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My Work Week, Mademoiselle

Another tough day at the office today–I had to work until 12:30 this afternoon, 30 minutes overtime. I don’t see how people work more than 3 hours a week. I said to my boss on leaving, “Have a nice weekend,” which caused him to stop for a moment to consider if it weren’t indeed Tuesday afternoon. My weekend starts on Tuesday afternoon and ends Monday evening. (My work schedule is like Edina Monsoon’s.) I work for a landscape designer, who is also one of my oldest and dearest friends. He’s from a long line of California gardeners, so his connection to the landscape is very deep. We worked together as gardeners for a while, but then he got to be an überdesigner and turned the maintenance route over to me. I missed our gossiping/philosophizing/girltalk sessions so much that I decided to run his office and put the farmer tan behind me. So we get to spend 3 hours together on Tuesday, for which I get paid a ridiculous amount of money, talking about his rent boys, my boyfriend, Thom Gunn, my boyfriend, his getting older, my getting older, Hedy Lamarr, etc. I love my job. It also allows me to spend the rest of the week being an artist.

Last night I watched the sumptuously photographed modernist masterpiece Mademoiselle, directed by Tony Richardson(!), with a screenplay by Margueritte Duras(!!) from a story by Jean Genet(!!!). Jeanne Moreau(!!!!) stars as a schoolteacher/spinster in a small French village who lusts for an Italian lumberjack and so, because this is Genet, has to destroy him. She accidentally starts a fire by dropping her cigarette into a haystack that she’s hiding behind. After witnessing the shirtless lumberjack’s bravery in the ensuing inferno, she starts more fires–she even wears special attire (stiletto heels and fishnet gloves) to the burnings. Everything is fetishised, and because this is Genet, it’s not subtle. Sometimes a pipe IS a penis, and in this case it’s a snake(!) that the Italian wears under his shirt. It slithers out from around his waist and up Moreau’s arm… “It won’t hurt you,” he assures here. Well, she eventualy gets to find out for herself when he introduces her to his other snake as they do finally get to it, spending a passion-filled night in the woods, where she kisses his boots, barks like a dog, and has the time of her life before returning to the village, where the villagers don’t know what to make of her tattered clothes. They assume she’s been raped, and when asked “Did he do this to you?” she replies “Yes…” and rushes off into her house as the villagers rush off to beat him to death.

Beautiful.

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Earthquake!

Oh my god–the… mirror was, like, RATTLING, and the door, it CREAKED, and and… okay, it was a pretty lame earthquake–a 5.2, they’re saying. It did bring to mind a story that I recall from the ’89 quake (blur fizz twinkle twinkle)… Manny was on the bus, the 24 Divisadero, coming home from a Doctor’s appointment at Kaiser. There were several kids in the back of the bus making a lot of noise despite the driver’s repeated threats to kick them off the bus if they didn’t shut up. Fed up, the driver slammed on the brakes, ran to the back of the bus and shaking her finger at the kids, screamed “If you kids don’t stop this racket….” but was cut off as the bus started shaking due to the Loma Prieta earthquake. The bus was completely silent. The driver threw her hands up in the air, beat her chest with her fists, and screamed “I am THUNDER!” as everyone clapped and she danced back to her wheel.

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Carmina Burana, Hakuna Matata

Last night Reese sang with the SF Boys Chorus and the Berkeley Community Orchestra at St. Joseph the Worker (it was in Berkeley) Church in a production of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. What a completely hysterical but thrilling piece of music. I was able to read the libretto during the performance and really enjoyed it. Orff set the music to medieval poems about love, fate, drinking, and gambling, and the poems are quite bawdy and sensuous at times, even racy, but really, the music is just too much, although the solo parts were completely gorgeous. After the piece, I dropped Bob and Reese off at home and headed up the hill to BC’s and then back down to the Lone Star to see Randy and Matthew one more time before Randy heads back to the midwest. Randy and Matthew came over earlier in the afternoon for a drink in the garden and one of the last whiffs of my rhododendron “Mi Amor.” They’re both very sweet real people. What is it with you bear guys? It would be SO great if you were all artists instead of computer geeks. I’m hoping that Randy will write and stage something for our bear show in February, assuming I secure a space, artists, funding, etc, etc, blah blah blah. Maybe we could just have the show in a barn somewhere? And I could make the curtains? Reese’s moms are coming over this morning for a Mother’s Day breakfast with me and Bob, and then I’m off to BC’s for the afternoon and Sunday night on HBO.

