Andrea Grant: The Pin-Up Poet Strikes Again

TRIBAL ORIGINS, LEONARD COHEN, AND CATHERINE TEKAKWITHA, THE MOST VENERABLE OF SAINTS...

2012-01-15T19:20:00.000-05:00

Leonard Cohen is my all-time favourite poet. Should you find his writing to your taste, it would behoove you to read Stranger Music, a collection of his best work.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a contemporary Native, paying respect to tribal origins in the midst of being called to a great adventure. This is something I'm exploring via the Minx: Dream War graphic novel series, and in my own life, always striving to remain accountable to the things my grandfather and father taught me.

I'm going home to the Island in a couple of weeks., and I really want to find a Coast Salish headdress - if only to wear it in the sanctity of my apartment while writing...

A GREAT FEAST IN QUEBEC
-Leonard Cohen

A few days after her baptism Catherine Tekakwitha was invited to a great feast in Quebec. Present were the Marquis de Tracy, the intendant Talon, the Governor M. de Courcelle, the Mohawk Chief Kryn, who was on eof the fiercest converts Christianity has ever commanded, and many handsome ladies and gentlemen. Perfume rose out of their hair. They were elegant in the manner only citizens two thousand miles from Paris can be. Wit flourished in every conversation. Butter was not passed without an aphorism.

They discussed the activities of the French Academy of Sciences, which was only ten years old. Some of the guests had spring pocket watches, a new timepiece invention which was sweeping Europe. Someone explained another recently developed device used to regulate clocks, the pendulum.

Catherine Tekakwitha listened quietly to everything that was said. With a bowed head she received the compliments which the quillwork on her deerskin gown evoked. The long white table shone with the pride of silver and crystal and early spring flowers, and for a minor second her eyes swam in the splendour of the occasion. Handsome servants poured wine into glasses that resembled long-stem roses. A hundred candle flames echoed and re-echoed in a hundred pieces of silver cutlery as the fragrant guests worked over their slabs of meat, and for a minor second the flashing multiple suns hurt her eyes, burned away her appetite. With a tiny abrupt movement which she did not command, she knocked over her glass of wine. She stared at the whale-shaped stain, frozen with shame.

- It is nothing, said the Marquis. It is nothing, child.

Cathering Tekakwitha sat motionless. The Marquis returned to his conversation. It concerned a new military invention which was being developed in France, the bayonet. The stain spread quickly.

- Even the tablecloth is thirsty for this good wine, joked the Marquis. Don't be frightened, child. There are no punishments for spilling a glass of wine.

Despite the suave activity of several servants the stain continued to discolour larger and larger areas of the tablecloth. Conversation dwindled as the diners directed their attention to its remarkable progress. It now claimed the entire tablecloth. Talk ceased altogether as a silver vase turned purple and the pink flowers it contained succumbed to the same influence. A beautiful lady gave out a cry of pain as her fine hand turned purple. A total chromatic metamorphosis took place in a matter of minutes. Wails and oaths resounded through the purple hall as faces, clothes, tapestries, and furniture displayed the same deep shade. Beyond the high windows there were islands of snow glinting in the moonlight. The entire company, servants and masters, had directed its gaze outside, as if to find beyond the contaminated hall some reassurance of a multicolored universe. Before their eyes these drifts of spring snow darkened into shades of spilled wine, and the moon itself absorbed the imperial hue. Catherine stood up slowly.

- I guess I owe you all an apology.

PRETTY THINGS: KOI SAKE, BRYANT PARK

2012-01-11T21:11:00.001-05:00

Bryant Park is one of my favorite places in New York City. Even though it's near the tourist-saturated Times Square, in the Park there is a certain redemption by way of trees, the view of classic architecture hovering in the background, and also the collectively lovely restaurant/bars which are ideal for an after-work respite.

On Monday, a friend invited me to Koi for something called the "Sake Bubble", of which this is the speel:

"Keeping with the time-honored tradition of New Year’s makeovers, Koi is introducing a new, unique twist on the sake bomb. Unlike a traditional sake bomb, the Koi Sake Bubble features a solid sake ‘sphere’ – made using reverse spherification – designed to be slowly dipped into a glass of beer using a small serving spoon, then taken together as a shot. The gummy-like sphere, which is made with Koi’s own brand of sake and peppered with edible gold flakes throughout, pops in your mouth and releases its delicious liquid center."

Welcome to a typical Monday @ 7 p.m. in January, dear readers. Gold flakes are always exciting, for some reason (perhaps because I love jewelry)...

THE SUBURBAN WAR

2012-01-08T18:30:00.001-05:00

This morning I woke up and felt a pang of nostalgia upon realizing how deeply I miss the sound of weekend lawnmowers. This is a sound I haven't thought about in a long time.

I've lived in cities for several years, but when I lived in more rural areas, there was something so comforting about a neighbor mowing their lawn, the din of the machine pulling you out of your dreams, the scent of fresh cut grass ripe in the atmosphere. And, when you had to mow your own lawn, there was something so satisfying about it.

I find that when I'm home in Toronto, they marvel at the fact that the Americans don't always realize The Arcade Fire is a Canadian band...c'est dommage.

Here, a song about the suburbs that's on my Winter 2012 playlist, which haunts me in that nostalgic kind of way.

"The Suburbs"

In the suburbs
I learned to drive
And you told me we'd never survive
Grab your mother's keys we're leaving
You always seemed so sure
That one day we'd be fighting
A suburban war
Your part of town against mine
I saw you standing on the opposite shore

But by the time the first bombs fell
We were already bored

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling again

Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they built in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothing at all

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling and into the night

So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before all this damage is done
But if it's too much to ask, it's too much to ask
Then send me a son

Under the overpass
In the parking lot we're still waiting
It's already passed
So move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass
Cause it's already passed

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling again
In my dreams we're still screaming...

2012: FIND YOUR ISLAND

2012-01-01T16:29:00.001-05:00

Happy 2012 to all my readers and supporters.

The Mayan calendar has ended, we're still standing, and in the spirit of new beginnings, here's an excerpt from one of my favorite books.

From The Tao of Wu, by the RZA

"Many cultures consider an island to be the ideal home.

Vintage Dior

First, because you're surrounded by water, which is life. Second, because you're isolated from the masses, which allows you to find yourself, to develop inner strengths you couldn't find anywhere else.

An island shows you the true nature of life itself...I advise everyone to find an island in this life.

Find a place where this culture can't take energy from you, sap your will and originality.

Since anything physical can be mental, that island can be your home.

Turn off the electromagnetic waves being forced upon you, the countless invisible forces coming at you all the time."

BURNOUT

2011-12-28T21:55:00.003-05:00

In 2011, I witnessed several of my close friends and acquaintances burn themselves out, as though a collective of the best and brightest were consumed with a perilous fever.

And, in turn, I watched myself burn out while working on Minx, in the nether region between Summer and Fall 2011 (typical to form, I observed this exhaustion happen with the detached interest of someone reading a book, and tried to dismiss it).

Recently, I traveled to Mexico on a family holiday, where my mother regarded my fatigue from the perspective of one who doesn't want to witness the travails of her offspring. She said, "You look...different, dear."

"I'm so exhausted I think my bones are about to protrude through my skin because I can't carry anything more upon my shoulders in this lifetime," I replied. "I don't really have time to sleep more than 5 hours a night, and my deadlines never end."

Photo by Miles Aldridg

I expected her to understand, but she regarded me as though I was a changeling in some Celtic fairy tale, rather than a child she'd borne. "Rest, then...and swim tomorrow. You've always brightened in the sun. It will be 80 degrees this week."

It's true that warm temperatures always make the world a bit more beautiful. Poolside, I began to reflect on burnout...and also felt re-motivated to adhere to my deadlines.

SIGNS OF BURNOUT

- Hollowed circles under the eyes that no amount of concealer can erase.
- Tense posture, particularly in the shoulders.
- A low tolerance of overly shrill tones: sirens, women with panicked voices speaking loudly in public places, and terrible music when you go out that makes you hate the venue.
- Random acts of vomiting, when nerves hit you hardest.
- Weeping, unexpectedly...especially if a stranger walks up to you and says something so depressing it makes your skin turn inside out.
- Uttering fatalistic, absolute statements about your burnout that include adverbs such as 'always' and 'never'.
- The sudden adoption of bad habits: smoking, excessive drinking (like, 3 shots in addition to your already-strong martini).
- Thoughts of jumping off the nearest bridge.
- Laying in bed for hours with no motivation to shower or dress (forgivable on a Sunday, but if this feeling lasting longer than 24 hours, beware).
- Feeling convinced that it will rain/be freezing cold as long as you will live, and dreading it.

So what is the cure for burn out?

Supposedly, some B Vitamins will help the cause, and a little bit of sun if you can manage to travel somewhere warm in winter.

Recovering the brain and moving forward is always a work in progress...Happy 2012, darlings.

ON HIS HANDS, THE SCENT OF CINNAMON STICKS

2011-12-23T10:50:00.002-05:00

Photograph by Steven Meisel, for Vogue Italia

A holiday weekend approaches, along with some solitude to finish creative projects, and daydream goals for 2012.

Today I'm thinking about one of my all-time favorite poems, incidentally written by a Canadian poet.

"The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon."

So much of love and attraction depends on scent. Skin. Cinnamon. Vanilla.

Lit cigarettes burning in the night. Perfume, worn off.

The idea of someone leaving their mark on you with their fingertips.

THE CINNAMON PEELER
-by Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

PROPRIOCEPTION AND PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY

2011-12-18T17:12:00.000-05:00

As some of you dear readers may or may not know, I had a severe accident last summer. I am still going to physical therapy to rehabilitate my severed tendon, and last week the doctor told me that I will forever have to be careful, because proprioception tends to be faulty when it comes to ankle/foot injuries.

"What's that cut on your other ankle from?" he asked.

"I don't remember," I replied. "I think it's from trying to train myself to wear heels again...just around the apartment, for 10 minutes a day. I'm tired of only being able to wear boots."

"Well you'd better wear your ankle brace in your boots when you walk around New York, since your proprioception is probably off."

So then I started to think a lot about proprioception...

Andrea Grant photographed by Joseph Marranca in Toronto, October 2011 (foot brace hidden, since it's not exactly glamorous)

Rather than sensing external reality, proprioception is the sense of the orientation of one's limbs in space. This is distinct from the sense of balance, which derives from the fluids in the inner ear, and is called equilibrioception.

Proprioception doesn't come from any specific organ, but from the nervous system as a whole. Its input comes from sensory receptors distinct from tactile receptors—nerves from inside the body rather than on the surface.

And then I started to think about perceived reality and how Stephen Hawking once posed the question: "How do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?"

Answer: We don't.

Sometimes that's beautiful, and sometimes it's terrifying. But it sure keeps things interesting.

TRAVELING THE WORLD AND THE SEVEN SEAS: MEXICO

2011-12-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

I adamantly believe that travel should be a priority as much as anything else. In order to have a fulfilling life with expanded perspective, we need to learn and grow as individuals. If we are confined to the same daily routine without respite, looking only to reliable neighborhood restaurants and the alarm clock going off at the same hour every morning, what will we learn beyond those perimeters?

I love New York City, but I find that if I don’t leave every 2 months—even for just a long weekend—then the din begins to weigh heavily upon my shoulder blades, and I lose my creative spark.

Every year, just as November turns chilly, I go to Mexico on a family vacation.

Here, it’s 80 degrees, with a view of purple flowers, exotic birds, and endless ocean.

It’s lush, and I am writing just for fun again, wrapping up remaining 2011 projects, and looking ahead to a second MINX graphic novel, slated for a 2012 release. It doesn't have a title yet, but it will be an exciting continuation of the DREAM WAR series.

Here, there is just enough silence, when needed.

On an interesting note, Puerto Vallarta was made famous largely thanks to the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Excerpt from The Best of Vanity Fair:
Elizabeth Taylor, July 2010

- By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

Contributing to their deepening bond was the enchantment of the place itself. At the time, Puerto Vallarta was a sleepy fishing village on Banderas Bay, surrounded by steep, green mountains and long, empty beaches. Delighted with the white-hot sun and the turquoise-green of the sea, they first rented and then bought a four-story, white stucco villa called Casa Kimberly, with access to 25 miles of beach.

On the film set, Elizabeth fussed over Richard, combing and re-combing his hair. (At one point, exasperated with her constant ministrations, Burton poured a pitcher of beer over his head.) When she wasn’t on set or barhopping with Burton, Elizabeth lolled on the beach, clad in a bikini, a green-and-white Mexican shift, and gold-and-turquoise beaded sandals. On another occasion, she showed up in a bikini bottom and sheer top, wearing a stunning pearl-and-ruby ring given to her by the King of Indonesia. Burton was thoroughly delighted, taking the occasion to mischievously describe her as looking like “a French tart,” but marveling privately at how Elizabeth “bloomed in hot climates.” Her outrageous displays of bounty—gifts of nature and of men—only made her more desirable in his eyes, more extraordinary, more lovable. No wonder he called her “Ocean,” to describe her deep, overpowering presence.

"WEARING TOO MANY HATS" IS NO LONGER COOL

2011-11-21T00:14:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about branding...about how to describe what it is that you even do for a living, versus the core of what you think you are good at.

In Old Hollywood terms, the "triple threat" was often the ideal goal...singing/dancing/acting.

In modern times, many of us are over-achievers, and we think that we have to fit into more than one category, in order to prove that we are doing an excellent job.

Personally, I've been struggling lately with describing my skill set (I hate resumes).

An ex-boyfriend called me on the phone last week, to catch up. And he said, "Come on, I knew you when you first moved to New York, and all you wanted to be was a writer and you seemed the happiest when you were actually writing - stop trying to multi-task yourself to death."

He's absolutely correct.

My goal for the holiday season is to actually write, and stop being such a producer/micro-manager of this brand I've created for myself.

NOVEMBER: BE LIKE WATER

2011-11-15T22:10:00.001-05:00

Perhaps because the holiday season is approaching (and, from the corporate perspective, 3rd quarter), there's always a lot of change in November.

From the perspective of someone who has been publishing indie magazines/comic books since 2001...it's now 2011, and we are suddenly swimming in the digital age, often longing for a simpler life.

This evening, I had dinner with one of my best friends, who is moving to L.A. next week, and I noticed at the restaurant that there were a lot of "stereotypically downtown" actor-types who were fashionably dressed (P.S. There is such a marked difference between someone actually being cool versus someone 'trying to be cool' - in Canada, we call them 'Try-Hards').

The worst is when someone pulls out their latest version of the iPhone and tries to surreptitiously take a photo of whomever is at the table beside them, and it's all because this new Google+ thing is trying to recognize faces and synch it to the mobile device.

Personally, I think this is a little creepy.

But the key is to adapt. As the Taoists say, the only constant is change.

And, as one who actually studied Bruce Lee's martial art form for a couple of years (Jeet Kune Do), I advocate everything he says in his video clip, below. Jeet Kune Do was initially looked at with considerable disdain by masters of traditional martial arts forms. As Bruce Lee began training others in his forms, he stressed individuality in movement, practice through matches rather than memorization of solo forms, and above all, simplicity of movement. In essence, the purpose of the form is to win a fight, not to prove you’re a well-trained fighter.

TAO TEH CHING AND VETERAN'S DAY 11.11.11

2011-11-11T08:39:00.000-05:00

My grandfather was a WWII war hero, a philosopher, and Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day was always important to him.

In the vein of honoring that somehow, here's a poem by Lao Tzu, the grandfather of Taoism.

#22 Tao Teh Ching

Bend and you will be whole.
Curl and you will be straight.
Keep empty and you will be filled.
Grow old and you will be renewed.
Have little and you will gain.
Have much and you will be confused.
Therefore, the Sage embraces the One,
And becomes a Pattern to all under Heaven.
He does not make a show of himself,
Hence he shines;
Does not justify himself,
Hence he becomes known;
Does not boast of his ability,
Hence he gets his credit;
Does not brandish his success,
Hence he endures;
Does not compete with anyone,
Hence no one can compete with him.
Indeed, the ancient saying: "Bend and you will remain whole" is no idle word.
Nay, if you have really attained wholeness, everything will flock to you.

Melancholia & the Infinite Sadness

2011-11-04T09:19:00.000-04:00

Dear readers, I am quiet because I am working on Minx...but here's something poignant worth watching, a film called Melancholia.

Melancholia: In this beautiful movie about the end of the world, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). Despite Claire's best efforts, the wedding is a fiasco, with family tensions mounting and relationships fraying. Meanwhile, a planet called Melancholia is heading directly towards Earth… MELANCHOLIA is a psychological disaster film from director Lars von Trier.

Happy Halloween 2011

2011-10-29T14:59:00.000-04:00

Please have a happy and safe Halloween weekend, everyone.

