The Source Family

I’m intrigued by cults though I know very little about them. Even the word itself contains vague complexities, etymologically and otherwise, and can be interpreted through both theological and sociological frameworks. One definition is merely any organized group of people with whom you disagree. There are the famous examples (Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, etc) and the associations we then make with mind control, indoctrination, abuse and violence. Yet my parents and all their friends followed a guru in the 70s and if my yoga studio was a cult I’d totally be a member. So, what is a cult really? What happens in the larger culture to inspire them? How is it possible they sometimes attract hundreds of people? Fictional interpretations have the luxury of using cults as a motif to explore a range of larger ideas, from faith, to power, to free will, to identity and non-fiction gets to use the truly divergent and unbelievably, wildly compelling details of the real thing. What follows are my favorites of both.

Recently I saw the absolutely riveting new documentary, The Source Family, about Jim Baker and his followers in 1970s LA. They owned one of the first health food restaurants, lived together in a bohemian mansion, had a proclivity for home births and played psychedelic rock. There was also some weird sex magic, and Baker got more and more narcissistic until he was a polygamist with underage wives, truly believing himself a god. Interviews with former members reveal some are broken, others crazy, others completely fine. They range from being participants in newer cults, to successful millionaire businessmen, to hippies living in solar-energy houses. One woman is grateful for the stability offered to her as a teenage runaway. Almost all talk about the feeling they had of truly being part of a family. While a lot of the audience snickered at the hokier details (everyone had the last name Aquarian), I found the story heartbreaking as it revealed very relatable needs and psychologies, as well as the somewhat awesome seeming origins of something that went pretty badly awry. The movie got me thinking that cults are not so unfathomable; they represent the dire extreme of something we all do, which is seek meaning and connection in our lives, all the while making bad decisions and not always knowing what we’re getting ourselves into.

Pete Rock, author of the new novel The Shelter Cycle  (you can read a fantastic excerpt of it here), which fictionalizes the Church Universal and Triumphant says it well, “[the novel] attempts to humanize and understand, to follow what seems an extreme collection of beliefs to where they make sense.” His wording encourages empathy but also points to the subjectivity of the groups we join, the beliefs we hold and even the minutia of each of our lifestyle choices. In each of our deepest convictions is something that makes sense to us even if it seems crazy to someone else.

In Sound of My Voice, Brit Marling (co-writer and star of the underrated Another Earth), again co-writes and stars, this time as a cult leader who just might also be a time traveler. The movie is creepy and enigmatic, placing us first as firm skeptics and then messing with our heads until we halfway feel we might believe. For days after we saw the movie I kept asking my husband, “Do you think she was for real?” In many ways that’s the wrong question. The questions of the film are about how or in what ways our lifestyles are sustainable, what we can do in order to reconcile our pasts and be ready to face our futures. In making a movie that uses a cult as its center point of suspense, Sound of My Voice is able to ponder these concerns in a context that seems both alien and chillingly relevant. “No one joins a cult,” a woman says at the beginning of Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple and that seems true.

Martha Marcy May Marlene doesn’t use the word cult to describe the farm Martha runs away from in the beginning of the movie. A fractured chronology leads us through Martha’s post-cult time as she acclimates to the real world, a place represented in an unflattering light by her yuppie sister and uptight husband. Though we are relieved she escaped the charismatic leader of the ideal-turned-scary farm commune we see in flashbacks, we don’t feel much more comfortable with the non-cult world that is her alleged haven either. Therein lies more of the twisted allure. Cults sometimes seemingly reject a world many of us might like to reject. But the utopian alternative they offer is short-lived at best, a perverse con or death sentence at worst. The sudden, uncertain conclusion to Martha Marcy May Marlene seems to question if Martha will ever really be free, her individuality and psyche ever intact. Again, this larger concern for freedom, the desire to be a self who isn’t afraid or controlled, seems to be about our freedom too.

It’s interesting to consider if the leaders of these groups believe themselves or not. The Master, directed by the brilliant Paul Thomas Anderson, has us watching the fraught and controlling, but also seemingly sincere, antics of the megalomaniac leader of the Cause. Anderson also refrains from using the word cult to discuss the dynamics in his movie, instead focusing on the larger historical and social realities of the time and why the ideas that Lancaster Dodd espouses might have held an appeal to so many. We assume it’s the vulnerable who are somehow led astray and that must often be true. Yet it’s also important to acknowledge that specific realities often create the reactions to them; in the case of The Master, a disturbed and violent post-World War II aimlessness leads Freddie to The Cause. Yet, despite all his bravado, Dodd seems vulnerable too, dependent on Freddie, if in a different way. Similarly, toward the end of The Source Family we hear Baker’s voice admitting maybe he isn’t actually a god, maybe he has no more to teach. Next we see him jumping from a cliff in a hang gliding attempt that seems an awful lot like a death wish.

I can’t help but feel viscerally drawn to these stories of cults and their members, both fictional and real. Even the leaders, those who seem most culpable, even dangerous at times, are struggling. These questions belong to all of us. What do we do with our disillusionment, with the realization of our limitations? How do we carve out an authentic life we really want to live? Cults, in all their endless variations and representations, point toward a profound human desire, one complicated, dark and endless, one full of a need for connection and meaning, one which so often goes unmet.

Prom, 1900.

Whatever details exist in our story of prom; heartbreak, rebellion, awkwardness, ambivalence, fun, or indifference, we all partook of this ritual experience, even if through rejection. A promenade is the formalized entering of the ballroom, a staging ground for the magic culmination (or anti-climactic punctuation) of our alleged best years. First mentioned in a diary well over 100 years ago, prom emerged as an odd middle-class version of the already bizarre debutante ball. This glittery rite of passage was vital to our teenage cultural experience; as a structure to hold certain charged memories within, dark vague hours to cultivate amnesia toward, or something else entirely, of which we’re still not entirely certain.

So then let’s examine the artifacts of prom night:

You went to a Chinese restaurant that didn’t card and ordered a Flaming Volcano with eight straws, the center engulfed in actual flames. Cameras followed you to make a documentary about prom. You were the inner-city kids to be contrasted against suburban counterparts. You posed for photos with an acquaintance who later died when you were in your 20s. Those photos showed up in memorials for him. You smoked on balconies. You thought it was going to be fun. You snuck away to the lake. You made fun of the theme: A Night To Remember. What you remember is your date’s tongue ring hitting your teeth, sitting bored at card tables with sequins poured on top, your English teacher flirting with you. You wore a feather boa, flip-flops and flowers glued to your dress. You wore a motley suit of burgundy and a dandy’s hat. You got your date her corsage at 7-11. It was the last one, bright orange, and in poor condition. You went in a group with a lesbian couple, one of whom was your school’s first openly gay student. After 20 minutes you left and went to a cavernous gay nightclub (with a volleyball court) where you lied about your age to get in. You skipped prom and went to a music festival. It didn’t occur to you to save your virginity for prom night. Prom wasn’t a big deal at your school like in the movies. You were raised on Sweet Valley High and She’s All That and considered prom to be a landmark moment you’d remember forever. You think prom brings up some interesting gender issues. Boys are told prom night means getting laid. Girls are told it’s a night to indulge their princess fantasies. But no one you knew was actually like that.

