LOVER

Cinematic Paper Emulsion

I have a lot to say, a lot to holler, and a lot to listen to right now. Yes yes yes I am a floaty red balloon, maybe yellow. Working my way out of working my way into working my way out of in and into out.

I'm amazed by the reaction that I'm getting in some circles for writing graphically about my experiences here in New Orleans: a lot of sensitive lefties are just not responding. Silence is such a loud thing - I hear the recoil. Now I know full well about subjective reality (sometimes people are busy or dealing with their own struggles or just at a saturation point) but patterns are patterns. And the pattern that human beings perpetuate of witnessing trauma & then needing to run from any representations of it: I see that.

It's hard to write things like this for alot of reasons: I can see both sides of the story, I don't want to jump to conclusions (we do that all the fucking time and it's done to me all the fucking time and I think it's just nauseating), I want to be as honest as possible, but what the hay? Some people are just cowards. And I'm not here to paint pretty pictures, to make people giggle (though I do & I get great pleasure out of that) or to run away from conflict - I am not here for that. So

I'll be writing more soon about life here in New Orleans and if people don't like what I write why do they insist on reading it?

You might not know

1. I am thrilled by the choice of Daniel Craig as the new James Bond.
2. I buy Esquire for the articles.
3. Though I think about green tea all the way to the coffee shop I'm probably going to get a double iced mocha, easy chocolate.
4. My spectacles are RayBans.
5. There was a time when I littered as an act of political rebellion.
6. I am a non-smoker.
7. In one of my fantasies I carry 2 pistols in plain view and I use them without hesitation if need be.
8. I can trust a liar who is honest about being a liar sooner than I can trust an "honest" man pretending to be something he's not.
9. My father's mother Lydia believed I needed an exorcism.
10. Quarter horse!
11. That I'm a genius is no secret but what about that I'm a space cadet?
12. I have no patience for braggarts.
13. My '69 Chevelle 396 SS automatic pulled 12.7 1/4 miles with street tires after I put a solid cam & lift in.
14. I'm not a fan of your ex-wife or your wife or your girlfriend, because they're stone-cold bitches. And your man? Can't stand him.
15. But your wife, now she's a woman I can get behind. And your man? I will pay to sing at the wedding.
16. That whole new-wave revival of leggings and stripes and assymetrical hair and flats does absolutely nothing for me.
17. Flip flops in the city are just wrong.
18. I would love one of those new Fendi bucket bags.
19. Fishnets.
20. I don't care if it's a rumpled Thrift City $15 purchase or a new Paul Smith: a man in a suit is sexy, especially if it's happy hour and he's writing in a journal.
21. When I was 9 I decided I had to take personal responsibility for whether or not I was bored, that I was never going to be bored, and that if I ever got bored I would leave wherever I was for some place else.
22. I'm an urban warrior who fantasizes about a house in the country.
23. Though I can sleep in a tent, and well, I am much much happier in a bed in a hotel.
24. Pants or shorts of any nature with writing across the ass?!?
25. Give me an Irish mutt over a well-heeled Franco any day.
26. Ceiling fans, humidity, and wine.
27. I get a vicious thrill when people crack their knuckles but I don't crack mine.
28. Something I look forward to is being old enough to get away with going to a café, ordering a cup of hot water, and putting a tea bag from home in it. Then I'll ask the girl for lemon.
29. Onions!
30. Writing on my hand is something I do whether I need to or not.
31. I argued with Cingular today to get my bill lowered because it is more than I want to pay and I succeeded by threatening to switch to Sprint (which I would never do).
32. I love t.v.
33. Degrees

"You look real nice, baby"

- Dew, what wonder!
- The shift
- Your glasses off
- Evening paints the streets
- A cat stretches, a cat’s piss
- Bottle emptied
- Lots of little bottles, empty
- Plastic flowers
- You might not have jewel colored clothes but you do
- Hey tramp!
- The front slit, the back
- I’m remembering what is going to happen
- Play, play
- Hot bright cellophane. And feathers.
- Not a night, a day
- When you get here, who?
- Browns, orange, red, a creamy white
- It’s got to be
- Vivid
- Paper towels, my favorite
- Saturday Night
- If it takes wine then give me wine, whatever it takes just give it to me
- Heart and soul, dancing to the rhythm
- Those sharp horns
- Thighs, Levis
- Who needs wheels
- Don’t call, don’t answer
- Lake games
- Stars!
- Wild rose, canaries untamed
- Firemen at the ready
- Exploded at once
- Degrees

Outside/In

It's raining again, always raining and I'm walking home from the mechanic's catching Miss Evaline with lost teeth sitting out on her porch because her house inside is furry with mold because since the flood she hasn't been able to gut it and the government won't send her a trailer because of some paperwork error and so she sits on the porch in the rain "It rains inside too," what's the difference? "I get to see you!"

I have been sick in my own furry trailer, a weak little white girl sick with some kind of flu thing that everyone here gets everyone keeps telling me, "Acclimatin'." I think it's the heart, just hurting real bad. Yeah yeah I can hear all you wise ass geezers - I just got back so gimme a minute. There's a lot to come to terms with on this land.