MINX: DREAM WAR - The Crescendo

2011-10-24T22:53:00.002-04:00

A crescendo is defined as a gradual increase; specifically : a gradual increase in volume of a musical passage. (I've always listened to classical music with the same ardent fervor that I might sometimes listen to indie rock, grunge, black metal, hip hop, etc...and right now I'm really into Arvo Pärt).

That said, there is a certain pivotal point in any creative project that reaches a crescendo. The creative team is there right now, wrapping up Minx: Dream War. And it's exciting. Updates to follow soon, I promise.

On and on it goes, maybe forever...

MINX: DREAM WAR at NY Comic Con, OA x Minx Wolf Jewelry Collaboration

2011-10-15T12:07:00.000-04:00

I've been really busy preparing for the New York Comic Con so that there would be some fun merchandise for the fans this weekend. Minx: Dream War #1 is available in print form at the Atlas / Ardden Booth #659 (my signing schedule is here).

Minx: Dream War #1 and #2 are both available digitally, thanks to Magzter (you can download really lovely digitized versions on your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices).

The "Minx in 3D" prints are available during my signings.

TIP: VIEW THIS 2D IMAGE WITH 3D RED / CYAN BLUE GLASSES.

Andrea Grant photographed by Rames Xelhuantzi in NYC, gown by Zang Toi, Minx: Dream War art by Rey Arzeno

I am also very happy to announce a new OA x Minx Wolf Jewelry Collaboration. These Coast Salish wolf charms will be available during my signings (or on www.OctoberAnniversary.com), and this is how I am wearing mine:

Andrea Grant wearing the OAxMinx Coast Salish wolf charm at the NY Comic Con

THINGS THAT KEEP AND DO NOT CHANGE: The Poems of Susan Musgrave

2011-10-03T11:22:00.000-04:00

There is nothing like a Sunday dinner with my brilliant writer/editor/filmmaker friends. The conversation runs the gamut, ranging from the career of surfer Kelly Slater, to Dark Shadows, to literature. And last night we discussed Susan Musgrave, who is my favorite Canadian poet (after Leonard Cohen).

She's had an interesting life:

Susan Musgrave is married to Stephen Reid, a writer, convicted bank robber and former member of the infamous band of thieves known as the Stopwatch Gang. Their relationship was chronicled in 1999 in the CBC series Life and Times.

I highly recommend her work. Here's an excerpt of one of her poems:

Exchange of Fire

By Susan Musgrave

From: Things that Keep and Do Not Change. McClelland&Stewart, 1999

"When your left arm touched my right
as we both reached for the dessert
menu in the all-night diner, a spark
began smouldering in my sleeve, broke
a hole the size of a heart in the patched
elbow of your jacket.

Dirty white smoke enveloped our bodies
as the conversation turned
to the underground fire we'd all seen
on the news, a fire that had raged up
to consume everything in its path..."

read the rest of the poem here

UPGRADING IN THE DIGITAL AGE & THE ANTICHRIST TELEVISION BLUES

2011-09-25T18:04:00.002-04:00

Summer 2011 has been one of the busiest for me...but suddenly, it's Fall 2011, with the New York Comic Con right around the corner (Oct 14th weekend). And I'm getting the latest issues of Minx ready.

As an aside, new advances in Digital Media have meant that I am constantly taking inventory of my multiple websites that link from CopiousAmounts.com and asking myself, "Is it clear to readers what I even DO or what this is?" Probably not - but we are working on changing that (thanks to Steve Castro, the most loyal of designers).

It's always good to upgrade and take inventory of our body of work while continuing to move forward creatively, but also setting time for the things that replenish us.

For me, that involves home maintenance and cleaning (even while recovering from a severe foot injury) that still has me in a cast, one of my great joys is what I term 'Cinderella Sundays'.

And music.

I'm obsessed with this song from Arcade Fire right now. I think the reason why this band wins so many awards in Canada is because they tell multi-dimensional, multi-layered stories, and tap into the collective unconscious in an interesting way.

(PS: Like it or not, I remain a church girl at heart, so I relate to this Antichrist theme, in a macabre sort of way...)

ANTICHRIST TELEVISION BLUES

Don't want to work in a building downtown
No, I don't want to work in a building downtown
I don't know what I'm going to do
Because the planes keep crashing always two by two
Don't want to work in a building downtown
No, I don't want to see it when the planes hit the ground

Don't want to work in a building downtown
Parking the cars in the underground
The voices when they scream, well, they make no sound
Want to see the cities rust
And the troublemakers riding on the back of the bus

Dear God, I'm a good Christian man
I'm your boy, I know you understand
That you got to work hard and you got to get paid
The girl's thirteen, but she don't act her age
She can sing like a bird in cage
Oh Lord, if you could see her when she's up on that stage

You know that I'm a God-fearing man...I just got to know if it's part of your plan
To see my darling stand by your right hand
I know that you'll do what's right, Lord
For they are the lanterns and you are the light

Now I'm overcome
My lips are near, but my heart is far away
Tell me what to say
I'll be your mouthpiece

Into the light of a bridge that burns
As I drive through the city with the money that I earn
To the dark of a starless sky
I won't stare into nothing and I'm asking you why
Lord, let me make her a star
So the world can see who you really are

Little girl, you're old enough to understand
You'll always be a stranger in a strange, strange land
Men are going to come while you're fast asleep
So you better just stay close and hold onto me
If mama's mockingbird don't sing well,
Then daddy won't buy her no diamond ring

Dear God, would you send me a child?
Oh God, would you send me a child?
Because I want to put it up on the TV screen
So the world can see what your true word means
Lord, won't you send me a sign?
Because I just got to know if I'm wasting my time

Now I'm overcome
By the light of day
My lips are near
But my heart is far away
But now the war is won
How come nothing tastes good?

Oh you're such a sensitive child
You know you're such a sensitive child
I know you're tired, but it's all right
I just needed you to sing for me tonight
You're going to have your day in the sun
You know God loves the sensitive ones

Oh, my little bird in a cage
Oh, my little bird in a cage
I need you to get up for me up on that stage
Show all the men that you're old for your age
Now in the times of fear
But if you don't take it, it'll disappear

Oh, my little mockingbird, sing
Oh, my little mockingbird, sing
I need you to get up on the stage for me, honey
Show the men it's not about the money
Want to hold a mirror up to the world
So that they can see themselves inside my little girl

Do you know where I was at your age?
Any idea where I was at your age?
I was working downtown for the minimum wage!
And I couldn't let you just throw it all away
Throw me a kid, God, throw me a knife
So tell me Lord, am I the Antichrist?

MINX IN 3D: RAMES XELHUANTZI, ZANG TOI & CREATIVE COLLABORATIONS

2011-09-12T21:28:00.009-04:00

Back when I was just a kid modeling in Vancouver, Canada, my agent booked me a test shoot with Rames Xelhuantzi, a photographer from Mexico City who was studying some really cool 3D techniques at the time. And those shots ended up being some of the best. We stayed in touch, following each others' creative paths, and I'm am always impressed by Rames' ability to create stills that look like they came straight out of a science fiction film, along with his highly evolved 3D fashion work (and also his kind, quiet personality).

Andrea Grant photographed by Rames Xelhuantzi. in New York, gown by Zang Toi

A couple of weeks ago, we set up a 3D shoot / creative collaboration in New York City, at Attic Studios. Enter another creative talent: fashion designer Zang Toi. He is one of the loveliest, most talented souls on the planet, and he was gracious enough to let me borrow his Phoenix gown.

This collaboration is classic comic book mythos (you can read my review of Zang's last show, here). His fashion show is tomorrow, Sept 13/11 at Lincoln Center. His work is incredible, and his shows are among the most interesting, so you should all keep an eye on his work, dear readers.

Here is Rames' 3D version of the same dress, show with some of the art from Minx: Dream War drawn by Rey Arzeno...so that I get to literally be in my own comic, on another level. TIP: VIEW WITH 3D RED / CYAN BLUE GLASSES.

Andrea Grant photographed by Rames Xelhuantzi in NYC, gown by Zang Toi, Minx: Dream War art by Rey Arzeno

An earthquake occurred while we were shooting this scene, after all...it was pretty epic.

WHITE ASHES IN MY HAIR, SAID JEAN HARLOW

- by Andrea Grant (from The Pin-Up Poet)

My hair burnt into white ashes

after my dreams turned grey

I was the same girl more or less

after apathy claimed me

except I went to the matinee alone

on Saturday afternoons to watch myself on screen,

weighing everything.

This is alchemic transformation.

This is the breakdown and reformation of character.

I could blame the boys if I wanted

I could blame my desire for money

I could blame my obsession with fashion

white silk, white roses, the furniture bleached

& the subtext of conversation.

But I take full responsibility

for my own charred remains

as I rise from the smokestack

Dragon to Phoenix.

MINX: DREAM WAR NEWS & UPDATES SEPTEMBER 11 / 11

2011-09-11T19:30:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,

I am so appreciative of everyone who helps this dream of the Minx project become realized.

Comic book plot lines are about allies, villains, and overcoming obstacles. A 4-part series is a ton of work, and requires nothing short of an army behind it.

I've always said that Rey Arzeno is extremely intuitive - he was the first artist who realized what Dreamtime looks like in my imagination: a sort of hyper-reality where the sky is purple and the monsters glow. He’s the artist for Issue #1(available in stores now, and on most digital platforms thanks to Magzter) and Issue #2 (coming soon).

Minx: Dream War #2 - Art by Rey Arzeno, color by Papillon Studio

Now, please welcome the talented Mike Williams to the Copious art team. He's the artist for Minx: Dream War Issues #3 and #4. His film noir style is perfect for the brutal flashback scenes that show how Ptolemy became an immortal, and the emotional complexities of all the characters.

Here's a sneak preview of one of my favorite pages illustrated by Mike Williams, where we see another flashback of the young Minx character of Dream War Issue #1. She's walking with her Native grandfather, and receiving her power amulet, right before some horrific monsters attack them.

Minx: Dream War #3 - Art by Mike Williams, color by Papillon Studio

As far as scheduled distribution, Minx: Dream War Issues #2 – #4 will be released as individual issues digitally, and the trade containing Issues #1 – #4 plus bonus content is slated for a November 2011 release in both print and digital formats.

ZOLA JESUS KILLS IT: THIS SHOULD BE ON YOUR FALL 2011 PLAYLIST

2011-09-07T00:07:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, the Russians slaughter the competitors, when song / poetry / music meets heart.

The music of Zola Jesus is gorgeous and aesthetic.

PER WIKIPEDIA:
Zola Jesus' "haunting vocals and swirling, electronic athmospherics are located midway between Florence Welch and Siouxsie and the Banshees." For the NME, Zola Jesus' "dark vocals rival Patti Smith's in fortitude"and she "wails like Kate Bush". She has also been linked to Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance and Elizabeth Frazer of the Cocteau Twins.Her style has been described variously as "commanded by ominous lyrics and a sultry Goth delivery,"part of the Crimson wave and as lo-fi goth; "noise music that scrapes and glistens in equal measure."

SKIN LACERATIONS & STAB WOUNDS: CATASTROPHE #2 Summer 2011

2011-09-01T19:20:00.001-04:00

Dear readers, you can always count on me to find the twisted humor in every catastrophe. That said, I thought I was going to die for at least 2 hours last night, and it really freaked me out.

Sure, I make it seem effortless, but I went through a lot to even get out of New York before Hurricane Irene hit, so that I could archive some of my art work in Canada.

With all the chaos of that, my flight back to New York was delayed, but I had an important event that I'd committed to August 31st, and even if that means 5 hours of sleep and impossible deadlines worrying me, I believe in honoring my word.

There's a longer story, but basically a drunken idiot was responsible for a glass breaking and slicing my foot open badly. I'm resilient, but I'm also aware of anatomy. I felt my skin slice, and all of a sudden one of my right high heels was quickly filling up with blood.

My friend M. saw it happen, and she said, "We're on camera right now. Don't let anyone at this party see you panic - not cool. Go sit over there, and I'll get security."

There was so much blood that it couldn't possibly be contained by the bar napkins she gave me. People were starting to notice, and I was starting to go into shock. I considered the possibility that the glass had cut open a vital vein, and that I was going to bleed to death. But hell, if I was going to die, then I was glad it was in a vintage bustier and designer skirt, red lipstick in place.

But what about my archives, not yet unpacked? Who has keys to my apartment, in case I die? And I have to let work know that I probably won't make it in tomorrow? And do my key friends all know each other? And if I do die, then someone in Facebook-land needs to know (because, after surviving brain cancer, Larisa died in a plane crash in Thailand one year on my birthday, and the fact that she is commemorated via social media haunts me).

Meanwhile, I was being wheeled away in an ambulance, mortified by paparazzi trying to take my photo so that they could try to write about it in OK! magazine or something gauche.

And all I could think was, "Sure, I write comics, but this is too much."

Blood soaking through the gauze, trying to not fall off the stretcher, texting everyone I thought should know in case I died: work, emergency contacts...and also taking photos of the wound for insurance purposes (and to put on Facebook, in case I did die).

But because of my sensitive skin and awareness of how faulty the U.S. medical system is, I was also furious. If I wasn't going to die from bleeding to death, then maybe I was going to die from frustration.

I think the best part was when I said to a nurse in the ER: "No, I don't need an x-ray. There's no glass in my foot - I would know that. But somebody had better fucking give me stitches within the hour, or else I will get up off of this table, and find a needle and thread to sew it up myself. Oh, and could I please have a shot of morphine or something, because this fucking KILLS. Sorry for yelling - this isn't directed at you specifically - I'm just so angry that I am here because of some drunk fool."

Told the nurse I thought I needed 5 stitches - turns out I needed 7 stitches.

Glad the cut isn't on the bottom of my foot, because that would hurt a lot more.

Very grateful I have friends who will stop in to help me with things like laundering my blood-soaked sheets, because it hurts too much to walk downstairs to the basement. And at least I didn't die somewhere depressing, like the New York Downtown Hospital.

I don't like taking time off of work or projects, but it seems I am being forced to take a rest from the most hectic summer of my entire life, thanks to Minx: Dream War.

HURRICANE IRENE: SUMMER 2011 CATASTROPHE #1

2011-09-01T18:16:00.000-04:00

My friend who plays the Empress always says that I have 9 lives.

And it's true that I have lived through catastrophic, life-altering things such as the worst shooting in Vancouver history, which was then the impetus to move to New York. It's also true that I think a lot about Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, mythology, transformation, archetypes, Taoism, poetry, and martial arts.

Having realized how quickly things happen, I try to stay one step ahead of emergencies.

I am grateful to my friends, who pay close attention to what's going on in the world, filtering the information so that I am not caught by surprise. Their instincts and advice help me to pay attention so when something seems awry, I move fast.

Faster than the masses.

Ptolemy, Minx and Empress in a scene from Minx: Dream War #2 (coming soon)

Having planned a pivotal weekend in Canada Aug 27 - 29, by Friday morning I was hyper-sensitive to hurricane warnings. I realized I had better plan accordingly so that I could actually get out of New York before the airport and transit system shut down and sent people into a real frenzy.

Then I realized that along with the paper archives of my work, several hundred copies of printed comics needed to be protected from water damage (ground floor, evacuation zone).

I kept thinking about the Biblical tale of how Noah took a male and female from every animal species into the ark, and when God shut the door, there were all of these people banging on the door trying to get in...but it was too late. Great Flood. Rain for 40 days and 40 nights.

It took 12 hours to find every legal and identity document I will ever need, and I consolidated everything into one suitcase and two very heavy carry-ons, and had a great weekend of archiving my materials and hanging with some of the greatest intellectuals of my generation.

I returned home to some flooding, which made me so glad I'd put all of those Minx comics in plastic and unplugged all of my power cords just in case.

Catastrophe averted.

MINX: DREAM WAR ISSUE #1 GOES DIGITAL ON MAGZTER.COM

2011-08-23T21:47:00.002-04:00

Dear readers,

Today there was an earthquake in New York while I was shooting an amazing Minx 3D photo shoot by Rames X in a gown by Zang Toi...but that's a story I will tell you when I can show you the photos.

I have more news...Minx: Dream War #1 is finally digital!

As a multi-media artist / writer / business owner with an international fan base, I have to evolve as fast as technology changes. So I constantly ask myself: "How are people viewing media, and what type of devices are popular in which countries? How can I make sure that people who love my work actually get to see it?" Magzter.com has finally given me a platform to showcase my work on multiple digital devices.

Here is the link to download Minx: Dream War #1 on your iPod, iPhone, or Android (new devices are being synched by the day - and if you buy Minx once through your Apple account, you can use it on multiple devices):

http://www.magzter.com/US/Copious-Amounts-Press/Minx/Art/

Thank you, as always, for your support.

