what's your favourite book?

Amongst the chit chatter that usually occurs as I transform a clients face with colour, contour and highlight, a very simple question threw me off guard.

I was rhythmically moving my brush back and forth in the socket of her eye to create the depth she desired.
We had just finished a brief conversation about our academic careers (my new found one at UofT and her old one at Western), she casually asks "so what's your favourite book?"

I couldn't answer this question, instead I named off a number of authors I've read and love, and the titles that stood out to me amongst them.

For the rest of my evening I pondered this question and I pinpointed it down to two novels.

They're not particularly my "favourite" for that seems too serious a commitment.
I have read many novels over the years that stirred me as much if not more than these have.
Rather than being my favourite they are my beginning; my inauguration into literature.

I've lost my virginity to these books.... before losing my virginity.

Before them I was reading kitschy gothic vampire novels, (which still unabashedly hold a place in my heart :).

The first of my favourites is Charles Bukowski's, Ham on Rye:

I had read some of his poetry when I was fifteen and it stuck to me. I purchased this book at fifteen/sixteen and I was enamored.
After discovering him, I walked around the grounds of my high school feeling like a beatnik.
Bukowski's poetry smothered in my armpit.
Skipping class and smoking outside my teachers window when I really should have spent my time learning instead of foolishly acting learned.

I related with Henry Chinaski right away.
Here he is coming of age in a dysfunctional and abusive family, hazardously lonely and anti-social.
The novel is written with beautiful wit and irony.
It seems to mock the story of self discovery, yet portraying it in a brutal and honest way.

Much later after reading all his novels and poetry I realized how finely veiled Henry is to himself.
In this book he is a young Henry, in his later novels he is still Henry though now a progressed masochistic selfish alcoholic.
Yet I still relate with this asshole even to this day. Ham On Rye must have been a premonition, and it indeed started my love-hate relationship with Charles Bukowski. He echos the love hate relationship I hold with my father for the same reasons.
He was me in Ham on Rye,
He had me at Factotum, Post Office and Women (Hollywood i feverishly enjoyed but could only relate to as my Bukowski alter ego).
I then disappointingly realized he wrote those after Ham On Rye, the chronology didn't sit right with my teenage brain.

Nonetheless i love his prose and poetry, he brings the humorous and dirty brutality to life.

The second of these is Vladamir Nabokov's:  Lolita,

The first time I opened this book I didn't close it until I finished it.
I felt this novel couldn't have entered any ones psyche as much as it did mine, of  course I was wrong as I realized how many followers this book had.
I'm not positive on how I picked this beauty up but I have to say that I believe my muse at the time (ehem :/ Marilyn Manson) named it as one of his favourites.

It's such a beautiful piece of art and though Nabokov is a brilliant writer the rest of his prose never lived up to Lolita in my eyes.
I suspect it has a lot to do with the tender age (14/15) that Lolita entered my world.
The most interesting thing for me about this book is how strongly and equally I related with both Humbert, Humbert and Lolita.
I got tangled in their futile love affair. Their libidinous affection, a tale disguised as a perversion of morality, but to the reader (at least to me) there is nothing unnatural to the relationships that push and pull on each other.

I sympathized with him and felt his lure towards Lola, as I cringed at his clumsy all-consuming and uncontrollable affliction.

And her his Lo, knobbly kneed Lo, how could I not relate with her and love her.
Discovering the frightening yet utterly titillating power of her detonating sexuality.
The fine line of innocence irreversibly blurred by her long legs, pretty face and mocking expressions.
Her playful gaze took on the appearance of a mature understanding and sexual flirtation to a lonely and lost man.
Empowered and liberated, only to be dominated and oppressed.
In turn she empowers, to inevitably oppress.

Humbert, Humbert to me is a tragic hero, so driven by his desire and love that he fails to see Lo as a human being but rather a nymph he wants to raise above the earth, his passion is his demise.
Her immature sexuality is jaded yet forced to blossom.

lolita

time is
a complicated monster
he
thrives on memory
feigning emotions, dragging
you behind

"who do you want to be today?" self portrait: short film

transforming myself into three facets of my personality using makeup as a tool

“Who do you want to be today?”

Let me just touch on the disturbing yet dynamic vanity of this world, including my own, and the loss or displacement of identity that has become an epidemic in the western world. I’ve worked as a make-up artist for close to a decade now, transforming people into their every whim and desire. From brides and prom queens ‘needing’ to look picture perfect, expecting that by the wave of my makeup brush I can bewitchingly turn them into the exact tear-out of a magazine they’ve presented me, airbrushed excuses for celebrities they aspire to emulate. Distastefully, I’ve even encountered bridesmaids stating quite clearly that they wish to upstage the bride. There have been many women going on first dates wanting to make the ‘best’ first impression, with false lashes and unnaturally exaggerated eyes and lips (whom call on me for their second, third and fourth dates terrified the curtain will fall and the object of their desire will flee exposed to their unmasked faces). Drag kings and queens with precise visions, looking to me to transform their external identity to match their internal craving. I’ve worked with men insecure about their acne or dark circles, had mothers bringing their teenage boys to me, trying to save their social and sex lives, boys whose awkwardness can be felt a distance away, angst ridden and ashamed, they fight looking me in the eyes, paralyzed with fear of judgement. There are people of all kinds using Halloween as an excuse to be whomever or whatever they entreat.

It’s been an interesting career, but one I don’t mind leaving behind. I’ve met personalities who I would be happy to never to cross paths with again, and others that surprised me with their warmth and pleasant personalities. I’m not a particularly talkative or probing person, especially whilst working with strangers, I get quite perplexed at how much personal information they divulge voluntarily, I've stifled back tears by some of my client’s tales, and silently angered by the ignorance and misconduct of others. I become an unwilling therapist, perhaps this occurs because I enter their personal space, face to face with them, inches away, mimicking a sense of comfort and familiarity; or does this uncomfortable closeness I produce cause them to chatter uncontrollably to avoid an awkward silence? Little do they know that I truly focus on getting their eyeliner precise and a relative silence would not be unwanted. I must say though there is nothing more uncomfortable for me then when a client doesn’t say a word but stares at me with a fervent intensity, their eyes dodging from my hand to my mouth and directly into my eyes as the distance between us shortens and I move in to apply eye shadow, their gaze molesting me. Through these personal encounters inevitably a transference occurs as I find myself answering questions to complete strangers that would leave me speechless under other circumstances. I am forced to talk, remember and inevitably feel.

In my experience, people whom wear an excessive amount of make-up on an almost daily basis, fall into two categories either; they are insecure and uncomfortable in their own bodies and they wish to portray an image of themselves to the world which in their mind is idealized; or else because they are extroverted, expressive, confidant and using it as a tool to highlight their creativity and identify themselves from the masses, (still, perhaps shielding something). The rest, including me, fall into neither of these two extremes, though I was the latter of those two extremes once upon a time ago, discarding an exoskeleton, a crypt housing my addled teenage years, has allowed me to probe inward and wear my skin unabashedly. I firmly believe natural beauty is the most coveted and precious kind, it’s particularly exquisite when a fragrant allure permeates from the core and delicately mingles with an aesthetically pleasing exterior.

Nevertheless I can’t denounce the power of the perfect shade of lipstick or a tube of mascara; it can undoubtedly be an empowering thing.Sometimes it just feels so good to pop the top off and move this smooth surface across my lips and see them transform while inhaling a pleasurable scent. A reference can be made here to the women of the great depression, buying lipstick where money for food was scarcely available, a symbol of their tenaciousness and ferocious disposition. Makeup has the most efficacious results when the subject’s confidence can stand independently without any crutches; makeup as an accessory rather than a cover.

To have the ability and ambition to role play from time to time is a wonderful thing; we are multifaceted beings after all, striving in a world that can become bleak and unbearable. There are days I want nothing more than to be my naked self stripped of everything, other days I feel androgynous, almost masculine and play on that. Periodically I feel ambitious and powerful in my femininity, I echo the vagabonds of the 1920’s or Marilyn Monroe and her jaw dropping red lip and bedroom eyes, superbly elegant Audrey Hepburn and her prominent and pristine eyebrows, or infamous muse, Edie Sedgwick and her definitive 1960’s look. In this short video I explore three facets of my personality using makeup as my medium, three different characters that inhabit my being, I experience and act on them in more subtle ways, usually not showcasing these characters so obviously in the public sphere. I metamorphose from my external being to internalized versions of my personality, all whom fight to find a compromise and balance within each other.

happiness as intoxication...reality as hangover

.....an activity in spying

autoportret

I've been reading some Polish modernist literature which has led me to explore some artists from the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, I came across many self portraits that peaked my interest. Self portraits dominated this era, these artworks were self reflective, a study of an individual, as well as an artist and his technique; but most importantly these works were studies of the human psyche. Artists inhabited a world which was suddenly foreign to them. Due to the vast and sudden advancement of technology, society found themselves lost and facing a mass culture which they were unexpectedly a part of. Artists were expressing an almost painful awareness of their position, striving to isolate and secure their individualism, among feelings of solitude, alienation, internal turmoil and existential anguish. Modernism diffused the importance of an individual dramatically, they became lost among the masses. The Romantic individual that preceded the modernist, was also lost in the expanding society,but still had a lot more artistic freedom. During this time, Kraków was the center of Polish culture because it had a lot more freedom compared to Warsaw which was under Russian partition. Here are some Polish artists 'autoportrets' I encountered,

                                                         Balthus (1908-2001)

                                             Gustaw Gwozdecki (1880-1935)

                                                     Irena Weiss (1888-1981)

                                             Leon Wyczolkowski (1852-1936)

Wyczolkowski
(I have a personal fondness to this one)

                                               Leon Wyczolkowski late in life.

 

                                                 Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929)

                                         Olga Boznanska (1865-1940)

                                                Melancholik, Wojciech Weiss
                                                 (favourite)

                                               Wojciech Weiss (1875-1950)

for the memories that die peacefully in our sleep: photo/drawing hybrid,

 I attempted to address the theme of memory. While thinking about the approach to be taken in addressing this theme, I encountered a difficulty; almost every memory that I could draw on frustratingly, but unsurprisingly, belonged to my childhood. The space of these memories, the setting in which they appeared to had taken place, varied upon each investigation, a metamorphosis that carried on until there was no certainty whether the memory had actually ever taken place or not. This led me to think about the space of my current memories, and the problematic nature of its temporality. Why is it that memory loses its temporal function as I age, why is there no going back after childhood has passed, and more importantly, why do I disappear from my current space of memory? So I focused on this last question, and took photographs of the scenes that fascinated me around my neighborhood: the scenes I passed nearly every day, but never noticed them in the space of my daily life. In these images of signs, people, public hangouts, I became aware of my engagement with the surrounding space. An engagement that often becomes so ordinary that it dissolves one of its participants. It is, therefore, this familiar space that conceals my role in my own memories. A billboard for a cemetery promises me a space in the future, providing of course that I have the funds. This billboard commands me to rest assured until 'then'. Life is, therefore, reversed. However, as trying as it may be, I want myself as well as the viewer, to notice the possibility of another space, a void that cannot be occupied by signs and buildings. Perhaps in the space of this void, often unnoticed in the center of my life, I could be propelled to follow my own desire, something that I could recall in future memories.

"I like the feeling it gives me, i like the release it gives me, I can't trust anybody but myself, I know I am superfluous, in the most charming way, but i haven't seen myself in a while so I have to rely on my memory."

"What a beautiful infallible crutch you have provided, it allows you to forget about the nature of memory." 

"Our conversation was always limited, wasn't it? I followed how often you stared into your cup, and counted every second closer to suicide. The last grain of sand never fell, lucky for us."

"I counted the footsteps home, mine, yours and others. One by one. I don't know what will happen in the spring?"

"Perhaps nothing remains?"

"My passive sigh of relief is frozen in the February air, is it probable the mirror you frequent will crack with frustration relieving me for good? Do you know this devours you? You are not a man and barely a woman."

I pretend to smoke in an attempt to bide time, to decipher the iconography before me, and just as strongly, avoid.

"There is no ending, there is no answer for you to unfold."