operatic resources

dear ingmar,

my roommate has bought a new set of taebo dvds and she is working out constantly to them. it drives me crazy. oh lord, as if i don't have enough problems.

in retaliation, i can't really think of anything to really fire back at her...then, i remembered, OPERA. i am looking for the works by russian composers such as glinka, mussorgsky, and borodin and antonín dvořák (ok, i know he's not russian) in particular. if you know where i can get these without having to shell out major dollars for the dvds/cds, i'd really appreciate it. i'm not suggesting piracy...(believe me, i tried! can't find them anywhere) but maybe there are websites where they can be downloaded or listened to or something?

whatever, maybe you can't help me because i don't even know if you get these letters. i don't even know if you or the cyber postman or anyone reads this drivel that i keep spouting.

-- j

the day is done

dear ingmar,

sorry about not posting a pop culture roundup like i promised. i haven't had the time and these celebrity folks, they are always doing crazy things. they operate on a different time scale and one week in their world is like a year's worth of drama for the rest of us. anyway, maybe later this week i will post something.

i wonder what your days are like sometimes. are you still active in your artistic community? i heard that you do a lot of small theatre productions now. i wish i knew swedish. i wish i knew so many things.

well, let me tell you a bit more about my days. i wake up quite early, grimace at the persistance of my back pain, slide out of bed like jelly filling, and force, i emphasize force, myself to go through the banal morning routine. i am usually on the road by 8am, driving and mingling with the rest of the commutters, singing horribly out of tune to a series of car mix cds and gesticulating wildly to "clap back" and occassionally mouthing to other drivers "small town girl."

by the time i get to the studio, i am exhausted. it's quite an intimate setting and i kick back in my little nook and await whatever tedious instrustions i am to be given for the day. my boss is the most indecisive person in the world but what's worse is that even though he is wishy washy, he dislikes taking in your suggestions. he wants to know what you think but he doesn't, you know what i mean? he would sit there whacking his jitz out for ideas but then shoot down every one i give him. so eventually i just don't bother offering my thoughts because no matter how great they are, he'll dislike them. he is divorced, NO WONDER!

anyway, so the rest of the 12-14hr day consist of me sweating in the non-air conditioned loft and killing myself softly with his song, strumming my pain with his fingers...oh i mean, it's wonderful opportunity and i love it!

then when it's dark and my night blindness has impudently set in, i must set about the task of driving over an hour back home. such a stressful, frequently misguided venture would not be complete without blaring car mix #6 specifically designed for nocturnal alertness, in other words, if my car could dance, it would be bouncing on its two back wheels.

so that is pretty much my day at least for part of the week. the other part of week...i dedicate to another job but i'll tell you a bit more about that some other day.

-- j

office space

dear ingmar,

my new boss looks like a younger, skinnier version of kevin costner...you know, before he packed on the pounds and got stingy with the benjamins. and last night message in a bottle came on tv. good god, i almost sat through the entire thing because i figured i should give it a chance because the cast also consisted of robin wright penn and paul newman...but it was dreadful regardless. what was i thinking watching a kevin costner movie? what was i thinking, ingmar?!

anyway, work is good because i'm learning stuff and i'm working on a subject that really interests me. if i do well, the boss will let me try my hands at the other two big projects he is working on. so of course, that's always exciting. what i don't understand is why it takes him years to complete something. it gets frustrating for me. i am a person of immediate results. i need to measure my year out in accomplishments. i am sick this way.

so much going on, so little time. i'm commuting and this is turning me bitter. i need to buy new sneakers. i'm the type to wear a pair for years beyond its tolerated use just because i hate shopping for new ones. this pair is ripping at the seams and has through-and-through holes where those wretchedly inconsiderate thai monks have carelessly dropped incense ashes during prayer. insolent berks.

the end of this month is marked by several important events, a couple of which include family member birthdays. i've been wrecking my brains out buying presents. most annoying.

tomorrow i'll come back with another pop culture round-up. i know you secretly enjoy those.

