Erin Jourdan is the Semiotician to the Stars

Writing From Personal Experience 8 Week Class

2012-01-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

Writing From Personal Experience 8 Week Session I
Sundays 7-9:30 beginning February 26th ( March 4, 11, 18, 25, April 1, 8, 15)
At Brazilian Yoga and Pilates (Atwater Crossing Arts Complex, Free Parking)

Erin Jourdan Bio Click Here.
Erin Jourdan Teaching Video/ Style Click Here.

Space is limited! Sign up today!

Registration Costs:

Early signup (payment received by February 12): $320.00
Regular signup (payment received after February 12): $350.00
Returning students: $280.00
* $15.00 copy fee due in cash on first day, or you can add it via Paypal.

HOT SPOTS: Adventures in Memoir I
Adventures in Memoir and Personal Experience is for anyone who wishes
to explore narrative based on personal experience--whether through
journaling, creating a personal essay, or basing fiction on real life
events. This class will focus on writing exercises, techniques,
external exploration, seeking source material, and workshopping based
on "hot spots." In addition, there will be short readings of memoir
examples & styles.

This class will not look to correct or provide criticism, but instead
investigate places of emotional upheaval that we can delve into
through writing, aka -- a "hot spot." Together we will delve into the
well of memory and learn new techniques for getting our adventure,
loss, happiness, and wisdom down on the page.

“Write about what you don’t know about what you know.” --Eudora Welty

Week One: Memory
Week Two: The Moment of Inspiration
Week Three: Hot Spots
Week Four: Point of View
Week 5: Working With Time
Week 6: Location, Location, Location/Scene Setting
Week 7: Thick Description
Week 8: Editing: Left Brain/Right Brain

GET LUCKY DINER @ MACHINE PROJECT

2012-01-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

A multi-dimensional dinner curated by artists Sara Wookey, Becca Lofchie, and hosted at the Machine Project "pink space" created by Nate Page. Dj'ing by Miss Lizzie Wade and a group hex/ group blessing Exquisite Corpse by me (Erin Jourdan).

Get Lucky!

Through the back window DJ Lizzie

Becca making (mostly) good luck pancakes.

Sara Wookey after performing a bad luck "brush off"

Erin Jourdan Good Luck/ Bad Luck Exquisite Corpse!

Erin Jourdan Los Angeles Memoir Class 2012 enrolling now!

2011-11-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

Space is limited so email me today for a spot in this January 2012 class.

Complimentary Compliments at the Silver Lake Reservoir

2011-11-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hello neighbor! How are you today?

I found that I was not a first smile giver, I was a second smiler, a smile responder.

Do you smile at people first, or do you return other's smiles?

I walk around the reservoir, in a daze, listening to podcasts, usually about the shitty state of the economy at Planet Money on NPR. I would look at people walking, jogging, hanging out at the park and think, yeah we are all in our own little bubble. I need to break out and GIVE the smile. To be a first smiler. Liz welcomed the idea of creating some good karma in the park. Overall we met some extremely exceptional fathers, well dressed people of all sorts, hardworking homeless, the coffee truck people from Johnson county (shout out to Iowa), many dogs, adorable little kids, lesbian moms and gay dads, couples, hipsters, and quite a few people who stopped to listen to us, ask us what it is all about, and in a few occasions, give a compliment back.

Liz of Brazilian Yoga and Pilates knows how to give excellent compliments.

Giving out a compliment to a fine gentleman.

Erin Jourdan Teaching Technique Video

2011-10-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Video of my teaching technique in case you missed it!

Four Week Flash Intensive Writing From Personal Experience class!

2011-10-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

“In English, the term memoir comes directly from French formemory, memoire, a word that isderived from the Latin for the same, memoria.In a sense, all memories have been forgotten. Memories are predicated on loss.Anything processed by memory is fiction. What the memoirist owes the reader istrying, as honestly as possible, to get to the bottom of the experience athand.”

—David Shields, Reality Hunger, a Manifesto

Four Week Flash Sessions for getting started in January2012. Each class will be for 3 hours with a short lecture, writing exercises,and workshopping/ sharing/ reading.

January 8 Creatingpractice, plot vs story, timelines: temporal and emotional

January 15 Writingfrom Memory= Memoir devices, tricks, tips for re-inhabiting memory

January 22 Trauma,in the body, grief. Senses.

January 29 Space,Location, Environment

“I’m preciousterritory.” –Andrew Bird (lyrics)

Time: 7-10 pm

Cost: $180 + 20.oocopy fee

Location: BrazilianYoga and Pilates

1,000 square footloft, seating and workspace will be provided.

3191 Casitas Ave #112(Atwater Crossing Arts Complex)

Free & Ample Parking

Contact: erinjourdan@gmail.com / www.erinjourdan.com

My 201th Post: Rewriting Personal Narrative #2

2011-07-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Sitting at home on a Sunday night, coming up with yet another timesaving plan for organizing my notes on "Rewriting Personal Narrative." I have about 20,000 words I have written over the last 2-3 years but only recently have I actually tried to be disciplined about the project. As you can see above, my journals I tabbed from 2005-2010, I would be a good candidate for graphomania. I know those two cartons don't seem like much but I was also writing blogs, stories, poetry, a play during the same period. Not that I am trying to say any of it was good. Far from it, a lot of my journals, like so many others, is repetition. Perhaps repetition compulsion, as stated on Wikipedia as, "covers the repetition of behaviour or life patterns more broadly: a 'key component in Freud's understanding of mental life, "repetition compulsion"...describes the pattern whereby people endlessly repeat patterns of behaviour which were difficult or distressing in earlier life.'^[1]"

^{In many ways I think journal writing is an attempt to "write yourself out of" (this is the emotional texture of my life, but this is what I want it to feel like) or "convince yourself of"(you circle and circle and circle some issue over and over and endlessly chew on it instead of accepting it) something you refuse to acknowledge. We are all, in some ways, repeating the same 90% percent of ourselves as a mantra in our mind, because that is who we have accepted ourselves to be. It is the 10% that is freedom, new thoughts, a ray of light perhaps in an adult mind where wonder and magic can be stamped out by bills, the joneses, the reminder and fear of mortality. One quote that has helped me is from Chogyam Trungpa, in "Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior:"}

^{"Self deception arises because you are afraid of your own intelligence and afraid that you won't be able to deal properly with your life. You are unable to acknowledge your own innate wisdom. Instead, you see wisdom as some monumental thing outside yourself."}

^{Or in my interpretation, you repeat your words of wisdom on the page, over and over, when you know the answers already. You just refuse to believe what you already know, at an intuitive rather than intellectual level.}

A Fantasy Mantilla

2011-07-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt very creative in a while, although I have still been typing away (mostly memoir), occasional needlepoint (cabbit dolls for my babyfriends), and making pen and pencil mandalas. I was recently looking at the website of one of my fellow colleagues from the Business of Art Class at CCI, Danielle McCullough, and was really inspired by her work, in particular Primary Source Materials (New Frontier Garment) and the gorgeous Neither Hide nor Hair. It made me want to wear these textile art pieces as a mantilla. much like the ones seen below, which are quite fantastic:

The idea of wearing a piece of art as a net, or a web just suddenly struck me as quite delicious. As Wikipedia explains, "The lightweight ornamental mantilla came into use in the warmer regions of Spain towards the end of the sixteenth century, and ones made of lace became popular with women in the 17th and 18th centuries being depicted most notably in the portraits of Diego Velázquez and Goya. In the nineteenth century, Queen Isabel II (1833–1868) actively encouraged its use. The practice diminished after her death, and by 1900 the use of the mantilla became largely limited to special ceremonies, such as bullfights,Holy Week and weddings."

But I imagine a more futuristic use...midnight hikes? Naked swims? Midsummer night dreams? Robotics?

New Project: Rewriting Personal Narrative

2011-04-02T08:46:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a trip to Portugal. It was a vacation, the first I can remember truly having in years. The internet didn't work in the apartment, my cell phone was useless, all I had was a guidebook and friends. I know that many of my friends can relate. You hear your ring on someone else's phone and Pavlovian, you reach for your cell. You check your email 5-10 times a day. The text bing sort of fills you with excitement.

I spent a lot of time in Lisbon in contemplative spaces. Parks, overlooks, churches, ruins, museums. Places where you can take in where you stand as an individual in comparison to world history. Yet, especially in these spaces the "curation" of the pieces---whether you are talking about megaliths, moorish lookouts, palaces, roman ruins, maritime history--is all a narration of history, people, morality, popularity, transcendence and transfer into history.

Since teaching Writing From Personal Experience I have been endlessly inspired, hollowed out, filled in, stretched and organized. And I am also very conscious of other's personal narratives (the way we organize our life experience) and fight against the cognitive dissonance which is the entropic force in life (the unexpected, the shocking, the gasp).