MY BODY IS A CAGE: ARCADE FIRE, AND SUMMER 2011

2011-08-22T01:17:00.000-04:00

Aren't we all a bit wearied by the weather, and the Armageddon predictions circa 2012? I know I am sick of prayer stations passing me by when I go to work in the NYC carnival region that is often known as Times Square (in an odd way, it's also amazing as hell, and I learn a lot...).

That said, dear readers, I am very busy trying to get Minx: Dream War completed before the Apocalypse. So if original thought is bled dry, take music instead.

"My Body Is A Cage"
- Arcade Fire

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

I'm standing on a stage
Of fear and self-doubt
It's a hollow play
But they'll clap anyway

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

I'm living in an age
That calls darkness light
Though my language is dead
Still the shapes fill my head

I'm living in an age
Whose name I don't know
Though the fear keeps me moving
Still my heart beats so slow

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key
My body is a cage
We take what we're given
Just because you've forgotten
That don't mean you're forgiven

I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

Set my spirit free

* * *

As a Native Indian, this video kind of repulses me because it's so cowboy-oriented...but the song is used in a context that may or may not be officially what the band wishes.

SWOLLEN MEMBERS : THE SHINING & HOW IT HURTS TO BE AN ARTIST

2011-08-14T21:06:00.001-04:00

It hurts to be an artist. I don't know how other artists feel, but I will tell you that some days I feel like blood is literally spewing from my heart, and that my skin is turned inside out, raw nerve endings exposed.

It's wonderful, sure, but everything has a price...if you are creatively tapping into some form of the collective unconscious, then that means you are tapping into everything else. So you have got to be really careful about who / what you let in.

My friend Prevail from Swollen Members has portrayed the character of Ptolemy from the start of Minx, in various renditions from initial idea to a pretty slick comic. We've seen each other through a lot of transformations on this journey.

After he represented his Minx comic book character at New York Comic Con last fall, Prev went back to Canada to work on the Swollen Members "Dagger Mouth" album. When I saw him last winter, he played this song for me...the band has been through a lot, and there is something so raw and beautiful about this track. Swollen has returned to their origins with their recent work, and telling it true.

Hell, we all come from the Pacific Northwest, where a lot of kids get depressed in winter and kill themselves.

(if you want more info on my perspective of what this means, simply search keywords like 'suicide' on my blog roll - not to be creepy...it's just the damn truth - you'd be disappointed if I didn't get into that, right?).

"The Shining"

[Intro/Chorus: Prevail]
My head keeps spinning and spinning and spinning
I don't know if this is the end or it's the beginning
Man I'm losing my mind, I think I'm losinf my mind
I think I'm losing my mind, I sink deeper try to keep it in line

[Mad Child]
I'm feeling like I wanna die
I'm an addict, I'm not talkin 'bout a fuckin marijuana high
Fuck the gangster talk, I'll smash your teeth in with the baby Glock
I'm a mental patient spittin crazy talk
I'm talented but life's a balancing act
And I am way off of alignment, the payoff isn't time yet
I'm so fuckin broke I'm puttin clothes up for consignment
I used to be white lightning
Now I'm sittin in a dark cloud, wonderin where my mind went
[Mad Child laughs for a few seconds] Y'all know where to find me!
Behind closed blinds, I'm on my type-a-writer
While I watch a spider climbin up the wall
To spin a web, and catch a fly and watch him die
He sucks all of the blood out of him then I start to cry
I don't know why, I don't know why he swallowed a fly
You're all gonna die; that's my only comfort
I smashed my iPhone before you get my number
... I'm clinically insane, mentally deranged
Hangin from a string strangled by a chain...
I guess all of the drugs have done a number on my brain
Fuck it!

[Prevail]
Yo I look up in the sky, I see the sun shining
So why's my mind spinning? Arkham Asylum
Dark Knight, Ra's al Ghuls, Scarecrows, Jokers, Riddlers
Catwomen and Penguins, Spidey sense is tingling
Hobgoblin, Doc Oc, Sandman, and Venom
My mind starts to die/dye like it's indigo denim
Time for me to Sean Penn 'em, lose 21 grams
It's the game at close range, I'm the Falcon, he's the Snowman
He's drinkin down a Pepsi while I'm openin a Coke can
My first show in front of ten thousand out at Snow Jam
No man, old man, take a look at my life
Carve my name in the tree with my own pocket knife
Yeah I'm classic Old Spice, you a Spice Girl, +Scary+
Selling off my mental property, "Glen Ross Glengarry"
And I know it's around here somewhere on the property buried
But I'm plastered like a poster - Obey, Shepard Fairey
6:30 every mornin, is when I get up like Banksy
Jet to the studio Mad's trippin sittin angtsy
It's reality and fantasy but I can't separate
My feet are on the ground so how the fuck my body levitate?

[Mad Child]
In no way is this meant to disrespect my family or God...
Okay seven day coke binge, heroin in tinfoil
Heroin in pill form, brain egg hardboiled
Mad Child chase dragon, turn into a gargoyle
Grade 7 mom took me shopping down at Park Royal
This is not the life that I have dreamt about
Mentally I'm emptied out, rapping while I vent with a demented mouth
Sentimentally my sentiments are printed out
Now stick a knife inside me, giving you something to think about
Insanity, it's hereditary, grandma got dementia
Grandma tried to kill herself, she's suffering from depression
And Mad Child suffer from depression
So am I going to try to kill myself is constantly my question...

LEONARD COHEN: WHAT IS A SAINT?

2011-07-31T10:56:00.000-04:00

"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers

HOW TO BE A REAL INDIAN

2011-07-29T01:09:00.003-04:00

I realize some people think I'm white...

Smoke Signals is one of my favorite 'Indian portrayal' films. There is so much truth in this film that it kind of kills me.

HOWL: FLORENCE + THE MACHINE MEETS ALAN GINSBERG

2011-07-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

History just keeps repeating...cities evolve and yet keep their temperature. Humanity is always and never the same.

Florence + The Machine have an amazing song called "Howl".

That said, certain passages of Ginsberg's "Howl" are part of this summer's tempestuous mood, meaning that I am noticing all this crazy stuff about people now that I travel from the insular, edgy corner of the East Village to Times Square for work every day, in 100 degrees of humidity.

But I enjoy the brisk walk in the mornings and being on a schedule...I think it's important for an artist to contribute to a collective and get out of the insular mindset that comes with only looking at one's own work.

Checks and balances.

Otherwise, you risk becoming like the people Ginsberg is describing...

HOWL

By Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy-publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada - Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts...

Please read the rest of the poem at the licensed source: Selected Poems 1947-1995 (HarperPerennial, 2001)

NIKKI LANE: GONE, GONE, GONE AND FRIENDS WHO HELP YOU MOVE YOUR APARTMENT

2011-07-27T01:31:00.000-04:00

I met Nikki a couple of years ago in a dive bar, via mutual friends. And she said: "Hey, I'm working on this music thing, but I'm also into vintage clothing...We should be friends." She was right; we instantly became friends. She's a girl's girl, with a lot of heart.

And when I moved from one apartment to another, approximately 30 days later, Nikki was the one who rolled up in her band van to help me haul my gear (Southern manners, seriously).

Now, if you live in New York, you will understand how profound that is. Few people actually own a car, and everyone is so busy...so the one person who actually helps you properly pack up your Royal Albert fine china in the Moonlight Roses pattern (that your dead grandma gave you) is the real deal.

That was the last day I saw Nikki in real-time...delicately smoking a cigarette on the streets of Alphabet City in the aftermath, and planning her own move to Nashville shortly thereafter. She had to record the album she knew was calling her.

When I walked into Details last week, I was proud to see her CD on a colleague's desk, along with a printed sheet that said:

NIKKI LANE RELEASES “GONE, GONE, GONE” VIDEO & ANNOUNCES FULL-LENGTH ALBUM, WALK OF SHAME, OUT SEPTEMBER 27 ON IAMSOUND

And I thought, "Okay, cool - she went and did exactly what she said she was going to..."

These are some of the reviews:

“There's a shortage of bad-ass female country singers today who can outdrink you and write a gorgeous melody afterwards. And given the strength of Lane's material, look for her luck to be changing very soon.” – MTV Buzzworthy Blog

"Her voice lands just on the sweeter side of Wanda Jackson, but her appealingly youthful songs sparkle with independent attitude that's very of-the-moment." - Nashville Scene

Who is Nikki Lane?

One glorious day some years back, a teenage high school dropout Nikki Lane packed a trailer with her worldly possessions. With one hand firmly gripping a steering wheel and the other flipping the bird, she said so long to her home, Greenville, South Carolina, the South and any sort of life it had suggested she should live. Western bound, she was headed to Los Angeles for no other reason than just because. After working various day-to-day jobs in fashion and the like, and living a life without clear direction, five years passed and Nikki started writing music, but soon forsook that path, after just two promising shows, for a job offer in New York. But like the best country singers, heartbreak brought her back to music. She started learning Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, John Prine and Merle Haggard tunes, trying her best to strum along and building her confidence along the way. Impressed with her bold vocal chops, classic, heartfelt country ballads, and wildly infectious personality, IAMSOUND found Nikki last year just before she relocated to Nashville to focus on her music career full time.

Lane now lives in Nashville where she also owns and operates a vintage boutique called High Class Hillbilly, selling pieces she has collected while touring the country. She’ll be one of several artists featured in American Eagle’s back to school ad campaign.
Nikki Lane Tour Dates
Sun. Aug. 14 -- Los Angeles, CA @ Echo (Roots Roadhouse mini-fest)
Mon. Aug. 15 -- Los Angeles, CA @ Bardot Hollywood (School Night with KCRW)
Sat. Aug. 20 -- Alpine, TX @ Railroad Blues
Tue. Aug. 23 -- Denton, TX @ Dan's Silverleaf

Contact her via Jessica...

RINGS I HAVE WORN, CREATIVE TIMELINES & THE EARLY DAYS OF COPIOUS

2011-07-24T16:43:00.001-04:00

When I started my U.S. company in 2005, I had no idea where the internet or digital media was headed. In an attempt to archive my work and prepare for expansion, I've been looking back at my early projects and where I was at the time versus how to take these raw ideas and create something more current.

I'd always written poetry and had a lot of work published in literary journals from the age of 17 onwards, but the real start of Copious Amounts Press was back in 2001, in Vancouver.

A lot of this impetus to create came from where I was emotionally. I was de-programming from the religious cult I'd been raised in and divorcing my first boyfriend, who had inflicted a lot of damage upon my teenage psyche and my finances. I was devastated, with nothing left to lose, and I was either going to jump off the Lion's Gate Bridge, or I was going to carve out the life I wanted.

By making this decision, I found my life's purpose. I was brimming with creative ideas, and my first major project was Copious Magazine.

Photo by Gregory Crow

I started Copious with a view to showcasing the work of other artists and forming a collective. The first issue was photocopied at a local print shop. By Issue 3, it was printed on glossy paper, and had an international cult following. Betsey Johnson and Dita Von Teese had ads in it, and I had a ton of press. I couldn't even keep up with all the letters people were sending me...it was an exciting time, and that's when I first got the idea for Minx.

Since I'd been so sheltered, everything was new. The heartbreaks and overall life lessons during this time inspired some of the best poetry I've ever written, such as:

RINGS I HAVE WORN

(Even though I know that who you are now isn't the same you that has become mythologized in my memory, sometimes I still think of you when I wash the sheets...And how we burned so hot we almost burnt each other to death.)

There’s a ring of your skin

in the bathtub, rinsed-away love.

I know the particles that belong to you, gather

them for my burgeoning collection.

In the porcelain I wash soapy leg-ropes,

the places where other men have put their mouths.

Irrelevant where I am touched,

you have marked me

with ghost-kisses,

caustic Comet scrub-burn words.

Unmistakable, one of your hairs

stray in my bed

but it is time to launder

and here too,

particles will be erased,

but never this headache of wanting you.

In 2003, I decided to record a spoken word album with my friends Daniel "Vago" Orellana and Geoff "Stylust" Reich. When I ran into Vago in Vancouver last winter, he said: "That was way ahead of it's time."

It's true. We didn't even know what was possible, we just wanted to make something that reflected what was happening around that time, such as Def Poetry Jam. And now that I've developed as an artist, the next time I work with my boys (who are doing some major things with other artists) the timeline will match what we originally envisioned, and we'll end up with something more polished and cohesive.

But I never stopped moving. I took the album we made to New York, and in 2005, I worked with Melissa Ulto to make corresponding art videos (at the time, I'd intended to somehow align these with the Minx comic I was writing). So we rented a room at the Chelsea Hotel, brought in drummer Kenny Grohowski and bassist Mike Lee to play characters, and had tons of fun.

The grand finale for this particular creative collaboration was a live show at the Nuyorican Halloween 2005. There were so many technical difficulties that I had to re-start 3 times to make sure the sound and the video synched up.

Also, this was not an audience who understood what we were trying to do. They were very stoned, into electronic music, and not in the head space for an impromptu spoken word performance art at 1 a.m. by a girl dressed up in what was supposed to be a Minx costume.

Our efforts were as valiant as they could be, considering the obstacles.

Timing is everything.

I've learned that since time is not linear, sometimes we are inventing something that feels like it will one day be important, but we don't know what that even means, let alone how to express it.

Never give up, never stop moving forward. . .

Everything you are creating now is training you to be ready for when technology, digital media, and / or the collective unconscious catches up. That's when you'll meet those pivotal people who recognize your work and help you take it to the next level.

JAMES BLAKE ::: The Wilhelm Scream

2011-07-12T00:37:00.005-04:00

I don't know about my dreams
I don't know about my dreaming anymore.
All that I know is
I'm falling, falling, falling, falling.
Might as well fall in.

I don't know about my love.
I don't know about my loving anymore.
All that I know is
I'm falling, falling, falling, falling.
Might as well fall in.

According to Wikipedia: "The Wilhelm Scream" is a film and television stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in Star Wars and many other blockbuster films, as well as television programs and video games. The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.

The sound is named for Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character is shot with an arrow. This was believed to be the third movie to use the sound effect and its first use from the Warner Brothers stock sound library.

HEALTH ::: PART OF THE NEXT MUSICAL MOVEMENT THAT WILL RIVAL THE GRUNGE MOVEMENT OF THE 90s

2011-07-02T00:33:00.002-04:00

If you don’t know about HEALTH, you certainly need to. Because they are part of the next musical movement of the decade that doesn't have a name yet (it's only 2011 - we need something to look forward to).

Thanks to the Details.com posting last week about the Vans pop-up show, I trekked out to a warehouse venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with my vintage friend Jen (@jenfromthepast).

I'd been there before - it's a very raw space that reminds me of the industrial warehouse parties I used to go to when I was a kid, and my guy friends were into bands like Ministry and The Revolting Cocks. It set the perfect tone for what was happening yesterday, with skater ramps on the sidelines, and an outdoor space so that people could actually breathe.

This VANS show felt exactly like how it was when I was going to my first concerts and seeing bands like Nirvana play, the feeling of a collective movement rising up, and us feeling so fortunate to be there, amongst people who liked the same things that we were into.

So there we were, surrounded by kids with a frenzied look in their eyes, going crazy for sponsored Heineken and taco trucks...and the low-fi sound, because the speakers were busted out. The hard core crowd meshed nicely with the indie rock crowd, and there was a little dirty hip hop thrown in between the bands for good measure (and some some 80s songs as well, like classic Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World").

By the time HEALTH went on, everyone was fully primed and amped up.

The music was a hybrid of things that make sense because of where we are now in our collective time line, and because people have finally evolved enough to finally accept visionary multi-tasking artists ("Oh wait - he's a drummer and plays bass, and drives the energy of the whole band?! That's cool.").

I can only describe HEALTH as 'mixed media music with a multi-dimensional sound'.

TRANSLATION:
d.i.y. punk, hardcore, indie, alternative meets Japanese Kabuki theater. Epic, tribal, orchestral. The bass player is half Japanese, really tall with long hair, and he dances like a swaying tree, flinging his hair, and adding a performance art element. Word on the streets is that HEALTH was playing in dirty basements in L.A. until Trent Reznor discovered them. And they don't give a fuck.

RECOMMENDED ALBUMS:
Get Color is my favorite - it's more hard core. But choose your battles, download whatever speaks to you, and make your own mix.

GENIUS = MADNESS: HEALTH VIDEOS:

HEALTH: "We Are Water" (I watched this in the morning when I woke up and thought 'Wow, this is as creepy as my nightmares and the things I make for Minx. They're also creepy.')

TRANSLATION: This vido is a parody of a horror-film Lady Gaga archetype in the role of Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf is the serial killer, and the last shot is reminiscent of the world of photographer Eugenio Recuenco (left), or a Vogue editorial from a couple years ago (right):

Perhaps, at the core, it's tying into 2 bizarre/wonderful Japanese films.