-- j

of a sort of emotional anemia

dear ingmar,

i have a little snippet of a poem for you.

like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
she walks by the railing of a path in kensington gardens,
and she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
-- "the garden" by ezra pound

i'm working a bit too much, i think. this weekend i'll be in new york. in two weeks i'll be leaving for tibet. i'm reading sculpting in time and it's so well-written that i have to set it down every few pages to catch my breath. the days have gotten hotter, i have three months before i move to paris, and the year seems to be flying by.

at night, i think of bottles trying to catch the rain leaking in from the unpatched roof. what do you think about?



--j

hot child in the city

dear ingmar,

i am not one of those people who are naturally good with children. i don't find most cute or "precious", i find them rather annoying and inconveniently loud. most unbearable, however, are those who've never been taught any manners and insist on behaving in the worst ways in the most inappropriate of places. yes, obese woman wearing the salmon capris and revolting sleeveless white top dotted with a ridiculous assortment of garden variety flowers at the downtown seaside restaurant with your own little four year old damien no doubtly personally gift-wrapped and expressed mailed from the devil himself, i am talking about you!

anyway, the reason i bring this up is because i have the ill-fated pleasure of living near a family with FOUR children, all under 10. during the winter, they rarely come outside to pollute the atmosphere with their shrilling sadistic cries of incomprehensible woe but now that summer is in full swing, they have reemerged like pesky rodents out to wreak further havoc on the farmer's crops already suffering from heat stroke.

what exactly am i complaining about, you wonder? well, these neighbors of mine, they have erected a monsterous inflatable water slide, standing at least 15ft tall and providing what seems to be a mecca for all the children in this god-forsaken town. so as temperatures boil up into the 90s this weekend, and i am a puddle of mercurial nerves in a frenzy to complete a project, i am forced to coexist amongst this circus of no less than a dozen kids at any given time of day, trying desperately to shut out their screaming fits of joy as they continously splash and slide up their way from the gates of hell. frankly i think entering a strong-man's contest would be easier than dealing with these pint-sized beasts.

sorry to sound like a total bitch,

-- j

the dirty clothes cometh

dear ingmar,

you may not be familiar with the modern details concerning laundry as that you are now approaching 90 and have earned the right to relegate this pesky task to your offspring or to the overweight yet cheerful housekeeper i imagine you to keep, however i, on the other hand, must deal with this most tedious chore on a weekly basis. because i am the kind of person who likes to give away knowledge generously, i felt that perhaps you'd like to know a bit more about the laundry process, in particular the many respective circumstances that lead up to the actual washing itself. you will see, after reading below, that the fate of a piece of clothing is vastly dependent on the specific situation in which it finds itself, a detail that is all too often ignored. here are the most common situations:

entirely inside the hamper = definitely washing a go-go

drapped at the corner of the bedpost = too lazy to hang up in closet, still wearable

sprawn out on the floor = flung off in haste for various reasons, wearable if does not smell the next day

hung on the hooks = jackets or robes worn on a daily basis and washed only when necessary

hung on lamp = drying, do not remove unless emmitting a burnt aroma

hung in bathroom = steaming to smooth out wrinkles

sprawn on bathroom floor = cast off before the shower and will not get picked up and deposited in hamper until the floors are dry because there’s nothing grosser than getting your feet wet after you’ve dried off and donned fresh clothes

folded over the side of the hamper = indeterminate laundry status

stuffed among the crevices of the bed = forgotten




with the smell of snuggles originals,
-- j

sweet sugar sunshine

dear ingmar,

here in america it is customary, when menaced by the most daunting of deadlines, to let out a low, cowardly groan with the effect of muffled disgust and then drop all work immediately in favor of some sort of gastronomical indiscretion.

in my case, i chose to make cupcakes. the results were most delicious.

