Behind the Curtain

The Pied Piper (Part 2)

While I'm away, I've asked some friends of mine to do guest posts. Here is Part 2 Carolee's, post. You can find Part 1 here.

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"You will begin to notice an enhancement of your natural abilities. Your intuition will increase. You will begin to notice the divine occurring around you, in a thousand minuscule ways, constantly. All the time. And those minute details will lead to other more significant observations, and so on. Ad infinitum. Until your entire universe is transformed forever."
   - Octavio Coleman, from the Induction video, The Jejune Institute 

Mysterious street art in San Francisco

When you've lost your ability to believe in fairy tales and the tooth fairy, and when facts are just a finger's touch away, life can start to seem a little stale. Perhaps the answer is a transfusion of mystery, a little confusion, or a dose of curiosity. Manufacturing a little uncertainty in the lives of others can be tremendously energizing for you, as well. This can be as easy as the simplest of actions: writing things on the pavement in chalk; leaving small bits of art hanging from trees or tacked to walls; or even tucking notes into the knotholes of trees. I always think of the artist Lynda Barry describing how she would leave piles of pennies around in places where neighborhood kids would play, because she remembered the thrill of finding something like that when she was a child. 

More elaborately, I've recently been engaged in some collaboration with a  faux stamp-collecting group; together, we create "tours" of strange places and create stories about workaday locales, inviting people to break off from their regular routines and explore an alternate version of ordinary places. I can't tell you how exciting it is to have an excuse to, say, hide an object so well in the landscape that a person would only find it if he or she knew exactly where to look. Or to string little jewels along an out-of-the-way path so that players and neighbors alike can look up and think "who did this? was it just to make me happy?" 

The answer, of course, is yes. But it makes me happy, too. Very much so.

This year, in January, the tables were turned on me. On a weekly basis, in the two or three months leading up to my birthday, my husband would say "I'm going to be gone this afternoon, can I have the scooter?" and when I'd query, "What are you going to do?" he'd say "never you mind."  I'd catch him lost in thought or taking notes, and I suspect now he was working out the details of what was to become my birthday present.

On that day, I waited as instructed, having blocked off the afternoon, and soon received a message telling me to inspect the underside of the "saddle" of my "new red horse," which I took to mean I should look under the seat of the scooter parked out front. There I found a typed list of clues and instructions, and I realized I'd be going on my own scavenger hunt. 

Now, my husband likes games, but not this type of game, and he's never been much interested in my little forays beyond the fact that they seemed to make me happy. And he'd never (ever) done anything quite like this. This was a real stretch, and what an elastic one it turned out to be. I rode the scooter to the first location, having no idea what lay before me, and spent the entire day in building lobbies admiring bizarre sculpture, finding clues in views, learning the cobbled corners and winding byways of my adopted city, and delving into the half-real, half-imagined world of "John B. Montgomery", a ship's captain, courtesy of my husband's adopted identity for the day, "John B. Jr. Jr."

I met a man who operates a display-window-deep bookstore. He was in on it. I visited the fifteenth-floor roof garden of a skyscraper and found a note taped to the underside of a table. I entered a Bohemian restaurant and was eyed amusedly by the two young bartenders pulling pints (they were in on it; one gave me a rose, even though it wasn't in the plans). I wandered and got lost and got stuck...and, at the end, I found my mind completely transformed by the experience, strikingly similar to the way I'd felt at the end of my first visit to The Jejune Institute. I genuinely felt--even though another part of my mind knew it couldn't possibly be true--that the city, somehow, was conspiring to create magic for me. As though the city--its uneven pavement and mislaid street markers and odd bits of detritus--wanted me to enjoy it.

 

I had unearthed my last clue and discovered instructions to meet John B. Jr. Jr. at The Pied Piper bar (apropos, no?), and as I turned to my left and was heading toward a busy streetcorner, I heard the faint strains of music slowly growing louder. On the approaching corner, as I watched, three individuals wearing Guy Fawkes masks crossed at the crosswalk. One was carrying a boom box. Two were carrying posters. For just the barest moment, I honestly thought they were in on it. The magic had suffused me that much. After overcoming my awe and confusion (and coming to my senses), talking to them for a few minutes (and giving them my rose), I learned that they were Chanologists (a group that protests at Scientology locations) doing their usual slot at the Scientology center. They were the nicest people, on their own schedules--though one of them gave me a friendly hug when I offered up my rose--but to this day, a small part of me still believes they were crossing that street, at that time, just for me. That's what a little significance will do for a person.