1. The Warrior and the Wolf...You can see the trailer here.

2. The Bride With White Hair, 1993 (trailer below).

In Chinese tradition, a ghost marriage is a marriage in which one or both parties are deceased, and that means that there's a strange phenomenon of Ghost brides being murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the Afterworld. This might be metaphorical i.e. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, or it might be literal, which is sick, and all too familiar in certain regions of the world.

P.S. Dear readers, forgive all the hyper-linking...but the more I work with web/media, the more I realize that you might want to map out the labyrinth in my brain in order to better figure out what the hell I am talking about. They call that Search Engine Optimization, but in actuality, I'm just trying to show you some of what I see...

BLACK WATER BY TIMBER TIMBRE (SUMMER 2011 SIREN'S SONG)

2011-06-26T18:08:00.000-04:00

Timber Timbre is an amazing band (I've said it before).

Seriously, it's the perfect music for days when you feel introspective and creative. Summer 2011 in New York is more humid than usual, with frequent flash thunderstorms. I've been caught in them a couple of times, and soaked to the bones (being from the Pacific Northwest where it rains every day, I have an aversion to umbrellas...you get what you get). Therefore, Timber Timbre and bands with that same moody tonality are the soundtrack of my work, fueling the mood of Minx, who is going through some heavy stuff right now...

BLACK WATER
- By Timber Timbre

All I need is some sunshine,
All I need...

The siren called beyond the tree line,
With another one for the caves,
And in the tarn beyond those birches,
There's a spirit that I crave.

And from the island people watched you,
You set that viking ship ablaze,
We reached those the moon falls I see a cauldron,
And found the spirit that I crave.

You fall barefoot past the tree line,
Peeping bone eyed birches sway,
And a thousand white fish floating belly up,
In the spirit that I crave.

And we threw ourselves right into it,
Where lay the bodies have been claimed?
We dove our third, our fourth, our fifth,
Back to the spirit that I crave.

I found empathy from madness,
Deliverance from a lace,
My heart is filled with gladness,
And you're the only spirit that I crave.

AUTHOR-ON-AUTHOR CRITICISMS

2011-06-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

Back in college, we had our peers asses our creative writing assignments, and it got quite intense at a point, with the same people in the same classes for multiple semesters, with the same end goals, all wanting to walk the same path. And who would succeed?

For me, the crossroad was at the point where I had to decide to walk the academic path and end up teaching at a university (which I totally admire my former classmate, Andrea MacPherson for sticking with - she's amazing), or striking out on my own.

I chose to jump off the proverbial cliff in the Pacific Northwest, and once I ended up in the East River of New York City, there was no going back.

So I appreciated seeing this FLAVORWIRE list today about authors assessing other authors. Think back to what things were before social media. Back then, if a writer ever gave their opinion on another writer's work, it was written down somewhere, hidden away, and somehow resurrected for we of the digital age.

Art is subjective depending on perspective, and love and hate are the same, remember... (P.S. Nabokov is my fave, so he can say no wrong in my eyes...otherwise, I'm as neutral as Switzerland).

The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History

Authors just don’t insult each other like they used to...It stands to reason, of course, that writers would be able to come up with some of the best insults around, given their natural affinity for a certain turn of phrase and all. And it also makes sense that the people they would choose to unleash their verbal battle-axes upon would be each other, since watching someone doing the same thing you’re doing — only badly — is one of the most frustrating feelings we know. So we forgive our dear authors for their spite.

28. Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri
“A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.”

27. Harold Bloom on J.K. Rowling (2000)
“How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.”

26. Vladimir Nabokov on Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Dostoevky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity — all this is difficult to admire.”

25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound
“A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”

24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley
“All raw, uncooked, protesting.”

23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw
“An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence
“Filth. Nothing but obscenities.”

21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820)
“Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”

20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad
“I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”

19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling
“Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”

18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen
“Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”

17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes
“Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”

16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864)
“I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.”

15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote
“He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”

12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope
“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”

11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972)
“As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”

10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876)
“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

9. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac
“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

8. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger
“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”

7. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923)
“Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’….One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”

6. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning
“I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”

5. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948)
“I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”

4. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)
“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

3. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce
“[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”

2. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922)
“A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”

1. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928)
“My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”

THE COMPLEXITY OF FATHER RELATIONSHIPS EXPLORED IN A NEW LITERARY ANTHOLOGY

2011-06-19T13:05:00.001-04:00

Parental relationships are always complicated, and now there's a literary anthology that contains poems and essays on the subject by some of the most wonderful writers in history.

As the Globe and Mail said in a recent review, "So many of these pieces are about loss, elegies for fathers who kept themselves hidden emotionally, or who couldn’t escape the rigid rituals of what men and fathers were expected to be in the old days when men earned the money and women raised the children."

Sarah McGinnis also gave a great review that sums up the project nicely:

Writer Andre Gerard, who identified and named the new publishing term patremoir an “essay, poem, play or film built around memories of the author’s father,” has just released Fathers: A Literary Anthology. In it, essays by a diverse group of beloved writers, including Alice Munro, Franz Kafka, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath and E.B. White explore the idea of fatherhood and all its ups and downs — the admiration and the conflict, love, loss, and everything in between.

From the author’s introduction:
As Telemachus learns [in The Odyssey], “It’s a wise child who knows its own father,” and it’s a rare child indeed who hasn’t been troubled by trying to make sense of its father, in the flesh or in the spirit. We don’t, it would seem, have to be Hamlets to be troubled by the ghosts of our fathers, living or dead. With the possible exception of mother, father is the most burdened word in our language, containing within it a bewildering profusion of emotions, experiences, understandings, and misunderstandings.
Fathers: A Literary Anthology is a manual for all children trying to understand their relationship with their fathers, and for fathers wanting to reflect upon and perhaps even improve their role in their children’s lives. A heartfelt gift, and a thought-provoking read, for Father’s Day or any time of the year.

There are extensive excerpts from the book available on the website, and more available by request, and Andre Gerard is available for interviews, guest articles, speaking engagements, events, and other opportunities. Fathers: A Literary Anthology is available from Amazon, and IndieBound, and from more and more independent booksellers in the US and Canada every day.

THE TOP 5 PERSONALITY TYPES TO BEWARE OF IN LOS ANGELES

2011-06-18T20:07:00.004-04:00

Writer/Producer Christian Beranek has been a wonderful comic book friend for a few years now, and every time I went to L.A. for business, we'd meet up and talk about our projects. He's given me tons of great advice, and has even collaborated on my Ready to Where? project (which I will revisit once the Minx: Dream War trade launches November 2011).

He spent several years working in L.A., and one day we were discussing the differences between the West Coast rhythm and the pace of New York City (probably because I was confused about someone being weird in an email after a meeting, asking me to meet them at their house at a suspiciously late hour that wasn't professional).

What's fascinating is that one day he just got sick of it all, sold everything, and traveled the world for months while maintaining all of his business projects / income. He's now living in the desert mountains of New Mexico, a place that allows him to really focus on his creativity.

I asked him to compile a Top 5 list of what he thought the red flags were when it came to people in the entertainment industry in California, because I thought that a lot of readers would benefit from his perspective. For the sake of parity, I considered compiling a Top 5 list for New York, except that thing I love so much about the East Coast is that people don't have as much time to waste, so they are more direct (you can tell a perv to f*@k off here, and he'll take it well).

Although California is beautiful, I get depressed after about 5 days in L.A.

Thanks for writing this, C.

THE TOP 5 PERSONALITY TYPES TO BEWARE OF IN LOS ANGELES

- By Christian Beranek

1. Sons, daughters, cousins, or any relatives of famous people.

Los Angeles is peppered throughout with the offspring of truly talented people who have already made their own names in the entertainment business. Whether it be sons, daughters, grandchildren, or distant cousins, this privileged group of descendants expects something from everyone. Additionally, they have a lot to prove in order to try and differentiate themselves from the accomplishments of their famous ancestors.

Be wary when they approach you to work with "them" on projects as it really means you'll be working "for them". Keep your dealings with them compartmentalized, because they have a tendency to cannibalize all original ideas you may bring to the table, and then taking the credit for it. It is not their fault, remember - it's just the nature of their upbringing. Those that have had it all handed to them cannot, by universal law, be fully creative and work alone as an individual. They need help (and probably some therapy).

Make them pay you for your services, and don't fully befriend them, because they will never fully accept you into their royal circles.

And get the big contractual stuff in writing.

2. Upgraders.

Upgraders are constantly upgrading their tech, phones, cars, and houses. They have to have the latest and greatest. This can also include those who are obsessed with brand names and designers. They will look down on you if you aren't up on trends. And even if you do have an iPad, they will then ask you about which apps you run, giving you unwarranted suggestions on which ones you should get. And they'll also probably claim to know who invented them.

Upgraders are classic time wasters, and should only be tolerated in small doses. Sometimes you can get helpful info from them. Take their advice with a grain of salt, thank them, and return to reality as quickly as possible.

And remember, many of these kind of Los Angeles types are severely in debt from maintaining the illusion of this lifestyle, and are therefore severely desperate. Which brings us to...

3. Has Beens and Wash Outs.

The Has Beens and Wash Outs are told: "Just give up and move on." But they can't hear it. These are the ones who are holding on to one success from years ago, or who are holding out, hoping one day something is going to break for them. They can be nice, even charming, but their tainted self esteem won't let them grow forward into a new phase of life, which then causes them to spin in centrifuge as victims of arrested development.

You may take a chance on some of them because of their experience. They may know a few people who may be able to help you, as well. But keep in mind that there is a price for everything in L.A., even if it is not doled out in the form of U.S. currency. Sometimes, it means a tiny piece of your soul. And when they take it from you, you'll never get it back.

4. Starfucking Ladder Climbers.

There really isn't much need to go into detail on these types - you'll know them right off the bat as soon as they open their mouth and ask, "What do you do?" All they care about is getting to the next level. It's kind of like a video game for them.

It really depends on what you want out of them. If you find one of these starfuckers amusing and good eye candy for a party, bring them along. But have another, classier version waiting in the wings, who you'll leave with instead. It gets people wondering.

That's only if you want to play that game...

5. New On the Scene.

Whether off the bus or out of college, these aspiring wannabes clog the very sidewalks, freeways, apartment buildings, and coffee shops of L.A. Just when you think you have a handle on the talent pool (and perhaps a leg up), 1000 bright-eyed newbies pour in from all over the country.

It's not their fault - they have dreams and ambitions. They are drawn to Los Angeles. They problem is they seep in like gunk into the machine, slowing down the system due to the fact you have to weed through a brand new lot of writers, actors, producers, etc...

And it creates competition, which in a true capitalistic sense should promote a better free market. But out in L.A., it's not just about money, it's about who you know. And although no one wants to know someone new on the scene, they sure as hell want to know you.

That said, the lifeblood of the business is new talent, that fresh face that will capture America's heart. And perhaps you can be the one to introduce them to the right person, thus inflating your own cache. You have to ask yourself, "What do I get out of it, and will it be worth it down the road."

Will this pay forward pay back?

Once again, this is only if you want to play that kind of game...

Photos by Miles Aldridge

HARVEST MOON, NEIL YOUNG & DISCOVERING YOUR FATHER HAS A SENSITIVE SIDE

2011-06-17T01:26:00.000-04:00

One teenage summer after I'd already graduated early from high school to strike out on my own (city/apartment/job/college), I went on a post-mordem type of road trip with my family. My parents had already split up once and gotten back together, and the silence between all of us was awkward.

We were all re-formed in new contexts, and unable to really talk. So it was a long road trip through some beautiful areas of America: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, California...then back to Canada.

During this timeline, I didn't really know how to talk to my parentals, and this trip was the starting point of seeing them in a different way. In order to drown out what we were all really thinking, we listened to the radio.

My father used to drive for hours, straight through the night. The sound of the tires on the endless highways was romantic, but also a little bit sad. My mother appeared to sleep soundly in the front seat, but I could tell she she was just pretending, in order to acquire some mental space.

One night, Neil Young's song "Harvest Moon" came on, and my father sang along, quietly.

I don't know why, but it broke my heart...I guess because he'd never struck me as being that romantic. Also, I sensed that my mother had already moved on emotionally, so any efforts he made to please her were futile.

"Harvest Moon"

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleepin'
We could dream this night away.

But there's a full moon risin'
Let's go dancin' in the light
We know where the music's playin'
Let's go out and feel the night.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

When we were strangers
I watched you from afar
When we were lovers
I loved you with all my heart.

But now it's gettin' late
And the moon is climbin' high
I want to celebrate
See it shinin' in your eye.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

THE TAO OF WU: THE FIVE ELEMENTS AND THEN SOME

2011-06-06T01:46:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, when I'm creating something, I find it inspiring to learn about how other artists felt about their own process via their autobiographies.

I recently finished Just Kids, Patti Smith's brilliant memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in their early days as struggling artists in New York, and right now I'm reading RZA's autobiography, The Tao of Wu. It's great. Of course, he delves into the martial arts aesthetic of the group (personally, I am a serious advocate of Taoism and Jeet Kune Do, along with city infrastructures, and artists answering the call to adventure/overcoming struggles).

Example (page 59)

"With Sifu I learned many Shaolin techniques, but my favorite is probably the Five Elements, maybe because I saw The Five Deadly Venoms at a young age. This technique breaks nature down into five basic forces: earth, water, metal, wood, and fire - which are also represented by the kung-fu styles snake, crane, dragon, leopard, and tiger. Most martial arts teach you to be as fluid as water, but earth absorbs water - so you counter water techniques with earth techniques, which absorb blows. Then if someone comes at you with earth techniques, you counter with wood styles, which drive forward. Then you counter wood with metal styles, which chop like an axe, and metal with fire styles, which are more explosive, and finally, you fight fire with water.

These principles are both external and internal. Internally, it applies to your five major organs. Earth is the spleen, metal is the lungs, water is the kidneys, wood is the liver, fire is the heart. Like, I have asthma, so the form I learned to combat it with was metal - to strengthen my lungs. At the same time, if you have a problem with your lungs, since fire melts metal you think of the energy from your heart pouring into your lungs. If your heart is aching emotionally, you think of the water from your kidney coming to quench your heart. You do all this mentally - it's inner Taoism.

Studying with Sifu, I learned that kung fu was less a fighting style, and more about cultivation of the spirit. What made a Shaolin monk so tough was his mastery of chi - the fact that he could make contact with the Earth and draw the energy from it through him. He's using his body, his breath, and his mind to align himself with the Tao - which is pure energy, the energy that sprang from a primal stillness called wu-chi. Tail chi translates as "the grand extreme" and breaks all ideas, forces, and objects into opposites, yin and yang. But wu-chi, which translates as "no extremes," came before tai chi. It's infinite, the source of all power, and it's all one.

A lot of people in our culture see life in terms of opposites - like, good versus evil, me versus you, valuable versus worthless, black versus white. Taoists believe you have to see beyond these to find their essential union. When Wu-Tang Clan started out, we had the saying "Tang is the slang. Wu is the way.' I didn't know the tai chi meaning of it then, but it turned out I was on the money. In a way, Wu-Tang pointed me to a wisdom that unified Mathematics and Taoism, that showed me their essential harmony."

THIS TORNADO LOVES YOU

2011-06-01T23:18:00.000-04:00

I've heard a hundred stories recently of men loving powerful women for a brief moment, then not being able to run the gamut - meaning they somehow feel castrated. Is the age of technology the new matriarchial society? On and on it goes, and maybe forever (this is for your break-up yesterday, B...remember, Liz Taylor had the same problems).

THIS TORNADO LOVES YOU
- By Neko Case

My love, I am the speed of sound
I left them motherless, fatherless
Their souls they hang inside-out from their mouths
But it's never enough

I want you

Carved your name across three counties
Ground it in with bloody hides
Their broken necks will line the ditch
'til you stop it, stop it
Stop this madness

I want you

I have waited with a glacier's patience
Smashed every transformer with every trailer
'til nothing was standing
65 miles wide
Still you are nowhere
Still you are nowhere
Nowhere in sight

Come out to meet me
Run out to meet me
Come in to the light

Climb the boxcars to the engine through the smoke into the sky
Your rails have always outrun mine
So I pick them up and crash them down
In a moment close to now
Cuz I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss
I miss how you'd sigh yourself to sleep

When I raked the springtime across your sheets

My love, I am the speed of sound
I left them motherless, fatherless
Their souls they hang inside-out from their mouths
But it's never enough

My love
I'm an owl on the sill in the evening
But morning finds you
Still warm and breathing

This tornado loves you
What will make you believe me?

ALTERNATE REALITIES COLLIDE AS MINX STARTS TO SPEAK WITH HER OWN VOICE...