So parts of your own narrative are true, or truthy, but I do believe it is a stretchy dough. You can make bread, pastry, sculpture, doorstops, bangles out of it. So I am going to rewrite my personal narrative or at least recast it.

Materials: craft paper, pencil, tacks
Time: endless, but this is the first week
Focus: none, it is just coming out of where-ever, I have noticed that there are column themes, groupings. Desire for more color and pictures.

April 2, 2011

The picture is not very good, but then again, I am grateful to my camera for a tad bit of privacy ;)

Til next time, as the sketching continues!

New Memoir Class Starting April 5@ Wordspace!

2011-03-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

ADVENTURES IN MEMOIR:

3rd session for this popular class!

Tell the true stories of your life for print or performance! This class is for anyone who wishes to explore narrative based on their unique personal experience--whether through journaling, creating a personal essay, or tempting fiction out of real life events.

This class will focus on writing exercises, techniques, external exploration, seeking source material, and workshopping based on "hot spots." In addition, there will be short readings of memoir examples & styles by memoirists such as-- David Sedaris, Nick Flynn, Mary Karr, George Orwell, Isabelle Eberhardt, Jeannette Walls, Tobias Wolff, Joan Didion, Geoff Dyer, Spalding Gray, Vivian Gornick, Alison Bechdel, and Mariane Satrapi among others.

This class look to investigate the truth of emotional spots: together we will delve into the well of memory and learn new techniques for getting our adventure, loss, happiness, and wisdom down on the page.

TUESDAYS April 5th - May 24th

$350 (after March 21st) only $320 before!
Hours: 7:00-9:30 PM @Wordspace 3191 Casitas, #156, Los Angeles, CA 90026 [Gorgeous Loft in Atwater Village] Free Parking! Visit wordspace.org for info on the location. www.wordspace.net/Memoir.html for registration!

"'Hotspots' is hands down the best writing class I have taken in a long time. I didn't know I would like memoir writing, but coming through the experience I have to say with Erin's encouragement, insight, experience, humor and love of the written word -- and the people who write them I feel ready to take the next step with my own writing.” --Claire, Memoir Student

About Erin Jourdan

Erin Jourdan received her undergraduate degree from the University of

Iowa in Communications and Anthropology. After working in the

publishing industry at St. Martin’s Press and The Hearst Corporation

she moved to San Francisco to attend graduate school. While in

California, Ms. Jourdan received an MA in English and an MFA in

Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

She has had work in publications such as Hayden’s Ferry Review,

Fourth River, Reed Magazine, The Blue Earth Review, Rhino,

San Francisco Magazine and Copper Nickel among many others.

She has worked iplaywriting and collaborated with three other writers

to create Four Echoes, under the auspices of the Shotgun Theatre’s

Lab program and collaborated with Manfred Fischbeck of GroupMotion

on a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth called, The Death of O.

She has been a resident fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi

and Jentel. Her website is at erinjourdan.com, which has more information

about her writing.

Some Ideas for Johnny Depp's NonTraditional Tonto

2011-02-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

'Lone Ranger': Johnny Depp won't be traditional Tonto, director says.

#1 He will be more like Keith Richards.
#2 He will speak four or five languages fluently and often.
# 3 He will not ride a horse, but instead a really rad camel.
#4 He will go off and do his own movie, leaving the lone ranger truly alone.
#5 Tonto and the Lone Ranger will be gay lovers fighting prop 8.
#6 Tonto will change his name to Lady Gaga.
#7 Tonto will be a supervillain named "the Taunter" who heckles people til they cry to death.
#8 Tonto will be running a meth lab that the Lone Ranger often visits near the Salton Sea.
#9 Tonto will be a woman, or a M to F tranny sick of turning tricks in the wild west.
#10 Tonto will be a professor at Harvard who finds a strange native american power amulet which he must save from falling into Nazi hands.

My Response to Flavorpill's 10 Essential Bad-Girl Anthems

2011-01-29T17:45:00.000-08:00

Here is the article and I thought it was weak I mean--really--Hole's Teenage Whore? Lady Marmalade? I mean two songs about prostitution is, like, so empowering (out of ten). So here I go, you can be bad and enjoy it, ladies!

Florence and The Machine "Kiss with a Fist"
Some people are lovers, some are fighters. She makes our nasty side cute, and our cute side vicious.

The Donnas "Too Fast For Love" (originally by Motely Crue)
The recorded version is much better, clearer, but these women plus those guitar riffs are awesome!

Missy Elliott Irresistible Delicious
People think she's crazy...but she knows what's irresistible delicious.

Annie "I know your girlfriend hates me"
Cute video for this bubblegum song. If it's the cold sadistic you like?

Amanda Palmer "Shores of California"
That fickle little bitch romance.

Peaches "I don't give a Fuck About My Reputation"
Sorry kids, doesn't appear to be a video on youtube for this one, hmmm wonder why....surprised these words are allowed at all.

Veruca Salt "Volcano Girls"
This song has gone through my head on many a big adventure. The video IS SO INCREDIBLY BAD. SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD CLOSE YOUR EYES AND JUST LISTEN :)

Dolly Parton "Working 9-5"
Not the world's best clip but hey, its all Dolly. I want to move ahead but the boss won't seem to let me. Oh yeah!

The Breeders "Divine Hammer"
Says it all, ladies.

Jon Spencer Explosion "Full Grown Woman"
Gotta love a man who loves adult women. And sings about it. Next song by his wife Christina Martinez and their band together, Boss Hogg.

Boss Hogg "Ski Bunny Suicide"
So awesome, it is just all sass, base, and old school fuck you.

Memoir Class Starting in 2011 At Wordspace!

2010-12-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

Expanding on my first class, I will be teaching Memoir II at Wordspace in Atwater Village starting mid-January. Here is a short video about my teaching style and few comments from my previous students. Email me at erinjourdan@gmail.com if you are interested in the upcoming schedule!

Writing From Personal Experience Class @ Wordspace! Enroll today!

2010-09-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching a new memoir writing class in Atwater Village!
Adventures in Memoir and Personal Experience is for anyone who wishes to explore narrative based on personal experience–whether through journaling, creating a personal essay, or basing fiction on real life events. This class will focus on writing exercises, techniques, external exploration, seeking source material, and workshopping based on “hot spots.” In addition, there will be short readings of memoir examples & styles by memoirists such as– David Sedaris, Nick Flynn, Mary Karr, George Orwell, Isabelle Eberhardt, Jeannette Walls, Tobias Wolff, Joan Didion, Geoff Dyer, Spalding Gray, Vivian Gornick, Alison Bechdel, and Mariane Satrapi among others. This class will not look to correct or provide criticism, but instead investigate places of emotional upheaval that we can delve into through writing, aka — a “hot spot.” Together we will delve into the well of memory and learn new techniques for getting our adventure, loss, happiness, and wisdom down on the page.
Wednesdays October 6- December 1 (skipping November 24)
Hours: 6:30-8:30 PM @Wordspace 3191 Casitas, #156, Los Angeles, CA 90026 [Gorgeous Loft in Atwater Village] Free Parking! Visit wordspace.org for info on the location. www.wordspace.net/Memoir.html for registration!

JUST LAUNCHED AZALEA INTERACTIVE!!!

2010-07-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new baby, Azalea Interactive!!

In January of this year, I applied for my DBA ("Doing Business As") and Azalea Interactive was born. I have found that many small business owners are overextended from piecing together marketing programs using random vendors while also trying to serve their customers.

Having a savvy marketing team on your side will increase the effectiveness of your marketing dollars rather than a piecemeal approach. You will spend less time, money, and energy managing marketing programs and will be able to focus on what makes you sucessful: your key clientelle.

Azalea Interactive provides seamless marketing programs individually tailored to your unique business proposition. Please come and check out the new site, download our new 2010 Best Practices PDF and spread the word to any small businesses that need a new and integrated internet marketing strategy!

xo,

Erin

In and Around Echo Park: Summer 2010

2010-07-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I am more than a little bit fascinated about my neighborhood Echo Park. My street itself is a panorama of wabi sabi eclecticism. There are families that have lived here for 20-30 years where the older people don't speak any English but, "God Bless You." Hipsters and artists that range from sculptors, potters, illustrators and the like. High end houses of great architectural value nestled at the top of the hill with floor to ceiling glass. Pit bulls, chickens, and I swear I heave heard the echo of a goat bleat. I have become a big fan of the daily newsletter "The Eastsider" that has homespun stories of local interest, breaking news about local crime, and a historical eye for tracing the history of the quickly changing neighborhood.

