Post 180: Wherein I Arrange Your ARTS

Lots of things happened since November 15th.

- I moved
- I got acquainted with my new job

...being the two big ones. I have been slowly unpacking my very visible boxed and bagged goods into my mouse-hole of a room. I now live in an old doll factory; my bedroom has no windows, so I sleep a lot when I sleep. But I've been managing to make it comfortable, I think (and by this I mean "cluttered in the way that I like"). But still -- still. Moving and jobbing are no excuse to not continue with my palatable list of ARTS -- attend, read, think, see. Did you know that some have called ARTS the best thing on the internet? Some have been right.

Attend:

• Cellist Valerie Kuehne at Small Beast, a weekly cabaret curated by singer/pianist Paul Wallfisch at the Delancey. You should know Valerie from her performance with Brett Saxon at At-Large's reading a few months back. Several of you commented to me about how you got an instacrush on Valerie and her dread-flinging. How is that not a reason to go? That's tomorrow, December 14th.
• Projection: A Reading Series, curated by Zachary Pace at Center for Performance Research, "features text projected beside the reader to produce a unique sonic and visual experience of the literary arts." Nick Flynn, Jason Schneiderman, Diego Baez, and Joseph Fasano will read on Wednesday, December 16th. I like the CPR; we had some rehearsals there for Autumn's piece right before the &Now Conference. It's in the lower level of Brooklyn's first LEED-certified residential building, the Greenbelt.
  
• Jason Helm at Literary Death Match. J. Helm read an exuberantly filthy piece at Bushwick Reading Series this past weekend -- at the reading with Franklin Bruno, Farrah Field, and Joanna Penn Cooper. If you missed him, here is your chance to renew your interest in good fiction. Thursday, December 17th at Bowery Poetry Club -- and it's free, y'all, so don't go fussing about how you don't have any cashmoney millions.

Read:

• Dude, read Cintra Wilson's Colors Insulting to Nature. This book has been recommended to me multiple times, but the extremely rocknroll Eve Bates brought me a copy of it to consume last week. This is the best book ever. Yes, it's that good. It's funny, like you wish you were. It's poignant, but not unbelievably. Wilson's prose is perfect for train rides, long stationary waits outside a door that you're hoping will open sometime in the next six hours, and laying in a bed you should unclutter or at least cover with a sheet, etc etc. I'm not sure why it didn't make a bigger splash when it jumped into the pool of fiction, because like an overly fat aunt drunk on Buttery Nipples, this book has both the bulk and personality.
  
• Like a strange bird on a warm day, Nicolle Elizabeth has landed on anderbo.com; you should get on that, if you didn't already.
• If you're into niche perfumers, and even if you're not, Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume gave a really interesting interview last year at Basenotes. Apparently he is a synesthete, and that makes smells tangible for him.
  

Think:

• Think hard about New Year's resolutions. Why do we make them? What is the appeal of making spur-of-the-moment promises, in a drunken furor, that will probably go unfulfilled? It would be best to begin thinking of it before the stupor, the malaise of the holidays, really sets in. I think making a plan would be best. I don't know about successful resolutions, as I've never made one. I wonder what kind would be easiest. It's impossible to attempt a total overhaul, but maybe something simple, with an expiration date (organize my closet by 1/15/2010) or something gently longterm (finish Infinite Jest by the end of September).
  

See:

• The video for Video Phone, by Beyonce, featuring Lady Gaga. Ok, the song itself is kind of not B's greatest, but the video is super interesting to watch for "the gaze" and the way they ironically and non-ironically play with it. Also, the men with camera heads are nightmare-inducing. But overall it makes me think of this:
• Beehived Finnish bombshell Laila Kinnunen's funny, theatrical version of "Hernando's Hideaway," from 1967. She acknowledges the idea of being watched, both on video and in the song lyrics, and she punctuates the song with appearances and non-appearances. This is a strangely modern take on the music video and yeah it's from the 60s.