Friday, June 13, 2003

 
Memories: "When the bed creaked beneath us, it sounded like the liebestod from Tristan and Isolde (sic) performed with vehemence by a military band" (118). Moreover, you "made me come with the barbarous dexterity of a huntsman eviscerating a stag" (127). Or fantasies of memories from Angela Carter's "Elegy for a Freelance" in Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (New York: Penguin Books, 1974)?
posted by Open Mouth 5:13 PM

 
Since I may end up on an island for 8 consecutive months, I've been thinking more about islands. One of my friends wants to visit every little island in New York City proper: not just Staten and Roosevelt, but Ward's, Randall's, City. Across from City Island is Hart Island, property of the city's (little c) Department of Corrections. Bought by the city in 1868 to be a potter's field (cemetary for the unclaimed and poor dead), maintained by inmates, the island also is home to an abandoned Cold War missle site. "The realization that these two unrelated institutions--one, the product of war, the other, the product of charity--both coexist on the same lonely piece of New York real estate always gives me pause" (Michael Miscione in City Secrets: New York City, edited by Robert Kahn [New York: The Little Bookroom, 2002] 423).
posted by Open Mouth 2:13 PM

Thursday, June 12, 2003

 
"This book isn't about the past. I'm looking for the suggestion...of something I've never seen" (13, italics in original).



Diana Vreeland, in collaboration with Christopher Hemphill, collages photo spreads and snippets of recorded mouth-offs into Allure (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc.: 1988). Montage is the ultimate fashion technique, as an amalgamation of discretely different objects cobble together a style, a visual statement of the body. "She spoke to people because she loved to speak her language and say what she wanted to say in the way she wanted to say it. And everyone was her audience because the language was so beautiful" (102).



In a conversation with an interviewer, worrying about good taste: " 'That's part of the problem--the worry, the eternal worry. Lots of people have terrible taste, you know, and make a damn good living off of it' " (203, italics in original). But what of grace and elegance? " 'Elegance,' I said, 'is refusal' " (203).
posted by Open Mouth 11:25 PM