Some photos:

New banana tree:
Sunset in the yard, memorial day:
Kitty cats
George the miracle kitty
Giant sunflower I grew from seed

Quitting Facebook

2010-05-24T09:54:00.001-07:00

I quit Facebook.

Ok I didn't "quit" Facebook because Facebook doesn't really let you quit.

I am on permanent hiatus from Facebook. Or I am a conscious objector of Facebook. Or I hit the pause button on Facebook.

Facebook isn't like smoking, it is more like herpes. Smoking you quit and the nicotine leaves your system. Facebook becomes entwined with your DNA shoring up for the next outbreak.

I am not about to get into the privacy concerns or information safety. I am really not interested in it and believe it is a highly unlikely scenario that there are large groups of people looking to steal drunkphotos/birthdays/friendlists/pithyquotes and use them against you. People are paranoid and love the idea of a very narcissistic crime. I am sure there are many people who want to be stalked just to prove their existence, or interesting-ness. But I digress.

In the tradition of Stephen Elliott's insightful month without the internet I took some notes about what I noticed after going off FB. Really the whole process is centering. You realize who notices you are gone and why. Who calls to see how you are, and who calls to ask if you have de-friended them or angry. I was amazed at how quickly Facebook became the societal norm, and that by quitting you were taking a step towards anti-social behavior. People assumed I was angry with them.

And honestly, I haven't missed it all, because it wasn't nourishing. Not even in the philly cheesesteak and fries kind of fat bomb kind of way. Facebook walks a line between being an addictive social platform, and being so annoying that it is no longer pleasureable. I love seeing pictures of people I love, and hearing their bright and savvy quotes. I disliked all of the games, other people's horoscopes, tepid pronouncements, endless links, and self-aggrandizing bs. But that really wasn't it either. It was really the quality of the interaction I had with people I loved and the timesuck added to the pressure of performance that did me in. I don't want to have a thought that is funny, and say to myself--wow that is such a gem, I will get attention for this--I must put this in the public forum right now for people to react to.

And reactionary it is--
There are a lot of things about other people's lives I don't need to know, and that I felt falsely connected to. People would post their sadness, outrage, joy and I felt like I had to react to it, even if not via a text or email. It felt sort of manipulative to me. And forced. It felt like being ham-tied by the detritus, proof, ephemera of other people's experiences--the pictures, songs, journal entries--to the point that the original moment was lost except that it was recorded.

And I do have to admit I did sneak on twice to see pictures of my nieces. But even after that, I realized it was a few awwwws I was looking for...why not pick up the phone and connect with real live babies in reality?

I am not saying I won't ever go back to FB, but that I don't like it. It feels like a detritus machine, making dust dust dust instead of real bonafide feelings, thoughts and connections. It feels a bit like a personal publicity channel where the very way the forum works is self promotion. I felt sort of harassed by the amounts of data I received, and the amount of time it took to actually manage the amount of data I was receiving. The amount of time I spent judging the data I received. Is this newsletter good enough to spend time on? Is there something better? Did you find a turnip in Farmville? What is the horoscope of someone I actually do not remember ever meeting but we appear to have maybe gone to high school together?

And don't even get me started about the prurient interest of watching other people's lives unfold like some sort of pseudo-frenemy in a digital terrarium. Oh the schadenfreude, oh the hubris!

If there is a new, second wave it will be of discernment, I hope. Of quality and depth. And it could happen. A program that makes us deeper, smarter, more glorious and connected.

And when you find it, email me, I'll definitely give it a try.

WordSpace Opening

2010-05-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I read last night at Wordspace, a gorgeous loft in Atwater Village helmed by the lovely Ms. Brenda Varda.

The turnout was fantastic, great work, energy, and jazz. I read a piece that I wrote a while back called "Then is Gone" which is based on my memory of a girl who killed herself in my eigth grade class. I know, not exactly party material but the prompt was, "this is not my memory; this is not my story” and I thought it was fitting. I am including the text below.

Cheers to a new arts endeavor in Los Angeles!

Then is Gone

She sits in front of me in middle school and I remember the back of her head as well as I recognize the front. Brown hair cropped in the back with slightly curly wings in the front. Smooth round face, classical peaches and cream complexion of the Midwest, I have to guess the eyes (blue?) since she wore glasses. The rims seemed to be squarish, colored a dark ruby.

They say that people who are at the scene of the crime have extremely poor recall of the events. If we do not know we are supposed to pay attention, most of us do not. We see tall for short, yellow for green, even fast for slow.

I believe the class we shared was Mr. Wagner’s English class. He was slightly feminine in the way that a Midwestern man can be—wearing bright crisp button down shirts and his hair like newscaster, as polished as his diction. It was rumored that Mr. Wagner had a deep affection for the singer Joan Jett, so we all assumed he was deeply invested in some sort of dark art.

Joan Jett wore a lot of black and sang rock n’ roll, so we all thought something immoral was probably happening in his cellar, or attic, those extra spaces people go to hide their affections.

Oliver Sacks writes about time, perception and memory in the New Yorker, “Through such instrumentalities, we can enhance our perception, speed or slow them, in effect, to a degree infinitely beyond what any living process could match. In this way, stuck as we are in our own speed and time, we can, in imagination, enter all speeds, all time.”

I can’t remember if we went to any of the same parties. The school was huge and poorly managed. The idea of putting two thousand junior high students together seemed crazy and we were the second class to enter into the new system. I had a few friends: Heather, Nikki, and Caroline. We ate gooey chocolate chip cookies for lunch. We hadn’t got our periods yet.

Mr. Wagner called me up to his desk after class about a poem I wrote. He asked me where I stole it from. I told him I actually wrote it myself, but he didn’t believe me. I had a way with words I didn’t understand, that maybe even Mr. Wagner didn’t understand. I was smart enough to know to be oddly flattered.

They say that there are warning signs. You give your possessions away. You lose your appetite. Maybe you write morose poetry. You behave recklessly. You appear depressed or withdrawn. You may have suffered a major loss or life change.

Jenna committed suicide and no one told us why at school. What I heard later was that on her birthday she had her friends over for a party. She said she had to go and get some soda down in the basement and when her friends went to look for her, she was there, hanging from the rafters by a rope.

And then a secondary story came out, the reason why, that her father had been rumored to be involved in gambling and owed people money. After disappearing for a while, he was found in the back of an abandoned car in upstate Wisconsin, locked in the trunk. I heard she loved her father so much all she wanted was to join him. I cannot imagine that at fifteen Jenna had any idea what suicide is except an act that reunites you with the ones you can’t bear to live without.

Mr. Wagner wondered from what text I stole those spectacular words. I don’t know what those words were, but they were probably too long and used only to create rhyme. No one was expecting anything extraordinary at Elm Middle School. If I could slow down these moments to be able to go back and really look, I would find out which words were so spectacular, what color Jenna’s eyes were, what Mr. Wagner did in his house while listening to Joan Jett records. There are other things that I might have curiosity about, but that I wouldn’t choose to see: the look on Jenna’s face, bloated and scary but happy to be rejoined with her father. Her friends watching her swing from the rafters. The day we closed up the desks in English class so there wouldn’t be an empty spot to remind us of Jenna.

"It's well known that even if you imagine something now that may not have happened in the past, it can create a feeling of familiarity if it does happen later on…You don't need objective outside information to create these situations; you can do so internally, on your own."—New York Times article about déjà vu.

I listen to Joan Jett on my stereo in the car. I never listened to her in junior high, and I love her now like I never could have before. She is fierce, with a snarl in her voice and seductive lines backed up with rock n’ roll guitar. Eighties style has become very popular in San Francisco, and I see girls ten years my junior sporting the striped shirts, plastic earrings, asymmetrical haircuts and I am jealous. Their version looks better on them than it ever did on me. Looking back at my junior high album, the only thing that saves the image is the sweetness of my youth—unlike the girls who sport eighties style now, at least I wasn’t dressing for irony.

So I look for Jenna on the Internet and she is not there. She was too young to be a part of the Google generation and didn’t live to be old enough to have plenty of detritus statistics: swim scores, resumes, postings about how to get cats to not claw up your furniture.

It’s all about Jenna Jameson, the porn star, or the president’s daughter Jenna Bush. Some sort of horror chain mail, “Could this dead girl kill you? I am seven years old with blonde hair and scary eyes. I have no nose or ears.” Submissive foot worshippers. Plastic fantasy adult superstar statues. Heartbreaker resin statues. Jenna from “Survivor” the television show. Everything from now and nothing that informs me about then.

Somehow I thought that there would be a Web site, or an academic article from some obscure source explaining it all. I am used to too much information and not the black holes of adolescence and 1987. I imagined that there was no way this could be the complete story, and that there is a third, a fourth, a fifth. That one of Jenna’s friends who saw the swinging body would be calling out, looking for others who remember through eighteen years something they still cannot quite comprehend.

