NEW ORLEANS GYPSY

Yemaya Vox + Alithea Vox = TLA

For one of the most well-crafted, poignant, and powerful video installations of 2007 please visit Courtney Egan's website and click on "Soft Spots".


She is one of the kindest, truest, bravest, most supportive, strongest human beings on the planet.  She brought champagne over at first notice of the award for ArtInAction, without hesitation, so happy, so invested, so truly kind.  She would come take me for snoballs when I was freaked out in the trailer freaking out in the trailer freaking out of my mind.  She gave me her bathtub to soak in when I was terrified. 

When I first moved back unsure and wild-eyed she was the only person who would meet me at the coffee shop and share her information, who was really hands-on involved in the rebuilding of my life.  She stands by me like a goddamn Mack truck.  And her art is head and shoulders above anything out there, truly realized, no f'in around, no naivité, no games, no hubris, no ego, pure gift- you call, she gives; you joke, she laughs; she's a star!  The real McCoy, and I love her, I'm lucky, she loves me, I'm lucky a star like her burns in my heart.   So check it out, "Soft Spots", and behold Courtney Egan human being artist extraordinaré.

It Was An Eve

Up in Gramercy, fireworks, fires, flying embers, slipping on the levee.  Back in the city, everyone over - black beans on the stove, rice, cilantro - special eve drinks - roman candle wars in the yard - knocking down tin cans w/the bb gun boyscout style - dance party on the yellow floor - wrapping paper flung in all directions - the animals spoke and here's what they said, "Crazy fools!  It's time to go to bed!" and I said, "Ok!  But only if you go to bed with me!"  So the dog & cats crawled in the sack and we dreamt smiling sleepy so that even an empty stocking on Christmas Day did not daunt me.  I cannot be daunted!

Plus "I" was just awarded a VERY substantial grant for ArtInAction! so that I may continue this work into 2008 - better, bigger, stronger, more open, freely!  The work done thus far has been recognized and I am being given the chance to be my own boss, to run this business as a bona fide business, with the support of some truly progressive and brilliant professionals in the field.  This tells me that the paradigm I've been shouldering my shoulder into is shifting, yes I am part of that - for work of this nature to be validated and supported to this degree. 

And also that in this specific and unique community, this post-disaster community, the creative process is a legitimate response to trauma, that everything I say about it is real, not just for me.  Yes, money can do that.  Nothing is free but some things are free-ing.  Built up from the ground that was underwater; I do not ever forget the lost seeds. 

We Are Family

What I Can Bring

Oh Mary Don't You Weep No More

Wild world hair, tennis shoes and jean skirt.  She gave me a tee shirt that has a trailer on it and it says, "I can't remember the last time I knew where I was."  My heart goes out to her, her whose best friend was murdered almost a year ago.  Lots of people got on the bandwagon, you know, of grief and pain of New Orleans, but she, she's the real front-line deal, and my heart goes out to her, she who cleaned the blood, she who cleans the blood, I'm her too.  Lots of people have a greedy hunger for the blood, vampires.  You can smell them a mile away, the chemical-ness of it.  But she smells like roses and parades and sno-cones and crawfish bisque at Frankie & Johnny's on Good Friday and I only want to clean the blood away so she doesn't have to see it anymore. 

Einstein

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."



The paradigm shift, I am shift, real plates groaning flat slow centuries of momentum and light pours in.  Christmas roses bloom in the wide cold yard, I brought them back. 

- Cast iron frying pan
- Small apples
- Wood smoke fire
- The pipes
- Rasping

He made me hot tea with honey for my throat and rubbed one bone out of my knot of pain.  The eyes he has in his head are warm and always surprised open kind.  Huffing gasoline from a tiny stick that helped him pour into my empty car.  Petting my head on his shoulder warm I love to breathe there.  My voice went to the ceiling. 

But I cannot be too careful, says the beak in my ear.  Am I sure, this?  With its particular limitations and waves of fluttering un-kissed lips and tumbling down from my ribs a bowed hush.  It leaves me a bit drunk and that's dubious but I still know this: I will be near him. 

