[December, 1995] Bad Omens, Soggy Hopes

…

12/3/95

In an attempt to expand my creativity (and use up paper in this thing to start writing in this other notebook I got), I’m going to write down the exercises I do from Rivers of Writing, this manuscript I took home. Here goes…

Hear: The ringing in your ears after a loud show, chimes from anywhere, the wind howling and pounding against the window…

Touch: The hard plastic of CD cases slipping through your fingers as you flip through, the shiny surface of a postcard, the raised letters of a typed page…

Smell: The incense on the corner of 6^th Ave and 8^th St, hazelnut coffee, the rain on the asphalt…

Taste: Mocha frappachino, melted cheese on eggs, salty mushy fries…

See: My silver satin skirt, glittery purple lipstick, a clean snow-covered city…

Wednesday it snowed, a gorgeous powdery snow that clung to everything and made living in such a dirty city euphoric and lovely. I grabbed my camera, all set to capture the postcard-ready scenery and daydreamed about the romantic possibilities of the lush crisp weather. Perhaps I should have heeded the bad omen of a snowball sailing hard into my right eye. No. I would quickly heal and assume prettiness when casually visiting my love (though he doesn’t know it) that afternoon. Besides, my camera was hungry for the images of a tranquil early winter. Then all the snow melted from the trees. My purposes of going downtown had whittled away to basically one: yes, him. But a busy store prevented much interaction so I was stuck with soggy hopes, praying I don’t come to despise the snow.

The writing exercise obviously called for descriptors for the five senses and then a paragraph expanding on one of them. I actually wish I did more of this kind of exercise to offer a more concise and interesting snapshot of my life-at-that-moment than my usual teenage blathering (I’ve edited some of the more redundant entries out of this blog).

So yeah, I was haunting Record Rabbit, and while I guess visiting a record store two-to-three times a month does not technically constitute stalking, the care and plotting that went into each visit was maybe a wee bit frightening in retrospect. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Anita, my best friend at the time, to hear me go on and on about him. It’s one thing to share a mutual obsession (U2, in our earlier teen years) but another to be on the receiving end of the minutiae associated with someone else’s fixation. Sometimes I had to have Anita stop from paying a visit too soon (like more than once a week) for fear of appearing suspicious to Nathan. I was sensitive about saturating him with my presence, so I didn’t hound him with phone calls or leave notes or do anything super-creepy (though I confess I did sometimes call him when I knew he wouldn’t be home to hear his answering machine message, which is utterly bizarre because it wasn’t even his voice but a recorded clip from a Charlie Brown cartoon). This made it all the more disappointing if I timed that biweekly visit poorly and didn’t get to talk to him much or at all.

Being as impatient as I was am, more decisive action would have to be taken soon. A plot was about to be hatched… 

[November, 1994] Extremely Unusual

Photo by Joel-Peter Witkin

11/25/94

“She had escaped demons—things of rot and wickedness—and she would have offered up a prayer of thanks for her deliverance if the sky had not been so wide and bright, and so plainly devoid of deities to hear.” – Clive Barker (Cabal)

NIN COUNTDOWN: 12 DAYS

I finally saw some photographs by Joel Peter Witkin. I only looked through the book twice but found that my knees were shaking when I got up afterwards. It wasn’t scary exactly…extremely unusual. That’s always a good quality, I suppose (as long as no harm is done to anyone). Also got some poetry by Bukowski. Taped Figure Drawing. A certain PHM lyric nags at the back of one’s mind.

“Her mind’s downward spiral of morbidity made her fearful—for the first time in her life—of her own mental processes.” – Clive Barker

[Major goth forshadowing going on here.]

More of my teenage code. I thought “Figure Drawing” was some pretentious show or movie I recorded, but it was actually an episode of Beavis and Butthead. And PHM = Pretty Hate Machine, though heaven only knows what lyric I was alluding too. Suffice it to say it was angsty and wannabe-deep.

The "Closer" video, while a decent homage to Witkin, doesn't come close to the intensity of the original work.

The interest in Joel-Peter Witkin was sparked by Trent Reznor mentioning him in an interview. It wasn’t until later that I learned that the Nine Inch Nails video for “Closer” is an homage to his work, which frequently features amputees, cadavers, circus freaks, and compositions out of an S&M nightmare. I still remember seeing Witkin’s photos for the first time. I was at the Mid-Manhattan library doing research for a school project and had some free time, so I headed over to the Photography section. I took the heavy tome to a desk and read a bit about Witkin’s background. When he was a little boy, he witnessed a car accident in which a little girl’s decapitated head rolled toward his feet, which could have triggered a fascination with the macabre. I remember looking through those photos, which I did find disturbing, but I thought I was too cool for school until I stood up to put the book away and found my legs had gone wobbly.

As for Charles Bukowski, that curiosity came from a song on U2’s album Zooropa, “Dirty Day,” was dedicated to the poet. I was a sponge for inspiration back then, and wanted to sift through the influences of my influences, to see if it sparked anything in me. I also lived a pretty sheltered life, so delving into Bukowski’s world of booze, prostitutes, and economic squalor made me uncomfortable, but in a good way.

I guess that was a running theme for my junior year of high school, stepping out of my comfort zone, exploring the things that scared or intimidated me, whether it was a song or photograph or poem, or anything that explored the darker side of human nature (Clive Barker being another good source for that). Maybe it’s because I was a bit too sheltered as a kid, or maybe it’s a phase a lot of teenagers go through. Except that I’m still going through it, to an extent.  Joel-Peter Witkin became, and remains to this day, one of my favorite photographers. I still appreciate Bukowski, too, but find a little goes a long way, and always preferred the poetry to the short stories. On the whole, while I don’t go out of my way to seek out macabre things that will make me uncomfortable, I’m still fascinated with the oddities in life. They’re a reminder that no matter how much we try to make sense of the world, ultimately it’s still a pretty strange place.