Hi all.
I've been in a period of transition for awhile and haven't posted, but I'm planning to be back to it, soon.
Love, Phyllis
Wednesday
Saturday
Style: Makeup Memory
I am on Sephora's email list. I am a "Sephora Beauty Insider". I shop there for most of my makeup and fragrance needs, and I even have a favorite makeup artist there that I consult with when I want a new look or new products.
Today, I got my regular weekly email from Sephora, and for some reason, I had a flash of an old memory: When I was in 7th grade, I started seriously learning how to use makeup. I had to do this on my own, as my mother was not very interested in makeup or skin care. I mean, she groomed her eyebrows herself and would dress up, wear makeup and perfume to go out to dinner or something, but she didn't really wear makeup on a daily basis.
So, here's the memory:
I remember bringing home my first bottle of L'Oreal Mattique foundation. I remember taking it upstairs and putting it on, looking at myself in the mirror of the hall bathroom. I was amazed by how GREAT it make my skin look. It actually did what foundation was SUPPOSED to do: it made my skin look flawless while simultaneously NOT looking fake. THIS was the product I had been searching for! I remember I was so excited I ran downstairs, where my parents were watching TV in the family room and I said "Do I look any different to you?" They were, like, "No?" and I said "It's my skin! Doesn't it look GREAT?" They didn't get how exciting it was, but it was a breakthrough for me.
Over the years I have gone through many different phases of involvement with makeup, including periods of several years of not wearing any at all. I still get that rush, though, when I find a product or a regimen that looks really BEAUTIFUL, that does what makeup is SUPPOSED to do, and takes what I have and enhances it without looking FAKE....Although these days, I'm wearing more makeup than I ever did before....and sometimes it looks fake, but I kind of LIKE that, so....
Today, I got my regular weekly email from Sephora, and for some reason, I had a flash of an old memory: When I was in 7th grade, I started seriously learning how to use makeup. I had to do this on my own, as my mother was not very interested in makeup or skin care. I mean, she groomed her eyebrows herself and would dress up, wear makeup and perfume to go out to dinner or something, but she didn't really wear makeup on a daily basis.
So, here's the memory:
I remember bringing home my first bottle of L'Oreal Mattique foundation. I remember taking it upstairs and putting it on, looking at myself in the mirror of the hall bathroom. I was amazed by how GREAT it make my skin look. It actually did what foundation was SUPPOSED to do: it made my skin look flawless while simultaneously NOT looking fake. THIS was the product I had been searching for! I remember I was so excited I ran downstairs, where my parents were watching TV in the family room and I said "Do I look any different to you?" They were, like, "No?" and I said "It's my skin! Doesn't it look GREAT?" They didn't get how exciting it was, but it was a breakthrough for me.
Over the years I have gone through many different phases of involvement with makeup, including periods of several years of not wearing any at all. I still get that rush, though, when I find a product or a regimen that looks really BEAUTIFUL, that does what makeup is SUPPOSED to do, and takes what I have and enhances it without looking FAKE....Although these days, I'm wearing more makeup than I ever did before....and sometimes it looks fake, but I kind of LIKE that, so....
Monday
Style: Summertime 6 Ways
Thinking about style again lately. Interesting how theme and variations occur and can be utterly different, no matter how "close" or "far they are from the "original".
I have always liked the song "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess by Gershwin, written in 1935 (I think). There are something like 12,000 known versions of this song. I'd love to have a collection of the notable ones. Billie Holiday's version is the closest to original in terms of time period, but the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong recording is the most iconic/most copied. I have included a live performance by Ella to stand in for that version...it's interesting to me how each version relates to her prototypical performance and what that says about style....I'm not even sure the Chick Corea/Hiromi Uehara version can really be called the "same" song at all--but what do we mean by the "same" song, anyway?
BTW, I think Devendra Banhart is evil, like truly evil, and not in a good Nietszchean sense. I want to like him, but he gives me the creeps, really really really bad. Any other opinions?
Billie Holiday, 1936
Ella Fitzgerald, Berlin 1968
Janis Joplin, Stockholm, 1969
The Fun Boy Three, London, 1982
Devendra Banhart, n/d
Chick Corea and Hiromi Uehara, n/d
I have always liked the song "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess by Gershwin, written in 1935 (I think). There are something like 12,000 known versions of this song. I'd love to have a collection of the notable ones. Billie Holiday's version is the closest to original in terms of time period, but the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong recording is the most iconic/most copied. I have included a live performance by Ella to stand in for that version...it's interesting to me how each version relates to her prototypical performance and what that says about style....I'm not even sure the Chick Corea/Hiromi Uehara version can really be called the "same" song at all--but what do we mean by the "same" song, anyway?