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The Piano Teacher

I just saw The Piano Teacher with Isabelle Huppert–a fascinating film about the first “stab” (see the movie) at love taken by a controlling music teacher who has never experienced any kind of physical or emotional intimacy. She sleeps in the same bed as her mother, from whom she has learned that love is about completely controlling one’s loved one. When a handsome and bright young student shows interest in her, she rejects his ardent advances, handing him a letter with specific instructions about how she wants him to express his love for her–by beating her up and sexually assaulting her. I love the French. Doesn’t it seem like mainstream French film has been slowly mutating into an expensive dialogue-heavy porn flick over the past few years? Anyway, it’s a really great movie. The only way that she could imagine intimacy… oh, I forgot to tell you that her sexual experience is limited to watching porn movies in one of those private video booths at the local porn shop, sniffing the cum-encrusted serviettes left behind by previous occupants… so the only way that she could imagine intimacy, given the complete lack of sensation in her life, is in experiencing something physically and emotionally intense, which in this case means wanting a stocking stuffed down her throat and her tongue forced up his butt. (She didn’t offer an explanation of how this was possible.) There’s a great scene–following the student’s brutal rejection of her generous offer to be humiliated and abused–back in bed with mom, where Huppert hops on MOM (!), trying to kiss her on the lips and elsewhere, crying “Je t’aime, mamma! Je t’aime!” Well, mom isn’t into it. There’s also a nifty hymen-slicing scene… See the movie!

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Bart and Elin are Here

Elin & Bart of Maine & Texas, respectively, arrived last night, for a little visit. I had earlier dined Chez BC, and thus was a little tipsy. From what I recall, they’re here for a reunion of Bart’s glee club from Princeton. Bart’s one of those guys with the tan face, wide grin, and loud voice who slaps his knee when he laughs. Elin is the daughter of a famous photographer, lives on a tiny island off the coast of Maine, and brings a bit of glamour into our lives. She’s tiny, with long black hair, tiny lips and a beak of a nose–stunning, actually. Oops, here they are–gotta go. More later…

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I Want to be a Tango Dancer When I’m 64, Bald, and Fat

Last night I attended a performance of a dance troupe from Argentina. The performance contained elements culled from the gaucho dance tradition malambo (originating in the 17th Century grasslands of Argentina as a tournament of gaucho skills, danced solely by men), the tango, and flamenco. There was the alpha male dancer–potbelly, shellacked thinning hair, mounds of chest hair sprouting from beneath the tuxedo collar–seducing all the foxy younger babes. The older dude in Argentina seems to have it made. Oh my God, and then there was the bandoneon player with his sad droopy eyes and floppy jowls–watching him relate to his instrument brought more than one blush to my cheek. The tango has to be one of the most histrionic, if not sexiest, of art forms. My favorite piece involved a dance between two men that bordered on the erotic, but of course was presented as a fight over two (or was it several?) women. Everything came to an abrupt end when a wife-like (big tits) woman appeared in the background and Mr. Potbelly Stud scampered off the stage, tail between his legs.

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Thursday Night

Thursday night was Dean Smith (intooutof, 2001, pictured below) and Barry McGee’s opening at Paule Anglim. Their art created a fascinating dialogue–Dean’s hand almost invisible and so controlled, and Barry’s just as precise but gestural and expressive. One is drawn closer and closer into and beyond the surfaces of Dean’s universe, and Barry’s world seems to leap out and surround you. All of the people who make me incredibly uncomfortable were at the artist dinner afterwards–Renny Pritikin from Yerba Buena CFA, who visited my studio last week, the collector Robert Shimshack, and former Examiner/Chronicle art critic David Bonetti (who actually walked right up to me–I was in his way–after averting his eyes from mine all evening at the opening, and said “Oh HI, I’m SO sorry we weren’t able to talk at the opening–it was SO crowded!”). But Barry was there, and he is just an angel–someone who’s always present for you, even though he’d rather be tagging the building outside. And the lamb shanks were awesome.

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New Series: Jack & Mack

I’ve been photographing two bear pornstars, Jack Radcliffe and Mack–other-worldly beings residing amongst us–in poses taken from Renaissance paintings. Since the bodies of these guys are so familiar, through the many pornographic images and videos of them in circulation, I wanted to re-position their bodies as sources of aesthetic pleasure.

Jack (top photo) is photographed in a pose taken from a painting by Giovanni Bellini, and Mack (bottom) is in a pose taken from a painting by Caravaggio. Bellini’s bodies are of a different realm, heavenly, and Caravaggio’s are very much of this earth: