Winter Fashion from The House of Atreus

If you've ever read Mortimer Adler, you'll be familiar with his almost bullying suggestion that a serious reader must have books that look a mess.  He contends that one must fully interact with a book, to wear it out with underlining, highlighting, dog-ears, margin notes, and so forth.  Having grown up with library books and being more than a little vain, I was not, in my formative years, inclined in this direction.  I found his argument compelling and, in my personal library, you can tell whether I've read a book before or after hearing Mr. Adler out.

So often I find that I want to take digging into what I am reading even further.  Much like I said in my previous posts, I not only want to consume books, but also allow them to consume me.  Most of you also know that I majored in Theater with a great deal of focus toward the production end.  Most of you also know of my intense interest in fashion. 

Laurie and I have decided to set aside a day or two each week as "Project Nights."  We've found that even when one tries to elevate the entertainment, it is still a very easy trap to come home in the evening and park one's self in front of a lighted screen.  So now, one night a week, we forbid Facebook, movies, and so forth and focus our waking hours on creative acts.  Gina even joined in and retaught herself to knit.

For Christmas, my aunt sent me an artist's sketchbook (large, blank, white pages.)  I had been wanting to get back into sketching.  I thought it might be nice to create preliminary design sketches for a production of The Oresteia which, odds are, I shall never have the real opportunity to produce.  Like so much of design, the ideas are the most engaging part and the realization is a luxury reserved for those with the astonishingly good fortune to be able to get funding for their design work.

It has been at least five years since I have sketched anything at all, so I beg your gentleness.  Great or not, it is a thing that I have accomplished.  I found it to be a charming way to interact with material that I am reading, one in which I break out of the exclusively analytical.  I will tell/warn you, I intend to do more of this sort of thing.

I began with the Furies, who I found to be some of the most compelling characters in the trilogy.  Wonky perspective and placement should reveal that the figure in the center was the first of the three which I drew.  By happy accident, the shoulders and arms came out much more masculine than I had originally intended and that early moment lead to a complete rethinking of my mind's eye production.  I had intended to mount a traditional production, but the shoulder's made me think "Of course the Furies are drag queens!"

From there I focused my efforts towards a production where the modern and the ancient blur.  I tried to create a different sort of modern feminine look for each of the three, each of which were rather harried.  The figure in the center's dress is meant to suggest skin removed with exposed muscles.  They are all, of course, dressed in blood colors.  One of the steps in the process of stage design that I used to love was the creation of a color palette for the production.  In this one, I have reds and blues to highlight the steel and blood, rage and death, and so forth.  There are some purples for royalty and whites and brights for gods.  I decided to have not a stitch of green onstage because green suggests life and growth to me.

The figure seated is Orestes.  The antechamber is open just enough to glimpse the carnage.  In spite of how your mind might wish to fill in the colors of his suit, I am thinking he ought to be exactly as drawn, in a white suit with dark blue outlines.  This is to tie him a bit with a motif I had for the gods and to something else which I'll discuss later.  His hair is bowlish and suggests a helmet. 

Apollo came out with a hint of twinkishness about him, I think, but I think it's acceptable for Apollo to have a dash of the twink.  He's the god of light after all.  He is, however, meant to be holding a lantern in the sketch and not a purse.  I sort of like the idea of playing around with the concept of an imposing figure from a variety of directions.  Perhaps this says more about my own worldview.

I have no idea why Clytemnestra ended up at a Batman villain angle.  I wanted her to be somewhat of what the contemporary colloquialism would deem "a cougar."  I also wanted for her and Aegithus to be the most indecent characters in the whole piece.  I expect the awkward intimacy of their robe lengths would be highlighted whenever they are in a scene with anyone else.  I picture Aegithus as a bit of an entitled snob, but I also wanted his wardrobe color scheme to mirror Orestes in the ever so slightest suggestion of the Oedipal.  As a side note, Laurie walked by when I was drawing Aegithus and said, "Ha!  Nice Dr. Manhattan there!" 

Athena turned out to be my personal favorite of the lot.  I cannot put my finger on which female pop musician from my childhood that she reminds me of, but I would insist that sparks actually come off of her crown.