Then is gone like so much growth to a young girl’s body. Once you’ve worn makeup every day for eighteen years you forget what it was like to leave the house clean-faced. Once you’ve had sex you couldn’t imagine relating to people with pure innocence, once you’ve taken care of yourself you can’t imagine going home to your parent’s house to live in your childhood room with its pale yellow flowers and white lacquer furniture.

Copyright 2010 Erin Jourdan All Rights Reserved

Marxism and Hipsterdom: It's all about the hustle

2010-02-22T17:34:00.001-08:00

So I got an email from Flavorpill about the new HBO show, "How to Make it in America," which states, (it) "might be all about the hustle — a group of hip twentysomethings are trying to move on up in the NYC — but it's also about enjoying that hustle, and making the most of the city. (Sounds like our life! What's life without the party, right?) To help you live it up like the hard-working and hard-partying characters of How to Make It, we've created an Editor's Picks web guide, sponsored by HBO. These are the must-see, must-do, must-dance events and venues in your city, highlighted to help you hustle the nightlife game, too."

My immediate takeaway is that 20-something hipsters are actually keeping our economy alive by spending their boomer parent's money in bars and clubs. Because there aren't any jobs, right?
There is no chance of them getting a good job, much less paying off their loans, or perhaps even getting an apartment so the best thing to do is, PARTAY.

And I don't blame them, Reality Bites was the Gen X version of this conundrum. But where we had a fictional movie, Gen Y has a reality show that in many ways fulfills its own fantasy. By working hard (at the jobs that the show probably got them, or were gained by the hopeful publicity of the business owners), and partying hard (also known as "being interesting" or "part of the scene") they can be on TV, and be known, which is Americanese for "making it."

Pew Research has also reported on this phenomena from the perspective of demographics saying that," Despite struggling (and often failing) to find jobs in the teeth of a recession, about nine-in-ten either say that they currently have enough money or that they will eventually meet their long-term financial goals. But at the moment, fully 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed or out of the workforce, the highest share among this age group in more than three decades. Research shows that young people who graduate from college in a bad economy typically suffer long-term consequences -- with effects on their careers and earnings that linger as long as 15 years."

And there are only so many jobs with health benefits in the "hype professions" ---advertising, internet, entertainment, PR, fashion, and they are notoriously nasty and eat their young. 37% unemployment, yet they report that they currently have enough money....hmmmm, from what? Dealing pot?

It is interesting how being popular in a hype/ popularity profession has become the greatest form of currency in America, I think way beyond being educated or even having money (everyone knows, you can't buy friends). It also reverberates nicely with our narcissistic culture. Which makes it hard if you have anything real or difficult or not sexy to say. Like, America is broke and George Bush Jr. squandered your future. Also we may end up living in what will be like a giant, hot, dusty WalMart parking lot eating vat meat and picking our noses. I know people roll their eyes when this is said, and of course we would all like to live in fantasyland, but seriously, I am just waiting for armagedon. As the lovely Lady Gaga was quoted, "The fact that we're surrounded by cement and we've already killed everything means the Apocalypse has happened.”

And I bet Gaga would make an excellent Tina Turner-esque queen of Thunderdome.

Hey HBO and the creators of Entourage, why not make that show? It would be like Survivor set in the future, with lots of blood and fighting! And pop music! Like Mad Max meets Paparazzi.

I lived in San Francisco, and part of the reason that I left is that I got sick of the hipsters. Perhaps there are too many art schools, but it just reminded me of high school. Enforced conformity. Not a lot of break out thought. More along the lines of hustling in the city to "make it." Will people want to watch this, or would they rather watch the uncool guidos of Jersey Shore work out, drink, hook up, fist pump? At least on Project Runway the snotty hipsters have skills.
Not sure what to think about a show that lacks a star and is all, entourage.

And what happens when your celebrity is based on being hated? Joel Stein wrote a wonderful back page column at Time Magazine, "Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt and the Limits of Celebrity" which discusses how after being on the front of People Magazine, Playboy, US Magazine and numerous TV appearances from The Hills to I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and yet has only sold 658 copies of her album. As he states, "What I learned from not listening to Superficial is that the nature of celebrity hasn't changed; celebrity is just more than ever its own industry. We've found a group of people who are hot, rich and narcissistic to entertain us with their lives and another group to entertain us with their work." In short, there are freaks we like to watch, and people with talent, known as artists. Both are celebrities, but only one group garners respect, and an honest following.

So where am I going with this? I was going to write about Dick Hebdidge, and his influential book "Subculture the Meaning of Style" but it just seems so brilliant, yet dated. If subculture is a response to dominant society, and dominant society celebrates deviance, then are we really left with nothing to define ourselves against the dominant paradigm? Is all lost and the only truth is to take the money and run? Or do we just fantasize about some sort of neverland of clear 50s-style social, work and gender roles?

Probably the most radical thing an American could ever do is refuse to consume. To not hustle, work hard or party hard. Or in short, to not believe they can make it in America.

Echo Park Views

2010-02-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

I have been living in Echo Park for about two months now. From my house to Echo Park Ave you go sort of "over the river and through the woods" or really up and around some twisty turny streets, a stop sign that overlooks the 5 freeway, then back down again and you are at Fix Coffee.

Some pictures from the last rain:

I still love a good sign posted to a phone pole. Someday will they rip all of these out?

It is so City of God, like Glendale is the favela.
NO that's not smog, its honest to goodness dark clouds!
A break as the sun comes out.
More background than foreground. There is an amazing huge house that sits off to the left of this photo that looks like it should be in Newfoundland overlooking the sea. Instead it is overlooking the 5, but hey, that's LA for you.

Coining words: infovergnügen, infoburn, and fictionalfiction

2009-12-25T07:50:00.001-08:00

Recently I read in the paper that for Americans, productivity is UP. Which is good and bad. Most people I know who are trying to live any sort of modern American life (2 kids, a dog/cat/ middle-class job) are suffering and over-extended. Stuffing more productivity into the daily work week is basically adding to stress, taking away from actual human pursuits (parenting? using your body ie. "exercizing"? cooking and eating?) while most make less, or the same, pumping out 1s and 0s in the information economy. As Time Magazine reported on December 28. 2009, the average person gets and sends 13,505 emails a year. I could comment on this, but there are so many people who do commentary, criticism, and analysis of the human condition in the information age better than I. But, I am still at that tipping point between pure information joy (there has got to be an overly long German word for the joy of information--like
infovergnügen, get urban dictionary on the line!) and infoburn, like when you are getting texts while driving and get in an accident...ouch. Or when you are on your smartphone so much that a friend starts to avoid you.

A post I was going to write, then wasn't, then realized I just did:

Something I can't stand, along with all of the accepted vanity publications of famous people (I understand for memoirs, the "as told to" but FICTION??!? Ghostwriting of fiction should make you a leper, up there with falsifying your memoir. The book below is a real book by a fictional character, which could be cool, except that the show is so poorly written you wonder what it's main character Hank Moody, could write. If that is not bizarre POMO enough for you. Maybe God Hates Us All for not publishing excellent, real artistic work. I think this is just another bit of information overload as product extension. Groovy, cute, modern like a lot of technology....but just like gremlins they start to explode and take up real space. Call it ghostfiction, or fictionalfiction.

Call me when Santa starts writing porn. Or when the Easter Bunny does some teen vampire novels.

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A wry literary masterpiece, God Hates Us All is a coming-of-age tale for the apathetic generation. Hank Moody's self-loathing yet darkly likeable narrator is a college drop-out-turned-accidental-drug-dealer enveloped in a world of contradictions. His boss -- a bong-hitting, dreadlocked Pontiff figure -- runs a remarkably organized and ingenious illegal trade patronized by, among others, a sweater-set-wearing Upper East Sider, a Wall Street hotshot, and a wannabe rock star with a hard-to-resist model girlfriend. The lonely narrator yearns for more than the tenuous but intimate thread he shares with his clients. To escape his mother's desperate expectations, his father's endless disappointments, and his certifiably insane ex-girlfriend, he moves to the city's mecca of ambitious slackers -- the Chelsea Hotel -- where the pursuit of lust (and the rock star's girlfriend) sends him on a series of well-intentioned misadventures that lead him right back where he started. Told in a unique and subtle voice, God Hates Us All is ironic, optimistic, and unforgettable.

A shout out to the provocative and fascinating Edge.org

2009-11-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

I have been "pruning" my email newsletters. I have disengaged, deleting them en masse for quite a while before I actually hit unsubscribe. It was easier just to delete all of the clutter than actually going to the bottom of each one, finding the link, clicking it, and often being exposed to a sort of whiny "sorry to see you go, we'll miss you...." message. It feels duplicitous and manipulative. So here is one that I am singling out to keep.