Your parents hated your boyfriend who was a high school dropout and a jerk, a skater punk with long hair and a pierced nose. You told your parents you were going to prom and instead parked behind the church, hoping to lose your virginity. It didn’t happen and you went home. After prom you slept in tents in someone’s yard. You ended up at a cabin in the redwoods where everyone cuddled. You got a foot rub. You didn’t ask the girl you liked. Your date made her dress out of a burlap sack and brought you a corn boutonnière. It was one of the tamest nights of high school. You attended Art School Prom in graduate school. It had the same mix of irony and disappointment as the original. You wore a tiara and declared yourself prom queen, though you weren’t. The real prom queen’s boyfriend told you that you made a great prom queen. You went to satisfy your parents and part of you wished to have a movie-like experience. You played cards most of the night. You wore a red petticoat, trying for some Madonna ’80s look. You left to go to a party at the beach. Your boyfriend wouldn’t go because he was 19 and said it was weird. You spent the most you ever have, before or since, on shoes. It ended up being like any other night. You made fun of people who took the whole thing seriously and scoffed at the thought that this was going to be a defining moment in your life.

Your boyfriend showed up wearing cut-off slacks, a sleeveless shirt, a tie and Converse. It was the night you and he broke up. You showed up to the after-party drunk, in sweat pants. You and your friend left as the sun was coming up, stumbled down the street smashing bottles. It was a mess of a night but one of your favorite memories with her. Your boyfriend wouldn’t take you so you asked an older boy you’d had a crush on for years and he said yes. You wore a floor length, long-sleeved black velvet gown. You found it at a thrift store and were pretty smug since all of the other girls were going to Jessica McClintock to buy new, hideous dresses. You’d grown up going to the beach every day, but turned into an Amish woman covered from wrist to ankle. Your mom took you to a local hair salon to have your hair and makeup done. You took in an ad, which showed a very white woman’s face with smoky eyes, wine red lips, and pale skin. The makeup artist said, as diplomatically as possible, that your skin was too dark to make you look like that. You said you wanted to look Goth. She did you up in peaches and mauves. You went home and wiped it all off, doing your usual cat eyes with liquid eyeliner, and burgundy lips. You felt badly for wasting your mom’s money.

Your date was a deviant. He had an undercut with a long ponytail. You’d rather not have gone, but the foolishness of prom is something that needs to be experienced. The art kids took over the dance floor in full, raucous, awkward force. You got milkshakes the next day. A boy you didn’t know well hung a banner in front of the school asking you to prom. You went home, pretending to be sick and wrote him a letter saying no, which your friend delivered. Your date couldn’t find your house so you had to pile your dress into your car and meet him. You wore your French teacher’s dress. You wore a green bridesmaid’s dress of your sisters. Prom was boring. Prom was awesome. You wore a blue tux. You had a drawer of vintage dresses that outfitted both you and your friends. You had a 2am fight barefoot on the street with the boy who was going to be your date. You’d promised yourself you wouldn’t have any drama about prom. Just because something was “once in a lifetime” didn’t mean you needed to do it.

Your friend’s dad dressed as a chauffeur, and a bunch of parents chipped in for a limo. You didn’t go but all your friends said yes to elaborate “promgagements”. Maybe it’s a rehearsal for another overpriced mating ritual, the wedding? You kissed a boy who wasn’t your date. You floated around on a boat in Lake Michigan until 4am and talked to people who never talked to you at any other point during high school. You were ambivalent about school, functions like prom, and life in general. You were full of contradictions, wanting to be good and do well while simultaneously wanting to give your parents and the Catholic school administrators the middle finger. You’re glad you got to share the experience with the person who was your best friend at the time. You went because you were supposed to. You got to dress up, go out into the world and play grown-up. You admit that you sometimes think back on that time and wonder why it was all such a big deal. *

*Compiled from twenty anonymous sources, ages 17-60. 

Small Black/Savages

I’ve been caught in a swooning loop of listening to my two new favorite bands, Small Black and Savages, for the past few weeks and I felt like it was time to share. Both bands have new albums out in the span of two weeks and everyone should be listening to them. Savages debut, Silence Yourself, graced us with its presence on May 7 and Small Black’s third endeavor, Limits of Desire, will be out May 14. They complement one another in a strange way, if only for their proximity in release and my level of excitement about both, so I’ve just been switching back and forth from one to the other all day long.

Savages are true to their name, a bunch of snarly post-punk girls from London who sing a very non-romantic song about husbands that I’ve been listening to for months while waiting for their full-length album to come out. Mark my words…they’re the next big deal. Bonus detail: this morning I found this weird, awesome video directed by Nathan Corbin, my classmate in the film department at Bard. I’m psyched to see he’s making such cool stuff.

Meanwhile Small Black are a bunch of dreamy, synthy boys who manage a delicious combo of sincerity, melancholy and cool. I once saw them opening for another band and didn’t pay any attention to them (bad job, past self!). They’ll be at Rickshaw Stop on June 11. I’ll be missing out on this one so please go in order for me to live vicariously through you.You can stream Small Black’s Limits of Desire at Pitchfork to get a little preview.

Enjoy!

Nicole & Robin
Photo by Tomo Saito

Whether you’re the kind of person who bikes to work every day or never bikes at all, May 9, also known as Bike To Work Day, is a celebratory moment to consider the delight that biking adds to our lives. And this year, my third as a regular yet very non-serious biker, got me thinking about my tumultuous journey to the love affair that is my bike and me.

Five years ago, I got a hand-me-down bike and decided that I’d henceforth be a cyclist! I saw all the cool girls in their dark jeans hunched over their handlebars, navigating through the world with a casual ease that I too wanted to possess. Most of my friends and my husband were avid riders, leaving me to hail cabs and get places way after they did, and for way more money. So I began dutifully biking places, arriving flustered and disheveled, having nearly wiped out after catching my high heel in a street grate. I needed help locking up and generally didn’t feel at all cool or effortless. So I wasn’t destined to be a cyclist after all. I didn’t like hopping on and off the seat at lights, or lifting my hand up to signal a turn and endanger my already precarious state. I couldn’t wear dresses, skirts and impractical shoes, which are my daily uniform. Citing myriad legitimate (but mostly lame) reasons, I retired the bike and went back to the expensive, crowded, dirty, insanity-inducing world of SF public transit.

My first day with my bike!