  

-- j

and it begins all over again

dear ingmar,

i overslept through "sunday morning shootout"and spent the rest of the afternoon in a languid daze. the tin can gray of yesterday has lifted its lid to a beautiful sun-filled afternoon, none of which i took advantage.

the travel channel aired a decent show "the secrets of the holy land" which i actually sat through in its entirety, slumped on the couch festering like a convict in an lebanese 6.5 x 9.8ft jail cell. what you don't know is that i'v already seen this show before, twice.

the only reason i kept watching was because "incredible catacombs" was set to air afterwards and you know i can't resist anything dealing with skulls and bones and the amassing of human skeletons. how fantastic, yes? my favorite of all time has always been the kostnice ossurary located in sedlec, kutna hora, czech republic (about an hour away from prague). what i like about it is that it's not just a pile of skeletal rubble thrown together but it's a work of majestic art. have a look below. splendid, no?



in other personal news, at precisely 7:48pm, it began again. the work.

manuscript #2 is being put on hold while #3 has pushed its way to the center of attention like a tantrum throwing child. what am i to do? abandon everything and pacify it, of course.

so there it is, a total shift in focus.

that was my day. i hope yours was just as uneventful. and i mean that in the most empathic way.

-- j

pop culture roundup vol 1

dear ingmar,

let me entertain you, let me make you smile.

it's saturday and why not indulge in a little pop culture news?

tom everett scott will be starring in the new tnt drama "saved" where he plays a troubled bad boy paramedic. though this is supposedly "an acclaimed new series" set to potentially rival the network's other front runner "the closer" we all know that scottie boy will never outshine the brilliance that was his performance in an american werewolf in paris. what, you've never seen that movie? don't you follow cult horror? you, of all people?!

the omen made a devilish killing at the box office when it debuted this tuesday, but as a loyal fan of the original omen, i instead spent my movie-going experience compiling a list of hollywood starlets i'd like to see meet the same fate that befell julia stiles' character in this scene.

also, do you think julia stiles resembles a skinny blond version of rosie o'donnell? seriously, follow the visual logic below:



i will spare you the coming of christ brangelina messiah-baby story since i'm sure you can find it featured in every single media release known to man (and aliens from at least 3 galaxies away). what we are not told is that shiloh nouvel also possesses the ultimate power to eventually overthrow the u.s. oligarchy, as she not only has the two secret weapons needed to win public adoration (angelina's lips and brad's nose) but like any prophetic usurper, she is also not of woman born.

anderson cooper can deny/avoid the question of his homosexuality all he wants but one glimsp into his ipod playlist reveals what we all knew from the beginning. the only reason i care about anderson cooper is because i read his latest book (which was decent) and all kidding aside, i actually like him as the bearer of my news...that i only sort of care about. plus, the whole tragedy with his family (his brother committed suicide) is interesting because you know i'm only interested in people who come from a messed up past. everyone else is just a waste of time.

well that'll do it for now. some other stuff happened but they're not important. just like the world cup.

so i'll leave you now to agda who has no doubtly already prepared the nightly sponge bath.

-- j

summer checklist

1. finish the manuscript that got out of hand and became some insane, senseless cry of aimless desperation. Check.

2. find work at small obscure local production company where the headquarters are located in the "corner niche" of a hovel otherwise known as "the studio" of a raging lunatic otherwise known as "the boss". Check.

3. sign up for a review course of the French language in a haphazard attempt to refresh material that was never learned in the first place. Check.

4. become familiar with esoteric cultural references dealing with subjects cared only by the underground community of bitter angry politcally subversive pretentious pseudo-intellectuals. Semi-Check.

5. become addicted to snorting cocaine, develop an eating disorder and become preoccupied with amassing cratefuls of vintage second-hand, purposefully raggedy clothing still imbibed with the smokey aroma of its cancerous predecessor. OH MY GOD.

contemporary design

dear ingmar,

believe it or not there was a time when i loved all things pretty, frilly, and soft. shabby chic, some like to call it -- slip-covered white couches, lace curtains, victorian accents, antique furniture, louis xiv style chairs - an overall tribute to the romanticism of a past era.

whenever someone mentions minimalist design, i would grimace in disgust. how cold, how hard, how uncomfortable, i thought. in college my dorm room was plastered with opera posters and fashion magazine cut-outs. it was bright and warm and very very colorful.