 

more links:
jejuneinstitute.org
theinstitutemovie.com
low-commitment projects.com
http://tinyurl.com/gfwilkinson

The Pied Piper (Part 1)

While I'm away, I've asked some friends of mine to do guest posts on here. Today and Thursday are posts from Carolee Wheeler, the co-author of Good Mail Day. Carolee is absolutely an awesome person and artist who is a constant spark of inspiration for me. Donovan & I have the extreme good fortune to be working with Carolee on a project we hope to release next month. Enough of my gushing, here is part 1 of Carolee's guest post.

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"The question is not what you look at, but what you see, Thoreau writes in his journal. [Joseph] Cornell speaks of being plunged into [a] world of complete happiness in which every triviality becomes imbued with significance...."
   - Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell

Photo credit: everfalling

Three years ago, my universe was transformed forever, in ways I didn't fully understand at the time. I had been given the address of a mysterious place called the Jejune Institute, and told to visit at my earliest opportunity. After some initial trepidation, which was then assuaged by that crowdsourced enabler, Yelp, I called off work and headed downtown. The address led to an imposing and intimidatingly tall office building. I rode the elevator to the sixteenth floor, and gave my name to the receptionist. In turn, she gave me a key to a locked door.

Do you want to run away already? Do you want to stop reading, right now? I wouldn't blame you if you did. That paragraph is fraught with uncertainty. Where am I going with this? Am I going to tell you about my conversion to Breatharianism or ask you to touch my aura? It's almost as strange, and I mean that sincerely, because the only way I can describe what happened after that is to say it changed my life.

I had stepped over the threshhold of that room (and through a trapdoor, which led to a secret bookcase, which transformed into time craft…) into something called an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). 

Now, I'm not a "gamer". I would even go so far as to say I don't like games. But this experience--finding secret messages on physical objects secured to the undersides of statues and innocuously stenciled on telephone poles--awakened me to the idea that I had not been fully living my life. That I had been on autopilot. That I had figured I knew all there was to know about my surroundings. I know that light means go and that one means stop. I'm pretty secure in the fact that inside that warehouse, they're just building furniture. I can recognize harmless things and dangerous things mostly just by looking at them. Right? 

 

So wrong. The experience I had that day, looking for clues and finding answers, and the parallel experience of realizing that a real person (or, in fact, a group of people) had created this experience just for my enjoyment, just slayed me. Naturally, I later discovered that ARGs are created for all kinds of reasons, including to convince you to see a movie or buy some gum (or even, in Japan, eat at McDonald's), but the idea that the creator of the Jejune Institute might just want me to stop being a boring old robot affected me, in a profound and enduring manner.

It took a couple more years from that point forward, but I finally got the message, which I understood to be: If you want people to have a more engaged, more curious, more joy-filled interaction with their surroundings, you might have to give them a reason to feel that way. 

We humans now feel that we have all the answers, at our fingertips, and as a result can suffer from a deficiency of wonder. Like a vitamin supplement, we may need an infusion of puzzlement.

(continued Thursday...)

Typewriter Erotica

While I'm away, I've asked some friends of mine to do guest posts on here. Today's post is by Donovan Beeson who is the other half of the two-headed giant that is 16 Sparrows. Donovan got to write her own introduction, probably due to a technical error on her part. She is obsessed with sending and receiving mail, office supplies, cabinets of curiousity, and having too much to do. She would love to be a typewriter repairman.

This post contains ladies in various states of undress (oh my, ankles, and then a lot more), so it is NSFW.

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I own a great number of typewriters. Even the broken ones still look nice on display. I made one into a Christmas tree this year. There's something intensely satisfying about their design, something decidedly sexy about those shiny paint jobs, those glass-topped keys. It doesn't suprise me that in the following photos, I'm more interested in trying to figure out the make of the machine. I can't imagine any of the following photos with word processors or computers in them, can you? These images all come from the Typewriter Museum and were found on Boing Boing. Enjoy!

{I believe the little dangling thing attached to the Royal is an eraser.}

1920s Lingerie in Boardwalk Empire

While I'm away, I've asked some friends of mine to do guest posts on here. Today's post is by Elide Endreson who is the skilled creator and owner of Previously. Elide made my wedding garters, my custom hankies, and many of her other designs grace my legs most days of the year. She does an immense amount of research when creating her designs, so I asked her to bestow some of her knowledge onto us.

This post contains ladies in lingerie, so it may be NSFW, depending where you work.