And it really is a vast nowhere that America does not want to acknowledge, still, because what New Orleans needed before the hurricane and needs now more than ever is Society capital S. And the era of "society", of social welfare not being forbidden words and the government being representatives of its constituents and people caring about the welfare of other people has passed (thanks Ronald Reagan all the way to Ray Nagin!), even the idea of it. Everywhere I look I see criminal injustice and though "art" seems a frivolous response I know it isn't.

So I get a little bit of sick but today I'm a better sick and drinking coffee again and sweet talking Charley the good old mechanic into rigging up my good old car so I can at least try to escape if need be.

Going Up

We rode the elevator after sharing a cigarette with the wild glee of interlopers fearlessly flaunting illicit contraband, haha! "See No Evil" romped through my head. At the bottom, the dank cold-rot all bars emanate pressed down and around, a moist cramped tunnel to squeeze us out into a big wide urban sky.

Something narrow can bloom a prairie. An elevator can travel horizontally. I understood why he wasn't attracted to you - he don't argue for arguing's sake, he will only follow a kind embrace.

"ART IN ACTION" in New Orleans

“Art In Action” is a long-term, collaborative, community art project to begin in New Orleans this October. Multi-media artist Elizabeth Underwood is spearheading this project with sponsorship from University of New Orleans’ anthropology department. Believing the creative process to be a powerful tool for affecting social change and healing from trauma, the underlying agenda of “Art In Action” is to re-animate New Orleans with positive, progressive energy and to support the community’s ongoing efforts at renewal.

“Art In Action’s” primary focus is to galvanize a wide variety of creative artists and community groups to create an on-going interactive treasure hunt of site-specific art and performance throughout the city. A corresponding downloadable map with accompanying audio narrative will be available on an “Art In Action” blog; the map will also be available in printed brochure form, making the treasure hunt open to everyone. All participants will be encouraged to share their experiences via the blog, which will then function as a library for this project. Plans for a corresponding book and exhibit are currently underway.

With New Orleans at such an archetypal crossroads, there is a deep need for personal involvement in its physical, psychological, and political landscape. Given the current crucial phase of the preservation and redefinition of the New Orleanian identity, engaging with New Orleans via work of this nature (as a “builder ”, “seeker”, or “documentarian”) is vital on many levels. Every aspect of this treasure hunt will connect this valiant community to a worldwide audience in a truly constructive way. Ultimately, “Art In Action” can function as a model for how communities might respond to the long-term challenges of future catastrophic man-made/natural disasters. “Art In Action” will motivate empowered regeneration and set in motion an inspired process that can perform itself under multiple guises for many years to come.

I'm sorry - did I hear you right?

Well she got me to New Orleans and even down to the library to fax my shit to FEMA. I'm praying it's something minor but yes, my last $50 are gonna go to the mechanic just to tell me what's wrong. Then what? Oh, yeah: my car over-heated big time today. At least I have a baguette, a bottle of vino, and I'm on the guest list for Rotary Downs & Ted Leo tomorrow night. At least.

For To Carry Me Home

The waking and arriving, it's a constant cycle for me. Always has been but especially to get here. All it took was just driving straight east and I am landing in the broke wet wooly City of Enchantment. Make no mistake, folks, the drug and lull of it, the sparkly tint and breathing shadow, it's here - that flood didn't wash it away.

And oh the roads all buckling and holed, the depression crisping the eyes like glitter, I haven't seen one pair of eyes yet that aren't fringed with it, I recognize because I know. And the tension of moving from Point A to K, tough bodies, leaky trailer, cold water showers, Dirty Dozen Brass Band's "Lost Souls" bringing me over and over again home. The backyard I live in like a bunny in a burrow of weedy grass is knit thick with roses, banana trees, palmettos, angel's trumpets, Japanese magnolia, Indian shot, fig tree, dogs, rats, and egrets flying over in the river sky ribboned with foghorns the freighters pull down over my shoulders at night. I am sleeping alright.

With newspapers on the floor to catch the dripping rain coming down through the lights. Reading Fabulist New Wave short stories and writing drawing writing myself back into my body again. It bleeds and dreams, whispers and licks, this city wakes me up to my body of gifts.

Here/Is

It's all so much much I'm bowled over silently like the japanese magnolia blossoms falling in the rose bushes that surround my trailer.

And it's depressed and stoic and meaty boisterous tough rubbled streets. It's rats as big as cats on sagging telephone wires, coffee air, a hard edge to people I'm used to seeing as soft and sweet. Who are these people, so muscular and bitten? What isn't here that wasn't finished?

Some moments I can't believe I'm seeing or not seeing what I'm seeing or not seeing. It's not that I haven't been here since the storm it's that this here and now, it's new, there's no knowing it unless you're here and I'm not here. I'm writing like I know but I don't even know, I can only see, I'm only breathing.

Rose hips, watermelon, lemons, rice, coconut milk, red beans. What I am doing is breathing, walking, no answers per say but feeling. Transistor radio, wooden spoon, my cat's a watch-dog on the stoop at night while the moon bleeds down on us quiet two. I'm not exactly sure why I came here but isn't it obvious? I came for this.

And this is why

I'm going home (The Black Men of Labor second-lining on St. Claude yesterday).