the fascination for all things cult has also re-emerged, perhaps in relation to the populist trend for going off the grid, and forming self-sufficient communities anathema to corporate-consumer existence.

The whole 1970s cult phenomena, a time when there were over 3,000 such self-identified orgs, its link to spiritual, civil rights, and sexual revolutions of the time, is of course, perpetually fascinating to me. I did, after all, in a moment of naive embrace, consider joining the Hari Krishnas in college when they came recruiting on campus, and joined a coven for a brief time after grad school with a boyfriend.

Of course, I could never submit to an individual’s authority, esp. a man (I got enough of that growing up Catholic), but the desire for spiritual growth has and will always appeal, and not just to me. Thinking, as atheists do, that any such pursuit is simply fantasy-inducing escapism, a willing of your power away to some non-existent force, is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater imho. Though the dangers of leaders gone awry, of the inevitable corruption that comes with power, etc. are of course, inescapably real.

Probably why when I participated in a summer solstice ritual this weekend, which brought me back to my “new age” moment of the 1980s, I experienced pleasure/nostalgia with a smidgen of cynical doubt, the same irony from which this blog’s name derived. How to be authentic without the foundation and legacy of tradition, historical, cultural, and biographical? Does donning the clothes of another era beg the same question? Certainly when I watch 20-somethings parade around in their long hair and beards, shirtless in their birkenstocks, I do wonder. Food for thought….

Tweet

Love this vid of Harold Pinter recounting memories of Samuel Beckett and performing – in a maniacal rush – the last of ‘The Unnamable’, 1953. Its the third book in Beckett’s famous trilogy, which you can download here for free as I intend to! Have only read Molloy (ages ago) and part of Malone Dies, so looking forward to finding the time esp. after reading this 1958 NYT review.

Beckett is the kind of writer that makes one feel like a hack, he’s a visionary powerhouse. Pinter acknowledges this in a letter he wrote in early 1950s, which he reads from with great gusto as well. Bookended by the otherwise awkward anecodotal renderings, it makes for a strange ride ( I can imagine a Monty Python sketch of it).

“I’m all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I’m something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we’ll have that, one must have something, it’s a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that’s enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there’s only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it’s steps coming and going, it’s voices speaking for a moment, it’s bodies groping their way, it’s the air, it’s things, it’s the air among the things, that’s enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it’s not clear, dear dear, you say it’s not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I’ll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I’m always seeking something, it’s tiring in the end, and it’s only the beginning.” ― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

Tweet

I’m half way through Reinaldo Arenas’ The Palace of The White Skunks, 1982, and totally enraptured. It made me look up his poetry. That led to my discovery of this clip from the documentary Havana, 1990, by the Czech-born director Jana Boková . It features a poem by Arenas in a sequence directly appropriated by Julian Schnabel for his film adaptation of Arenas’ incendiary autobiography, Before Night Falls (a project that credits Boková as one of five screenwriters including – red herringly – Schnabel himself). I’ve not seen either film yet, and while the latter got rave reviews, I suspect I might feel as this frieze reviewer does who says: “The exotic aestheticization of the film does have a downside: the politics of the Fidelista and Arenas, whose insistent, hedonistic sexuality was as much about politics as personal satisfaction, are toned down. Arenas’ erotic quest is recast as more happy-go-lucky than rebellious.”

Did you figure out I’m not a fan of Schnabel’s? Anyway, I shouldn’t say I’m surprised that he would so freely take from a lesser known filmmaker, a woman and a documentarian, to boot. Someone without Hollywood connections. Its in keeping with his arrogance (which I’ve had the displeasure to witness). A grossly overrated artist (ok, the plate paintings were pretty brilliant) who turns out to a talented director, someone who knows how to assemble and lead talent. That doesn’t make him a writer or an auteur. It makes me wonder whether Boková fought for that credit.

In the same frieze review, the influence of Boková’s film is summed up this way, neatly sidestepping the matter: “Mr. Schnabel said he’d first heard about Arenas through a Cuban real estate agent in Miami named Esther Percal. ”She told me I had to see this documentary that Jana Boková made called ‘Havana,’ ” Mr. Schnabel said. ”So for $25 we bought a black-market copy of it in a bodega in Little Havana. It’s an oral history of Cuba, interviews mixed together with fragments of these people’s writings, including Virgilio Pinera and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Reinaldo comes on and starts talking, and the guy is so funny and so modest. I was so impressed with him that I read ‘Before Night Falls.’ ”

A Variety review makes specific reference to the clip as if Schnabel created the aesthetic it borrows: “By heightening the color and playing around with film stock, Schnabel cleverly integrates archival footage — reportedly the only color film shot of the revolution — to illustrate the moment of excitement, optimism and political ferment, while Arenas’ poem, “The Parade Begins,” is heard in voice-over. This is one of several instances in the film in which the author’s writings are used to great effect and one of many skillfully handled narrative expedients….In addition to Arenas’ autobiography and other writings, Schnabel also sourced a BBC documentary on the author by Jana Bokova. Footage from a banned Cuban film titled “PM,” which is mentioned at one point, is seen over the end credits.”