- Cauliflower
- Yarn
- Pentacostal  tongues

The coffee burns.  I am not getting any work done, like a wobbly fawn my knobs are quaking, because it is new in here, post-shift.  Alone in the house and quiet with animals - Cody has saved my life time & time again and now Rosa.  She absorbs my pain.  She is nothing but pure sugar cane.  The coffee waits for me to swallow.  A Parisian winter street haunts me, a photograph from another E's journal.  Voices in the air tell me we can walk right into it, voices in the air from across time, the globe, space, gaps.  We can walk into it now. 

I must maintain my reputation

from either death!"preparations had been made, with military precisionbucket of water and threw it over the mess. she
laurie will be quite spoiled among them."  my speech, i got stuck in the middle and had to  was so thin, so patient, and so young. on
cooked," exclaimed dorothy. "but i'm much    

Am I really getting another doggie?

 

My heart is racing/waking

Courage Is In The Being

"Sometimes I grin a lot but I ain't tickled"  LV Hull 

When are we not collaborating?  It's hard for me to wrap my brain around that.  I exhale, you inhale.  For every action there's a reaction.  I sometimes miss the safe beauty of the store.  I sometimes wonder if you wonder about me.  By building an environment of peaceful introspection, with one regular pigeon, I call him Mr. Lucky, visiting in the yard, we're working together. 

Today is Ginger's birthday.  A pigeon-soft air, soft enough for a tank top, and another pigeon joins Mr. Lucky, I call her Luckette.  And then 3 more.  Which is an odd number.  Which means one of them lost its mate.  I threw the old dog food in the grass hoping they'd find it.  Luna has left wearing Annie's collar.  A morning dove joins them, they're family.  I gave Ginger a bag of eggs with fortunes in them.  It's nice, making someone you love laugh.

When are we not collaborating?  Do I have any interesting questions to ask?  Why am I in a position of authority?  Step by step by step.  I'd give it all away again, lose it all over again, I'm not afraid.  Because I remember how I held up, and who held me up, and who answered the door, who ran me a hot bath when I couldn't sleep in the trailer, and how we made each other's lives better.  How can I claim anything, why would I want to?   Ownership is a foreign concept to me.  It's got nothing to do with my parents getting divorced - it has to do with my blood, heritage, life.  Lose it once, lose it twice, whose been naughty whose been nice.

CHURCH

It's like watching snow clouds chase the geese, it's like thinking something was a dream when really it was something I wrote on a wall somewhere a long long time ago and it's coming back to me with a certain shift of the air, a particular scent coming off my neck.   It's carrying wood in before it rains and laughing like idiots because sometimes when something's funny it's really just stupid. 

I liked this last church we went to.  I liked the pagan quality of it, the light growing, the night long, its longest, and then the light returning, and the light is us. 

What's interesting is the way it grows if you leave it alone (or at least don't put any darkness down upon it).  If there were any point to pushing I still wouldn't - the very thought exhausts me.  This is the confusing thing about having a strong voice: it's power gets mistaken for assertion and everyone thinks you're impenetrable.  I won't argue: sometimes I'm bossy.  But the point is I don't push even if it sounds like it and I am far from made of steel.  Besides, what's the point to pushing?  Denis Johnson would write, "when nothing ever comes true anyhow."   Thing is, I'm not Denis Johnson; I just have a powerful voice.  Just like any other voice, it deserves to be heard, but that doesn't mean I'm the boss and it doesn't mean this won't come true.

So we went to church on Sunday!  I have been dreaming of Sundays, of pink houses, and café au lait, the newspaper, a walk, a bicycle, brioche, wandering, wine.  Yeah I'm Miss Didn'tMissAThing.  I bring you stories and make you things/you make sure I don't fall off the edge of the earth.  The earth ends, you know.  Like the lip of a volcano - staring down the way I do, I could fall in.  I'm not superhuman and you are my true friend.  Your hands caught me just then.  Church is supernatural.