Tag Archives: Alt-J

October Is For Whores

Posted on by

0

photo copy 3photo-2 copyphoto-1 copyphoto-3 copy

I’m starting a new American chapter at Newark Liberty international airport, New Jersey. I don’t even get excited any more when I pass the immigration test or see my first American flag cause I feel like I partially live here now and I’m just going home, away from the mean people. I already screamed 15 times on the inside “I love Americans!” shaking my forearms like an idiot (also on the inside).

I could furtively see my beloved NYC skyline when touching the ground. I blew a kiss to “my” Empire State Building cause I’m going to dance the 5 Rhythms in its face in 11 days.

The new Alt-J (‘This is all Yours’) will be the soundtrack of this trip. My favourite line of the entire album is “I’m gonna turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet”. Whoever comes close enough to me next in life is going to hear that and I’ll pretend I invented it.

My flight is delayed and I’m eating a Manhattan chowder. I’m kind of bummed cause I returned a Vivienne Westwood dress to buy a second flight to Chicago that lands earlier, and I’m now stuck Vivienneless with 2 tickets for planes landing at the same time. Dadaist drama. Clever budgeting.

I’m transiting to Chicago where my Whore friends – this is how we call each other – already gathered. A member of the family is getting married on Saturday and we are all punk maids of honour. I’m the last one to arrive, and also traveling the furthest distance, so I will have a prodigal son moment later today when I get my collective welcome hug. They told me to get my body ready for squeezes. That’s exactly one year that we saw each other altogether, the 5 of us, after the Route 66 fun.

October is for Whores.

This group of gals is very special. I would even say “exceptional”. I met 3 out of 4 whilst studying at the tragically bad “Dance & Visual Art” department at Brighton Uni. We ended up living 4 peeps in a bedroom for two. That’s how we got so close. They went back to America after 6 months so I dropped out of Uni in a particularly theatrical manner. Good times.

We are a bunch of arty slashers, so we all are pretty hard to describe.

α is a filmmaker/puppet maker/ random stuff maker/yoga teacher/ event organiser at an architects firm living in NYC.

ε is the bride to be. She is a Chicago-based painter/pie maker/former best nanny in the world and has now a variety of jobs that I’m losing track on.

α3 is a painter/caver/photographer/life manager for all of us and also does business in her spare time, selling some kind of paint that makes your old furniture look like stainless steel. She lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. All that she does is hilarious (but that could generally apply to each one of us.)

H is a filmmaker/camera operator/photographer working in LA. She hangs out with the red carpet people but giggles about it the same way she giggles at everything else.

And there’s me, the European refugee, the only one who was not born and raised in the Midwest. Like most of the groups I’ve belonged to, I’m the only foreigner/accented. This said, even when I was hanging out in Paris (where I was born) with a bunch of French, I was told that I sound Belgian.

I sometimes wonder if there are any  people who speak like me? It is so much part of my identity now – the mixed influences “citizen of the world” twist. (I hate this expression).  I’d like to meet someone like me at least once to team up with another odd-one-out. We would have a long conversation tainted with the different shades and tones of our various life experiences.

Next fall is H’s 30th birthday. Another hot Whores gathering in sight.

Holding My Breath

Posted on by

0

IMG_2410 IMG_2412 IMG_2420 IMG_2436 IMG_2437 IMG_2443 IMG_2456 IMG_2460

I’ve been back in London for 13 days and I’ve spent most of my conscious time figuring out ways to move back home (New York City). It is tiring, but I have a life goal at last. I spent 30 years not knowing what I wanted to do and where, and then pfiout in 5 New York weeks all became clear.

As a visualisation exercise, I designed my ideal business card. It states all my professional ambitions (“Writer/Performer/5 Rhythms Teacher/LGBT Rights activist”) and has my US number on it. My 5 Rhythms teacher name will be ‘Mother Chaos’. I burned a candle to my Virgin Mary statue telling her that I will hand out this business card within 4 years (even before).

I’ll be holding my breath till then.

I don’t know at all why I live in London, which is problematic. If I was packing all my shit and leaving tonight, it wouldn’t make a difference to anyone’s life. I wonder how long it would take for my body to be discovered if I died in the house (this is not a suicidal alert). I don’t really care anyway about making people love me here. I just want to leave.

I live mostly alone in a 6 bedroom house with garden, which I was calling the “Ghost House” when I initially moved in. I chose this house because of the apple tree in the back yard. I actually share the place with N², a phlegmatic Scottish guy who makes me laugh to peeing. He works night shifts with very unusual people (conspiracy theory or refusal to wear a bra type), so I occasionally see him in the kitchen, but it can be days without our worlds to collide. He is in Sri Lanka right now, where his wife lives. So I am absolutely alone. 

In 13 days, I reunited with a few people, they asked me what the highlight of my New York stay was, and I could reply nothing but “NYC itself”. When I try to get into detail, I see that I am losing most of them .

I went to a new club in Piccadilly with α5, my very intense squatter friend. Some of her underground housemates are regularly performing extravaganza numbers there. There was also a not very good female wizard. On the street, we met a drunk stripping Superman. α5 helped him dress back up. She’s currently in love with a slam singer woman married to another woman. She’s trying to figure out where she fits in the triangle – classic α5 story. I gently made fun of her, singing in a loop “Triangles are my favourite shape“. 

I also caught up with my old dance and digital artist friend µ, that I have known and worked with for 9 years. In my absence, she got herself a part-time 22 year old  Erasmus student female lover. They met at a “Growing Bacteria” workshop. I called her “Cougar” for the rest of the night. My friends are fabulous worldwide and more often than not, are my reason to live. 

Yesterday, I went to my first Krav Maga (קרב מגע) class, the self-defence technique used in the Israeli Defence Forces. It was developed in the 30s by Imrich Lichtenfeld in Bratislava to protect the Jewish area from anti-Semitic attacks, so it is close to real situation street fight. There were about 10 guys and another girl in the class. We did multiple attackers exercises, like surrounded by enemies and you have to escape from the circle or in the centre of a circle and attackers sweep down on you one after the other but you never know where the attack will come from. I got really beaten up but I loved it. I don’t really know where my taste for fight comes from. Violence just really excites me sometimes. Boys usually don’t expect that a 5ft girl will beat them up with all her heart. OK, they are stronger. But I am faster and angrier. They were like: “Are you OK? Are you OK?” and after the class they asked me where I learned to spin like that. I told them: “Years of ballet, Gentlemen.”

The class was taking place in a primary school and I had a look at the kids’ names under each hanger. Oh My God! There are really parents out there who named their kid “Cougar”? I dare to hope for the kid that she’s not a girl at least.

Now, I am in the middle of the 3 day week end. I avoided 2 lesbian parties, because I don’t want to pretend and have meaningless sex for the moment. I am entering a “not pretending” detox phase. I am not yet ready for love, but I am ready for some emotion at least. Instead of drinking mojitos with the dykes, I went to see “Tracks“, the true story of a young girl who crossed the Australian desert with 3 camels and a dog in the 70s. I needed some woman explorer inspiration. It made me want to dive back into the biography of Alexandra David-Néel.

I want to go on a life-changing adventure too.

Who are the female adventurers of our times? Do I qualify to be one?