Jan 29 2000 Okay I finally set up a real email account for this site. the old one I was hanging on to in the hopes it would eventually work. buut no such luck. so now you can contact me here. i'll be fixing my links this week. trouble out.

Jan 28 2000 I was trying to update evrything and fix links and shit and I lost the past two days' updates. what a dork I am. Luckily it was saved on my laptop at home. I fixed it late tonight after work (rockin it in the newly-sold-to-two-sketchy-older-men cafe)and now things will continue as they were.

jan27 2000

So I got home today and made myself some tasty dinner, and sat down to watch a one-hour BBC documentary on the clitoris. Chalk up another thing unlikely to be found on American television. We're talking numerous closeups of female genitalia, shaven and not, getting peirced, and even actualy footage from the Masters and Johnson films of what a woman's vagina lookes like when she's having an orgasm. what it look like from theinside. i enjoyed it all sincerely. The beginning was odd --some artist guy making a mold of a woman's vagina (outside and in), which he then made casts from, and the final piece was a chest of drawers where the handles were vaginas (you put your finger in to open them). Although funny in concept, if I walked into somebody's room and they had that to keep their clothes in, I admit I'd be weirded out.

jan 25 2000 Saw Trans Am tonight with a friend from my program. Actually he's a PhD student who's sitting in on one of the courses. Interesting cat, New Zealander, super-eclectic and intellectually good-to-go. So the show, anyway, was really good. Synths, basses, vocoder, plain voice, and an incredible drummer. In that music-critic kind of way i'd say Kraftwek-Joy Division-Dj Food (cuz the beats were often tasty)-heavy guitar indie stuff. They are integrating some of their sound better, I think. Although now they tend to go song-by-song, synths and beats, basses and guitars, rather than combining all as they did on earlier stuff. In this little club packed full with indie kids, looking just like boston: skinny white boys in drab colors and corduroys, knit caps. Enthusiastic crowd, good show all round.

jan 23 2000 Royal Academy today for two exhibits: Amazons of the Avant Garde, and 1900: The Great Exposition. Lucky me i used my roommate's membership card otherwise I couldn't have afforded both, but I am SO glad I went. At first it was the Amazons that intrigued me, but the show was diasappointing. About six or 8 Russian women from the 20s (not that that's bad, indeed it's some of my favorite kind of art, suprematism, painterly architechtonics, text and bright colors). But it was too few women, too national a focus for the title, and most importantly too few piece shown. It was purely a painting show, when much of what these women did was sculpture and textile and costume design. And their paintings refer and interact with the other media they used. reducing them all to two dimensions flattens what it was they were on about, dammit. Glad it was free otherwise it was too tantalizing and easily-summed-up. feh.
But the pieces that were either in or related to the Paris Exhibition in 1900.. oh heavens it w3as great. All the heavy hitters (Picasso, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse, Munch, Sargent, etc etc) and others not popular now but big then. A room of nudes, a room of portraits a room of still lifes.. And in the second portrait room I had an incredible thing happen to me. I looked across from the entry way and met someone's eyes. The piece on the far wall, by a Russian painter whose name I'm blanking on (began with K, sounds like an english word...), of a youngish man, darkhaired, clothed well but slightly out of focus, but the face lit and painted with such life. I found him magnetic. sexy. He had ideas in his head, and he let you see them while he looked at you. damn, it was good. I checked the name: portrait of Bilibin, N.K. painted in 1901. Where had I heard that name before? and it came to me. The images I had in my head which became the work on my arm from shoulder to elbow, were from book of Russian fairy tales illustrated at the turn of the century. The whole piece, i insisted to the artist who did the work on my arm, had to be in this style. The style of Nikolai Bilibin. I stood frozen, smiling to myself. i wanted to tell someone in that crowded room, to show them my arm. It was very strange and emotional. partly because the painting had gotten such a response from me before I knew who it was. I took a few breaths. stood some more. Then turned around.
into a lovely bust, a sculpture of Count Leo Tolstoy. one of my heroes, embodying a lot of the romance and passion that makes me such a fucking slavophile (like Peter Kropotkin as well). Moral forces. I shivered, and teared up a little. what a sap i am. but it's okay