BTW, I think Devendra Banhart is evil, like truly evil, and not in a good Nietszchean sense. I want to like him, but he gives me the creeps, really really really bad. Any other opinions?
Billie Holiday, 1936
Ella Fitzgerald, Berlin 1968
Janis Joplin, Stockholm, 1969
The Fun Boy Three, London, 1982
Devendra Banhart, n/d
Chick Corea and Hiromi Uehara, n/d
Tuesday
Song Needed: Request for Audience Participation
OK, I was trying to find a song or poem to post here that would really get at the meaning I was trying to express in my last post about how we are made of each other, and the kind of love I'm working with there....but I'm stumped. Any suggestions?
Monday
Thanksgiving: we are made of each other
I have just spent the past few days dwelling in the past, sorting and cleaning out my belongings from my parents' basement. They had everything down there, from my earliest toys to all of my school papers (preschool to high school! you can tell I'm an only child). It has felt good to go through it all and to let go of most of it. It has also felt good to stumble upon the unexpected treasures that will continue along the next part of my living with me.
I have found many photographs that I took of my friends in elementary and middle school and have had the chance to look through all of my parents' belongings and photo albums....a comprehensive family and personal history in artifacts and photographs.
Spending time with my parents in their home also gives me the chance to notice so clearly how much I am made of them...their patterns of speech, their facial expressions, their gestures. I wonder how far back those go? Is my mother's goofiness really that of my 13th great grandmother's? My father's linguistic precision, did that come from Adam?
We all grow out of one another in such concrete yet mysterious ways....and it isn't just our parents and our families that we are made of.
In the photographs I took as a child of eleven, I found there was one little boy in particular that I had a number of photographs of, by himself. I guess he was a favored photographic subject of mine. I don't recall having a crush on him, he was a lot shorter than me. Yet, there are all these photographs, more of him than of anyone else. Why? What did he mean to me then? I can't remember what it was like to be 11 or 12. Was it so much different than now, in my early 30s?
I found some old letters written between me and friends when I was 12 or 13, and to be frank, it doesn't seem that different now. Some of these letters were so much more insightful than I understood at the time. I think people totally underestimate children and adolescents, perhaps adolescents especially. I've grown, but the brilliant sentience that I am, that they were, (that we all really are) hasn't changed at all. If I have improved it has been because I have found ways to be what I always was without being worried about it.
He was a beautiful little blonde boy, a good friend of mine. Such a heartbreakingly beautiful boy, smiling in this photo, pensive in the next. I notice as I look at them that he didn't mug for the camera the way the other kids did. He was capable of being seen, it seems. He could look the camera in the eye, and be present. I am blown away by the strength and power of his 11 year old presence. I remember him in impressions...a fragment of his voice, the way he laughed, the way he sounded when he was upset about something. What kind of man did he become?
When I was in my early to mid twenties, my parents moved back to the town I lived in when I went to school with this boy, and I tracked down his parents' phone number. I called his mom and introduced myself and asked about him. She remembered me and told me he was in school for engineering at a state university, that he was doing well. I must have left my contact information (I don't remember doing it, but I must have) and he didn't get back to me.
Maybe he'll show up on facebook one of these days. A number of the people that we were friends with in the early days are there, and I have reconnected with them since I found these photos. It's strange to me that they remember me--I moved away in 7th grade! I see pictures of all of them as teenagers and even as adults together--going to each other's weddings and stuff.
I have lived in a lot of different places and have had a lot of friends and lovers, and I am always flattered (and surprised) when the people whose lives I floated through on my childhood and adolescent travels remember me and are glad to hear from me again.
Those people...all those people in all those places! I loved them all so much. I still do. I am made of them....I am made of you.
Thank you all so much for the time we have spent together, and if you're reading this, thanks for spending your time checking in with me now. It has been my privilege and my pleasure to know you--you have let me be what I am and you have made me what I am. Know that I carry you with me everywhere I go...it is such a sublime fullness.
thank you thank you thank you
I have found many photographs that I took of my friends in elementary and middle school and have had the chance to look through all of my parents' belongings and photo albums....a comprehensive family and personal history in artifacts and photographs.
Spending time with my parents in their home also gives me the chance to notice so clearly how much I am made of them...their patterns of speech, their facial expressions, their gestures. I wonder how far back those go? Is my mother's goofiness really that of my 13th great grandmother's? My father's linguistic precision, did that come from Adam?
We all grow out of one another in such concrete yet mysterious ways....and it isn't just our parents and our families that we are made of.