Then, for my birthday, my husband made a big to-do about how we had to go somewhere to get my present. All sorts of things went through my head (primarily diamonds for some hilarious reason). It ended up being even better than diamonds, though I didn’t know it yet. He took me to the PUBLIC Bikes store and told me to pick out a bike. The gesture was so loving and generous I could hardly say no, though I sort of wanted to. The bikes were insanely cute, which provided an essential initial motivation. I tentatively took my test ride around a quiet tree-lined loop that couldn’t have been more perfect for my hesitant, poorly dressed self (I’d worn a dress and boots to pick out my diamonds). Though I nearly ran over a man jaywalking with an iguana, I felt pretty comfortable. The low, sloping bar of the Dutch style “Step-thru” made hopping on and off in a lady-like fashion very easy, and the high handlebars and basket made me feel a tad European.

Fast forward three years and I bike everywhere. I recently biked some deranged hilly route from North Beach to the Richmond, giddy with gratitude that the journey would have been impossibly long and annoying any other way. I cannot imagine living without my bike; I have a nickname for it and sometimes find myself humming the theme song of the Wicked Witch of the West as I ride. My bike just makes me happy on this immediate, cellular level. I can lock it up just fine, signal that I’m turning without falling over and wear whatever I want. As one of my fellow girly friends says, “if you sometimes like to wear dresses/boots/heels, you may think you can’t bike without changing your wardrobe, but you’re wrong. Rock them anyway! It’s easier than you think. If people can see up your skirt a little bit, who cares!” This is an important biking philosophy I’ve adopted. If someone can see up my skirt for a second, it doesn’t matter cause I’m already gone.

That’s the beauty of being a biker in San Francisco: you can be any sort you want, from the serious to the amateur, and everything in between. You can bike up to Point Reyes or down to Pacifica. You can proudly navigate your 10 minute commute, or make your way through the lovely Panhandle. It’s all OK. Not only does biking offer the cheapest, fastest, most environmental form of urban public transport, but you get to see unexpected, intimate details of your city and the world magically opens up to hold you in a different sort of way. Another biking friend of mine agrees, “There’s something different about putting your feet on the ground mid-transit that changes how you see things. This week I saw: fog lit from above and below, a broken dead seagull, an empty freeway entrance, the third street drawbridge open and close.” More than once, gliding down Sanchez toward 17th late at night on “the wiggle” I’ve thought (and said out loud), “Life is perfect,” because that’s the feeling invoked by biking. In his book Bicycle Diaries, Talking Heads lead singer David Byrne describes his adventures all over the world and says biking “facilitates a state of mind that allows some but not too much of the unconscious to bubble up.”

My sister and I in Kyoto, Japan where we rode bikes in 100 degree heat to the bamboo forest!

There’s no better feeling than riding with a group of friends through Golden Gate Park on a Sunday when the roads are closed to car traffic, ending up at the beach for sunset and beer. Or realizing I have to run some random errand that would normally take an hour, and instead it takes half that. Or taking the ferry to Angel Island for the day to bike around considering the most gorgeous views I’ve ever seen. Or heading over the gusty Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito for white wine on a deck overlooking the water. Or going to the store and putting all my groceries in my basket (I usually refrain from flowers and baguettes, but not always). You’re probably getting the picture about the leisurely take I have on it, but one of my favorite things about biking is its democracy, that everyone has their own style and way they ride.

My fellow more hardcore bikers and even cars, are usually incredibly kind (I’ve been yelled at about five times in three years). I’m intimidated by people who clearly bike faster and more skillfully than me and yet there’s no real reason to be. Once a group of men at the shop where I went to get a tune-up told me that I was part of a club since I’d biked there in the rain (they later held the door for me and gently reminded me to brake sooner than usual because the roads were slippery, which meant I wasn’t really in the club). There was also the car who stopped traffic so I could retrieve my sunglasses that had fallen into the middle of the road and the driver of a delivery truck I ran into who insisted on bandaging my bloody finger. And there was the good looking boy who tried to show off by balancing on his pedals at the red light, bit it, hopped up and said, “C’est la vie, right? We’re on our bikes!” I now fight the urge to yell that at everyone I pass by: “We’re on our bikes!” Here we are, out in the air, rain and sun, feeling our legs and hearts and city. How lucky we are.

Important things I’ve learned about biking: Wear a helmet; it’s fine to look like a dork (ignore helmet-less boys that look cool). Actually stop at lights and stop signs. Shop at/support the array of local awesome bike shops like Box Dog, Freewheel, and Heavy Metal Bike Shop, to name just a few. Join the SF Bike Coalition. Be zen (people do crazy things) and be nice. Don’t chase/try to impress cute boys or you will crash (this wasn’t me, I swear, this was my friend who shall remain nameless). Warm Planet Bikes will park your bike all day for free. Watch out for doors opening into the bike lane. Take up a whole lane if you have to. And, most importantly, there’s no reason not to bike. You can start by biking to work on May 9. I’ll see you out there. I’ll be the one in the dress biking so slowly you’d think I never had anywhere to be.

Friends Forever

Google is making us stupid. Our phones are damaging our hearts. Zadie Smith thinks social media has us pathologically caught in the consciousness of a snarky teenage boy. Rebecca Solnit has some scathing observations about SF’s tech boom. So too, I imagine our ephemeral Facebook connections must be leaving some psychological imprint on us, especially those friendships that we might not otherwise still have or want. On one hand I’m inclined to write off these concerns. The novelty of Facebook is gone for many of us; even my teenage students find it “boring” these days. So, does it really matter? In the early days of Facebook we all rushed to find everyone we could think of, amazed that it was possible, not considering whether we really wanted to or not. Part of the psychological imprint is that now we’re all somehow connected without actually interacting (sometimes without interacting in person and sometimes without interacting at all) to hundreds of people. Robert Kelly, my writing teacher in college, once told us that everyone we ever loved would exist forever as a ghost around us. I found that sad and thrilling and hoped it was true. He didn’t mean Facebook, but he certainly could have, and I’m less sure I hope it’s true now.

I had looked right through, when I wanted a universe that sustains looker and looking and the seen forever, detail after detail never ending. -’Looking’ by Robert Kelly

Recently I “unfriended” someone, an important person from my past who renders me an irrationally passionate teenager. And the unfriend is truly the last resort of the irrationally passionate teenager. In an era of sophisticated privacy settings I can hide anyone who annoys me and I can control every piece of information I share. The unfriend is unnecessary; it’s the violent, tangible act we turn to when no other expression of our over-it-ness will suffice. Where before door slamming and shouted threats of never speaking again would get the point across, it’s now the click that quietly disconnects us.

In the aftermath of this unfriend I conducted a casual survey and it seems many of my friends have never unfriended anyone. Reasons include fear of seeming too invested or concerned, of offending, of giving Facebook too much validity, that they might change their mind (though in what dramatic statement about an interpersonal dynamic might we ever be sure?) and so forth. They rightfully hide the offending party and continue on. It’s a reasonable and sustainable approach where no one’s feelings are hurt and we don’t seem crazy. After all, there are plenty of people I’ve merely hidden and soon forget. It’s easy, painless and non-political. I can unhide if I want and I don’t seem fickle. Due to this clandestine option, I forget half the people I’m friends with, but therein lies part of the strangeness and the question. Why do I stay invisibly connected to someone I want to hide, no matter what the reason?

I was curious as to why this particular person, and a handful before him, inspired me to forego such social niceties as would make sense. I wanted him to know he was no longer allowed to see me and that I had no interest in seeing him. Not only did I want to disconnect from him symbolically (and literally) in a way that he could potentially be aware of and upset by, but I was also willing to give up the idea that he might get the occasional glimpse at the curated, controlled moments of my perfect, amazing, digital life and I was thereby severing all ties, including the unspoken one where we’re at least allowed to spy on each other. All levels and layers of our connection are obsolete, says the unfriend. If the newsfeed hide is when you pretend you don’t see someone at a party, the unfriend is when you throw your drink in their face and cause a scene. Who actually inspires that? And even if they do, should we give them the pleasure?

George and Martha would have unfriended each other.

There have been others, albeit slightly less dramatic ones. The acquaintance who was a jerk the last time I saw him, who never sent a message or interacted with me, but silently sat there as my hundred and whatever-eth friend doing nothing. Finally, when I still couldn’t remember if I liked him in real life or not, I unfriended him. Or the guy who wanted me to “like” his band (ten times!) but walked by me in Dolores Park because he didn’t recognize me. Or the guy who took me on three dates in college and was a hell of a breakdancer but had nothing to say since. Or an old girlfriend who seemed to have forgotten clearly telling me we weren’t friends anymore (in our early 20′s). These people shouldn’t be connected to me because they aren’t. We don’t know each other anymore or we never did. What does it do to my brain/heart/psychology to know they’re there anyway? We’re not even actively looking at each other’s lives most likely, but instead just absent-mindedly, occasionally looking, listlessly and invisibly bound to one another. In what unconscious, tiny ways are we changed by revealing ourselves like this, by looking at others and being seen within this framework?

Once this most recent person was unfriended, I felt calmer, less seen, more myself (and fascinated that these were all equated). He wasn’t there, wherever there is. He was gone, not hidden. What further interested me was that he was as absent from my offline life as ever, but the palpable sense of getting him out of my online life felt substantial. And that speaks to the odd importance of our online selves, how they mirror or reinforce who we really are. In my informal survey many had obviously unfriended exes but others had purposefully kept them around so as not to give them the “satisfaction” of being unfriended, a funny twist. Are our experiences any less if everyone can’t see it? Some part of our experiences include us wanting specific other people to know about them. There’s some secret part of ourselves that must admit we want that. But the unfriend is saying I don’t and therefore has some actual meaning and significant social power.

Facebook has made us forget that we don’t want to know everyone. We’ve forgotten it can be nice to be alone, as it can be helpful to be quiet. I’ve made a ritual of not going on my phone first thing in the morning, or taking it out when my dinner companions excuse themselves and this helps me have one or two quiet moments inside my own head. Along the same lines I’ve also decided that the unfriend is allowed. The art of the unfriend can range from the occasional housecleaning of people you really don’t know or will never see again, to the psychological protection of ridding yourself of someone bad for you, to no longer aligning yourself with someone you don’t want to be aligned with. Don’t avoid the unfriend for fear of seeming melodramatic or one day changing your mind. Delete your ex-boyfriend if he makes you so mad you forget you’re a grown woman. Delete the friend you wouldn’t want to meet for a drink in real life. Grow apart like you should.

The road trip, running around in the woods at night, the car crash, when he played piano in the empty auditorium, those are the fleeting actual moments of my life, the relationships that dissipated or strengthened, that evolved or ended, in real time. Those living moments of our friendships happened and are remembered or not, mattered or didn’t. This person’s status as my Facebook friend was an electronic glimmer that distracted me.The inexplicable nature of why we’re drawn to one another and why we stay or go is the endless fascination of my life. If only it were simple to understand, but in the meantime, even if he does exist forever as a ghost around me, he doesn’t exist on Facebook because I unfriended him.

Challenge of the Future Via Bard Makes Noise

When I attended Bard College in upstate New York during the late ’90s, there was a band called Boba Fett whose guitarist was Nick Zinner in his pre-Yeah Yeah Yeahs days. There was an all-pervading maniacal love for music at Bard. It was nearly ridiculous how voracious everyone was and I was no exception. I saw so much good music in the scruffy confines of the charmingly dilapidated Old Gym, where pretty much everything awesome that ever happened, happened. Bands that seemed too famous for the space (Le Tigre, Blonde Redhead, Yo La Tengo!) oftentimes played, feeling generous on their way to or from real concerts in New York City. In some ways, the concerts all blend into one when I think of them now, the famous bands alongside our friends. I remember the Boba Fett boys, and others like them, epitomized some archetypal Bard boy qualities; older than me, irreverent, cool as hell, handsome in a jagged featured, thin t-shirted way, listening to Spacemen 3 and Jonathan Fire-Eater, wearing scarves and so on. These boys’ crush-worthy mythologies preceded them. They were all seniors when I was a freshman and I only saw Boba Fett play once. At Old Gym concerts, people ran through windows, snuck vodka in their Snapple bottles and everything was perfect. When we graduated, we all moved to New York City. Somewhere along the way, Boba Fett became Challenge of the Future, for fear of being sued. And somewhere further along the way, the Challenge of the Future boys concentrated more on their respective side projects, including Lycaon Pictus and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Old Gym

There was excitement and hype going on in New York City at the time I moved there, with bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes, The White Stripes and Liars getting attention. It was 2001 and I was going to concerts in secret basement rooms, waitressing, lying on my roof at night and falling in love. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in the city much longer and one night I came home late from work to a note that said, I’ll move to the woods with you and so we did. It’s those first months in the country, driving down the back dirt roads in my little red Toyota Tercel with a 5-disc CD player in the trunk, that I most associate with Yeah Yeah Yeahs first EP. My life had gone from very urban to very rural. I blasted “Art Star” as loud as I could and drove unreasonably long distances to get anywhere at all. The delirious sound of the album, messy but somehow also controlled, went well with the wilderness, being 23, living in an A-frame in the middle of nowhere and trying to decide whether or not to be a grown-up. I loved Karen O’s voice and swagger. YYYs contained everything, girly and hard, too-cool and unconcerned, stylish and rough. Listening to them was cathartic fun, music made exactly for my mix of sensibilities and contrasts. In the last song, with Karen O half crooning, half screeching, “It’s our time, our time…” I was out of my head with how much I felt that it really, really was.

Then in 2003, Fever to Tell, came out. I’d moved across the country to San Francisco and it was strange knowing I’d arrived in the place meant for me, but still feeling profoundly unmoored as I acclimated. I listened to “Date With The Night” and sang along feeling practically euphoric as I ran around my new city. To this day that song’s bratty wonderfulness is often stuck in my head. The plaintive “Maps” was a totally different mood altogether and no less mesmerizing. That juxtaposition made sense; I liked them not being all one way. Everything good I’d loved in their EP had strengthened and crystallized. Karen O continued to embody some combination of soft and edgy. Her cryptic fashion and theatrical, exuberant attitude were magnetic. She wasn’t the purely angsty girls of my teenage musical loves, but a shrieking, sexy woman whose voice could go sweet or scathing, who was posturing and intensely sincere simultaneously. Watching her dance is proof of her range and realness, her sultry, awkward, long limbed antics are riveting.

In March of 2006, when it seriously wouldn’t stop raining for one second, Show Your Bones, was released. I was going through a break-up and that album was the soundtrack to it. It wasn’t the typical break-up album by any measurement and for that I was irrationally grateful. Somehow, “Gold Lion” was gonna tell me where the light was, the video had sparks coming out of Brian Chase’s drum set and that was what I wanted. I walked around in the rain (seriously, it rained all month) listening to the album. YYYs were coming through town and I went to see them for the first and only time. It’s the only concert I’ve ever gone to by myself and I’m glad I did. I wore a weird black dress, red lipstick and danced until I thought my head might fall off, the night a combination of transcendent empty mindedness and giddy dance moves. “I think that I’m bigger than the sound,” Karen O sang with repetitive intensity on “Cheated Hearts.” She writhed and growled all over the stage. Nick Zinner looked cute, serious and tousled. I burst out into the night air afterward feeling particularly kinetic.

Is Is, another EP came out in 2007, as I was finishing graduate school. It was a rowdy, busy year and perfect for some YYYs accompaniment. And accompany me they did, to readings and parties, while I wrote stories. In my post-grad school life, a lot of interesting things happened: I had to start trying to be a writer for real, which was new, scary and good, my break-up was reversed and out came It’s Blitz! in 2009 (the video for “Zero” was shot in SF!). Familiar but still unexpected, this album found YYYs keeping some core essence while also evolving. Again, it all felt very relevant and personal as I listened and attempted the same. Some claimed It’s Blitz! was the YYYs trying to make a more mainstream album though it doesn’t really seem that way to me. Whether it’s true or not, being successful in that way doesn’t seem to concern them. Karen O told Carrie Brownstein in an interview for The Believer, “…there’s no detachment when I’m up there. I don’t allow myself the distance. I’m fully putting myself out there for the people and for the sake of trying to lure them into the experience.”

1001 Photos by Nick ZInner at Public Works/Via Art Business

YYYs members do other things too. A couple years ago at Public Works, I saw Nick Zinner’s 1001 Photos (he studied photography at Bard).  The tiny room was covered from floor to ceiling in photographs. They were rock-n-roll and travel photos, but, much like his band, they were also more complicated, chaotic, and compelling than just that. Brian Chase just put out an experimental solo album. Karen O has a side project, Native Korean Rock, and worked on an opera called Stop the Virgins, which I never saw but sounds amazing. Discussing the opera she said, “I feel like every five to seven years I really need to put myself in this position of discomfort and exploration, just to survive.” That clawing, sparkly angst is everywhere in YYYs music, and the desire for discomfort as exploration is both contagious and relatable.

YYYs’ newest, Mosquito, comes out Tuesday. It’s been over ten years since I first heard them and they continue to feel not just relevant, but essential. The two songs I’ve heard indicate that I will be continuing my love affair. With the usual levels of ferocity, inchoate sexiness, and general bad ass-ness, “Sacrilege” and “Mosquito” are recognizably YYYs, but with something new added, as there is each time. Their music has always punctuated my life at the exact right moment in the exact right way. Even how Karen O recently described being an artist seems right: “We’ve got a death grip on the adolescent way of feeling things,” she said, later explaining,”…having the mundane experience of living day to day, [but] experiencing things on this really kind of amped-up level.” There aren’t many other bands from ten years ago that I’m still listening to with such excitement, or that continue to so consistently thrill me with new work. They have a brashness, restraint, melancholy, and feverishness that I just can’t find anywhere else, a combination of adolescent and adult, like we all are. In each song and with each album, there’s different ratios of these things, a dynamic sense of struggle and change. Their inventiveness means no one else sounds similar and they encapsulate such variety of mood and sensation. Somehow they are collegiate rowdiness, windows breaking, wilderness back roads, torrential downpours, new cities, transitions, tumult, adventure, and whatever comes next.

Springtime!/Laura Schadler

If you’re like me, the long winter months (never mind that San Francisco is basically season-less) and that scary full moon at the end of March have you cultivating or recovering from your third(ish) existential crisis and planning to quit your job to go teach ESL in Thailand. But the good news is that it’s April; full-on springtime, rainy, pretty, warm, hopeful, and there’s all sorts of cool stuff happening in San Francisco and beyond. So while I still may move to Thailand, I’m going to wait till May at least so I can partake in all the creativity, celebration and excitement of the burgeoning springtime.

1. Anne Carson

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. Via The Millions.

First, Anne Carson is reading at Mills on April 10. The only way to put it is that Anne Carson is not of this Earth. I aim to be even just 1/26th as odd as her. She’s piercing and magical and I feel upended every time I read her work. Her newest, Red Doc> is shaping up to be perfect if the first 10 pages are any indicator. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think bulls are running around with their horns on fire. My goal is to finish by Wednesday so I have at least a fighting chance of understanding anything she says. Red Doc> is a follow-up of sorts to Autobiography of Red, Carson’s mythological verse novel, which is basically one of the best books ever and one I recommend to people I’m trying to impress. Read anything of hers to get yourself in a nice, other-worldly mood and then head over the bridge dreamily not knowing what to expect. In general, I think April is a good month to start reading out loud to each other more. Try this or this.

2. Movies

I love the particular type of anticipation born when an eccentric director’s new movie is coming out and this month we have three. From April 12 to April 18, Upstream Color is going to be playing at the Roxie. Shane Carruth’s first film, Primer, is an incredible time travel movie made for a measly $7,000 that needs like ten viewings to just partly grasp its philosophical intentions and only one viewing to grasp its utter awesomeness. Judging from the preview above we have some more inexplicable and creepy experiences in store for us. The less eccentric (but still, enough so to be interesting) Derek Cianfrance, of Blue Valentine fame, has a new movie, The Place Beyond the Pines, which seems like Drive with motorcycles. In other words: awesome. I don’t need to say much else about this one except for Ryan Gosling & Eva Mendes 4ever. I’m going to see it tonight. Last but not least is Terrence Malick’s newest, To The Wonder, coming out April 12. I dare not say a thing before I see it and I c a n n o t wait. I’m so glad he isn’t waiting 20 years between movies anymore.

3. Music

It’s a musical month too. On April 14, the delightful and theatrical Bat for Lashes will be playing at The Regency Ballroom (the icing on that witchy girl cake is that Nite Jewel is opening). I want to buy a glow in the dark unitard and do a weird dance on the beach but until I can get to that I will be clutching the elbow of my concert companion, swaying and swooning. Tickets aren’t sold out so go buy one now. Then, in an attempt to still act like a 20-year-old who goes to concerts every night, check out Purity Ring at the Independent on April 15 and 16. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs new album is coming out April 16 (sadly no upcoming concerts locally), an event which has had me holding my breath for years. I’m not going to say much about the YYYs as I’m currently writing my love fest retrospective of them in my head and you will no doubt be regaled with that shortly (next week?). But…needless to say…YAY! Other concerts of note:  Wild Belle at the Mezzanine on April 12 and Polica on April 13, Burnt Ones at Brick and Morter on April 12 and Blood Red Shoes on April 20.

4. Arts and the Outdoors

SF wildflowers/Laura Schadler

If you’re a writer, filmmaker or visual artist, the MacDowell Colony deadline is April 15. Have one of your friends write you a letter of recommendation about how amazing you are and then go hang out in the woods for a month working on one of your projects (this is waaay easier said than done, but why not give it a try?). With all the crackling transition and rebirth going on around us, now is the time to harness some of that creative energy and do something inspired. You can also go to an art opening at White Walls or Yerba Buena, see The Birds at the Castro as part of a Zoetrope All-Story event (you can also read their latest Spring issue) and learn something new like how to brew beer or weave baskets underwater. This doesn’t even take into account the timeless activities that are all the more fun in April, such as inviting yourself over to your friend’s house if they have a nice back yard, or drinking margaritas at 4pm, or driving out of the city to one of the zillion gorgeous places that surround us.

5. Spring Fever!

SF from a distance on a pretty day/Laura Schadler

Last but not least, on April 19th our very own KQED Pop, along with the Rumpus and Do415 are hosting a springtime party aptly called Spring Fever!: A Night of Literature, Live Radio, Comedy and Music. I’ll see you there! We can bask in our gratitude that we live in such an amazing city/crazy world/perfect month with so much going on. Busying ourselves with experiencing, discussing and analyzing all of the aforementioned goodness will surely keep the existential crises at bay through spring and perhaps even summer. Happy April!

I’ve never been a careerist. It’s not a strategy. I react to certain characters and story lines and specific mode of filmmaking. I feel a kind of emotional pull in a specific direction and that’s what I follow. As far as the sellout thing goes: It makes me laugh. That term means nothing anymore. This whole idea of “sellout culture” or what’s high or low culture is an old person’s thought process. It’s counter to the truth of the moment. It does not exist anymore. It’s been obliterated.  There’s no such thing as underground, no such thing as sellout. There’s nothing high. There’s nothing base. It all exists in the air. Things are either interesting or not interesting. Good or not good. Things have a connection and a grace and an energy or they don’t. That’s all I care about. –Harmony Korine in Salon

I do sometimes admire Harmony Korine conceptually more than I actually like his movies. But still, I’m fascinated by him. I love people always calling him enfant terrible even though he’s 40, getting mad about his antics and trying to figure out what he means. I love how half-crazy, half-brilliant he sounds when he talks, and how engaged he is with his provocation and the impressionistic messy magic of the world he sees. I love his Letterman interviews from the ’90s which make him seem like an eccentric savant in the best way; hilarious, strangely particular and deeply unconcerned with trivialities. I love that his fans include Julian Schnabel, Bernardo Bertolucci and Werner Herzog, the latter of whom is an  actor in Korine’s films and encouraged him after a bad review of Gummo, saying that the movie would live forever. I love that he makes weirdly poignant homage videos to Jonas Mekas (see “Curb Dancing,” above), unfinished projects where he instigates fistfights with people, experiments with Dogme 95, shoots on a VHS camcorder and when he was 19 just happened to be skateboarding around with his screenplay in his pocket. At various points in my life I’ve been impressed, bothered and intrigued by his movies, but never bored. I was happy to see him re-emerge after a decade of drugs, mowing lawns, starting house fires and wandering Paris, with Mr. Lonely, a calmer, but no less interesting movie. He said the next one would be more provocative and, true to his word, he then made Trash Humpers.

Gummo

I was pretty psyched to see his latest, Spring Breakers, for many reasons; the hot pink hued preview, the fact that he cast a bunch of teen pop queens from Disney and Pretty Little Liars, and because the A.V. Club says he’s dynamiting the zeitgeist which sounds like a worthwhile pastime, cinematic and otherwise. I wanted to know what grown-up Harmony Korine was up to. He seems confused we aren’t all laughing more at the discord between our need to seek meaning and our inability to find any. For that I find him mesmerizing.

Julien Donkey-Boy

Though I understand the critiques of him and his work, I think what he does is ultimately darker, cooler, more impressive, weirder and smarter than simply provocation for provocations sake. And, anyway, why not be more provocative? So often even independent film has a dull, safe, monochromatic feeling to it. Within that context, I appreciate Korine’s various concoctions and admire his intensity, absurdity and scrutiny. He admits to wanting to provoke his audience into a real reaction and though I’m not a big fan of Trash Humpers I appreciate the grainy, horrible beauty of certain moments, his unrelenting witch cackle in the background and his adherence to his own demented vision. I did have a reaction, one that, despite my criticism, had me thinking about him for days. Now, with his first foray into a real engagement with uber-popular culture, everyone is suddenly paying a lot more attention to him, as he simultaneously embraces and subverts the reality he depicts, while claiming to do both and neither and not caring what we take from it. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times puts it perfectly: “That Mr. Korine appears to be having it both (or many) ways may seem like a cop-out, but only if you believe that the role of the artist is to be a didact or a scold.”

Spring Breakers

Sitting in the theatre waiting to see Spring Breakers this weekend I was full of a thrilled anticipation. There are few people that would illicit that level of curiosity and excitement in me and I wasn’t disappointed by what came next. Whether his work is always good, comprehensible, frustrating, or whatever else seems beside the point. His movies do have the grace, energy and connection he is speaking of in the Salon interview excerpted above. He strikes me as an alarming, funny, crass, flawed mystic. If you’ve read the reviews (and many of them are quite good), you know the general gist of the hedonistic, bacchanal you’re in for. With Benoît Debie’s (Enter the Void and Irreversible) swooshing, wild cinematography, Spring Breakers feels very Harmony Korine-ish. The intimate, creepy, wobbly mood that permeates all of his films is no less present in this one. There’s more of a narrative arc (sort of), and the pretty girls are more fun to watch than creepy perverts in masks, but it fits in quite neatly with his overall vision for the past 20 years. His obsession with dolls, aimless bike riding (or in this case scooter riding), annoying repetitions of ominous dialogue, costumes, soul-crushing boredom, non-linear story telling and fractured vignettes creates a certain space that exists in all his work, adding up to an uneasy, sensory experience that, notably, isn’t like any other. Korine seems deeply interested in landscapes, from the sad, desolate towns of the South to the candy-colored depravity of spring break locales, he examines the potential for latent horror within these places. That was one of my favorite feelings while watching Spring Breakers, the slow dawning horror seeping out between all the gratuitous partying, Skrillex songs and bouncing naked girls.

James Franco earned my respect back as Alien, a mesmerizing bad guy who is unexpectedly the most vulnerable character in some profound way and I was also surprisingly captivated by Selena Gomez portraying the only girl who has a sense something really bad is about to happen, but who also hoped the most ardently for the transformative powers of spring break. Ultimately the movie entertained and fascinated me on numerous levels, sinking in over the past few days like a fever dream. I like that it doesn’t matter who these people are or why they’re doing what they’re doing. Their motivations and characteristics are not the point because they’re part of a larger mythology, a confusing, alluring, disturbing mythology that we’re all witness to and part of, whether we’d like to be or not.

Harmony Korine

I liked watching people walk out of the theatre during Spring Breakers and feeling the waves of reaction around me so palpably at various points, which I won’t describe so as not to ruin some of the more wonderfully appalling and bizarre moments. The level of reaction is fun and interesting in and of itself because it feels like Korine has hacked into popular culture and is wreaking havoc. At one point someone literally yelled out, “What the f***?” and I heard girls behind me whispering to each other, “I’m so confused, I’m so confused…” I laughed nervously more than once, in this wonderful gray state of being wary, nervous and genuinely amused. The thing about Harmony Korine is that he clearly welcomes all reactions, people who take it literally, who are confused, who find it ironic, who get mad about it. That’s ultimately his strength, making work that is unconcerned with how it’s interpreted. He’s been called a pop-culture Dadaist more than once; the Dadaists concerned themselves with intuition, nonsense and the irrational, responding to the horrors of their time, which is very much what Korine is doing in his own way. I can viscerally feel his irreverence and I’m compelled to do my best to understand, or at least go along with him, because he’s always taking me somewhere I haven’t been before.

Guerrilla Girls Billboard (2011)

Of the top 250 domestic films in 2012, 9% were directed by women. The glaring under-representation of women in film directing has always bothered and perplexed me, so in honor of Women’s History Month I’ll write about it. I can’t think of any other area of popular culture where women are still quite so marginalized (it reminds me of the dismal stats on female CEOs, another area where people seem hesitant to have women in charge). Only one woman has won an Oscar for Best Director (Katherine Bigelow), while no women of color have even been nominated for the award, and only one woman has won the Palm d’Or at Cannes (Jane Campion). Women are less likely to get financing for their films than men and the Oscar Academy is 77% male. The examples of this insanity go on and on, with all sorts of assumptions as to why (men tend to direct the money-makers while women go indie and/or tell “girly” stories that appeal to less people, etc.). Never mind that these assumptions contain an infuriating sexism and chicken-egg logic that could keep us here for days. The good news is film schools currently boast a 50% female student body, women have won Best Director at Sundance the past two years in a row and, in 2012, Ava DuVernay was the first African-American woman to win for her film Middle of Nowhere. Both The Atlantic and The New York Times think some improvements on this gender inequity are in the works. Women, after all, have made some of my absolute favorite movies, films that not only impacted me but are profoundly influential on a larger scale as well. Here’s just a small glimpse at some female directors, past and present.

Vera Chytilová

Daisies

Vera Chytilová was the sole female member of the Czech New Wave and her 1966 movie Sedmikrásky (Daisies) is nothing short of an anarchic, mysterious, captivating masterpiece (it was banned from theatres and export for a time). It’s narratively disjointed, but makes total sense, kind of like dreams do, full of symbolism, beauty and strange surprises. The film follows two bored girls, their boredom a response to a world they deem senseless. Their subsequent mayhem has an air of perfectly irreverent protest to it, something brimming under and finally over the surface. Full of energy, color and noise, it’s my favorite movie of all time.

Maya Deren

When I saw Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), the disarming film by Maya Deren, I’m pretty sure my response was just, “Ohmygod, hell yeah!” One of the first prominent avant-garde American filmmakers, Deren has influenced filmmakers from Su Friedrich to David Lynch. When I see something like Lykke Li’s music videos, I feel sure Deren’s influence has permeated our world. Shot with a 16mm Bolex, Meshes is creepy, beautiful, haunting, bold and psychological, riddled with darkly surreal moments I won’t describe. Take 18 minutes of your life and watch it below. You won’t be sorry. Deren’s other work is equally compelling, including a documentary The Divine Horsemen:The Living Gods of Haiti and Ritual in Transfigured Time. 

Lisa Cholodenko

Laurel Canyon (2002) is my favorite Lisa Cholodenko movie, though all her films are understated and deeply entertaining. Cholodenko’s work is a great response to the whole “women’s tales are too girly” argument since her stories do seem distinctly told by a woman but contain the sharp, smart and witty edges of what that means (she also made The Kids Are All Right and High Art). Her actresses are always breathtaking and portray fully imagined, intriguing women. Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon is riveting and hilarious as the brash foil to her uptight son (though it’s her hot younger rock-star beau in the clip below).

Miranda July

Miranda July started off as a performance and video artist, with projects such as Joanie4Jackie, soliciting short films made by women, which were then compiled onto video and sent back out to the contributors in the spirit of a chain letter. She has countless other projects and also writes books. Her first movie, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), is weird, funny, sad and so so good. Her second movie, The Future  (2011), has its moments but isn’t as perfect. It doesn’t matter though because July’s DIY, cross-genre, inventive, generous bad-ass-ness is a gift to everyone.

Love Diamond (1998-2000), her first full length performance, is below.

Claire Denis

Critically acclaimed French filmmaker Claire Denis made a vampire movie with Vincent Gallo, Trouble Every Day (2001), that horrified me to the depths of my soul. Often described as fearless, subversive, an auteur, or all three, Denis says wonderful things like this (in an interview with The Guardian):  ”We are always trying and failing to understand the world and ourselves. We never really know the final meaning of our lives. Literature and the cinema should reflect that.”

Claire Denis shooting Trouble Every Day.

Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley gets major points for adapting an Alice Munro short story into her first film, Away from Her (2006), and stays impressively true to the spirit of Munro’s impeccable prose. Polley’s second movie, Take This Waltz (2012), is a nuanced, grown-up look at adultery with a conclusion I was totally unprepared for and more than one moment that made me smack my hands over my eyes and scream (a brief PG-13 look at one such moment below). Both films, while flawed, almost seem better because of those flaws and are deeply thoughtful, fully explored, lyrical, complicated and unique.

Chantal Akerman

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) by Chantal Akerman was the first movie to truly shock me. It introduced me to the idea of watching an excruciating movie as a worthwhile experiential ordeal and combined formal experimentation with the intensely personal. It has lots of feminist film criticism written about it that I barely understand and a surprise ending like no other. At a running time of 225 minutes, I’m a little wary to watch it again but I’ve never forgotten it. The clip below will give you an idea of what I mean about endurance.

Jeanne Dielman

Andrea Arnold

One day I will stop writing about and being freakishly obsessed with Wuthering Heights but that day hasn’t come yet.  Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation is so good it took my freakish obsession to whole new levels and explored the horror of the story as much as the romance. It’s quiet, gloomy, dimly lit, devastating and by far the closest thing to how the book seems in my head.

Andrea Arnold

Arnold’s earlier film Fish Tank (2009) is brutal but wonderful and makes sinister, sexy use of Michael Fassbender. Fish Tank and Wuthering Heights are definitely two of my favorite movies, and not just by a female director, but by any director. I’m a little afraid to see Red Road which won the 2006 Cannes Jury Prize because I think it’s going to upset me, but the fact that Arnold is so good that I’m scared of her movies is one of the best compliments I could give.

Allison Anders, Martha Coolidge, Karyn Kusama, Sofia Coppola, Alison Klayman, Mary Harron, Tanya Hamilton and Debra Granik all come to mind too, among so many others. Let’s make sure we go see the incredible movies women are making. The whole point of stories is to hear them told in a multitude of voices, those we recognize and those we don’t, those similar to us, and those not, those we’re immediately drawn to, and those we’re unsure of or uncomfortable with, the stories of men and women both, told from every possible perspective. How else are we to go about the futile, wonderful task of trying to fully understand our lives?

Me at 14 vs. Me at 34. I promise there was more than decade where my hair was different and I never wore flannel.

Growing up out in the woods pre-Internet there was nothing quite like the discovery of music, books, art, or fashion that I loved, hence my proclivity toward the cool lists. With non-traditional, artistic parents there wasn’t much to rebel against. I was encouraged to express myself however I wanted and sometimes made to watch Joseph Campbell videos. I vividly remember ripping holes in my stockings the summer between 8th and 9th grade but I’m not entirely sure where the inspiration came from. I was happily sent home from school once for an outfit deemed too “distracting” (violet slip, green vintage t-shirt, platform sandals) and it was early on that my love for scouring thrift stores, wearing giant jewelry and creating outfits with flourishes such as my dad’s blue coveralls was born. Each new find I made was a message in a bottle from the outside world. They were hints at the place I was one day going to get to and proof that I was compatible with it. Riot Grrrls, Heathers, Dadaism! The clues were everywhere, in episodes of My So-Called Life, in the pages of Sassy, in drives to D.C. for band t-shirts, baby doll dresses, artsy movies, museums and the Indie Rock Flea Market. Something thrilling was occurring in my gathering of these interests, no less than the formation of an identity being built consciously and unconsciously. My current self is beholden to these influences in inextricable, enigmatic ways.

Tuscadero was one of many awesome things about the Indie Rock Flea Market. Others included red vintage shoes (not pictured) that I took with me to college.

“A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing,” Arthur Rimbaud writes in A Season In Hell. In high school this slim golden volume that I only half understood was suggested to me by a cute older boy who not only was in college but went to art school. Rimbaud was a 19-year-old French free-verse poet whose bio includes adjectives like volatile and peripatetic. The whole experience blew my mind on several levels. A boy suggesting a book meant the thoughts therein were ones we’d both looked at and read and therefore shared somehow and I realized for the first time how intimacy could be created through ideas. It was a revelation in the sexiness of words that I’ve never forgotten and it influences everything from my text messages to my short stories to how my thoughts even work. The idea that this type of poetic expression was a life or death thing, a way to live and consider life all at once, meant everything to me.

Arthur & Sylvia

Then there was The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, discovered by way of my 9^th grade fascination with women writers who’d killed themselves. The Bell Jar contains sentiments that both my 14 and 34-year-old self deeply appreciate, such as, “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.” Though the book is clearly full of despair, lines like that feel freeing too because of the power in Plath’s language that wrestles with despair. The Bell Jar was a reading experience beyond simply relating to the voice and more like having something directly injected into my psyche. In Maggie Nelson’s incredible, paradigm-shifting collection of essays The Art of Cruelty, Plath is addressed in-depth. Nelson says she can’t help but wish we could all read the writing of an older Plath and I agree. It’s profound to consider how our concerns, understandings and preoccupations shift as we age, and it would have been fascinating to see them shift in her. Among many reasons why, she might have given our own shifts more clarity and because the only thing as fascinating as what remains the same in us is what changes.

One significant activity that filled my days as a teenager was zine making. For years I dutifully created Confessions of a Doorknob Queen (I forget the title’s origin, I think I was fascinated by locks) and sold it at local music stores. It contained lyrics from The Cure, poetry obviously, Anne Sexton lines, concert tickets and sketches of boys I had crushes on. Zine-making is still going strong, somewhat undeterred by the ubiquitous power of the screen (or perhaps invigorated by it). There’s also, of course, the overall trend toward the handmade, including book art and bookmaking. My sometimes panicked deleting of Instagram off my phone must be the result of my old school affinity for scotch tape, staples, my manual camera and ripping up all my books and magazines. Nothing makes me feel better than ripping images out of a magazine and taping them on a piece of paper. The tangible and analogue are therapeutic because they remind me of my days spent collaging my bedroom walls and making music videos in the fields. I do appreciate things like Rookie and Sadie, zine-like in spirit even though they’re online, and which my teenage self would’ve totally devoured had the Internet been around. Locally there’s Needles & Pens (my high school and current self’s dream store) who carry zines and other ephemera, and the SF Zine Festival, where if I ever get my act together, I plan to one day unveil my collaborative zine project Future Circa (you know who you are, collaborator) which will make my 14-year-old-self proud.

Title Page of Confessions of a Doorknob Queen- circa 1996

More than any one band (well, maybe The Pixies) it’s the love of finding music that I share with my young self (though she had a higher tendency to write lyrics on her t-shirts in marker); the act of reading, going to shows, sharing new discoveries and of course, listening. Listening when I’m working, when I’m writing, when I’m walking; music informs and punctuates every activity and always has. I remember sitting in the film center my freshman year of college when Fugazi’s Waiting Room started playing. In my unsettled, homesick state it felt like my familiarity and attachment to that song was a mirror, a vital part of me, a wild perfect remedy of some sort. Science confirms how literally music is tied into our memories and life stories and I’m not surprised. More than one of my early romances hinged on a shared love of certain bands (my knowledge of Jawbox is totally responsible for my first college kiss). With the advent of music blogs and Spotify this musical search has become easier and different of course, but it still contains the spirit of the scavenger hunt and I still love it. I have Spotify to thank for Lust For Youth, Gazelle Twin, and Rhye among a zillion others. My 14-year-old self would have lost her mind over Spotify (for inspiration I’ve been listening to Bratmobile while writing this article). When I was in high school I made mixed tapes and titled the two sides things like Slut Side and Virgin Side. In the spirit of those days, I now title my Spotify playlists as if they have two sides (Doomed and Saved!).

The searching, openness, magic and attention it takes to find what you love is so fun, serendipitous and rewarding. The word of mouth, the overheard song, the opening band, how one thing you love is connected to another, how one author you like talks about an author he likes, how through these things we continually decide, I am this and this and this. Though I no longer need the lifeline in exactly the same way I did when I was younger, I still feel the richness and delight of each discovery and how they make the world seem like an astonishing place brimming with expression, excitement and a ton of stuff worth adding to my cool list. I found that thrilling and inspiring at age 14 and I still do. I sat down recently to write my 40-year- old self a letter and I have a feeling she’ll agree.