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Clockwise from left: Margaret, Ep. 5; Lucy, Ep. 2; Gillilan, Ep. 9; Four Deuces Prostitute Ep. 8

After almost two years of hearing about the 1920s costumes on Season One of Boardwalk Empire, I was finally able to watch it for myself when it came out on DVD. As a fan of 1920s lingerie, it did not disappoint. I really enjoyed how the arc of the characters could be seen in their clothing. Unfortunately, the lingerie doesn’t get much screen time and it’s difficult to see details during the episodes. So I found myself looking for examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Collection of 1920s chemises, teddies and ‘step-ins’. Although not all the pieces I found in the collection were dated 1920 (some were dated a few years later) it does give a better sense of the craftsmanship of the era.

Margaret, Ep. 3

Early in the season we see Margaret in her plain bloomers and chemise. She could not have afforded the silky pieces seen on the other characters. I like that her lingerie is clearly a hold over from the previous decade.

Brassier, 1915-20

Madame Jeunet at Belle Femme, Top: Ep. 5 Bottom: Ep. 9

The scenes in Belle Femme were also noteworthy as they carried a lot of pretty underpinnings. I particularly liked seeing the stacked boxes of stockings in the glass display case!

[Left] Silk Chemise, 1920s; [Right] Silk Teddy, 1920s

Lucy at Belle Femme, Ep. 3

Lucy, who has the best lingerie wardrobe of all, frequents Belle Femme. This dialog pretty much sums it up:

Lucy: “Why does anybody buy underwear?”

Mme Jeunet: “Some women wish to hide. Others wish to reveal.”

Lucy: “Well I want it in lights. Something vampy. And sheer.”

[Left] Silk Teddy, 1920s; [Right] Silk Chemise, 1920s

Pearl at the Four Deuces, a brothel in Chicago, episode 4.

Silk Brassier, 1920s Silk Tap Pants, 1920s

More ladies from the Four Deuces, left Episode 6; right Episode 8. Most of the women in these scenes rolled their stockings.

Silk Lingerie with Cotton Lace, 1920s

Episode 6

One of the few examples of garters in Season One, at a brothel in Atlantic City. Although difficult to see in the above image, her stockings are rolled above the garters.

Silk Garters, 1920s

Havering Quine

© NRM Pictorial Collection - Science and Society Picture Library
These posters celebrating the Coronation Scot are in a special exhibition "See Scotland by Train" at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, until June 24 2012

Tomorrow I jet off to my honeymoon in Scotland. I think I quite prefer this whole delayed honeymoon thing; I doubt I would have been able to plan a wedding and honeymoon at the same time while keeping all my marbles.

While I'm away,  I have three very lovely ladies writing some guest posts: Donovan Beeson, Carolee Wheeler, and Elide Enderson. They have some pretty awesome posts lined up, so I hope you enjoy their words while I am gallivanting around the Highlands.

For now, I leave you with a fun little "Soundy" of Martha Tilton singing "Loch Lomond."

“Loch Lomond” (1941) – Martha Tilton.

Soundies were an early version of the music video: three-minute musical films, produced in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood between 1940 and 1946, often including short dance sequences. The films were displayed on the Panoram, a coin-operated film jukebox or machine music, in nightclubs, bars, restaurants, factory lounges, and amusement centers.
- Wikipedia via Retronaut

 

Three Books

We leave on our Scottish honeymoon in three days.Three days! Eeep!

We already know where we'll be and have an idea of the sights we want to see. With most of that in order I've been fretting on what to pack. My friends have been helping me on some aspects of this. Such as reading material for the long long flight.

Kateri drew my attention to the publisher Melville House, who have a series of novellas (Art of the Novella) and as well as a series of overlooked novels (The Neversink Library). I got a couple of books from both series. For the trip/flights/train rides I picked-up Lady Susan from Jane Austen and After Midnight by Irmgard Keun, both of which I'll report back on when I finish them. I also purchased the ebook of May Day (F Scott Fitzgerald) and preordered The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, which I'll most likely get to sometime this summer.

But, the book I'm most excited about is one that is completely blank.

The amazing Carolee handmade a journal especially for my honeymoon and I am completely overjoyed at how it turned out. The inside pages are a dream to write on with my fountain pens and the cover is a lovely mix of linen and leather. The best part though is the end papers...

Look at the awesome pattern! I love the split-pea soup green of the background too. Super sigh. I'm excited to start writing in it, but I'm holding off until I am at least on the plane to Scotland. It's been hard to hold back though.

War Workers

"Women working in factory, Newcastle" (1918) Sir John Lavery
(From British Artists at the Front, Continuation of The Western Front)

When I first started reading E.M. Delafield's The War Workers (1918) I thought I was in for a boring character study, but I was very wrong. I went into this story blind, as I could not find any plot descriptions or reviews on the story, but I decided to take a chance on it since I enjoyed Delafield's other work.