2011-05-29T13:17:00.003-04:00

As an artist and storyteller, I’ve always approached any medium (photography, poetry, comics, what have you) as a collage. Memory forms the background of each work. Layers of literary and cultural references add texture. Experience works like scissors to cut those pieces into shreds. And tradition glues them all back together to form a picture.

Minx is a collage—spliced within these pages are my deepest memories, my obsessions, and my fears and desires, all bound together by my Native beliefs and culture. To know Minx is to know me, and to know me is to know that whatever Minx goes through, I've experienced in some way in my life.

I mean that allegorically for the most part, of course. But I actually do hold true the Native belief that when we sleep part of our consciousness travels to another dimension that might be just as valid as our waking reality. And the more we become aware of that, the more we are able to see the connections between those two worlds, with startling consequences.

Minx is the embodiment of that realization for me - through her, I am piecing together my own multi-layered history with the idea that someday, I will leave behind a whole picture. Minx: Dream War is the first part.

That's the intro to Dream War #1.

Readers have been asking for me to really give Minx her own voice, and so she now has her own blog: http://minx-in-dreamtime.blogspot.com/.

I often talk about realities colliding, because while we are in production for one book, I have to write the next one, but also plan the next volume so that I know where the story is headed, and who my project allies are going to be. So I'm always at least 3 years ahead.

But I've decided to start Minx's diaristic timeline somewhere between preparing for her first art show (pages 19 - 21 of Issue #1) and before she has her art show and meets Ptolemy, who will become a profound figure in her life. Because she's so connected to Dreamtime, her emotions in the waking world are conflicted.

You can now buy a signed copy of Issue #1 on the Copious Amounts website: http://www.copiousamounts.com/minx/store.html. Thank you, as always, for your support.

MINX: DREAM WAR ISSUE #1 AVAILABLE IN STORES TODAY

2011-05-25T08:33:00.001-04:00

Copious Amounts Press is pleased to announce the release of Minx: Dream War #1, available in stores across North America as of May 24, 2011. If you want to get your hands on a copy, go to your local comic store and get them to order it (retailers are reactive rather than proactive when it comes to ordering new titles). You can send them to Comixology to find it here: http://www.comixology.com/series/5715/Minx/items.

MINX is a graphic novel project that merges the classic superhero motif with traditional First Nations mythology, explored through both the conscious and subconscious mediums.

They say, “If you die in your dreams, you die in real life...” For half-Native American Minx, this is not superstition; it is reality. Issue 1 opens with Minx living as a struggling young artist in New York City. Her life changes forever after suffering a vicious attack and slipping into a coma. She doesn’t wake in the same world she left; rather, she finds herself in Dreamtime, the alternate reality that humans inhabit when they sleep. With this transition comes great revelation and profound responsibility as Minx evolves into a sophisticated warrior, charged with protecting her Native people from a complex agenda that seeks to transform nightmares into realities and realities into nightmares. But Minx’s role as vigilante is not born from random coincidence: it is the result of elaborate conspiracy, ancient prophecy, and devastating betrayal.

Series creator Andrea Grant with artist Rey Arzeno and the Clowns About Town

There was a Minx launch party to celebrate this on May 11th, at Bedlam in New York City (see more pictures here). Imagine a room filled with the best of the best: your most beloved, who wish for everything you’ve ever dreamed of to be a reality, and a few others who are curious about what you’re creating, offering support as they discover.

THE DISTANT FRAGRANCE OF A HALF-REMEMBERED LIFE

2011-05-18T01:23:00.005-04:00

There is a phrase that repeats itself in my brain sometimes, by way of categorizing things: "The distant fragrance of a half-remembered life."

What this really means is:

Time. How it bends and twists in a non-linear fashion. How it's marked by various styles of clothing (although vintage throws everyone off kilter). The scent of a lover's perfume, melded with the memory of flesh upon flesh, gold-foiling and decadent at the edges.

Or the aftermath, which stays after you've gone your separate ways. Elation, until the trepidation creeps in because it's the beginning of something, and maybe it will work, maybe it won't.

Sometimes you think about how fascinating it is, the way you can get so close and then...nothing. Radio silence. But the music that was playing during the most profound of moments will become the soundtrack of your memory (so be careful what you play on your iPod).

Perhaps you were listening to Springsteen, and it seemed profound in the moment:

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife
baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley
through the middle of my soul

At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
and a freight train running through the
middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
Oh, I'm on fire...

(I wanted to write a lot more tonight, but I'm bone-weary, my wrist kills from typing so much, and I need to go away for a couple of days to swim in some warm turquoise water, which will take me back to writing the next issue of Minx).

IT'S A MAD, MAD WORLD

2011-05-08T17:34:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I suddenly recalled the song "Mad World" by Tears for Fears...a band that was ahead of its time (everybody does want to rule the world nowadays, don't they?)

These are heartbreaking lyrics: 'I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, that the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had...' The song was covered by Roland Orzabal for Donnie Darko, another project that wasn't fully appreciated until later on (and even then, it was more cult).

I sometimes think about the public face we all put on, versus those moments of solitude that sometimes verge on the melancholy. Whether we drown it out, or surrender to the beauty of it depends on the day. Maybe it's in direct proportion to what we feel we're supposed to be creating versus the obligations of maintaining lives that are constantly speeding up.

"Look right through me, look right through me..."

MAD WORLD

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
'Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world.
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me...

DON DRAPER: IT NEVER HAPPENED...AND HOW THIS TRANSLATES TO MARTIAL ARTS

2011-05-02T00:23:00.001-04:00

As Don Draper from Mad Men likes to say about all the vexing things this life has to offer: “It never happened". But this is really just another way of saying "create your own reality."

The creation of a new reality is what is necessary in order to plow through serious things such as deadlines at the 11th hour. Even if you think it's going to kill you. And sometimes it feels like it will. But you have to find the strength to keep on moving forward.

When faced with life's challenges, I think about my study of Jeet Kun Do, and how the discipline of that martial art was balanced by what Bruce Lee called "the style of no style". You need to be fluid, and be like water. Adapt to your surroundings, but always stay one step ahead, anticipating your opponent's movements.

This is the new art. It's relentless.

There is no time to indulge the crazies, the forlorn, the drama queens. If you have those types of people in your life, cut them off...with kindness, but firmly. You don't have time for that.

They are spinning so fast it hurts to be around them, and that will drain you to the core. You need to stay grounded, completely aware of what's happening, anticipating the fact that they might try strike some kind of blow when they realize you aren't so available. But because you've anticipated this in advance, you'll avoid getting hit.

Remain calm.

This is how you'll transcend.

EVERY HEART IS A LONESOME HUNTER

2011-04-23T16:02:00.002-04:00

So much is happening. I'm working 7 days a week, from early morning into night, watching it all unfold, negotiating...and the past/present/future realities collide every so often.

Timber Timbre is my favorite band this week. I love the melancholy-blues sound and the surreal lyrics.

What did that bad man put in you?
I'm afraid I'll never understand baby,
I'm so sorry you had such a bad time.
Well I've done some truly awful things
And you must be very terrified

Well you have every reason to be frightened
Since you've been reading my mind
Who am I to deny this moment
And who am I to even question it?
There is a cross on a mountain baby
There is a cross glowing over your head
Please break this spell you have me under
Every heart is a lonesome hunter

Sparrows at your window
Starlings at your door
Magpies wherever we go
Is it blackbirds forevermore
Well I'm standing holding my head
And I'm staring through a hole in your head
And I've been feeling like a zombie baby
I am a zombie coming slow to your bed

* * *

Personally, I don't feel like a zombie (more like a robot) - but what a great analogy for the impulses that wash over all of us.

YOU SAID SOMETHING THAT I'VE NEVER FORGOTTEN

2011-04-19T23:42:00.001-04:00

Once, he sent me the most beautiful message, which read:

"I woke up to you writing LOVE on my skin - and with your eyes, you said "I'd die to be free".

It was about a dream he'd had, which was prophetic.

We never saw each other again.

TIMBER TIMBRE: LAY DOWN IN THE TALL GRASS...

2011-04-18T20:55:00.000-04:00

Timber Timbre is an amazing band...and their morbid lyrics are so very Canadian.

Lay down in the tall grass
in a flat-bottom boat
Lay down and wait for you
with nothing but a piece of rope
Dreaming every night of you
Shaking at the sight
I'll be dreaming every night of you
I'll be shaking at the sight - of - you

Will you beg for forgiveness?
Will you pray to be saved?
Will you choke your children when they spit in your face?
Dreaming every night of you
Shaking at the sight
I'll be dreaming every night of you
I'll be shaking at the sight

I dreamt you found me out in a field
You tripped over my site
And you dug me out of this shallow grave
with your Swiss Army knife
And only you could revive me, so badly decomposed

I was born white, dry, and scaly
but you still took me home
Dreaming every night of you
Shaking at the sight of you
I'll be dreaming every night of you

And how could you be so serene?
Motivation unclear
In a late basement seance that brought us to tears
Dreaming every night of you
Shaking at the sight

I dreamt you found me out in a field
You tripped over my site
and you dug me out of this shallow grave
with your Swiss Army knife
and only you could revive me, so badly decomposed
I was born white, dry, and scaly
but you still took me home...

LOCKED IN THE TRUNK OF A CAR: CANADIAN MORBIDITY AND SONG LYRICS

2011-04-12T22:52:00.005-04:00

When I first moved to New York, and people asked where I was from, it was hard to convey the subtext of the gulf islands that were hidden away deep in the Pacific Northwest.

I used to answer, "I'm from an island that bred serial killers and poets - and I became a poet."

This is (still) true.

But the tone of missing girls on milk cartons in the 90s has always influenced my work (I was never one of them, thanks to my father who taught me self-defense when I was 12). Also, my brother had an influence on my aesthetic, since he was a bad-ass from the age of 10. Having tough men in the family makes the girls tough in a unique way, because Daddy will hold the door open for the girl when the family goes to dinner, but then he will also take her aside to teach some vital martial arts training in the evenings. This creates a new hybrid of lady who doesn't expect a man to save her, since she can throw down, if necessary...which is often intimidating to the modern man, who has been emasculated by feminism and all that.

Photographed by the amazing Gigi Stoll who shoots it raw, March 2011

LOCKED IN THE TRUNK OF A CAR

By the Tragically Hip

They don't know how old I am
Found armour in my belly
From the 16th century
Conquistador, I think
They don't know how old I am
They found armour in my belly
Passion out of machine-revving tension
Lashing out at machine-revving tension

Brushing by the machine revving tension

Morning broke out the backside of a truck-stop
End of a line a real, rainbow-likening luck stop,
Where you could say I became chronologically "fucked up"
Put ten bucks in just to get the tank topped off
Then I found a place it's dark and it's rotted

It's a cool, sweet kinda place where the copters won't spot it
And I destroyed the map, I even thought I forgot it, however,

Everyday I'm dumping the body
It'd be better for us if you don't understand
Even better for me if you don't understand

And I found a place it's dark and it's rotted
It's a cool, sweet kinda place where the copters won't spot it
And I destroyed the map that I carefully dotted, however,
Every day I'm dumping the body
Better for me if you don't understand

Let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out

SINEAD O'CONNOR: WE KNEW FROM THE START THAT THINGS FALL APART II

2011-04-11T23:35:00.002-04:00

Sinéad O'Connor was only 21 years old when she hit super stardom. Controversy aside, she was a tremendous vocalist (besides, the things that shocked people in the early 90s are minute nowadays).

She was beautiful in that natural way that makes people uncomfortable. "Why would she shave her hair off? She'd be so much prettier with hair." But whenever she grew an inch of hair, she wasn't as beautiful. With a shaved head, it was all limpid eyes and skin...feminine artifice did not align with her voice.

This is a video of her performing at the Grammy's in '89, during a phase that Wikipedia describes this way: 'O'Connor's first two albums (1987's The Lion and the Cobra and 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got) gained considerable attention and mostly positive reviews. She was praised for her voice and her original songs. She was also noted for her appearance: her trademark shaved head, often angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing.'

The song refers to the Mandinka, one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. They are the descendants of the Mali Empire, which rose to power under the rule of the great Mandinka king Sundiata Keita.

I've been listening to her early albums lately, and I really like the song "Jackie". It's very Wuthering Heights/Dark Shadows, pre-Karen Elson's "Ghost Who Walks".

Nothing says Irish like mourning over a dead lover...

JACKIE

Jackie left on a cold, dark night
Telling me he'd be home
Sailed the seas for a hundred years
Leaving me all alone
And I've been dead for twenty years
I've been washing the sand
With my ghostly tears
Searching the shores for my Jackie-oh
I remember the day the young man came
He said, "your Jackie's gone
We got lost in the rain"
And I ran to the beach
And laid me down "You're all wrong", I said
And they stared at the sand
"That man knows that sea
Like the back of his hand
He'll be back some time
laughing at you"
And I've been waiting all this time
For my man to come
Take his hand in mine
And lead me away
To unseen shores
I've been washing the sand
With my salty tears
Searching the shore
For these long years
And I'll walk the seas forever more
Till I find my Jackie, oh

WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO THE LEAST

2011-04-10T15:07:00.001-04:00

Writing takes a ton of discipline.

If you wait for the right mood to strike, you might be waiting forever.

Deadlines help. But if there isn't a hard deadline (and let's face it, there rarely is), then you have to find other ways to force yourself to create, or nothing will move forward.

Sure, there are a lot of distractions...friends inviting you to really fun events, looking up things on the internet (which feels like work, but which is often a complete wast of time), the telephone ringing. Sometimes you just have to go inward, and disappear for a few days.

The way to tackle an insurmountable task is to just dive in. Once you start, it doesn't take that much to get to the halfway point. By the time you're three quarters of the way there, there's a rhythm to the project that makes it easy to finish. And once you've finished, the idea of revisions are less daunting than they were when you wrote that first sentence.

Photo of Nadja Auermann by Helmut Newton

I'm frequently motivated to write when there's some other task I'm dreading. It's a game of 'what do I want to do the least?' For example, if I don't feel like sorting out tax receipts, I'll dust off that manuscript that's been tucked away in a drawer for the past two years...

Whatever works.

WHAT THE GRUNGE MOVEMENT OF THE NINETIES REALLY FELT LIKE

2011-04-05T02:25:00.010-04:00

Last week, out of nowhere, I woke up with Pearl Jam's "Black" running through my head.

This led to a renewed enthusiasm for my grunge playlist: Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Hole, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, and some more obscure songs that used to circulate on the radio in the early 90s (like "Grey Cell Green" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, or "Caroline" by Concrete Blonde).

And I've been listening to this mix ever since. It suits the mood of early spring, when it's still cold, and frequently raining.

When you're really young and a movement is occurring, you sense it in your bones, although you don't realize the full cultural impact it will have until later on. Grunge was the soundtrack that expressed our confusion about the future. Because we didn't know what else to do, we hung around the houses of the kids whose parents were never home, blasting the stereo, laying on the floor, and analyzing every song.

This was before the internet, of course. Time moved differently.

I remember exactly whose house I was at when I first saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit". One of the boys in our crew was watching the music channel, and the girls were summoned to come and watch. "Look at this," he said. "Look at the cheerleaders - they're smashing into each other, slam dancing!"

Due to all of the hype of this once-in-a-lifetime-movement, my first concert was Lollpalooza, circa 1991. I had to overcome all sorts of obstacles to even get there: lie to my parents about where I was spending the night AND give me some money, buy a ticket at the local record store, make travel arrangements to actually cross the border, find my way to some remote place called Enumclaw, and book a hotel for the night (with a land line, mind you - not a cell phone).

So my friends and I drove down to Washington State with someone's older brother who had a car, and it poured rain the entire time - the parking lot was its own muddy ordeal. We were drenched right through our clothes, but because we'd never seen anything like it, we didn't care.

This was the musical line-up: Jane's Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Ice-T, Body Count, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, and Emergency Broadcast Network. A serious juxtaposition, especially for rock kids who had never heard of hip hop.

Of course, the top grunge bands also used to come up to play in Vancouver. We got to see Kurt Cobain perform with Nirvana right before he died, which was legendary.

everyone used to look at each other with the kind of understanding that comes with a feeling of tribe. The boys wore their hair as long as they could get away with, and even though their plaid shirts were a kind of uniform, the costuming was sincere.

When we saw Marc Jacobs try to appropriate our style in a Vogue fashion spread a couple of years later, we were appalled. Models with stringy hair, feigning heroin chic? Not an accurate portrayal of what was really happening in our scene. We weren't into the affectation of it all - we wore combat boots with steel toes because we were diving into mosh pits relentlessly, trying to ease the awkwardness of our virginity and parental conflict.

Music was everything to us back then - probably because it was the first thing we could call our own, in a time when a first kiss was a big deal. That Seattle-grunge sound complemented our moments of trepidation, and captured the melancholy of a region where the rain is incessant.