In the photographs I took as a child of eleven, I found there was one little boy in particular that I had a number of photographs of, by himself. I guess he was a favored photographic subject of mine. I don't recall having a crush on him, he was a lot shorter than me. Yet, there are all these photographs, more of him than of anyone else. Why? What did he mean to me then? I can't remember what it was like to be 11 or 12. Was it so much different than now, in my early 30s?
I found some old letters written between me and friends when I was 12 or 13, and to be frank, it doesn't seem that different now. Some of these letters were so much more insightful than I understood at the time. I think people totally underestimate children and adolescents, perhaps adolescents especially. I've grown, but the brilliant sentience that I am, that they were, (that we all really are) hasn't changed at all. If I have improved it has been because I have found ways to be what I always was without being worried about it.
He was a beautiful little blonde boy, a good friend of mine. Such a heartbreakingly beautiful boy, smiling in this photo, pensive in the next. I notice as I look at them that he didn't mug for the camera the way the other kids did. He was capable of being seen, it seems. He could look the camera in the eye, and be present. I am blown away by the strength and power of his 11 year old presence. I remember him in impressions...a fragment of his voice, the way he laughed, the way he sounded when he was upset about something. What kind of man did he become?
When I was in my early to mid twenties, my parents moved back to the town I lived in when I went to school with this boy, and I tracked down his parents' phone number. I called his mom and introduced myself and asked about him. She remembered me and told me he was in school for engineering at a state university, that he was doing well. I must have left my contact information (I don't remember doing it, but I must have) and he didn't get back to me.
Maybe he'll show up on facebook one of these days. A number of the people that we were friends with in the early days are there, and I have reconnected with them since I found these photos. It's strange to me that they remember me--I moved away in 7th grade! I see pictures of all of them as teenagers and even as adults together--going to each other's weddings and stuff.
I have lived in a lot of different places and have had a lot of friends and lovers, and I am always flattered (and surprised) when the people whose lives I floated through on my childhood and adolescent travels remember me and are glad to hear from me again.
Those people...all those people in all those places! I loved them all so much. I still do. I am made of them....I am made of you.
Thank you all so much for the time we have spent together, and if you're reading this, thanks for spending your time checking in with me now. It has been my privilege and my pleasure to know you--you have let me be what I am and you have made me what I am. Know that I carry you with me everywhere I go...it is such a sublime fullness.
thank you thank you thank you
The crux of creating: feeling situations?
This post is in tangential response to Cara's comments on my first post.
One of the things I'm noticing as I'm in conversation with you and non-blog others is how little interest I have in "art" or "fashion" or "design". I mean, I read some magazines like Domino and Allure and I read some blogs like If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, bad banana blog, Design*Sponge, and Grassrootsmodern, but these are mostly for inspiration and light reading. I too, seek to be pretty (or at least 'put-together') and am not invested really in participating in the world of aesthetic professionals. Whatever aesthetic production I am interested in participating in personally I am mostly interested in for my own enjoyment and edification (although I hope to write interesting books about psychology one day, and I consider psychotherapy to be a performing art/performance art)...
On a day to day basis, though, I am inherently attuned to the aesthetics of situations. This does not necessarily mean decorating everything just so or buying art or even arranging my architectural experiences such that I have fabulous views all the time. It does mean that I feel the situations I'm in pretty acutely.
In fact, the feeling of situations is foundational in my creative actions, academic or otherwise. For example: The other day I was working on my dissertation proposal and had a moment when I was working through a complex concept and didn't quite have the words for it. Anyone who writes has experiences like this--working through the process of bringing something into words. It's a curious experience--where do the words come from, anyway?
As part of the writing/thinking process, I paused from actively writing while still totally engaged with the work. In a matter of seconds, I found myself completely taken with the beauty of one of my plants; swimming in it, overtaken by it. While there was no direct relation between my dissertation work and my plant, somehow gazing at it was part of this creative process. I felt so incredibly glad that the plant was with me, that it was here in this temporary rental apartment I am staying in for now. There was something about the intense Reality of the Plant and my Love For the Plant that was totally important and cogent.
To be honest, I cannot explain or conceptualize the importance, at that moment, of my experience with that plant. Nor can I explain or conceptualize the importance, at any given moment, of the people, things, and aesthetic details that help me bring my own creative products into the world.
