189. Tender buttons
October 26th, 2009 § 5 Comments
Button-up, pastel-striped blouse (thrift store), yellow skirt (thrift store), lace tie-up, patent oxfords (mind-shatteringly large department store in Shanghai)
I can’t stop thinking about Gertrude Stein and her lectures. Here’s her giving a lecture on ‘Composition as Explanation’ at Oxford College:
Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. Of course it is extremely difficult nothing more so than to remember back to its not being beautiful once it has become beautiful. This makes it so much more difficult to realize its beauty when the work is being refused and prevents every one from realizing that they were convinced that beauty was denied, once the work is accepted. Automatically with the acceptance of the time sense comes the recognition of the beauty and once the beauty is accepted the beauty never fails anyone.
Beginning again and again is a natural thing even when there is a series.
Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing.
It is understood by this time that everything is the same except composition and time, composition and the time of the composition and the time in the compostion.
Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same. Everything is not the same as the time when of the composition and the time in the composition is different. The composition is different, that is certain.
Somehow, I think that relates to the conversation Meggy & I had on overdressing, notions of beauty and strangeness, and somehow that relates to how this post was going to be about one particular thing but now I’ve lost track of everything and it’s just going to be about a range of particulars.
Today, I met with an Israeli poet/musician/performer for Irish coffees, and she told me that she had to change the way she referred to herself. ‘I’m not really a poet,’ she told me. ‘I’m an articulator.’ I sort of like that, and wonder if I’m more of an articulator than I am a writer. And if there’s a word or term out there for me (& for all those who love clothes) that would be more precise than ‘clotheshorse’ or ‘fashion-lover’ to describe the dreamy totality of my interests in clothes and dress-up?
My new Israeli friend/articulator showed me a video of her students performing bits of Antigone in a mud pit, and then another one of her reciting a monologue from Hamlet to the music of Kraftwerk. She also showed me a series of ‘poems thrown against a wall,’ and of course, I came home and wrote an ode to her. It’s very silly and sycophant-y.
I recently organized my closet (well, half of my closet) by color, something I’ve never ever ever attempted before in my life, and in the process, I found this bright yellow skirt with big plastic buttons down the side. I bought it at my favorite thrift store in San Francisco this summer when I was visiting for Meggy’s wedding. Of course, I had to wear it with some heels to go to class in the spirit of dressing up for no occasion at all.
I’m thinking of Stein again, how she asked a group of journalists in 1934, “Suppose there were no questions what would the answer be?” and then proceeded to answer all of the journalists’ questions in a completely straightforward and direct manner. That Gertrude! When one of the journalists asked her, “Why don’t you write the way you talk?” she replied, “Why don’t you read the way I write?”
To that I add (though I admit the connection to Stein is as flimsy as tracing paper): “Why don’t you dress the way you dream?”
With love,
Jenny
OMG Tender Buttons reference! I love this post and all of the things that you think about when you get dressed, and also your joyous pose in the second photo, which makes me think about how fun it is to go dancing with you, because you also have that very joyous something about you when you dance.
xo mw
PS I want those shoes!
Meggy! I can’t wait to dance with you again–in my mind you dance the dance of fairies and you are wearing a wispy dress with lots of straps.
i am loving that skirt xxxx
Thank you! I only wish I had a better camera so that I could show you the skirt in its full glory!