When Pearl Jam first came onto the scene, they were criticized. I don't remember why. But I do know that by their second album, we accepted them. Their talent remains undeniable.

Eddie Vedder was always so handsome, and his intense performance for MTV Unplugged is pained, sexual, and captivating. Like the boys we grew up with...

Black

Artist: Pearl Jam

Composer: Vedder/Gossard

Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
Were laid spread out before me, as her body once did
All five horizons revolved around her soul
As the earth to the sun
Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn
And all I taught her was everything
I know she gave me all that she wore
And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds
Of what was everything?
Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed Everything...

I take a walk outside
I'm surrounded by some kids at play
I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear
And twisted thoughts that spin round my head
I'm spinning, oh, I'm spinning
How quick the sun can, drop away
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
Of what was everything
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything...
All the love gone bad turned my world to black
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I will be...yeah...
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star
In somebody else's sky, but why, why, why
Can't it be, can't it be mine

IF I WAS YOUR GIRLFRIEND...PRINCE STYLE

2011-03-30T23:22:00.004-04:00

There is nothing dirtier than vintage Prince, before he became religious and started censoring himself so that he was appropriate for the Oprah show.

Terrible experimental grammar aside, the song "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is an adamant declaration of dramatic, worshipful 80s love...and therefore utterly awesome. In this video of a live performance, Prince grinds it down, strips down to a low-cut unitard, and does the splits, before mock-seducing his back-up singer on the stage.

The best part of the full-length recorded song is at the end, when he takes it right back down to the silence.

IF I WAS YOUR GIRLFRIEND

Look at the bargains over here, ladies

If I was your girlfriend, would U remember
2 tell me all the things U forgot when I was your man?
Hey hey, when I was your man

If I was your best friend, would U let me
Take care of U and do all the things that only a best friend can?
Oh, only best friends can

If I was your girlfriend

If I was your girlfriend, would U let me dress U
I mean, help U pick out your clothes before we go out?
Not that U're helpless
But sometime, sometime those are the things that bein' in love's about

If I was your one and only friend
Would U run 2 me if somebody hurt U even if that somebody was me?
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be ... please!

If I was your girlfriend
Would U let me wash your hair?
Could I make U breakfast sometime?
Well then, could we just hang out
I mean, could we go 2 a movie and cry 2gether?
Cuz 2 me baby, that would be so fine.

Baby, can I dress U
I mean, help U pick out your clothes before we go out?
Listen girl, I ain't sayin U're helpless
But sometime, sometime those are the things that bein' in love's about
Sugar, do U know what I'm saying 2 U this evening?
Maybe U think I'm being a little self-centered
But I, I said I wanna be all of the things U are 2 me
Surely, surely U can see

Is it really necessary 4 me 2 go out of the room
Just because U wanna undress?
We don't have 2 make children 2 make love
And we don't have 2 make love 2 have an orgasm
Your body's what I'm all about
Can I see it?
I'll show U
Why not?
U can do it because I'm your friend
I'd do it 4 U
Of course I'd undress in front of U
And when I'm naked, what shall I do?
How can I make U see that it's cool?
Can't U just trust me?
If I was your girlfriend, U could
Oh yeah, I think so
Listen, 4 U naked I would dance a ballet
Would that get U off?
Tell me what will
If I was your girlfriend, would U tell me?
Would U let me see U naked then?
Would U let me give U a bath?
Would U let me tickle U so hard U'd laugh and laugh
And would U, would U let me kiss U there
U know, down there where it counts
I'll do it so good, I swear I'll drink every ounce
And then I'll hold U tight and hold U long
And 2gether we'll stare into silence

And we'll try 2 imagine what it looks like
Yeah, we'll try 2 imagine what, what silence looks like

WHEN KAFKA WAS THE RAGE

2011-03-27T21:17:00.000-04:00

This Greenwich Village memoir is one of my all-time favorite books, describing what it was like to come of age in New York in the late 1940s. As the author says, "American life had not yet been split open. It was still all of a piece, intact, bounded on every side, and above all, regulated. Actions we now regard as commonplace were forbidden by law and custom. While all kinds of things were censored, we hadn't even learned to think in terms of censorship, because we were so used to it. The social history of the world is, in some ways, a history of censorship."

This passage is my favorite (I used it for the spoken word album I made a few years back, with DS Boone's old-man radio show voice capturing the slightly melancholic tone).

'The saddest part of sex in those days was the silence. Men and women hadn't yet learned to talk to one other in a natural way. Girls were trained to listen. They were waiting for history to give them permission to speak. They led waiting lives - waiting for men to ask them out, for them to have an orgasm, to marry or leave them. Their silence was another form of virginity.

There were all kinds of silences: timid silences, dogged silences, discreet, sullen, watchful, despairing silences, hopeful silences, interrogative silences. In the early stages of knowing a girl I didn't mind, because desire was a kind of noise - but afterward, lying in bed, the silence was cold, as if we had no blanket to cover us. There were girls who insisted on kissing all through the act and I thought of this kissing as a speechless babble.

I was so depressed by the silence, by the absence of real talk or genuine confiding, that I went around for a while with a deaf and dumb girl. Why not? I said to myself. Why not go all the way? I didn’t know, when I picked her up in the lobby of the New School, that she couldn’t hear. I assumed her odd speech – the way of someone who has never heard speech – was the accent of a foreign student. It sounded like Arabic.

When I realized that she had been born this way it seemed like a judgment. I felt that I had reached a logical conclusion. This was the final silence between women and men – why go on pretending? Her hearing aid was in her bra – when she undressed, she was stone deaf. We could only tap each other on the arm. She told me that she heard my voice as a vibration in my chest.”

What Hemingway's A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s, this charming yet undeceivable memoir does for Greenwich Village in the late 1940s.

In 1946, Anatole Broyard was a dapper, earnest, fledgling avant-gardist, intoxicated by books, sex, and the neighborhood that offered both in such abundance.

Stylish written, mercurially witty, imbued with insights that are both affectionate and astringent, this memoir offers an indelible portrait of a lost bohemia.

AND THE BOYS GO ON AND ON...

2011-03-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

I always need music playing in the background in order to write. Angus & Julia Stone is a good band to listen to in a reflective mood. They're a brother-sister duo from Newport on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia.

Both of the sibs have distinctive vocal styles. The Sydney Morning Herald's Bernard Zuel described their vocals as such: "Her voice has a fractured feel like Jolie Holland; his has a smoke-on-the-beach drawl." UK journalist Johnny Sharp stated, "Most impressive, though, are the songs - simple but blindingly effective acoustic compositions, warm boy-girl harmonies and delicate, less-is-more arrangements. Resistance is surely futile."

Their videos aren't exactly mind-blowing, but the songs/lyrics are good.

AND THE BOYS LYRICS

It's been days now
and you change your mind again
it feels like years
and I can tell how time can bend your ideas

and the boys go on and on and on and on
and there's gold falling from the ceiling of this world
falling from the heartbeat of this girl
falling from the things we should have learned
falling from the things we could have heard

well it's been days now
and you change your mind again
all the cracks in the walls reminds you of things we said
and I could tell you that I wont hurt you this time
but it's just safer to keep you in this heart of mine

and the boys go on and on and on and on
and there's gold falling from the ceiling of this world
falling from the heartbeat of this girl
falling from the things we should have learned
falling from the things we could have heard

falling from the people that we heard
falling from the love we never earned
falling from the sky that should have burned
falling from my heart

ELLIOTT SMITH, SEPPUKU, AND WOULDN'T MAMA BE PROUD?

2011-03-20T14:19:00.039-04:00

I first became aware of Elliott Smith in 2003, right after he killed himself at age 34, by stabbing himself in the chest. My fella at the time loved Smith's music, and was really upset for a couple of weeks, which he expressed by playing the Figure 8 album over and over.

Smith had a distinctive vocal style characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery"and the use of multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies, and critics noted that he made music for the sad kids (aka the start of emo).

"Imagine what it would take to actually take a knife and cut through your own flesh," D. said, a lit cigarette hanging from his fingers. "It's a modern form of seppuku. The image is horrifying."

We all know that seppuku was usually committed as a voluntary death by samurai to retain their honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies or shame their families (or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses).

Smith suffered from depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction, and these themes often appeared in his lyrics. Perhaps he was ashamed of himself...or just tired of the cycle. Sometimes, artists just get burnt out and sick of everything.

"Wouldn't Mama Be Proud" has been described as the most literal, straight-up pop song that Smith ever made. Sure, he seems to be slightly making fun of people who have a day job. But somewhere in the lyrics, there is perhaps a hint of his own internal conflict and a fear of disappointing his family.

WOULDN'T MAMA BE PROUD

The question is, "Wouldn't mama be proud?"
There's a silver lining in the corporate cloud
And the pretty post that you're taking as
As an NCO of the great pretender
I should sure think so

Wouldn't mama be proud?

"Can I take your order?"
Asks the heavenly host
Ticket to the jetstream
Blowing coast to coast

The long stemmed glasses, a movie
And a pleasant dream in mid air
You got to tell me quickly
Because we're almost there

Wouldn't mama be proud?

If you look out your window
And the sky's gone black
Well, kid, you're on the right track

If I send you postcards
From the side of the road
Photographs of moving parts
About to implode

If I call to keep it together
Like you say I can do
To transmit a moment
From me to you

SILENCE IN THE AGE OF CONSTANT COMMUNICATION

2011-03-20T13:30:00.002-04:00

SILENCE

- Leonard Cohen

You tell me that silence

is nearer to peace than poems

but if for my gift I brought you silence

(for I know silence)

you would say

This is not silence

this is another poem

and you would hand it back to me.

* * *

Ironically, although radio silence from others drives me crazy, I find that I am sometimes guilty of that myself. It's a natural reaction from the constant text messages, emails, social media we are all balancing in our modern times (when someone actually calls me, I am briefly startled).

KIM NOVAK, VINTAGE STYLE ICON

2011-03-06T18:19:00.001-05:00

Writing the script for Minx means that I have to think about wardrobe. What would the characters wear to an art opening? What would they wear to go to the Dreamtime Lounge? Although I love outlandish designers such as Gaultier, with his corsets, or the futuristic wardrobe styles found in films such as Blade Runner (where 40s style was reinterpreted), my favorite style icons are always classic screen stars from the 40s and 50s.

Take Kim Novak, for example. In Vertigo she played an icy blonde who captured the obsessive attentions of Jimmy Stuart. She wore black, white, and grey, and her hair was in a chignon, suggesting a careful restraint which made her erratic moments (such as when she tried to drown herself in the San Francisco Bay) even more dramatic.

Here, her black dress is paired with a white coat with a beautiful collar, complemented by black elbow-length gloves and a sheer scarf. Her bright orange lipstick adds a pop of color and brightens her skin. Bare legs keep the look from being too monochromatic, and although you can't tell from this photo, she is wearing classic black kitten heels.

Zang Toi's F/W 2011 show was reminiscent of this tailored, ladylike style, which can move easily from day into evening.

TWIN PEAKS (aka things you think about when you can't sleep)

2011-03-04T01:02:00.001-05:00

I realize I'm a bit of a delinquent lately when it comes to writing. But so much is happening.

I have been thinking a lot about fan bases...and, in this saturated society, who was ahead of the curve.

David Lynch with Twin Peaks, that's who.

Someone loved the show so much years later that they made this.

DISCIPLINE IS PARAMOUNT: A DAY IN THE LIFE

2011-02-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

On the plane to Paris last weekend, I was thinking about how I have to sometimes physically leave New York City to carve out time to write and navigate this thing I’m building. And what's that like, you may wonder?

AN AVERAGE WEEKDAY:

-Wake up early, after 3 of the 5 alarms I’ve set have gone off. Play music loudly, think about what has to be done, and what to wear based on the weather. Calisthenics, or an extra 15 minutes of sleep, depending on whether I've gotten to bed at midnight or 2 a.m. (going to bed earlier often makes me feel worse the next day).

- Return business emails / letter comics / ship custom comic orders while getting ready (multi-tasking is key). Make notes of things to remember throughout the day on sticky notes, and then write more notes on my phone, which I know I will probably not read.

- Work in a structured office routine that is healthier than my former schedule of staying up till 4 or 6 a.m. every night, because I could, since I used to start my day at noon and work till 10 pm (then go out).

- Mondays are mine. Other nights, there might be some kind of meeting or seemingly glamorous rock concert/dinner engagement with friends, where I worry about the threat of sleep deprivation since I know there are 2-3 hours of work waiting for me. Or, a photo shoot, where I hope the dark circles under my eyes will be touched up in post.

- Return home to 5+ hours of work per night (although I pretend it's 2-3 hours, just to get through). Lettering custom comics, writing Minx, writing proposals for new projects, making sure things have been shipped. Take some vitamins, read part of a graphic novel, and finally rest.

Repeat.

PRIORITIES:

-Help motivate the artists to make their deadlines and say "If I can do this, so can you!"

-Pay bills and run errands.

-Buy pretty things to wear, and wear them once in a while.

-Make phone calls to Canada, where they say encouraging things about my relentless pursuit of the American Dream.

WEEKENDS:

- Saturdays are for shopping. Preferably vintage in the East Village.

- Instead of church, I have Cinderella Sundays, where I clean the apartment, scrubbing the floors by hand before I get into writing or go out. It's like a meditation. I didn't do it this past weekend because I was in Paris, and I feel a bit guilty, but there is no time until Sunday to take up that heavy work.

Where I come from, people take pride in organizing their lives. My father was very strict, and he insisted I learn how to chop wood, build fires, put oil in my car, change a flat tire, and kill perpetrators. And since my mother believed children should be raised like little servants, I do understand what it means to really dust the bookshelves and clean the windowpanes.

But these are lessons I am grateful for. So when guests say things like, “Your apartment is too clean,” I think that perhaps they weren’t brought up properly (PS please take your shoes off without my having to ask you – since I am on my knees scrubbing weekly, please consider the sacrifice).

However, there are rewards for all of this work, like the Hemmingway suite at the Ritz in Paris. So it's not like I'm hard done by or anything...

THE GLAMOROUS LIFE (CIRCA ZANG TOI)

2011-02-15T01:11:00.001-05:00

Zang Toi's F/W 2011 collection was reminiscent of the sleek, cool women in Hitchcock's finest films (Tippi Hendren in Marnie, Kim Novak in Vertigo). Camel, black, forest green like we've never seen it before, and gray. Tailored dresses and suits paired with furs, and neck pieces that speak to a neo-Cleopatra.

Photos by Shawn Hayes.

BUKOWSKI ON A SATURDAY EVENING...

2011-02-12T17:40:00.000-05:00

I won't bore you with how busy I am, struggling to find the balance between project deadlines and the silence between the words. Every now and then, it's necessary to read poetry.

Perhaps because my new custom comics company has been so busy with Valentine's Day orders, I really get to see a personal side of people's love relationships - and then I hear all sorts of stories from my friends. It's all very interesting.

This Bukowski poem is very New York...

ALONE WITH EVERYBODY
- Charles Bukowski

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

THE BEAT POETS

2011-02-06T20:32:00.002-05:00

As of this weekend, I've been in New York City for 7 years. It's continually inspiring on several levels, especially downtown.

The ghosts of the Beat poets still hover around the Village. Although I enjoy our modern culture, I do wish I could have hung around those gentlemen in all their glorious madness.

"I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerely putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires."

-Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac

"There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination." -William Burroughs

THE END OF MY LIFE IN ART

2011-02-04T01:24:00.002-05:00

The busier I get, the more I think about poetry...and how it can be challenging to find vintage Leonard on the internet. Here's one of his most epic pieces (I took a break from writing to type it - and I'd better not get the same kind of letter I got from Al Purdy's people for excerpting one of his poems).