My dissertation proposal (and the research project it outlines) is a piece of work developed and supported by countless hours of listening to music, reading poetry, watching films, and spending time with my husband, my friends and my clients in deep human engagement. It also grew out of the many tangential and accidental encounters with all of my neighborhood acquaintances and the unknown strangers that I have noticed crossing my path. It grew directly out of the curtains in my bedroom, the plants in my house, my backyard, my kitchen, and now this boring rental apartment that--luckily--includes my precious plants. Moreover, it grew out of everything I have lived in my life until now...all the different sunlights I have ever seen and gotten to know, the different airs I have breathed, etcetera, etcetera.
Back when I used to be creatively impaired (read: clinically depressed), I had the problem that the world would come into me in the very way my plant did, rushing in, inseminating me, somehow insinuating something in feeling that I couldn't quite grasp intellectually. Instead of bringing the world's feeling-children into being via some kind of creative work, I would let them fester like little tumors. The world-feeling would go sour in me, get stuck in there, and then eventually come out in little puss-oozing sores that smelled bad and were really aesthetically displeasing...and frightening. I felt then that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow "too sensitive" and that I would never be able to bear the way the world affected me.
It turns out I was wrong, but the only way for me to bear the world is to listen to it, to experience it fully, and to experience it by letting it create through me. That's not quite right.
Really, the situation is that in the creating, there is neither a "me" nor "the world". In the creating there is only the becoming...which is a radically sentient and material event--listening to the feeling of being and letting it take over in the production of sentient and material circumstances.
One of the things I'm noticing as I'm in conversation with you and non-blog others is how little interest I have in "art" or "fashion" or "design". I mean, I read some magazines like Domino and Allure and I read some blogs like If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, bad banana blog, Design*Sponge, and Grassrootsmodern, but these are mostly for inspiration and light reading. I too, seek to be pretty (or at least 'put-together') and am not invested really in participating in the world of aesthetic professionals. Whatever aesthetic production I am interested in participating in personally I am mostly interested in for my own enjoyment and edification (although I hope to write interesting books about psychology one day, and I consider psychotherapy to be a performing art/performance art)...
On a day to day basis, though, I am inherently attuned to the aesthetics of situations. This does not necessarily mean decorating everything just so or buying art or even arranging my architectural experiences such that I have fabulous views all the time. It does mean that I feel the situations I'm in pretty acutely.
In fact, the feeling of situations is foundational in my creative actions, academic or otherwise. For example: The other day I was working on my dissertation proposal and had a moment when I was working through a complex concept and didn't quite have the words for it. Anyone who writes has experiences like this--working through the process of bringing something into words. It's a curious experience--where do the words come from, anyway?
As part of the writing/thinking process, I paused from actively writing while still totally engaged with the work. In a matter of seconds, I found myself completely taken with the beauty of one of my plants; swimming in it, overtaken by it. While there was no direct relation between my dissertation work and my plant, somehow gazing at it was part of this creative process. I felt so incredibly glad that the plant was with me, that it was here in this temporary rental apartment I am staying in for now. There was something about the intense Reality of the Plant and my Love For the Plant that was totally important and cogent.
To be honest, I cannot explain or conceptualize the importance, at that moment, of my experience with that plant. Nor can I explain or conceptualize the importance, at any given moment, of the people, things, and aesthetic details that help me bring my own creative products into the world.
My dissertation proposal (and the research project it outlines) is a piece of work developed and supported by countless hours of listening to music, reading poetry, watching films, and spending time with my husband, my friends and my clients in deep human engagement. It also grew out of the many tangential and accidental encounters with all of my neighborhood acquaintances and the unknown strangers that I have noticed crossing my path. It grew directly out of the curtains in my bedroom, the plants in my house, my backyard, my kitchen, and now this boring rental apartment that--luckily--includes my precious plants. Moreover, it grew out of everything I have lived in my life until now...all the different sunlights I have ever seen and gotten to know, the different airs I have breathed, etcetera, etcetera.
Back when I used to be creatively impaired (read: clinically depressed), I had the problem that the world would come into me in the very way my plant did, rushing in, inseminating me, somehow insinuating something in feeling that I couldn't quite grasp intellectually. Instead of bringing the world's feeling-children into being via some kind of creative work, I would let them fester like little tumors. The world-feeling would go sour in me, get stuck in there, and then eventually come out in little puss-oozing sores that smelled bad and were really aesthetically displeasing...and frightening. I felt then that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow "too sensitive" and that I would never be able to bear the way the world affected me.
It turns out I was wrong, but the only way for me to bear the world is to listen to it, to experience it fully, and to experience it by letting it create through me. That's not quite right.
Really, the situation is that in the creating, there is neither a "me" nor "the world". In the creating there is only the becoming...which is a radically sentient and material event--listening to the feeling of being and letting it take over in the production of sentient and material circumstances.
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