I wanted Electra to harken the most back to Agamemnon.  I think it fitting and probably reveals my thoughts on the appropriate character choices, her motivations and so forth.  I felt like every action and probably nearly every word spoken by her character point to her super-objective of honoring her fallen father (and the anguish over the gross dishonor that has come upon him.)  She is a bit more of a child in this sketch than I would anticipate in actual casting.  I think "waif" in general is more what I would envision, but maybe more of a young woman wasting away in fury. I pictured Agamemnon as a sort of "fallen" version of Paul Heerman's bust of Winter.

There is the fruit of my evening's work.  I did not make any set design sketches, but I imagine I shall in the future (for future texts.  I think this finally marks the end of my dalliance in The House of Atreus.)  Dioramas, puppets, and incidental music to follow. 

Blow by Blow by Detmar Blow

Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow

Readers of this blog and those who know me in person know that my imagination is captivated by the career of Isabella Blow.  She was and remains one of my most inspirational style icons.  When I recently had a little extra money, I purchased a few of the recently published books on the subject of Isabella Blow.  I chose to read Detmar Blow's biography of Isabella Blow first and I think it was the wise choice.  I was able to experience the book in a way I don't think I would have been able to had I read Lauren Goldstein Crowe's more conventional biography first, as this book was written by one of the characters in the conventional biography (or, more likely, ghost-written.)

Having spent the past year reading Milton, Shakespeare, and that crowd, the rhetorical style of the book was a bit like the frivolous uncle of a child, whose parents are draconian in their serving of only highly nutritious food, who takes the child out secretly for their first root beer float.  Although my Internal Pendant requires me to temper that enthusiasm by mentioning that there were at least two typos, a jarring lack of the Oxford comma at the proper places, and one instance in the book where Isabella was accidentally referred to in the present tense.  In contemporary slang, I would most likely characterize it as "a beach read" although a rather grim one.

The other issue I would take with the book is the inconsistent treatment of the subject matter as the forefront of the narrative.  Clearly Mr. Blow took great pains to research the early life of Isabella, most likely from her own accounts from their many years together and, by his admission, interviews with key figures in preparation for the book.  The second act, when Isabella Blow is at the height of her career and Detmar is her husband, also features Isabella although Detmar's first person arrives.  In the third act, as their marriage begins to feel the strain of her mental breakdown, the focus of the narrative seems to shift to Detmar (specifically Detmar's dealings with Isabella in the last portion of her life.)

The other criticism I would bring is that it seemed to me throughout that there was potentially enlightening information being withheld by the author possibly out of respect for the subject (or, possibly, out of still having to deal with the other survivors of the story) although I have no means by which to support that claim.  I do, however, strongly expect to find in the other biography more of a "warts and all" portrait of the couple and their relationship.  It is also probably not a surprising revelation that there are instances of opinion that may not be entirely objective.  I found it pushing the taste envelope that the major examples of specific negative opinion toward certain people's behavior is reserved for those no longer alive to defend themselves (notably Isabella's father and Alexander McQueen.  Although, in keeping with my defense of honesty, I am predisposed to not want to ever think ill of McQueen.)

The value of the book is in the love of the man for the subject as well as the bits of informal information gained from personal experience that we might not otherwise glimpse of some major figures of our day.  I smiled at Isabella's exasperation that Karl Lagerfeld would only shoot photos at night as he designed all day.  I loved the account of Alexander McQueen running to save his brawny Staffordshire Terrier from being chased by a Scottish Terrier.  I was charmed but not surprised to see that André Leon Talley comes off as one of the kindest people in the entire narrative.  Also of great value, I thought, was that the book could serve as a highly readable crash course in the history of contemporary fashion.

I would also mention Isabella Blow's remarkable ability to find new talent.  It was with some amusement that I read the section where other major figures in fashion journalism marvel at the quality and quantity of her discoveries.  It seems that Blow achieved this by leaving her office to go meet up and coming artists, attending senior class project shows, and even pulling people off of the street to end up in fashion shoots.  She seems to have gained this serendipitous ethic from Warhol.  And I don't mean an academic understanding of Warhol's artistic career.  I mean Andy Warhol probably turned to her one day when they were at a club or in a cab and said, "Isabella, here's how I find so many fresh new artists.  I go out."