The Edge is incredible. It is like sitting in a cafe listening to the most brilliant academics, researchers, and tech gurus hash out, explore, and define philosophical and cultural issues. For instance, a quote from the most recent issue:"THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE": A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher with
Daniel Kahneman, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Nick Bilton, Nick Carr, Douglas Rushkoff, Jesse Dylan, Virginia Heffernan, Gerd Gigerenzer, John Perry Barlow, Steven Pinker, and John Bargh.

"DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: We continue to build and accept new technologies into our lives with little or no understanding of how these devices have been programmed. We do not know how to program our computers. We spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to program one another, instead. And this is potentially a grave mistake. [...]" This is basically the technology paradox, that very very few of us could actually make, or even conceive of how to make, many of the technologies we use on a daily basis.

Now discuss. There is so much drivel out there--where to get the best smoothie! Who does great eyebrows! What is the new schnauzapoo-esque celebrity dog! A lot of thin-voiced shill. This is the real stuff. Don't read this in your bubble bath, but instead sitting up straight, alert and ready to dream along with these braniac wizards.

The link: The Edge.org.

Sarah Perry Art Opening-Bergamot Station

2009-10-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

I got back from Jentel October 13, and that very weekend one of my colleagues from Djerassi was having an art opening at Bergamot station. It was packed with people wandering around in their arty best, glasses of white wine in hand--like a mini-soho (now chelsea from what I hear).

Sarah Perry's show was called, "Weight of the Moon." It was wonderful to see her again and her exquisite work.

This one leaves me speechless, the statement is so clear.

Yes, that is the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Using tiny elements of bones you can't quite see in the photo:
Bibles, bibles, bibles.
This is a partial bird, on a scythe. I like the shadow, perfect for Halloween.

Winter Wonderland

2009-10-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

Went on a walk down the country road, with my new dog-pal Strait (as in George Strait, the country singer). Snowy landscape when it is sunny weather is one of my favorites--the sun bouncing off the white snow makes everything look so clean and crisp.

Swath of light blue, might be coming our way....

Strait is wiggling in the snow. He was abandoned by his keeper so one of the staff at Jentel is looking for a new home for him. He was such a good guy on the walk--didn't pull at the leash, chase after birds, or balk. Kept good eye contact and heeled. It was lovely, if I lived here he would be my new BFF.
White on white with gray and yellow--exquisite.
River framed by the bridge, gives a sense of depth.
Peace xo

Erin

New Animoto Copy Writing Portfolio

2009-10-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Take a look, leave me some feedback. Hey, it's only a minute and a half of your time!

Jana Flynn Art Closing

2009-10-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

When you are an installation artist at a residency in Wyoming, the art has to come down to make room for new projects. Thus we gathered in Jana's (her website here) studio to celebrate, and become ensnared in, her latest work.

Drive by shot out the window on the way to Sheridan:
This is what happens to you if you don't pick up your room when your mom tells you to:
Snow on the Big Horn Mountains, which Jen informed me, are part of the Rockies!
Remember, "your work is to keep cranking the fly wheel that turns the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair."
---Annie Dillard

Wet & Windy

2009-10-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

On any given day the temperature can change by 40 degrees. One day it is hot and sultry, then rain, then wind and snow on the mountains. Some photos:

Cows on the hill in between the writer's studio and the artist house:
Water makes the stones and leaves look prettier:

Fall leaves on the still green grass:

Rain comes
With the wind, still I like the colors
Happy Autumn!

What's the Story?

2009-09-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Story, Wyoming where the postcards say population 450 (but the 2000 census actually listed 420 households, and 887 people). Interesting since the town is absolutely blink and you miss it small. The General Store, below, is for sale and includes some outbuildings for around 620,000k. All of their spices were 1/2 price so I bought spice and postcards, which feels very old school east-india trading company-ish.

Requisite rusting old car shot:

The origin of the word beware, was actually the combination of the indian word bear and the english word aware. To be bear-aware is to beware. (I am totally lying).

The Lions Club community board. We picked up a laser jet printer. There are also two horses missing, if you happen to see them.

Post office!

Overall, a very nice little spot, about the size of some country crossroads. There were probably more deer than people, and they are incredibly tame, like giant squirrels.

1,000 Acres: Wyoming Version

2009-09-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

When I realized that I was not going to get much done yesterday, I decided to make my first foray into the 1,000 acres, the property above Jentel owned by the benefactor, Neltje. After getting "snake punked" last week, where as it turns out previous residents had left two weathered fake snakes (a rattler and a garden snake) poised on some rocks on a path on the property, sunning themselves. Of course it took a 1/2 hour of gawking before we realized, hey...that one's mouth has been open for a while, and the other seems to have a seam on its belly...now, I can see a garden snake and I just walk over it...no big deal...i'm acclimating.

View from a peak in 1,000 acres:

Me brandishing my orange safety vest, large sunglasses, braids and bandanna combo:
View of the Jentel compound from the peak:
An elk (or deer?) that I came eye to eye with.
A dead deer, amazing how the skeleton reminds me of a fish.
The Little Piney Creek, where I will cool my toes this afternoon.
My art project. I picked up the Sun Print kit in the giftshop of the Museum of Jurassic Technology with my dearheart Mia the Business Casual Backpapcker. Well, I collected all of the leaf and flora items you see below, and I thought I followed the directions, but all I got was blobs. I am wondering if it may be the highly softened water here that screwed up the process.
Back to the drawing board as the artists say. Also, there was an AMAZING presentation last night by the artist MF Dondelinger who taught us writer types how to make egg tempura based on a centuries old recipe. It was very fun and informative and her work is breathtaking.

Settling In

2009-09-24T17:14:00.001-07:00

Settling into my studio and room after a week and nothing seems strange or foreign anymore. It is the second round of grocery shopping, meal making, sheridan browsing. We now have the lay of the land and can relax, because in our minds there is no longer just the question mark of open space. We have monuments, stories, names of ranchers, guideposts, rules and regulations. We know the cows are in the pasture, and to not push them (with our very presence) towards the creek. I know where the moon is in its phase. The part wild cats that live in the yard and when they saunter by my window. I'm settling in and feeling the creaks of old wood, expansion and contraction.

A trinket, the official beverage of the country byway:

They all stare at you, waiting. Not scared, but sensing:

I actually found this cow pie to be quite artful:

The Mint Bar has been there for over 100 years and is filled with taxidermy and liquor. Quite a fine establishment.

Me on a walk, when you are alone your best companion is your shadow.

Head Towards the Blue

2009-09-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Whenever I am out walking, I am always trying to get more blue in my sights. It is sad, because quite often the blue that I see as I walk towards the mountains can not be captured with my camera. One way down the road there is more blue, and if I keep going, over a hill and up, I feel like I will be able to attain more blue.

Below is a picture of the writer's studio today.
The road to the residency, with dramatic clouds.

From my walk yesterday, the beautiful texture of some tightly wound hay.
Me in the reflection of the writer's studio door. We received postcards yesterday from the previous tenants of our studios. Mine said, "Be inspired, be calm, be happy."

salve for my soul

2009-09-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

Some new pictures of my wanderings. I seriously believe that if I wasn't here I would be hiding out from my life in my PJs under my comforter. Wyoming is a much better place to be, and far more beautiful that the underside of my down quilt.

Below is a picture of the infamous "rock pile" where if you hike up the hill you suddenly get cell phone reception. It has been imbued with a sense of magic by the residents here at Jentel.

Me saluting the hills with my hat and shadow:

A daily walkabout. In Wyoming there are fences and "implied" fences. You can't jump fences (trespass) or walk through an implied fence which is gap in the fence where they may be a cattle gaurd or a just a spot where cows can pass to graze. I find this maddening for some reason.
The door to my studio from the inside. Most of the rooms are appointed with farm antiques.

As the yoga teacher of one of my fellow residents said, "your thoughts today are 95% the same as they were yesterday." And will probably be 95% the same as they will be next year, as far as I can tell. And here I am, so tiny, still trying to find Orion's belt in the lush night sky.

Wyoming: Pray for Storms

2009-09-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Bridge over the Little Piney Creek:

The Artist Residence:

Fields and mountains and fields:

Piney Creek at Dusk

I have been in Wyoming for two days now and I know a lot of people are wondering what it is like. First of all, it is gorgeous. On my ride from the airport to Jentel there was lightning off in the distance, one side of the land bright and sunny and the other half cloudy and ready to pour.

Most people would pray for good weather. I am rooting for as many storms as possible. The weather in Los Angeles almost makes me feel like I am in some sort of plastic purgatory of sun.

