Monday, January 19, 2009

I love showing off, yet I've somehow developed stage fright in my old age. I can jump into my scenes at a rehearsals, provide examples within acting exercises, and after a few cocktails I will gladly lead the soul train line, but when it's time to step into the light and click record I start to squirm. What am I afraid of? What do I think people will see? What will be amplified--something I don't want to be seen? It taps into my issues with doing or being wrong or inferior. This is the antithesis of the philosophies I promote. Be yourself. Value your art and equate your art as YOU. I choose pretty expositional medium to claim an issue with stage fright. Not stage fright, just fright. Fear. Fear that I will be found out.

Another World



My recent discovery, Antony and the Johnsons


And his super Beyonce cover of "Crazy in Love"

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Donde estan usted Ishmael Houston-Jones?


Ishmael Houston-Jones and Henry Nozuka
Photo by Michael Hart

Monday, January 12, 2009

7 whole days



"Michelle is a tremendously strong person, and has a very strong sense of herself and who she is and where she comes from. But I also think in her eyes you can see a trace of vulnerability that most people don’t know, because when she’s walking through the world she is this tall, beautiful, confident woman. There is a part of her that is vulnerable and young and sometimes frightened, and I think seeing both of those things is what attracted me to her. And then what sustains our relationship is I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings."

Read the entire piece and view more pics here.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Anti-Utopian.

I have been a reader of the Village Voice since college. It awakened the primal scream I'd been craving in my rural upbringing amongst the cows and corn. Ah juxtaposition! I don't remember my first Voice or how or where I discovered the paper. It is a part of my NYC experience, along with coffee addiction, Mamoun's falafels (my version of the Gray's Papaya recession special, and secret bathrooms on clumsy afternoons.

When a Wednesday would appear and I would escape between classes to 72nd and 2nd Avenue to the lone red paper kiosk in the hood (on the beloved Upper East Side) for my copy. I loved the bootleg reporting and as a fledgling I would take its headline as pertinent news for the week. Many concerts and exhibits were seen based on the Voice Choices section.

Louis Menand's piece for the New Yorker can be read, here. Registration may be required to read the full article.

The Village Voice emerged as a provocative and aggressive response to the post war "mentality" and downtown routine of 1950's New York. Norman Mailer was a writer and semi-founder, contributing to its raucous and fringes based opinion. It was a structured beat thang, giving cause to the "howl"ing inhabitants, who expounded on politics, art, and daily activities.

"Journalism is a profession entirely by self-description. You do not need a degree, license, or credential of any kind to be a journalist."


Gotcha.

Beat critics will argue that the discombulated text of Kerouac and his delightful friends is annoying and overrated. I am connected simply based on the push to turn myself inside out and make noise. I love Kerouac's glum lumberjack list-making self and appreciate the Voice's projected interpretation. I think that my connection is based on the escape.

I have noticed the change in the aggression and omniscient presence that I loved in the Voice. Perhaps, the four or five people that have experienced the revolving editor door at the Voice HQ off Lafayette have something to do with it. Nonetheless, I still run to the newsstand on Wednesdays. Even if it is for Rob Breszny's, Free Will Astrology.

"You're going to turn me animal." - Lover's Day, TV ON THE RADIO