Away Message

Hiya Chrysalis Crew,
I'm writing a few hours before I depart for London to hawk red lipstick on television. Many of you know of my deep, abiding love for those creamy, crimson crayons. I've been wearing the stuff since I was just old enough not to look like a Denver version of Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver. I used to wear it with dance tights and sweat pants when I first moved to New York. Now I wear it in the daytime with flip flops and hoop earrings. I leave it, like a signature, on the rims of glasses, on linen napkins and smeared at the bottom of cheap purses. All I have to do is convince fifty thousand British women that they, too, can experience the surge of confidence and perplexing blend of retro and modern glamour that comes from leaving your lip print on the rim of a coffee cup. Easy. easy. easy.

Before I go I want to honor the month of April 2008 (the official anniversary of the best music year of my life) with a few links 'n' notes about what I'm taking with me and looking forward to upon my return. Now, I'm nobody's music blogger. I'm not a cutting-edge insider, music geek or go-to trendwatcher. But in April of last year I was in a dank apartment in Nantes with my brother doing one of those music-share marathons ("okay, now you go", "oh my God, I HAVE to play you this!", "where can I find that?") and it shaped my entire year. As I finish packing today I'm thinking of that gray, salty Nantes afternoon and am feeling a similar excitment about the coming summer of music and all the memories waiting to be made to its soundtrack. This post is my 2008 music-share. Some new, some older. From my dank New York apartment to you, with love.

Lest you should think there is any formality to this list, see disclaimers below:

1.) I totally know that some of these selections are not from 2008.
2.) I totally know that some of these albums have been out for awhile.
3.) I totally know that many of these bands have like, 3-5 albums out and that this is not their "pivotal" album nor have I "discovered" anything.

Alright, with all that business out of the way, let's delve.

The following accompanies me over the Atlantic:
-Elvis Perkins, Ash Wednesday
*a stunningly heartfelt, lyrical gem with some of the most complex singer-songwriter melodies I've heard.
**Standouts: All the Night Without Love, While You Were Sleeping, Sleep Sandwich, Good Friday.

-Blue Scholars, Bayani
*rich, intelligent Seattle-based indie-hop with memorable hooks and everyman quality.
**Standouts: Opening Salvo, North by Northwest, Still Got Love.

-Balkan Beat Box, Balkan Beat Box :
*sweet world dance with gypsy vibe and sexy, trippy vocals accompanied by mindblowing horns.
**Standouts: Bulgarian Chicks, Shushan, Hassan, 9/4 Ladies.

-Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago:
*heartachingly gentle falsetto vocals layered over acoustic and percussion with lyrics of love and loss.
**Standouts: Skinny Love, Flume, The Wolves (Act I and II).

-M.I.A., Kala
*bracing, ass-kicking Sri Lankan (via London) lady-rap with insane production.
**Standouts: Bamboo Banga, Paper Planes, XR2.


What Sends Me Back Home:
-Gogol Bordello, live, McCarren Pool, June 20. If you haven't seen them live, you're missing a piece of the human experience.
-Elbow releases The Seldom Seen Kid, April 22nd. How can they get better?
-Firewater (the best travel music ever) releases The Golden Hour in April and plays The Bowery May 26.
-The Black Keys have released Attack and Release. Just good. Just period.
-The Raconteurs have released Consolers of the Lonely. Richer, deeper, more complex.
-Ghostland Observatory has released Robotique Majestique. Insane techno-glam-rock with a frontman to rival Mick Jagger.

Okay, now you go...

Size 142

It's beautiful in New York today. It's finally the April we've been yearning for: crystalline, warm and glistening with spring's familiar clarity of purpose.

As the weather shifts I launch into my quarterly practice of trying to make seasonally inappropriate clothing thrive out of their element. In that weird post-winter, pre-spring transition period for instance, I often try to make flip flops work as regular shoes even though the chill April wind cuts across my bare toes like swift swipes with a shard of glass. I'm also guilty of wearing slinky summer dresses with a pair of tights in mid-winter, justifying them sheepishly with a scarf and blazer in hopes no one will remember they saw me in the same dress at a barbeque in July.