The house here is beautiful, like a resort, with a thousand acres for us to wander around in. One resident found petrified trees, entire chunks sticking up out of the ground. There are also shells from when this land used to be a sea. Perhaps in the Jurassic. They are very odd, obviously fossils but they look so new, as if they were pulled off the beach yesterday.

White tailed deer. Rabbits. Grasshoppers. Cicadas even during the daytime. Moths everywhere. A gray cat called gray kitty who I gave some chicken to last night. The stars in a perfect dome.

I have only taken one very short hike around the property. I am waiting for dusk, my favorite time when the light is mellow and it starts to chill.

Neltje is our benefactor, and her paintings are hung throughout the house. In my room I have a Neltje. She designed and decorated the house and outbuildings. There are "neltjisms" around, whimsical signs, jokes around the land. Jentel is an anagram of her name. She might come for a game of scrabble.

Alright, well back to the drawing board for me. If anyone would like a letter (my cell phone doesn't work here unless I hike up a hill and stand next to a pile of rocks) send me an email at erinjourdan@gmail.com with your address.

xo, e

Views from the Heartland--the Riviera of the Midwest

2009-09-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

Greetings from Cherryland!

The Skyline drive in:

A bathtub filled with taffy!

Baskets of candy at the Confectionery:

Erin Jourdan Awarded Fellowship by the Jentel Artist Residency Program

2009-08-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

For immediate release
For information: Lynn Reeves
307-737-2311 jentel@jentelarts.org

Erin Jourdan Awarded Fellowship by the Jentel Artist Residency Program

Erin Jourdan of Los Angeles, CA has been awarded a fellowship by the Jentel Artist Residency Program. Jentel is located in a rural setting on a working cattle ranch in the Lower Piney Creek Valley approximately 20 miles southeast of Sheridan, Wyoming. Erin will be among the award recipients focusing on their own creative projects at this working retreat for artists and writers.

During the four week long residency, Jentel provides space where artists and writers may focus on creating. Communal spaces are designated for research, recreation, food preparation, and dining. Each artist and writer is offered a private comfortably furnished accommodation and a light airy workspace. Each resident receives a stipend to help defray living expenses during the program. Residents may choose privacy during their stay or participate in Jentel Presents, a community outreach program that features slide presentations and readings by visual artists and writers at the residency. There are no schedules and no obligations. Here artists and writers experience unfettered time to allow for thoughtful reflection and meditation on the creative process in a setting that preserves the agricultural and historical integrity of the land.

The Jentel Artist Residency Program offers a spectacularly beautiful place to peacefully work and achieve personal artistic goals in a remarkable environment. The program residents enjoy interaction with peers and the community as desired. The residency provides a resource of time and space for artists to create their best work. Artists and writers know the value of time and space apart from normal life to create substantive work. For any artist in whatever media, protected time from the day-to-day necessities of living to examine and reflect upon work and the creative process is essential as a catalyst for artistic development.

####

FUNDRAISER4MIRIAM

2009-07-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, Long-Lost Friends, Potential Enemies (Just Kidding)

I am digging deep into my address book in order to promote a
fundraiser I am holding for my roommate, and good friend Miriam
Commisso. Some of you know her. Some of you barely know me. But that is not the
issue. On July 15, 2009 Miriam learned that her lymphoma had returned.
And it is brutal, and she is heading back in for chemo (3x) and a stem
cell transplant. The only thing that is helping her through this
entire situation is that through Fertile Hope (www.fertilehope.org) we have been able to
get help in freezing her eggs and thus fending off complete
infertility. Miriam would like to have a family one day. And this plea is about that hope.
Any funds raised beyond the monies needed for Fertile Hope will go
towards medical bills.

I am planning a fundraiser in a month and will include anyone who
responds to this email with an invitation. Beyond donations, I am
looking for good and services I can auction off at the party. IE

Do you work someplace cool? Offer a tour!
Are you a talented artist? You know what to do!
Are you sexy as all hell? Maybe a "dinner date" would be fun.
Do you work in music/spirits/clothing/music/

publishing? Please help me!
Do you have an extra cool thing, a life experience that will uplift
and give joy (bong? free tickets to comedy? A famous friend? Something
tantalizing?)

Please join me in a grassroots effort to help my friend. As someone
who has been through cancer myself I can only say that it feels much
more devastating when it happens to someone you love. When you are in it, you are in a place of magical thinking or somehow saved by your own fear.

I have started a blog to reflect my, and my friends, efforts at
http://fundraiser4miriam.blogspot.com/ I know I ain't Revlon, and
this isn't a walk for life, but I honestly believe that by
contributing you will be able to have a 1 or 1 effect on a young
woman's life.

If you have anything to contribute please call me (Erin Jourdan) at
323-393-ERIN (thanks google voice!) or email erinjourdan@gmail.com. If
you are looking for a tax-free donation please let me know, I am
currently working on this issue with Fertile Hope which is a
nonprofit.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Erin Jourdan

On My Mind: TMI

2009-05-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

As I sit here at my desk, I have already:

1) Checked my email and assorted email lists such as VSL, Indeed, Going, MediaBistro.
2) Checked some freelance sites such as Craig's list, elance.
2) Visited Facebook and read all related posts regarding my posts. Tried to be quirky, funny, provocative.
3) Looked at the top pages for The San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, and the New York Times.
4) Listened to 4-5 Writer's Block podcasts. Myla Goldberg, Anne Lamott, Mirielle Guillano, Neal Pollack.
5) Am currently listening to Fresh Air about the drug wars in Afghanistan.
6) Checked my horoscope--says to plan travel. Checked my tarot: accept nurturing from friends.
7) Looked up the drug Levaquin (which has a line over the first E as if to tell me, idiot, how to pronouce it) to see if it has any weird contraindications. It is an antibiotic to treat a weird bump I have on my right shoulder.

I have also
1) scrubbed my sink
2) cleaned out my cat's ears and given them some supervised fresh air
3) ate oatmeal and drank coffee
4) watered my jasmine plant which is starting to blossom
5) researched some things such as a cheap ticket to Portland ($209), the Xeric foundation, a restaurant to eat at tonight= Little Dom's
6) been thinking about new music, in particular Buraka Som Sistema
7) cleaned out my closet, or at least I organized by item. I do not have shirts in my dresses anymore.

But what have I learned?

That I am grazing and getting a patchy knowledge which may be equal to a general sense of distraction. I am churning. I have a burning interest in knowledge but it is disparate. I am preparing myself to write about clickstreams, but it almost feels like writing about consciousness. The only time I ever felt that I actually listened to myself was when I did a meditation retreat at Spirit Rock Medition Center. Perhaps I am being influenced by the book FEED, which I read before I went to bed last night. I am fantasizing about my upcoming residency at Jentel in Wyoming to recalibrate.

Is clickstream consciousness's exoskeleton? Is Wyoming an antibiotic for the mind? Is it time for me to unplug? Why is there a weird pleasure of knowing? What amount of effort should anyone put forth in being cognizant of the outside world? How can one take the pressure off and form a peaceable gateway between your human self and the vast wilds of information?

All I know is that I will not be Googling any of these questions.

Dinner party, anyone?

A Rare Thing: The Moth Podcast

2009-05-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

I tend to hoard the Moth Podcast for when I work out at the gym. It is almost integral to my health regimen because it so artfully takes over my mind so I can plod on the treadmill. Which really isn't what I am trying to do, incidentally, I am trying to *connect* my body and mind, but instead my first instinct is to take it even further and find something so delicious to put in my ears so that I don't even notice my health march on the rubber rat wheel.

Today I was listening to Ed Gavagan's "Drowning on Sullivan Street" and "Victim's Impact" and literally started crying. Not from a charleyhorse, but the beauty and humanity of his story. It is about a guy who turns a streetcorner, not knowing that a group of gang members are waiting to try to kill the first person they see. Another story that kills me is Ted Conover's "Sing Sing Tattoo" about a prison gaurd's fascination with a line of verse he can't place. Gorgeous. Rudy Rush's "Harlem Cowboy" should be a part of every school's curriculum, it is so lovely. It is a simple story about unlikely friends who become like family.

So many times when I go to readings, or pick up literary journals, or even read the New Yorker, I am astounded by the lack of affect the work has on me. Of course, the stories in The Moth are true, and told without notes (or so they say, but I hope they let people have index cards or something), and they are so artful and moving, they slay me almost every time.

Perhaps it is empathy or emotion that is lacking in fiction for me right now. I don't know how much anyone has ever been moved by style and artifice, but an honest lump in the throat really gets to me.