maybe i am changing, maybe the work i'm doing is changing me, but for whatever reason contemporary design is now very appealing. declutter. desaturate. delineate your life with straight edges and solid colors. geometricize your thoughts. love in rectangles. strip the leaves off of your overpriced uptown florist tulips and fan out the stems to create clean botanical allure. keep pets under 15lbs. install a gourmet kitchen that you'll pretend to use only to impress guests.

sorry, i got carried away.

maybe it's this industry or maybe it's just the city but the sleek lines of modern style no longer feel cold and hard to me. or maybe it's just i've become cold and hard. you like what you are, right?

thank god i'm moving to paris. hopefully it'll jolt some life back into this desolate frozen tundra that i've become.


somewhat disheartened,
-- j

angels, demons and all things in between

dear ingmar,

i am such a fool. i spent four long frost-bitten years on the hallow grounds of cornell and never once did i pay a visit to its rare manuscript collection. it is not until i've moved on, swore nothing would ever drag me back to that god-forsaken frozen hell did i realize what a magnificient resource i had missed out on.

thankfully, someone had the brilliant idea to devote a website to some of the plates, woodblocks, and other illustrations featured in these rare books and manuscripts. here is the link.



i am practicaly giddy with this new discovery for i've always been particularly fascinated with forgotten etchings and book plates. i think if i could make a decent living as a rare books dealer, i would. sort of like johnny depp in the ninth gate. hell, throw in some conspiracies and secret cults and i couldn't be happier.

-- j

via boing boing

the work of kimberly gremillion

dear ingmar,

in keeping with the satanic theme of today's date, i give you the spellbinding works of one of my favorite photographers kimberly gremillion. i remember reading somewhere that her techniques rely partially on luck, as she fumbles around in the dark experimenting with lighting and exposure.

these below are from her "thresholds" series to which i am particularly drawn as they illustrate the thin line between this world and the one beyond, like a "waking dream, that creative space between consciousness and unconsciousness."

  

frankly, all her photos seem to evoke a transcendent eeriness that stays with you well after you've view them, sort of like a haunting memory that creeps its way in uninvited and overstays its welcome.

  

  

i hope these didn't frighten you because i didn't find them the least bit scary. they are not meant to be.

-- j

jude miller's paper flowers

dear ingmar,

everyone's been talking about the paper flowers of jude miller. i too have been won over. never the one for crafty things, this is an exception. her botanical sculptures are simply magnificent. i'm thoroughly impressed with her attention to detail, producing almost exact replicas of the real thing, and alongswhich adding her own special touch.





i hope you like them too.

-- j

seeing is believing

dear ingmar,

i’ve resorted back to wearing contacts because they are less of a hassle...and because i’ve discovered tan lines from my glasses, which are more than unsightly.

the bad thing is, everything is now magnified (more than with the glasses). my cat who i thought was “normal size” now appears obese. everything and everyone is larger than they originally were.

and this is very unsettling. because apparently i’ve been seeing the world incorrectly for the past 2 years.

i am aghast.

-- j

la jetée and 12 monkeys

dear ingmar,

today i watched a little short film called la jetée (1962, chris marker) which left me rather breathless and in a complete state of awe. the film was about a half hour long and consisted almost entirely of still black & white images. the quality is a bit grainy but the effect is most powerful. there is a rawness to it that sort of grips you and gnaws away whatever cinematic trappings you may have adorned throughout the years of watching meaningless hollywoodized drivel.

you can find a short snippet of the beginning here. this does not include the narration.



now i stumbled upon this sort of by accident and by the end, i kept thinking..."wow, this is almost exactly like the plot of terry gilliam's 12 monkeys (1995)" and wouldn't you know, after looking it up, i discovered 12 monkeys was indeed inspired by la jetée! it is even credited in the former.

who would've thought that somewhere between manufacturing grotesequely slapstick adam sandler comedies would hollywood actually find the time to dig up this brilliant little foreign short and make it a bruce willis blockbuster.

i also read that chris marker (originally christian françois bouche-villeneuve) took the last name "marker" from the "magic marker" pen. the french, they are fous, n'est pas?!

-- j