THE END OF MY LIFE IN ART

- By Leonard Cohen

This is the end of my life in art. At last I have found the woman I am looking for. It is summer. It is the summer. It is the summer I waited for. We are living in a suite on the fifth floor of the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. She is as beautiful as Lili Marlene. She is as beautiful as Lady Hamilton. Except for the fear of losing her I have no complaint. I have not been denied the full measure of beauty. Nights and mornings we kiss each other. The feathery palms rise through the smog. The curtains stir. The traffic moves on Sunset over painted arrows, words and lines. It is best not even to whisper about this perfection. This is the end of my life in art. I am drinking a Red Needle, a drink I invented in Needles, California, tequila and cranberry juice, lemon and ice. The full measure. I have not been denied the full measure. It happened as I approached my forty-first birthday. Beauty and Love were granted me in the form of a woman. She wears silver bracelets, one on each wrist. I am happy with my luck. Even if she goes away I will say to myself, I have not been denied the full measure of beauty. I said that to myself in Holston, Arizona, in a bar across the street from or motel, when I thought she would be leaving the next morning. This is drunken talk. This is Red Needles talking. It is too smooth. I am frightened. I don’t know why. Yesterday I was so frightened that I could hardly hand a Red Needle to a monk on Mount Baldy. I’m frightened and tired. I am an old man with a silver ornament. These stiff movements should not be accompanied by tiny silver bells. She must be plotting against me in my bed. She wants me to be Carlo Ponti. The black maid is stealing my credit cards. I should go sailing alone through the pine trees. I should get a grip on myself. O god her skin is soft and brown. I would sell my family graves. I am old enough for that. I better have another drink. If I could write a song for her I could pay for this suite. She saw the men in Afghanistan, she saw the elders, how can she stay here with me? It is true I am a hero of the Sahara but she did not see me under sand and fire, mastering the sphincters of my cowardice. And she could not know how beautiful these words are. Nobody could. She could not perceive the poignant immortality of my life in art. Nobody can. My vision of the traffic on Sunset Boulevard through the concrete lilies of the balcony railing. The table, the climate, the perfect physique for a forty-year-old artist, famous, happy, frightened. Six in the morning. Six-o-five. The minutes go by. Six-ten. Women. Women and children. The light gone from Los Angeles they say, the original movie light, but this view of Sunset Boulevard satisfactory in every way. My life in art closing down. Monica sleeping. All the wandering mind is hers. My devotions begin to embarrass me. She should grow tired of them soon. I am tired of them now. She is pregnant. Our love-making is sweet because of this. She will not have the child. Six-twenty. We drink Red Needles every night. She tells me of the gay San Francisco world. The weight of her beauty has become intolerable. People in the liquor store actually pop-eyed and double-took as she went by with her long hair and her sacrificial child, her second-hand clothes and her ordinary face mocking all the preparations for allurement here in the heart of Hollywood, so ripe she is in the forces of beauty and music as to frighten me, who has witnessed the end of his life in art. Six-forty. I want to go back to bed and get inside her. That’s the only time there’s anything approaching peace. And when she sits on my face. When she lowers herself onto my mouth This feels like doom. This is a pyramid on my chest. I want to change blood with her. I want her slavery. I want her promise. I want her death. I want the thrown acid to disencumber me. I want to stop staring. Six-fifty. Ruined in Los Angeles. I should start smoking again. I’m going to start smoking again. I want to die in her arms and leave her. You need to smoke a pack a day to be that kind of man. When we were on the road I was always ready to drive her to the nearest airport and say goodbye but now I want her to die without me. I started my exercises again today. I need some muscle now. I need a man in the mirror to whisper courage when I shave and to tell me once again about the noble ones who conquered all of this.

WHEN PEOPLE HAVE A HIGH SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

2011-02-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

Dear readers...there is some legit writing happening on the sidelines, but I'm also managing some hard core business stuff. But being professional means you don't say what you think (i.e. how come people don't THINK before they speak).

WE KNEW FROM THE START THAT THINGS FALL APART

2011-01-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

Now that it's 2011, I feel time overlap like never before. So many things have come full circle. Last year's theme was "Let go of the things that no longer serve you," which meant a lot of endings as I metaphorically jumped off a few cliffs. Because you cannot evolve unless you constantly move forward.

For a lot of artists, every day is 'do or die,' which essentially means that some kind of tension is vital for the work.

There's a great scene in one of the Sandman stories, where the venerable Lord of Dreams is having a conversation with a mortal who is complaining about not being ready to die. The Sandman hangs his head, grants a boon, and walks away saying, "So...live."

In the dead of winter, which means it's time to work, and the projects are overlapping. Time is like that stretchy taffy candy kids twirl around their fingers.

Book 1 of Minx: Dream War will be out this summer, after being released as a 4-part series. Issue #1 breaks in March.

Just as Rey Arzeno's art is coming in for that, my editor's line edits are coming through, along with structural edits for Issue #2. And I need to start #3 by next weekend. Now, 'Cinderella Sundays' do something for my head that helps me work out story kinks, but the way I clean takes 2 hours of valuable time. Meanwhile, it's time to plan ahead for Book 2. And there are a couple of book projects in the works. I always feel like I never catch up...but I love it.

As an aside, I came across this X-Men family tree graphic this week, which is really great. Alternate realities really affect people.

Comics are beautiful because the serial nature of the stories mean that they never really end. There is always a chance for another volume. And that's the redemption...

CLASSIC STYLE

2011-01-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

Grace Kelly and her famous namesake Hermes bag.

Vintage paparazzi photos are so striking (in contrast to the depressing candids of our modern era, where movie stars are caught in their workout clothes).

If you are blonde, you should occasionally wear all white for a silver screen goddess effect - but with black accessories.

HOWL

2011-01-18T00:57:00.003-05:00

I think often about transformation. It's no secret that I am obsessed with wolves. Minx wouldn't be quite as ferocious without her pack.

Sure, vampires are hot...but werewolves operate on a whole other level. That particular brand of supernatural transformation somehow seems more accessible than the whole undead thing.

Wolven mythology runs the gamut that goes beyond True Blood and Twilight. There's a great 90s werewolf movie called Wolf starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer that I suspect a lot of people never saw, but it's mythic in it's own way (i.e. people turning into wolves for the sake of love).

Dreamtime Collage: 'The Girl's Part Wolf' available at www.copiousamounts.com/minx/store

Obviously, Ginsburg's "Howl" poem was probably the most profound thing he ever wrote.

And music...Florence and the Machine is a wonderful band, and they have a song called "Howl".

If you could only see
The beast you made of me
I held it in but now it seems you set it running
Screaming in the dark, I howl when we're apart
Drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart

My fingers claw your skin, try to tempt my way in
You are the moon that breaks the night for which I have to
Howl, howl

Now there's no holding back
I'm waiting to attack
My blood is singing with your voice, I want to pour it out
The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound
I hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallow'd ground
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
I want to find you, tear out all your tenderness
And howl

Be careful, I'm the curse
That falls on young lovers
Starts so soft and sweet, and turns them to hunters

The fabric of your flesh
Pure as a wedding dress
Until I wrap myself inside your arms I cannot rest
The saints can't help me now
The ropes have been unbound
I hunt for you with bloody feet across the hollow ground, and howl

Be careful of the curse
That falls on young lovers
Starts so soft and sweet
and turns them into hunters

A man who's pure of heart and says his prayers by night
may still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright

If you could only see
The beast you made of me
I held it in but now it seems you set it running free
The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound
I hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallow'd ground

SHOVELING SNOW IS SO MANLY...

2011-01-13T08:11:00.000-05:00

So there was a legitimate blizzard in New York City a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday night that resulted in a 'snow day Monday'. The snow removal was hazy, and everyone felt the sting as they trudged along side streets in their waterproof winter wear.

Subsequent snow warnings resulted and 'a state of emergency has been declared' was the top news story. Although Tuesday's storm only resulted in a few inches of powder. the best thing was seeing all the men shoveling snow the next morning, pausing to let people pass by and hoping their work would be noticed. There was a feeling of community, with these manly men trying to rescue all of us from slipping on ice patches.

My father (who is probably legitimately stranded right now in his remote cabin on Vancouver Island, and loving it) insisted I shovel snow a few times as a kid.

"It will make your back strong, kiddo," he used to say.

I suppose it did.

CINDERELLA SUNDAYS, AND JONI MITCHELL ON THE RADIO...

2011-01-10T00:46:00.001-05:00

On Sundays I like to scour the apartment. Sure, I've had a maid come to clean in the past...but then I realized that it's a sort of meditation for me, where I evaluate what's been accomplished in the past week versus what still needs to be done.

And sometimes I play some Leonard Cohen, or some Joni Mitchell. The great thing about old songs is that their universal truths stand the test of time (i.e. how challenging it is to be an artist and have a romantic relationship).

COYOTE

- Joni Mitchell

No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studio
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver, no, no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running through the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking through keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them through this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

THE YEAR 2011, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, AND THE HOLLOW MEN

2011-01-01T12:37:00.001-05:00

I guess because I was raised to believe Armageddon was just around the corner, I am not too concerned with the supposed end of the world, circa 2012.

But in case the Mayans were onto something, we may as well make 2011 count. After all, it's a new decade.

That said, a lot of things have come full circle for me. I've never believed time is linear. As Stephen Hawking said, "We do not know what is happening at the moment farther away in the universe: the light that we see from distant galaxies left them millions of years ago and in the case of the most distant object that we have seen, the light left some eight thousand million years ago. Thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past."

On another note, during high school, I was consumed with poetry, and particularly obsessed with T.S. Eliot. This poem is my favorite...because this is the way the world will end (if it ever does) - not with a bang, but a whimper.

THE HOLLOW MEN

I
            

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

            
                II
            

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

            
                III
            

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

            
                IV
            

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

            
                V
            

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                    For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                    Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                    For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FIRST NATIONS / INDIGENOUS/ NATIVE AMERICAN?

2010-12-26T22:56:00.001-05:00

I went home to Canada a few days ago, and it was so hauntingly beautiful, cold, and rainy that it reminded me again of the things that resonate straight through to my core. I came back to New York with my heart full of poetry, and my head full of mythology.

I'm writing Issue 2 of Minx right now, and of course a lot of Native mythological themes are running through my mind, as I contemplate how to convey my culture in an accessible way. What's interesting is that whenever I go into 'Native research' mode, strangers keep asking what race I am - and a lot of them have Native blood also, reminding me of the interconnectedness of us all.

For inspiration, I often turn to Joseph Campbell. In the 'Power of Myth' BBC documentaries, one of the episodes opens with this letter from Chief Seattle, supposedly written in 1852 in response to a U.S. Government inquiry about buying tribal lands.

It's gorgeous.

* * *

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We are all brothers after all."

Courtesy of Indigenous Peoples' Human Rights Initiative

COMIC BOOK THIS: FEATS OF SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH

2010-12-14T21:55:00.000-05:00

I like to create things. So when I was asked 'Can you create custom comics?' I racked my brain to figure out a way to do it.

Sure, you can Madmen yourself etcetera these days...but comics are expensive to produce, and require an army to create. But I figured it out: www.copiousproductions.com, assembled a team, and taught myself to letter comics one weekend in order to speed up the process a little.

My friend Nicholas Routzen is a prototype for 'FEATS OF SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH'. Art by Liza, who draws Ready to Where?

HOME, WHERE THE MOUNTAINS ARE COVERED IN SNOW...

2010-12-08T21:14:00.001-05:00

Now I'm home, in Canada, where my beloved ones rally around me like an army. In the meantime, Minx is getting amazing press, and there are all sorts of deadlines: comic book scripts, and a new business venture (now you can comic book yourself!)

I feel more creative when I'm away, albeit distracted.

They say you can never go home again. But that's not really true. At home, people know where you came from, and how hard you fought to be where you are now. They forgive you for leaving.

And aren't these mountains so beautiful it tears at your heart somehow?

THIS IS THE AMERICAN DREAM (MEXICO, WINTER 2010)

2010-12-01T00:34:00.000-05:00

For all the traveling I do, this is the first time in probably 3 years that I have allowed myself the mental space to actually pause and enjoy it. Because the silence between the words is perhaps even more vital than the words themselves.

I had all these lofty goals of finishing my Minx script on this trip...and I probably will, tomorrow. But today I went shopping, and absorbed the city instead.

I bought a glorious one-piece white swimsuit. That's not an easy thing to find...it has to be the right silhouette, the right fabric. I told my mother, "This will be perfect to wear when I go on someone's yacht, or something...' Which is totally the type of thing that happens in my reality.

Even though it's a struggle sometimes, I am living in some kind of dream I created during childhood. Sure, my fingers might be bleeding from climbing uphill...but that's perfectly normal. Nothing worth having comes easy.

During this trip I am taking inventory, and trying to not be quite so tough on myself. Because there are these moments that you miss out on if you are consumed with guilt over not working 13 hours a day.

I've recently alluded to some life transitions, which I am keeping close to my chest. But I am preparing for the next shift...and Mexico is the perfect place right now.

During every trip I take, I seem to find some really obscure theme song.

And this is the latest...bluesy soul.

A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

- by Leela James

I was born by the river
In a little tent
and gorgeous like the river
I've been runnin' ever since

It's been a long
a long time coming
but I, I know a change gonna come, yes it will

It's been too hard living
But I am afraid to die
cause I don't know what's up there
beyond the sky

There's been times that I thought
I wouldn't last for long
But somehow
I think I'm able to carry on

And then I go to my mother
I said mother could you help me please?
She said: I'd like to, I really would
but I'm just not able
Then I looked around
and I was right back down
down on my knees

There's been times that I thought
I wouldn't last for long
But somehow
I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long
a long time coming
but I know... a change gonna come, yes it will...

TRYING TO ENJOY ALL THE FRUITS OF MY LABOR

2010-11-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

With the impending holiday, I've had some extra time to write this week, digging out dust-covered poems and stories to see what has ripened, and what needs to be abandoned. Working with my artists, always amazed by their intuition.

I've also got the worst cold ever. So I'm drinking hot whiskey with lemon, and working, working... It never stops.

Once, a boy I loved used to play this song for me, and he said: "This will be you after you move to New York City."

I suppose that's true. Except that I've found a peace in my work and solitude that's brought me a new level of contentment I never thought possible, and I don't have velvet curtains.

Here are the lyrics...

FRUITS OF MY LABOR
- by Lucinda Williams

Baby, see how I been living
Velvet curtains on the windows to
Keep the bright and unforgiving
Light from shining through

Baby, I remember all the things we did
When we slept together
In the blue behind your eyelids
Baby, sweet baby

Traced your scent through the gloom
'Til I found these purple flowers
I was spent, I was soon smelling you for hours

Lavender, lotus blossoms too
Water the dirt, flowers last for you
Baby, sweet baby

Tangerines and persimmons
And sugarcane
Grapes and honeydew melon
Enough fit for a queen

Lemon trees don't make a sound
'Til branches bend and fruit falls to the ground
Baby, sweet baby

Come to my wolrd and witness
The way things have changed
'Cause I finally did it, baby
I got out of La Grange

Got in my Mercury and drove out west
Pedal to the metal and my luck to the test
Baby, sweet baby

I been tryin' to enjoy all the fruits of my labor
I been cryin' for you boy but truth is my savior

Baby, sweet baby if it's all the same
Take the glory any day over the fame

TRUE BLOOD, FOURTH WAVE FEMINISM, AND THE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE PHENOMENON

2010-11-19T17:20:00.000-05:00

The HBO series True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mystery series written by Charlain Harris, which is a first-person account of Sookie Stackhouse's life as a telepathic waitress in the town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 2001.

While Harris certainly had a loyal readership, it was the show that really propelled her books forward in the public consciousness. True Blood took everyone by surprise with its portrayal of modern vampires who had recently "come out of the coffin”, struggling to integrate into society while maintaing their own secret political agendas. And then there were all the lusty supporting characters who were endearing because they just couldn’t stay out of trouble.

Suddenly, vamp fever was in full force, coinciding with the Twilight phenomenon. Except this wasn’t a chaste show about forbidden teenage love – this was about fangbangers (humans who are known for their promiscuous obsession with vampires), shape shifters, drug addiction, and murder. By Season 3, True Blood had reached a fever pitch, with werewolves, witches, faeries, and vampire royalty pushing the boundaries even further.

But the books focus much more on Sookie’s character as she matures and leaves her sheltered life behind, and much less on the lives of the supporting characters. Harris’ Sookie is more empowered and thoughtful than the slightly frantic character that Anna Paquin plays on the show, and she balances her supernatural gifts with logic rather than emotion.

In our current climate, where the third wave ‘grrl riot’ feminist movement seems to have become a little confused on its way to fourth wave, a heroine like Sookie is relevant. She’s feminine, proud of her curves and ability to attract men, and yet she is never a victim; she kills villains when she has to. Although sometimes she is in dire situations where she needs to be saved, more often she is the one taking control and rescuing someone else – even powerful vampires like Bill and Eric, who can only act during the night hours, lest they fry in the sun.

Harris’ well-written books explore this juxtaposition with a sense of humor, leaving us with the feeling that perhaps the ideal modern female just IS – never explaining, never making excuses, but defending her territory as her own man of the house, while the vampire suitors come and go.

THE CANADIAN GUIDE TO ROMANCE

2010-11-19T17:02:00.000-05:00

My guilty pleasure when I go to the dentist is to read trashy magazines, like the People's 'Sexiest Man Alive' issue (as opposed to the hair salon, where I read Vogue).

So yesterday I was reading about Ryan Reynolds, who topped the list, and of course he is Canadian. He has that self-deprecating sense of humor that we are known for, and he reminded me of the guys I grew up with - and sometimes loved. And I understood why Scarlett Johansson married him.