But why do I listen to this while I am working out? Well many of the stories are LOL hilarious. I have noticed I am one of the few people to hoot in laughter at the gym. But also, maybe if you are trying to exercise your body it makes sense to try to put your emotions through their paces at the same time. Oh and here is a link to some samples you can hear online if downloading is too much of a committment.

The Sprout, the Bean, the Dream Angels Push Up Bra

2009-04-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

I know it's weird.

I was working at Greens restaurant as a hostess. Probably a job that ranks up there with telemarketing. The space is beautiful and right on the pier at Ft. Mason Center in San Fracisco. As in most restaurants it is mostly dinner theatre: the cast and crew of the food serving drama. I was desperate for a job during my second year of my MFA degree. So I would sit in the office and answer calls, confirm and make reservations, and then head downstairs for showtime. My job was to slot people into tables in an even manner sort of like an advanced game of Tetris.

I was not very good at it. I had never waited tables and did not have much patience for other people's egos. There were beautiful sights: the young boy who brought his girlfriend in, blindfolded for a clandestine dinner date. The time I finally saw Remington Steele in person, when Pierce Brosnan dined there with his wife. I imagined him and I together since I was about 11, his dark hair and strong jaw. And the piece de la resistance: when they had a party for David Mamet's play that was opening at the Magic Theatre next door. I had a play that I was working on with three other writers, Four Echoes, and was a big fan. The gang at the restaurant made show up to the party and serve him a glass of champagne. I congratulated him on the opening of his new play and said that I had just had a play accepted at a theatre lab. He said, "well congratulations to us both." Then I swooned a little bit, which is a lot for me.

And as time went on, I was making very little money, but it was so hard to find a job in San Francisco. They brought in new people to work the phones. One of which was Joanna Newsom.
She was adorable and shy in a very gentle way. I asked her what she really wanted to do and she said she was a harpist. I thought to myself, writing is tough, but it must be even worse being a harpist.

I left the restaurant soon after, and heard her first album--it was beautiful and full of playful joy and moments of yearning. I went to see her play a big, sold out concert and watched the fanboys swoon at her dulcet performance.

And now, sitting watching TV there are familiar sounds of the song The Sprout and the Bean as the Victoria's Secret Angels strut their stuff. Its just a big pool of cultural dissonance, not that I feel that the song does not give a certain winged beauty and satin panties kind of vibe.

To me it just heralded: the question of selling out is moot. Not even worth discussing. The only thing that is worth debating is why the issue of selling out is a nonstarter. I was in Urban Outfitters and the by song by MIA "Paper Planes" which was featured prominently in Slumdog Millionaire, was playing, it is about being a 3rd world hustler.

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

The song at Urban Outfitters had been edited to take out the gunshots. Which I can see why you wouldn't want realistic gun shot sounds effects in your store while people are shopping, but then again, it is Urban Outfitters. We are living in age where we clean up songs about being a hustler.

And of course, if you go into a store, or watch tv, people will try to sell you things, even using songs that you consider artful. I think selling out is an American thing, where we have art and product. I think of Scandinavian design where every utilitarian item--a spoon, a vase, eyeglasses, a car---all have artful and considered design behind them. I doubt there is much of an issue of "selling out" when artistry is considered in the production of everyday items.

Could the Sprout and the Bean and the Dream Angels Push Up Bra be my Proustian Madeleine?

EVERYBODY IS A CRITIC

2009-03-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here is my small book review in the April 2009 issue of San Francisco Magazine for The Pocket History of Sex in the 20th Century. It is interesting to me because the other review I saw of this book is by Alison Bechdel in the New York Times (author of Fun Home which looks like a book I would really enjoy).

Oh and sorry about the sh*tty scan, it is on page 44. I am in the process of updating my home office and I know I need something 10x better if not 2x better. Here is the text of the review I wrote, buy San Francisco Magazine (beautiful, glossy!) or visit them online here.

JANE VANDENBURGH: A POCKET HISTORY OF SEX IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
(Counterpoint)

In Vandenburgh’s memoir, the Point Richmond-based author (Failure to ZigZag, The Physics of Sunset) is oppressed by a personal history that falls short of the 1950s ideal of white picket fences and wholesome perfection of a conventional family. As John Updike said of his WASPy upbringing, “We did have an identity, not like water but more like milk. There is a color even if it’s white and the milk is now stale in the glass.” Vandenburgh’s struggle for identity is first with her bohemian parents: a possibly gay father who commits suicide, and a mother who ends up in a mental institution. Growing up in a well-to-do extended family, Vandenburgh’s experiences mark her as a misfit. Yet, tensions in this memoir do not come from sex, as the title would suggest, but from the author’s desire for a lost normality. As Vandenburgh moves through the cultural landscape key characters disappear off the page, and society becomes the focus of the story. In the end, with lucid and moving prose, Vandenburgh shines her life through a cultural prism and expectations of society, class, and gender separate before the reader as clearly as colors on a wall. B

ERIN JOURDAN

Erin Jourdan's Copywriting Portfolio

2009-02-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

I think it is a fun visual aid, even if you can't really read the type!

Favorite new spam.

2009-02-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

Wake up your hot monster Star Kaleidoscope

Think You Know Much About "Intimacy"?

Unbelievably healthy living, come to our site to claim it.

Pretty nice huh? A little gem hanging out in my spam filter.
Maybe I should meditate on this for a while.

My lists of things that will hopefully go away, or return due to the recession.

2009-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Things that will hopefully go away with the recession:

1) Space Tourism
Why do we need a bunch of rich assholes in space? So that they can stand or float or whatever they do, above the Earth and scream, I am king of the world? Yuck. Stay home.
2) Children with Cell Phones
When I was kid, my parents would say "go out in the yard and play." Every time I see a kid with a screen attached to their face I feel nauseous. I mean I know you have to keep track of your kids and it is scary out there, but please there has got to be a better way to do it. Can't some things just be for adults? Like telecommunications?
3) Teeth Whitening Strips:
Everything is teeth whitening these days, including my english muffin in the morning. Maybe tomorrow I will have a teeth whitening bagel with some teeth whitening OJ.
4) Atkins, or high protein diets.
Dude, we need to go back to lentils.
5) Fees: From $80 dollar PARKING tickets to an $850 bill for talking non-hands free (would you call that hands on?) the government and business are nickle and diming people to death. That is groceries for a family of four for at least a week. Or one 8 hour workday for someone getting around minimum wage. Disgusting.
8) Suspenders, whether on hipsters or bankers. They look gross on everyone. Even Santa.
9) Frenemies
Know who you can trust and who you can't and don't get them confused.
10) Reality TV: I am so sick of stupid people baited to act even worse. Might as well just watch monkeys have sex.
11)Blockbuster Hollywood Movies: Benjamin Button has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Treacle and moron entertainment. Hello, brought to you by the same screenwriter as Forrest Gump.
11) Octuplets. That is just gross and the biggest one was 3 pounds 4 ounces and the smaller one was 1 pound 8 ounces. We aren't cats, people! We are not meant to have 8 babies at once.
12) THE IDEA THAT IN A ECONOMIC DOWNTURN WE SHOULD MAKE PROSTITUTION LEGAL SO WE CAN TAX IT. This is the most offensive thing I have ever heard. I really want my niece to know that she can grow up ina world where the available professions for her are: Secretary of State, or Prostitute. That is SICK.

Things that I hope will make a comeback:
1) Design
If you are going to have an object why not have a well-considered one.
2) Hobos
They are like homeless people with class and panache.
3) Gardens
Grow your own food and delight in it, give it to friends, celebrate.
4) Books
As a total nerd I can't wait to troll for more books.
5) Candlelight
Classic, beautiful, makes everyone look better now that we can't afford expensive makeup and plastic surgery. Also no one can tell that you haven't had your hair done in three months.
6) Potluck Dinners
Always a crowd pleaser and spreads the risk of a bad dish around.
7)Rent Parties
Don't you just want to go to a party, pay 5 bucks and listen to some jazz? This is how the community used to come together to help those who have fallen on hard times.
8) Meditation
I want Paris Hilton dressed in a hairshirt doing zazen.
9) The New York Times
Rumors of the demise of the grey lady have to be false. I can not imagine a world without her.
10) People who do great things for free.
Such as the "Hillbilly Millionare" Warren Hellman who helms Hardly Strictly Blueglass- completely free, with free water and recycling experts who help you separate your trash. I have been there twice and think it is the most lovely thing ever.

Feel free to comment on my blog with your thoughts and additions!

Homes & Halos Available on Blurb.com

2009-01-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

Homes & Halos

Prose Poetry

By Erin Kathleen Jourdan

Book Preview

This is a book I created on the amazing service, Blurb.com, as a gift for friends and family last Christmas. It was so much fun, I may do it again. The front and back cover
are photographs I took while an artist resident at Djerassi. Many of the poems have been published in various college journals. It is on sale at the site for $4.95. I highly recommend Blurb.com for anyone who wants to do a chapbook for friends!