The bare information in the first chapter poses the Richard Cory question, "Why would someone at the peak of their creative powers choose to end their life?"  Detmar's thesis seems to be that Isabella's eventual collapse started when she was five years old.  The inciting incident is the death of her two year old brother who her mother seemingly irresponsibly left in the care of five year old Isabella.  Isabella was called to the fence by a passerby and her brother fell in the pool.  The boy was her father's only male heir to his barony and the weight of the loss tore her family to pieces.  The study of family strife tearing an otherwise bright, creative, and successful person to pieces over decades was harrowing and, I daresay, had a touch of the universal appeal to it.

Although I do have my suspicions over the amount of responsibility placed on Isabella's highly dysfunctional upbringing.  Detmar went through a horrific experience and I found myself identifying with him throughout.  He had great difficulty in dealing with a harsh situation and I found his honesty over that refreshing.  He does not let the reader off the hook, just as he was never let off the hook.  In the end, he is one of the characters in the story who elicited the most sympathy and I doubt any further information from other sources could undermine that impression in me now.  

The third act boils down to a list of names of institutions and of suicide attempts.  There is a photograph near the end of Isabella with Bryan Ferry, both looking happy and prosperous, two of the more elite figures on the planet at the time.  The caption at the bottom directs the viewer to Isabella's right ankle.  Her leg is crossed and her ankle is showing beneath her calve length dress.  On her ankle is a nasty looking scar which, the caption informs us, came from her suicide attempt by jumping off of an overpass and shattering her foot and ankle bones.

I'm afraid that the end of the book does not give the reader much comfort or resolution, but there is a great truth in that.  It states outright the hopeless condition of one who is so seeped in their mental illness that they are entirely unwilling to take any action to help themselves and the utter helplessness of those who love them.  The book also highlights that even those who seem to be "on top" of the world have their places where they feel they failed, where they feel they were slighted, financial worries, insecurities, and all of the manifestations of fear and regret universal to humankind's existential dilemma.   That is why I would recommend the book to anyone and everyone.  It points to an existence where all of the success in the world doesn't really matter if there is no happiness and no peace.

After a Fashion

Laurie and I recently had a small, uncommon sum arrive which had the lion's share immediately thrown at our ravenous debt.  I appropriated an even smaller amount in which to purchase a few books that I've had my eye on for a while.

The first small set was Wheelock's Latin and accompanying textbooks.  I have made the declaration in the past few days that I am, at long last, going to go through with learning Latin, upping my commitment level by announcing it here as well.  My reasons are many: 1) My friend Christopher suggested it a few months ago and it has appealed to the part of me that 2) considers myself a Classicist, although I don't know Greek or Latin, which makes my Inner Critic murmur "ersatz Classicist" every time I apply that label to myself.  Laurie and I have talked about learning Greek together for about a year now but her current commitments prohibit it at present, which is fine because 3) I am given to understand that Latin is a lot easier than Greek.  4) I have a storehouse of Protestant guilt within me, ready to tap should Method Acting needs arise, over the years worth of atrophy my brain has suffered over the smattering of French and German that I so enthusiastically dived into in my early 20s. 5) Yet another in a seemingly endless line of "I heard a story on NPR" life choices.  The story in question here reported evidence that learning multiple languages could potentially stave off Alzheimer's/dementia, a disease which is one of my key phobias.  And, of course, 6) somewhere in my adult life I developed the strange kink of liking to take on huge, complex, multi-year projects.  Many at once and the headier the better!

The other set of books I ordered deal with the subject of the photo above.  The photo is of fashion icon Isabella Blow.  Some people don't know this about me, because I don't talk about it at nearly the length and detail that I talk of literature and art, but I am absolutely fascinated by the beau monde.  At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, I am of the view that beauty, style, and creativity contain visible echoes of the very fingerprint of God.  I am quite serious.  Sometimes people are taken by surprise that, as Laurie puts it, "he could probably tell you what Karl Lagerfeld had for breakfast this morning."  A slight exaggeration which illustrates my point.

(Half of a grapefruit and a demitasse of Arabic coffee, for the record.  Whenever he internally grumbles over his Spartan breakfast, he thinks of his closets filled with Hedi Slimane designed clothes and perseveres.  You must admire that kind of dedication.)