There is something very honest about the Canadian sensibility when it comes to love. We mean what we say, and if we show you our forests, mountains, and oceans, then you had better be ready to abandon all your reserve and just surrender to us. We don't play games. After all, we have Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young.

On that note, there is a beautiful song by the Great Lake Swimmers. Download it - it's lovely and poignant. And very romantic in a Canadian sort of way.

YOUR ROCKY SPINE

I was lost in the lakes
And the shape that your body makes
That your body makes

And the mountains said I could find you here
They whisper the snow and the leaves in my ear
I traced my finger along your trails
Your body was the map
I was lost in there

Floating over your rocky spine
The glaciers made you and now you're mine

I was moving across your frozen veneer
The sky was dark
But you were clear
Could you feel my footsteps?
And would you shatter, would you shatter?
Would you?

Your soft fingers between my claws
Like purity against resolve
I could tell then there that we were formed from the clay
And came from the rocks for earth to display

They told me to be careful up there
Where the wind rages through your hair

THE HERO'S JOURNEY

2010-11-11T16:44:00.001-05:00

In college, we studied 'The Writer's Journey' by Chris Vogler, which is based on Joseph Campbell's amazing 'Power of Myth'.

This book explores the powerful relationship between mythology and storytelling, and I find myself returning to it whenever I come to a crossroads in my own life.

It goes like this...

1. Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where
2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE.
3. They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but
4. are encouraged by a MENTOR to
5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHHOLD and enter the Special World, where
6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES.
7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold
8. where they endure the ORDEAL.
9. They take possession of their REWARD and
10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World.
11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience.
12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World.

I think artists are constantly cycling through stages 6 - 12.

Right now I am hovering around stages 8-10, and then going back to the mentor at stage 4 for advice every now and then.

I've decided to shift some things around in my life, and focus even harder on what I love most, which is writing. Along with the comics, this means finishing a book that has been hidden away in the drawer. And some new projects within the Copious universe.

I cannot wait to return with the elixir...

THIS IS THE DAY YOUR LIFE WILL SURELY CHANGE

2010-11-08T03:21:00.000-05:00

- The The

Well, you didn't wake up this morning because you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red
The calendar on your wall is ticking the days off
You've been reading some old letters
You smile and think how much you've changed
All the money in the world couldn't buy back those days

You pull back your curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying
Across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

You could've done anything If you'd wanted
And all your friends and family think that you're lucky
But the side of you they'll never see
Is when you're left alone with the memories
That hold your life together ... like glue

You pull back your curtains
And the sun burns into your eyes
You watch a plane flying
Across a clear blue sky
This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place

SNOW WHITE & THE STEREOTYPES OF MOTHERS

2010-10-27T21:59:00.001-04:00

I don't like Halloween. However, I am always invited to some wonderful parties which requires me to dress up. People usually tell me I should dress like Wonder Woman (and one year I will have a killer custom costume made, and pose for comic artist Billy Tucci for a cover).

But this year, it's all about the fairy tales.

If you do a search for Snow White, you either end up with Disney - and that horrid blue and yellow outfit - or images such as this one:

I've decided to be a Grimm Red Riding Hood instead, because red and black are colors I prefer, and I have a wolf-like pelt I can carry around. With fake blood and all that, for dramatic effect.

My obsession with Grimm fairy tales led to a poetry / poster collaboration with Justin Hampton. We have Red Riding Hood finished, and several more stories in the works.

Yesterday's post about fathers led to someone asking 'What about mothers?'

And so, dear readers, I give you my poem about mothers...Grimm style.

SNOW-WHITE & THE STEREOTYPES OF MOTHERS

by Andrea Grant

I. Sweet genetic mother dies in her prime

She is pale.

She is virtuous sacrifice.

She watches the snow & embroiders with the sharpest needles & pricks her fingers to manifest a daughter who is red/white/black.

She teaches her daughter outdated domestic skills, like how to bake

the perfect souffle, like how to make chocolate fondue.

Remove china figurines off the shelf before dusting, vacuum every corner.

This mother exhausts

herself before age 25, drops dead.

Maybe murder.

Maybe suicide.

It ends up in the papers.

She exits like a martyr so the husband can go mad with grief

& marry someone with more dramatic tension.

Maybe a queen

Maybe a widow.

Maybe an actress. The second wife is a trophy.

The second wife is mirror, mirror on the wall.

II. Wicked stepmother steals the story

Like many mothers

she sees crow’s feet

in the looking-glass, aging hands

so different from the taut perfection

of her daughter-step.

Her theater days are over.

No one could compare to her before she turned mid-40

& dimmed like a broken lamp.

The make-up cannot mask the slackening skin.

She wants one last curtain call.

Outwardly,

she feigns pride

over her ebony hair, young

red mouth ‘Isn’t she like a porcelain doll? A doll that could break so easily…’

She bides her time.

She salts the red apples with cyanide

she curses and smashes

the magic mirror when she’s alone.

Seven years of bad luck.

Like many mothers

she waits for the hunter

to lock her daughter’s thundering heart

in a wooden

padlocked box,

and feed her

the poisoned apples of age.

III. Paragon of beauty, the prodigal daughter rises up

So fair & sweet the Napoleonic dwarfs let her play slave

as the price for protection. Everything mother taught her is put to good use,

that charming naivete which allows her to live out death and rebirth fantasies without being accused of masochism. Symbols of beauty gone killer - rib-crushing corset lacing, poisoned hair combs piercing scalp and pulling back hair,

and finally the sweet death-apple.

She’s so easily deceived into that transparent coffin,

She sleeps for years without decay until the prince magically saves her.

Yes, she needs a man to save her.

FORGIVING OUR FATHERS

2010-10-27T00:22:00.003-04:00

A poem by Dick Lourie, used in the Native-American themed film Smoke Signals

maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free

or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken

maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left

THE LOVER

2010-10-24T22:32:00.001-04:00

One of my all-time favorite books is The Lover by Marguerite Duras, a semi-autobiographical novel detailing the illicit affair between a young French girl and a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 Vietnam.

Soul heat is so rare that it's terrifying. Sometimes it burns us, so we try to drown it out in various forms of denial. We leave our lovers, we pretend those feelings never existed in the first place. We say things like "Romeo and Juliet were just kids" and we put Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets away on the shelf.

But that furious, burning-fever love never goes away - it always returns to haunt and consume us.

An excerpt from The Lover:

"Another time, on the same route, during the crossing of the same ocean, night had begun as before and in the lounge on the main deck there was a sudden burst of music, a Chopin waltz which she knew secretly, personally, because for months she had tried to learn it, though she never managed to play it properly, never, and that was why her mother agreed to let her give up the piano.

Among all the other nights upon nights, the girl had spent that one on the boat, of that she was sure, and she’d been there when it happened, the burst of Chopin under a sky lit up with brilliancies. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable.

And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in turn, throw herself in her turn into the sea, and afterwards she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn’t sure she hadn’t loved him with a love she hadn’t seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music flung across the sea."

COLLISIONS IN OCTOBER

2010-10-21T18:44:00.000-04:00

New York City moves at 4x the speed of any other city I've known, and I've come to realize that everyone feels like they are racing to catch up to themselves.

The Minx graphic novel is the next major project. My goal is to publish early 2011. At over 100 pages, this means my artist has a lot of work to do. Last Sunday I handed Rey Part 1 of the script so that he can get started, even though my editor will probably have some changes to my dialogue. This is Part 1 of 4...which means Rey will have to complete 2 or 3 pages per week to stay on schedule. The great thing is that he's intuitive, and he knows what Dreamtime looks like.

Photo by Patrick Demarchelier

While editing Part 1, I have to start thinking about Part 2...oh, and the marketing has to start soon (the rule is 6 months' lead time). Spin off stories have been assigned, which will be fun. Prevail from Swollen Members is going to write a short about Ptolemy, the character he plays in the series. And Gerry Jobe is writing a spin-off about Dez, a character who seems low key, but is actually a master of destiny.

And I want to finish editing Bleach. And make some art. Also working on some new Ready to Where? episodes.

Fashion. Meetings. Interns. Mundane tasks that clear my head, like cleaning. Obsessing about incongruent things, like my sheer horror of insects, and the fact that last night I vacuumed up a centipede-type thing, then left my vacuum in the hall for a few hours in case it crawled out, only to find that someone decided to STEAL the vacuum...meaning that buying a new one is just another irritating errand, although I'm sure I can order something online and have it delivered...

And summer has suddenly collided into October, but I'm already into December in my mind.

Forgive my lack of writing, dear readers. However, I'm now booking chunks of time to marathon-work. Good thing I'm a total workaholic.

In lieu of my guilt over neglecting my diary, I give you a poem by Leonard.

THE WINDOW

- Leonard Cohen

A blond boy wearing thick glasses just looked in my window, or rather at my window, for he used it as a mirror in which he confirmed his coiffure and his expression. I was afraid he might catch sight of me behind his reflection but he quit his work unaware of the self-centered host of this sunken room, and I did not have to confront him in the midst of his vanity.

AFTERDREAM

2010-10-12T00:11:00.000-04:00

So, when I recover from Fashion Month + the most amazing Comic Con we've ever had, I'll write something fun. Promise.

MINX: DREAM WAR AT NY COMIC CON, SWOLLEN MEMBERS' PREVAIL, AND EXCLUSIVE OLIVIA MUNN

2010-10-07T00:06:00.004-04:00

Dear readers,

I need to promote the hell out of comic-com at the 11th hour here, so that people know what's going on. And next week, back to the creative side of things!

October 8 – 10, Jacob Javits Center in NYC
Artist’s Alley - Table C16

Come and meet the Copious crew at comic con this weekend! Series creator Andrea Grant and Minx artist Rey Arzenowill be in attendance to sign a preview of the new Dream War series, along with Prevail from the rap group Swollen Members(www.swollenmembers.com), who plays Ptolemy.

Grant was recently awarded a Grant from the Canada Council in support of Dream War. “Readers will get to see another side of Minx - her Native origins, and her life in New York City before the violent attack that plunged her into Dreamtime. I’m fascinated by the ‘call to adventure’, that life-altering moment that creates a hero. Also, the idea of aftermath – what happens to you when you’ve experienced a death and rebirth?”

Along with Dream Wars and Grant’s new fashion web comic series, Ready to Where? (www.readytowhereonline.com) Copious is pleased to feature MYMAG’s Hey Olivia! (www.mymag.com/tastemakers/oliviamunn/)

The entire magazine is devoted to G4 star and comic-con queen Olivia Munn who takes you on a journey through the best parts of her world, revealing her favorite articles, answering her fans' Twitter questions, presenting readers with her own photo shoot - and it even includes a glossy poster!

For more information on Copious Amounts Press, go to:

FASHION MONTH INTO COMIC CON

2010-10-05T10:28:00.001-04:00

The past few weeks have been ridiculously busy. I didn't feel like I had a summer, because NYFW planning began much earlier this year. So last week I stole away to Bermuda to get a bit of sun. It's a strange little Island, and I love it.

I swam in turquoise water, caught up on some work, and now I'm ready for comic con. I'm very excited to share a table with my artist Rey Arzeno, and to have Prevail from Swollen Members come to support his role as Ptolemy.

We'll be launching a preview of the new series 'Dream War' (working on the full length graphic novel for an early 2011 release).

BURNOUT & THE PERILS OF THE BLOGOSPHERE

2010-09-21T03:15:00.000-04:00

For work, we had a panel at a blogger's conference during NYFW.

All these kids, wanting to figure out the 'formula' so that they can make money from their fashion blogs, and their sense of entitlement was astounding...but what if all of us have become sort of bratty since the internet?

Blogs have become so commercialized they aren't even cool anymore...and the only people who maybe make money from ads are the ones who were ahead of the curve, years before the craze (i.e. Susie Bubble).

As my stepfather said today, most blogs don't even make sense, and all this social media is confusing. Is digital taking over? Are books going out of print?

Even I'm sometime exhausted by the obligation of posting regularly, especially when others post daily. Really?!

Not updating regularly makes me feel guilty when I realize it's been a week or more since I even thought about writing anything (I internalize most of what's going on in my world). Updating too much seems self-indulgent.

Honestly, I spend so much time on the computer for work that sometimes it makes my head spin when it comes to creativity. I like to step back and write things on paper, the old-fashioned way.

When I went to college for Creative Writing, we were supposed to keep a written daily diary, then turn it in to be marked at the end of the semester. My friends and I thought this was an invasion of privacy, so we wrote things in code, just to vex the teacher. However, we got A's.

PS I love Florence and the Machine. I met her last week at a fashion party, and she was cool as hell. I bet she writes her lyrics ON PAPER. By hand. Imagine.

* * *

My Boy Builds Coffins - Florence and the Machine

My boy builds coffins with hammers and nails
He doesn't build ships, he has no use for sails
He doesn't make tables, dresses or chairs
He can't carve a whistle cause he just doesn't care

My boy builds coffins for the rich and the poor
Kings and queens have all knocked on his door
Beggars and liars, gypsies and thieves
They all come to him 'cause he's so eager to please

My boy builds coffins he makes them all day
But it's not just for work and it isn't for play
He's made one for himself
One for me too
One of these days he'll make one for you,
for you, for you, for you

My boy builds coffins for better or worse
Some say its a blessing, some say its a curse
He fits them together in sunshine or rain
Each one is unique, no two are the same

My boy builds coffins and i think it's a shame
That when each one's been made, he can't see it again
He crafts every one with love and with care
Then its thrown in the ground and it just isn't fair

My boy builds coffins he makes them all day
But it's not just for work and it isn't for play
He's made one for himself
One for me too
One of these days he'll make one for you

EVEN POETS HAVE GROUPIES

2010-09-14T23:24:00.000-04:00

If you want groupies, become a poet. Write gorgeous things about love + sex, and everyone will project their fantasies onto you. You will become the cup of their need. But be careful what you wish for - because if you're really talented, you'll eventually need a team of security.

Why do you think Leonard Cohen fled to a monastery?

Before I moved to NYC, I was convinced I was in love with a certain musician, and coveted him from afar.

We worked on a project together, and at the end, he tried to to put the moves on. But his reputation with women was terrible, and I wasn't having it.

The only thing I could think of to say in that socially awkward moment between desire and logic was, "I like you, but I understand your life, and nothing is going to happen here. Besides, I'm a poet - even I have groupies!"

Now I am primarily dealing in comics, and use the term 'fan boys'...and in fact, the word groupie seems out of place, since I am a woman.

A few years later, that musician and I met again, and he told me he always remembered my saying that. And he said, "You were right - I thought I could have anyone back then."

So we briefly fell in love in that burning summer romance kind of way, where you want it all, and yet there is this sad finality because you know you'll never be in the same city long enough to make it work.

He remains one of my greatest muses.

DIARY OF A RUNWAY PHOTOGRAPHER

2010-09-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

I'm really excited about this project. This season, we really wanted some diary projects to show what the industry is actually like.

Check out Jodi Jones' detailing of her adventures in what is known as 'the pit' (aka sometimes the pit of hell).

http://www.thefashionspot.com/runway-news/news/106930-jodi-jones-diary-of-a-runway-photographer

THE CHANEL PARTY

2010-09-10T12:20:00.000-04:00

The fashion business is a lot of hard work, with some glamorous moments thrown in. Fashion parties are strange. People standing around, staring at one another. There are some people in some outrageous costumes, others who are deliberately casual.

None of the stars show up until the last 15 minutes, and then the room goes wild as people fight to snap photos. That's the exact moment when I want to get the hell out of there.

But there was something fantastic about the Chanel party last night. I love Karl Lagerfeld (who doesn't?) and the fact that they managed to block off and monopolize the Soho sidewalks to create a whole other room was impressive.

Photo by Jacqueline Pate.

Falling

2010-09-03T21:15:00.000-04:00

I hope it rains like hell tonight. The air is so thick, and there's a hurricane warning. And I am writing my comic book script.

* * *
Falling - by Florence and the Machine

I've fallen out of favour
And I've fallen from grace
Fallen out of trees
And I've fallen on my face
Fallen out of taxis
Out of windows too
Fell in your opinion
When I fell in love with you

Sometimes I wish for falling
Wish for the release
Wish for falling through the air
To give me some relief
Because falling's not the problem
When I'm falling I'm in peace
It's only when I hit the ground
It causes all the grief

This is a song for a scribbled out name
And my love keeps writing again and again
This is a song for a scribbled out name
And my love keeps writing again and again

I'll dance myself up
Drunk myself down
Find people to love
Love people too drunk
I'm not scared to jump
I'm not scared to fall
If there was nowhere to land
I woudn't be scared
At all

Sometimes I wish for falling
Wish for the release
Wish for falling through the air
To give me some relief
Because falling's not the problem
When I'm falling I'm in peace
It's only when I hit the ground
It causes all the grief