Set during WWI, this story focuses on a group of women all employed at the same war office. There are class differences and personality differences, but it never comes off as a class struggle or catty. You are given a glimpse into the lives of a group of people for a series of time, leaving them after some events unfold, their lives changed, but not drastically so. The pace of the story reminded me a little bit of The Fortnight in September, or Greenbanks, but it has more events, more changes that occur to the characters that makes it more engaging.

"Shell making, Edinburgh" Sir John Lavery (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

This short book was enjoyable to read and the characters are built in a way that you get sucked into their lives. I found myself rooting for certain people/relationships, which is something that is rare for me to do in a book.

The scenes that take place in the hostel between the group of war workers, especially the domestic scene on their Sunday off, was lovely and picturesque to read. I was a bit sad to finish the book because the group of women Delafield created was so fun to include myself in, even though they were in a war. The camaraderie of the women during this time was awesome to read about and get lost in. Even if you could care less about war stories or home front stories, I think you'd find this book enjoyable because it is mainly about the people rather than the situation they are in.

 

Light Headed

This past weekend I sat myself down in a salon and got a little over 10" of my hair cut-off. I was so freaking excited to finally be able to cut it. See, I only ever grow my hair long so that I can donate it. Other than that, I prefer short hair on myself.

I'm donating the cut hair to Beautiful Lengths, which is where I donated to last time I cut off this much hair (in 2009). Back then I also dyed my hair red, but I discovered shortly afterward that I've developed an allergy to hair dyes. So, no more drastic color changes for me!

I really love the hair cut I got this time and think I'll be keeping it short for a while. I got the cut done at a new salon in my neighborhood called Pin Curls. Although they specialize in vintage cuts and styles, they also do a damn good job at contemporary cuts. I don't bring in photos when I get my hair cut; I find that the stylist tries to mimic the cut exactly rather than making it fit my face. So, I went in there with an idea and the owner had her suggestions on how to make it more flattering, which is what we went with.

I am absolutely tickled pink with how it turned out. If you are in the area, let me know if you want to get a cut there - she gave me two $20 off coupons and I'd be happy to mail one to you. (Two of my fellow library workers pounced on these!) Totally not a paid endorsement, I think they are using these coupons to get the word out about them, which I'm happy to do for a cut well done. A good stylist is really hard to find.

If you are interested in making the cut and donating, here are a few organizations that accept donations:
Wigs for Kids
St. Baldrick's
Locks of Love
Pantene Beautiful Lengths 

Tongolele's Maracas

Tongolele c.1950, via vintagegal

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo (which is this weekend), here is a clip of Tongolele, burlesque dancer and actress of the Cinema of Mexico. I'm unsure what film this clip is from, so if you know, please comment with the title.

Happy celebrating this weekend!

Bouquet

I'm not sure what led me to pick-up Bouquet by G. B. Sterns, which recounts her 1926 tour through the vineyards and restaurants of France. Perhaps it was the promise of an adventure, or the fact that it was set in the 20s, but I quickly realized that I was not the target audience for this book.

Stern's traveling companions are her husband Johnny, and married friends Rosemary and Humphrey, who are interesting and realistic traveling companions indeed. The relationship between these companions as well as Stern's lovely language and description of moments and places is the only thing that made me keep reading. I know this sounds weird - isn't the author's prose and experience what you read a story for. Yes, except for when the story gets extremely detailed on a drink the reader (me) could care less about: wine.

I confess, I do not like wine. I'm sorry. I can't drink many wines due to an allergic reaction I get, so I've just cut them out entirely. To dull the pain from this poor relationship, I cuddle up with beer and whiskey - not a bad trade off, really. But back to Stern's book...

Since I do not drink wine, many of the character notes, arguments, and climactic moments in the book held little interest for me. If you love wine or want to know more about wine, pick this book up. If you could care less about wine, but love travel stories, pick up this book. If you care for neither, I would have to say leave this one be and read another title from Stern.

That being said - what I really enjoyed about Bouquet, besides the amazing scenic descriptions, was how Stern does not shy away from detailing the bad aspects of travel. The couples get in fights, they check into bad hotels, their car breaks down - she speaks of it all and I love her for that. There is nothing worse than a travel story that glosses over the bad that comes with the good. We all know travel cannot be 100% cream and roses. You get sick, tired, fussy - it happens to the best of us. Coming from Stern, these moments become funny and normalized. They make you feel like less of an asshole for when you find yourself in similar situations in "idyllic locals."

In reading this book I fell in love with Stern's writing and I will definitely be giving her other books a read. I've heard good things about Ten Days of Christmas, which I think would be a good book to read over the holidays. Now to find a copy in one of my libraries...