Bye Bye, Chelsea

“The Chelsea hotel in New York is closing” is a rattling headline which I compare to “The Sky Is Falling”, because isn’t it? This is the news I woke up to this morning (this mourning). I’m twenty three years old, and the 60s/70s is all but a ghost era to me, but one which I can summon by simply putting on a Janis Joplin record or reading an Allen Ginsberg poem or looking at a Diane Arbus photograph. There are certainly ways to connect with this time of free love and expression, and one of those ways was to stay at the Chelsea Hotel.

I visited the Chelsea Hotel for the first time last december, which soothed my fascination, or rather – was a fix to my addiction. Being a fan of Patti Smith for years, it was inevitable that I would understand the colossal greatness of the hotel just as she did. This is where she got her start, this is where she lived, loved, and created. The hallways and stairways were a ghostly heaven. The walls plastered in art and images, the floor boards worn down with history. It was a tomb of greatness that I could hardly even bare. I imagined Grace Slick walking cooly past me, in a sleeping gown, humming White Rabbit. I could picture a young Patti and Robert Maplethorp stumbling down the stairs, full of youth and laughter and burning with ambition. In my mind, all of the artists and musicians and writers whom had once lived within these walls were just behind every door, quietly creating, and most certainly alive. In the lobby I felt dizzy with the notion of who had walked through these doors: Allen Ginsberg, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and Nico, Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, and of course (at this thought, I had to sit down) Janis Joplin. It was a full-circle experience, and I will never forget the energy coursing through that hotel and channelling into me.

I was planning on going back and staying there for a few days this September, just a month from now. I’m completely crushed that the Chelsea Hotel is no longer.

Video + Quote: Suheir Hammad

“I will not dance to your war drum, I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum, I will not dance to that beat, I know that beat, it is lifeless, I know intimately that skin you are hitting it was alive once, hunted, stolen, stretched. I will not dance to your drummed-up-war, I will not pop, spin, break for you, I will not hate for you or even hate you, I will not kill for you. especially, I will not die for you, I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide, I will not side with you or dance to bombs because everyone is dancing… everyone can be wrong. life is a right, not collateral, or casual.”

Simply beyond.

Exhibit: Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand

Showing at The Met in New York City, this exhibit displayed life works by photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, all of which were American photographers active from 1860 to the late 1970s. My focus was set on pieces from Stieglitz’s composite portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe, I appreciate his obsession as well as his perfection.

Later that day, I was beyond thrilled when we by-chance walked into a room full of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. I’ve been long time enthusiastic about Georgia and her work, especially upon learning about Ghost Ranch (where she lived and painted in near-seclusion for the last years of her life). I’ve been planning a trip to Santa Fe to heed to my growing interest in the work she produced there (and of course, to photograph it)

The Scarlet Letter

“Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and- produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction under- neath. Until such time as it will have to hear.

The American has got to destroy. It is his destiny. It is his destiny to destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness. And he’s got to do it secretly. As the growing of a dragon-fly inside a chrysalis or cocoon destroys the larva grub, secretly.

Though many a dragon-fly never gets out of the chrysalis case: dies inside. As America might.”

- of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

(As I read from Studies in Classic American Literature by D.H. Lawrence)

I do not need to say a word about this.

Sally Mann – What Remains

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

mantra for thought

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namaḥ Śivāya (Ohm na-mah shi-va-ya)

“I honor the divinity which resides within Me”

This is a mantra as beautiful as they come. Pray to yourself, to the goddess within you, and look to yourself for strength and understanding. Your body is a temple of harmony which houses the most prepossessing thing of all: life.

Aurora Borealis

The northern lights existing comes in and out of my awareness every once and a while, today I thought and read a lot about it. I will never care if the colour of my socks match again. The northern lights are charged particles of the sun… I can’t even explain how the thought and sight of it makes my heart race. I’ve been planning some travelling for over the next year, I think experiencing Aurora Borealis is in order.

venus&virgo

I believe very strongly in the power of our star-signs, and the energy of the universe. It is a belief that has never failed me, that has never made a fool out of me. It doesn’t create trial in my head, it doesn’t make me wonder, it simply let’s me “know”. I read my horoscope from time-to-time (I try not to get too caught up in it) but sometimes it tells me what I’ve been thinking about, it joins a place in my mind that I’ve already put there. Today my horoscope read: The astral energy is encouraging you to open up more to your world, culture, and ways of thinking, Virgo. You don’t have to go off alone in the desert to reinvent everything. For you, this would be the easy way out, because it would allow you to hide! Develop your curiosity about what exists in this society. Your opinion will carry weight later on.

And on a separate note, I’m very happy to have came by this video:

music to work to

If you’re anything like me, you can’t work in silence. Don’t worry, I got you! Here are the five albums I play on repeat when working on a client project or coding up a website.

1. Electric President – Self Titled
This album really gets my brain going, I listen and sing to it over and over when trying to lay down a design for a new website.

2. Beach House – Devotion
I love listening to this band when I work because it sort of drones in the background and fills the room with beautiful sound. Reverb is a  beautiful thing!

3. Gregor Samsa – Rest
I adore this album. It’s soft and slow-paced, and the vocals are quiet and abstract.. perfect for keeping  the mind going.

4. Mogwai – Happy Songs for Happy People
I need to remain uninterrupted while I code a website, so this album, which is mostly  instrumental, keeps me focused and makes the  process feel much less mundane.. and  it’s just so damn good too.

5. Stinking Lizaveta – Scream of the Iron Iconoclast
This might seem like an odd choice, but instrumental stoner metal is  really the key to creative success (haha, okay maybe not). I  usually  put this one when taking a break, it’s high energy and so  badass.

What do you listen to while working?

GRAPHIC ACTIVISM- part I

The Guerrilla Girls, fighting discrimination with facts, humor, and fake fur. The slogan for Guerrilla Girls On Tour? “Changing the world, once sexist city at a time.” If you haven’t heard about this group before, you’re certainly bound to, and quite loudly might I say. The Guerrilla Girls are a group of graphic activists originated in New York City in the early 80s. In 2001 they split into The Guerrilla Girls on Tour, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, and Guerrilla Girls, Inc. They combine truth, humor, and art with an unescapable howl of feminism.

“We’re a bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. We have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large. We use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. We wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities”

As for their work… It speaks for itself:

“Being included in revised versions of art history” hahahahaha

Billboard

www.guerrillagirls.com
www.guerrillagirlsontour.com

(Stay tuned for part II featuring Peter Kennard)