Watch and see for yourself.

Obviously, Schnabel was/is sincere in his appreciation of Arenas, and I do want to see the film. I just couldn’t ignore coming across these two snippets one after the other, Schnabel’s popping up immediately (in my Google search for the poem), Boková’s precedent coming later. Is this the fate of small films and female directors in a greedy male-dominated industry? And maybe we should rethink our relationship to the notion of “appropriation” because, as I’ve said before, this is not the 1980s?

Granted, there’s no way to know how Boková feels, and I tried to find out. Perhaps she and Schnabel are great pals though there’s no evidence of that in the way of images or articles. Her Doc alliance bio says this: “She was the first to film the writer Reinaldo Arenas, about whom Julian Schnabel later made the feature film Before Night Falls, which was directly inspired by Havana.” A quiet indictment? Made me want to explore her films, if nothing else. You can watch the 1968 drama Hotel Paradise online, made just after she left Prague for Paris (how fortuitous that it includes a Camus storyline, given my post recent on him). Getting a hold of Bye Bye Shanghai, 2008, might be as easy as it gets though of course I want to see the BBC doc on Arenas first! The Cinémathèque Française gave her a retrospective in 2003, but that’s all the leads I’ve got at the moment. I wonder which version of himself Arenas would’ve preferred, Boková’s or Schnabel’s?

Tweet

1 – One of my first memories is going to a car lot with my mom to pick up her first car – a brand Volkswagon beetle (or bug as we called it). In red! This car had 20 years on the road before the body gave out and my brother put the engine into another model, which I later inherited as my first car, and loved! He’d lined it in shag carpeting, including the ceiling, and it was 2 gears – how weird is that to think of? I had fun with that car until I drove it into a ditch speeding down a road in the wee hours of the morning (yes, after a nite of drinking) that had iced over suddenly. I remember this well because I was about 17, new-ish to driving. And as bad as trashing the car was (I literally rolled over in it), I also happened to be wearing my mother’s silk Bally wedding shoes, which she’d told me never to wear. I remember waking my Dad up (as she was visiting family in germany, hence my thinking I could get away with the shoes), and he was relatively nice/calm. The second time I trashed a car, not so nice (and that one also involved ice and wasn’t my fault). I still feel guilty about those shoes. Champagne silk pumps with a small heel. I had to trek through muddy lawns to get to houses that stood far from the street in order to get help, so there was nothing I could do. Anyway, not a single pic of either exists, not even the VW bugs.

2 – In elementary school, apparently some teacher took a bunch of us little girls to a hair salon (why, no clue) where I insisted, my mom says, that I wanted a hairdo styled like Dolly Parton. And I came home with my thick brown locks in some extravagantly teased, rolled concoction of hairspray that was supposedly hilarious. I don’t remember this day (this is not unusual, I have a shitty memory), but I would’ve loved to see what I looked liked, grateful as I am for the story because it confirms the origins of my long-standing love for big, sculpted, wigs/hair. Oh well. Here’s one of my favorite portraits of Dolly instead, taken around the same time by the great Henry Horenstein (c. 1970s).

3 – I entered a drugstore competition where you had to color in a pic of Santa Claus. Apparently, I gave him a purple hair, and turned his coat and boots into a mini-skirt with go-go boots. It won first prize (some kind of chocolate bar I didn’t like, I’m told – again no recollection). The drawing nor any pic of it exists, sad to say (though I do remember seeing a drawing I did of myself as a nurse for some “what do you wanna be when you grow up?” assignment from around the same time so my mother did save a few, at least for a while. After my grandmother died and she had to go overseas and sort out her estate, she became OCD minimalist). Anyway, in lieu of any visual equivalent, here’s an anonymous polaroid I found online that’s pretty great!

ok, well I will update this over time….in meantime, please share your own “Kodak moments” that never were, and any visual subsititutions! And for some vintage fun, here’s some great old camera commercials!

Tweet