I should probably take a moment to establish what precisely interests me.  What interests me is, of course, enveloping the human form in art, self expression and bold individual style, as well as the psychological effects of "uniform" if you will.  The latter refers to the effect of one's clothes on a person's attitude and, indeed, their very life.  Which outfit will make me feel most bold: t-shirt and sweats OR pressed suit, Windsor knot tie, shined shoes.  I recall a Wodehouse story where Jeeves, with possible a wink of the satirical, urges a young man to go to a costume ball dressed as Mephistopheles in order to embolden himself to propose to a specific young lady.  Clothes do make the man.

It is entirely possible that I am uncommon in this regard, but I can tell an autobiography of my mind through the progression of my clothing style.  In high school, I had a most likely skewed estimation of what I imagined was Urban Haute Bourgeoisie in a time when I lusted toward that world (and missed the target terribly.  Looking back on photos of me in High School I now think, "bartender at a high end, touristy New Orleans bar or European hairdresser trying too hard to project the image of affluence or student at an elite art school who currently takes himself so seriously that he's destined to become something only tangentially related to the creative.  Like a party planner or something"), followed by punk, goth, hippie, an interlude of sort of Urban Haute Bohemian intending to project a general eccentric artist vibe, followed by what I now aim toward, sort of an intellectual, moderately well dressed proletariat aura more in keeping with "my place."  Usually with the accessory of a hat that, out of context of the rest of my outfit might suggest "golfer", but within the context of the rest of my outfit, if I achieve what I am aiming for, prevents people from being too surprised when I walk around whistling the Internationale.

Which brings me to the very strange side note of uniform.  Uniforms offer the advantage of being uniform (having worked with the severely mentally ill, I can report that a uniform is a very helpful tool.  Also that I find it remarkable how long a brain will still recognize uniformity and its significance) as well as the advantage of not involving one's personal wardrobe in the duties one is called upon to perform in the course of their work.  Of course, there is the disadvantage at times of encountering someone who is convinced that their position in life is elevated above the one in a uniform, however, I have found in those instances that as soon as the initial frustration wears off, one realizes that such behavior is the very model of déclassé and more a commentary on the sort of person the offending party have the misfortune of having chosen to be.

Isabella Blow was much like what I want to be, a beautiful person whose career mainly comprised pointing out beautiful things.  I do not feel the need to go into great detail about her at present as I undoubtedly have forthcoming book reviews on the subject.  But I thought I would highlight a few points about her by way of either introduction (for those unfamiliar) or of pulling this post together (for all of us) culled from the key bits of information that most people who know of her know about her.  I am included in this group, having only a "fly-over" knowledge of her career, just enough of a taste to know that I coveted these books.

If you haven't an accessible visual memory of what I am talking about, I would highly recommend you immediately browse Google Image Search, or possibly a few moments worth of YouTube diversion, on Isabella Blow (her real name, by the way.  She was married to Detmar Blow who, architecture buffs will correctly guess, is a descendent of the architect Detmar Blow), Philip Treacy (sort of the last man standing in this story, if you'll pardon the spoiler), and especially the incomparable genius of modern couture, the tragically beautiful discovery of our tragically beautiful heroine, Alexander McQueen.  Their mixture of the Apollonian and Dionysian sensibility are very much to my taste and, I think, a necessary balance for great art.

If I may indulge my maudlin side ("sure, Paul, why stop now") and employ the metaphor of a rose, the very millinery she was remembered for wearing served as both an expression of beauty and, in her own words, a deterrent from the ubiquitous Continental kiss in the circles she inhabited.  To draw in with the beautiful even while repelling spatially.  Sadly, that also calls to mind her well-known, aggressive and eventually successful suicidal tendencies, terminating in her drinking weed killer.  Reportedly among her last words were "I'm worried I didn't take enough."

Much like Richard Cory (Truman Capote also springs to mind as he was the darling of the "beautiful people" of his day and yet poisoned himself to death over a much longer period of time), one is left to wonder how someone who seemingly had so much, was at the height of her career, an aristocrat, beloved by many, paid for creativity, could get that low.  I imagine what she had was nothing compared to what may have been missing.  Or rather, circumstance is not what really matters in this life and will not save you in the end.  What one does with circumstance, I would imagine, is more the point.  But I don't presume to have a definitive answer to this right now.  I would hazard a guess that it is one of the answers I'm looking for in this reading side-project.