Today I'm especially uncomfortable. I walked out of the house in my cheap Target chain link print summer dress made smarter (I thought, at 7:30 a.m.) topped by a velvet blazer. But the dress is flimsy and too big on top and I made it work with a mini safety pin covered in cat hair that I found in a jewelry bowl on my dresser. As I walked to the subway holding the bottom part of the dress closed against the wind, my mother's words came at me from the recesses of a Penney's fitting room when I was 10: "ill-fitting", "unbecoming", "pulling around your middle". I've spent the morning tugging the front of the chain link dress closed, pulling at my boot tops to meet its hem, buttoning and unbuttoning my blazer. And the simple truth is it doesn't fit. It doesn't matter how expertly I hid my mini pin, my bra is still nearly in full view when I sit at my desk, which further confirms my image as part-time office worker/summer intern at a brothel.

It's all got me thinking about trying to make things fit when they don't. I'm doing that outside my closet too.

As part of the "chrysalis curriculum", we've decided it's time to move. Now, I'm not going to bore you with tales of rental woe, broker shenanigans or apartment atrocities. It's pretty obvious that moving in New York is no joke. The entire cosmos has to be in line (as does your bank statement, w-2, employment history and at least 6 months' worth of pay stubs) in order to even begin the search. But I'm finding that the desperate need I feel to keep my hot summer moments in heart and hand by walking around in a sundress in December is similar to the desperation that has me trying to make our perfect apartment out of what is very often just a mini bar with a bathroom. It's a stick of dynamite created by two polar opposites: needing to move forward and wanting to hold on.

The clawing insanity that accompanies hours spent on Craigslist browsing listings intensifies, hour by hour, making each and every little ridiculous blue link look more and more possible. "One bedroom studio". Okay, what is that? If it has a room, it sounds like it could work. A "one bedroom studio". Sounds painterly. Sounds artistic. Done. It's our apartment. "New walk-in apartment". You can walk in it? Well, thank God. That's what we want! To be able to walk in it. Done. It's our apartment.

And on I go, just like that, trying to make things fit. Pulling, tugging, hiking. Convertible 2 room? Junior 1 bedroom but on the Upper East Side? Bushwick? Flatbush? Give it to me, lemme see it, wrap it around me, try to fit us inside it, inside the neighborhood, bedroom, bathroom. Make us, it. Pretty soon, I think, I'm gonna realize I can put it on and zip it up but I might not be able to breathe in it. And that's not progress, that's just a filmsy chain link dress on a chilly April day.

So there's this little red building at 142 Franklin Street in Greenpoint. We're kinda hoping for it. We don't know enough about it yet. It might be a chain link dress, it might be a fuckin' Versace. Either way, this post is my vow not to pull and tug so hard but to instead a.) wear seasonally appropriate shoes and b.) shop around, look for the best fit, then move ahead.

Look Out, You Rock-n-Rollers

Oh, Ziggy Stardust, inhabit me! I need a new persona. I need a rock and roll genie, a lean and lanky British God with jagged teeth and two mismatched marbles for eyes to sweep me up in a twisted tulle tornado and ch-ch-ch-ch-change me. In my fantasy, I'll rocket past dusk in a polished, hollow, shining bullet loaded with gleaming pastel potions, be made over by a drunk transvestite in platforms and return to Madison Avenue at sunrise to wander the streets in a vinyl raincoat -- a newer, more certain version of myself.

When one reaches a particular level of gerbil-wheel-turning madness, regardless of effort toward personal evolution, career progress or just plain forward movement without desired result, one must do something to push change from concept into reality. And at this point, I'm no longer referring to the kind of change that comes from an hour spent wandering the "Self Help" section of Borders, a pilates session, two pieces of expensive dark chocolate or three hours binge drinking at a place called Crime Scene Pub. No, I'm talking like, transformative change. The kind of change rock and roll genies write songs about. The thing is, sometimes all the "change" talk just becomes overwhelming in the abstract. It needs a physical manifestation. It needs a model.

Enter David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy's my pilot. Periodically, I have to pull him out, dust him off and slip into his blazing, manic-tron glory for a moment. He's the perfect icon for right this minute; for all this stagnant dust I need to blow off and turn into glitter. He's gonna represent my new philosophy: if you don't feel it, fucking paint it on.

I'm now working from the outside, in. Spackle up the exterior, put a brave face on, make myself look like the change I want to feel. I'm gonna airbrush every bit of doubt out of the creases of my face and polish up my platforms. Time to step it up a bit and build a beautiful beast who can go out there and do all my singing.

In honor of Ziggy, we'll start with the hair. I'm gonna make myself a redhead tonight. Well, really, Lana, my militant Russian hairdresser is going to make me a redhead. Let's see if a little fire on the head sparks a little fire in the heart. I need to see some change. I'll begin outside, head blazing, and see if I can start a wildfire.

"Just gonna have to be a different (wo)man". -- DB/ZS