I am being spammed by Barack Obama

2009-01-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

Today I finally had enough. I got an email from Barack Obama that stated,

" I know we've asked a lot of you. But changing the way business is done in Washington will take a commitment from all of us. Right now, you can help give this administration a strong start. And if you make a donation of any amount before midnight tonight, you could be selected to come to Washington, D.C., and be part of the welcome ceremony, the swearing in, the Inaugural Parade, and the Inaugural Community Ball."

This struck me as odd. The President elect is having a big party and asking me for five dollars? And that if I give it to him before midnight tonight, I could win a trip to DC and ticket to the party?

I recoiled, what a tacky marketing plea. I ignored it. Then I got a second email from David Plouffe.

"I wanted to take a minute to reinforce Barack's message. We wouldn't be preparing to celebrate this historic inauguration if it weren't for you. But the deadline to get your ticket to history is just a few hours away."

Well, that is great Mr. Plouffe, but I already got an email from Obama. Do you think I didn't understand it the first time? That I needed you to re-it-er-ate it for me? And you still want five dollars... that's great.

The economy is in the toilet and I am being spammed by the office of the President Elect about a party. I am not trying to be a jerk, have your all-inclusive party but don't ask me to pay for it. Pass the hat around at the location but don't send pleas for cash to me while I sit in a cafe trying to find work. You won Barack Obama, now the way you get money is through taxes! While, I realize that you are trying to pay for your party without taxpayer money. So perhaps you should do what Americans haven't been doing for the last twenty years--LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS. Have a party you can afford rather than asking me to give you five bucks.

Or maybe instead of abusing your email list, you should get to work. I have been getting emails almost every other day from Michelle, Barack and David. They are not the real Michelle, Barack or David. Maybe all three are David Plouffe or David Plouffe's assistant or David Plouffe's assistant's assistant. Either way, its disingenious and creepy in a Orwellian kind of way.

I phone banked, I voted, and now I have unsubscribed. You want my five bucks you are going to have to do better than throw a good party.

You have to be the head of a good party.

Bail Out the Writers or It's the Marketplace, Stupid

2008-12-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

The New York Times had an essay by Paul Greenberg "Bail out the Writers" comparing how the government plans on bailing out banks and insurance companies with how writers could be bailed out as an industry. It was written in jest, but I had an issue with some of the points because of his tone, which is as weary as a man who has spent too much time with words, and bad ones at that. He decries the overabundance of MFA students, multiple "Ann Beatties" (both the critically acclaimed author and the self-published author), and the mediocrity of it all.

As someone who worked in the book publishing and magazine publishing worlds, I can tell you that publishing is not going downhill due to the quality of writing or the quantity of work being published. Simply the industry is facing a potential catastrophic situation that began in the 1990s--cultural shifts, cost shifts, the introduction of competing media. When my computer that looked like a toaster started to have a shaky screen my boss at a major publishing house told me to go find my typewriter--and this was 1993. We were doing slide presentations at sales conferences. Crappy work has been published for hundreds of years, and MFA programs have absolutely nothing to do with that, and I attribute writing programs with keeping a vibrant culture that keeps writing alive and interesting.

Overcapacity, is created not by the amount of books published but by the amount of new channels for publishing information. As Greenberg quotes Ann Beattie is in his essay,

"Overcapacity has been something generally acknowledged across the writing industry for at least 10 years. In a 2002 essay in The New York Times, the onetime best-selling novelist and story writer Ann Beattie mourned the situation of the modern writer, living in a world where people are more interested in “being a writer” than in writing itself. “There are too many of us, and M.F.A. programs graduate more every year, causing publishers to suffer snow-blindness, which has resulted in everyone getting lost,” she lamented."

I think that what Ms. Beattie is addressing here, is the narcissism and self-aggrandizement of some of those who publish. I truly believe that it is a pop culture sensibility that needs to be kept in check. In a day when every B list celebrity has a gross ghost written tome (and trust me, I have seen this happen so many times as to make your eyes cross in frustration). These are the sort of books that are at least guaranteed to sell, a bit. Not evergreen like Ms. Beattie's classics, but will get the publicity necessary to make money for the house.

What Mr. Greenberg should perhaps spend the writer's bailout money on, is education, because I believe that unless we raise children who can actually read and reason on a higher level, and have an appreciation for art, there will be a big enough audience for great literature that it will be able to make money for a publisher. It is the marketplace, not the MFA that is making bad writing. It is the lack of interest in art and increased interest in entertainment.

And I must add that it has only been in the last 100 years that women have been able to publish at all. Would I ever choose to decry the amount of writers out there when half of them, perhaps more, have only had the opportunity to have a large audience in the last 75 years?

It seems like what Mr. Greenberg wants is a return to the effete old guard. Where those from certain universities and backgrounds had a better chance of being a widely-hailed writer and having the connections to getting a book published by a major publishing house.

You can't fight the future, Mr. Greenberg. And the future is in services like Blurb where small presses and other organizations outside the New York-centric can get books published at a reasonable cost. I am doing it with some poetry I wrote for the holidays and will definitely put it up for sale here on my blog. It would be nice to be published by an "official" house but I not naive and think that my prose poetry will be making anyone money. I'd prefer to publish it myself and give it as a gift to friends and family. That is, after all, why I write it.

And yes, I am in the Richard Brautigan school of the obscure library for the unpublished, of zines and mimeographs. I like the future, and the craziness of book stores and libraries where the entire backlist is history in print. I would say that most bookstores are half full rather than what I think Mr. Greenberg is suggesting-- half empty.

Notes for CCA Career Symposium 08

2008-11-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

COPY WRITING 101

I started out in book publishing in New York City at St. Martin’s Press and then moved into new media at Hearst. I did copy writing in many jobs, but after getting my MFA in Creative Writing I have been working as a freelance writer for the last year.

KEY POINTS:

Usually you will work with advertising companies, marketing departments, individuals and small businesses.

SAMPLE PROJECTS:

Advertising Copy
Newsletters
Press Releases
Product Packaging
Brochures
Web Copy

Business Plans
Articles
Presentations

Translating or Translating to colloquial or “everyday” English
Grant Writing for non-Profits or the Arts.

SKILLS:
Professional Experience: Get an internship. Study with someone smart. Get a mentor. Take a class at a place like MediaBistro or here at CCA. Take a class on SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization friendly copy. This means that you are using key words that are search engine friendly.

Research skills: be a resource, study up on the topic you are writing about. Learn how to uncover good information. Be a detective.

Enjoy writing: like being alone in front of a computer.

Hussle: you will have to find your own work, so be ready to sell yourself. Build a Web site for yourself, if you have to, I hate to say it but you may have to work for free, use this work to start a portfolio.

Chutzpah: stick to it, sometimes you may have a bad experience. Be ready to send out invoices and hassle people to get paid.

Be A Good Listener: be client focused. A good copy writer knows the top line goals of an organization and how to translate that into succinct copy.

Be Extremely Professional: your word is your bond. You must be above reproach.
Treat every project like it is your own from beginning to end.

ALSO TO THINK ABOUT:

Editing VS Writing: There is a bit of both in copy writing but most people tend to feel more comfortable with one or the other. Assess your skills. What do people most often say you are good at? Being creative or the precision of following the rules?
Are you a good mimic and can copy the voice of an ad? Can you capture the brand’s personality? Are you strict and technical and see writing more as jigsaw puzzle? If so, you might be better at writing for business materials or tech manuals.

You will find that you get a specialty. This is what people mean when they say “The Brand Called YOU.” I tend towards "green," art, design and computer related issues.

Know the requirements of the media you are writing for.
What is the word count? 250 words can be considered a lot on the Web.
How can you showcase the message best in a small space?
Ask for examples of copy the client likes.
Startups have been the hardest clients for me since they really have not gone out yet with their “public face” and may not know what they want. Have a plan in place for coming up with solid communication with new clients.

Web 2.0—writing for social network sites is another type of marketing based writing. This would mean for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and having a Blog.

Look at LinkedIn, Guru.com, and Creative Circle. Make your own ad and post it to Craig’s List. Another way to get work is in foreign markets. Think about doing copy writing mixed with translation if you are bilingual.

A major downfall is that a lot of people THINK they can write. Technically, they can—THEY CAN put words together in a sentence. But that doesn’t make them a good writer. BEWARE people who do not have an ear for good writing. Work for people who respect your skills and understand what you have to offer. There is a difference between writing a memo and effective, moving copy.

Beware of people with no money. Ask how a project is funded. Ask what their payment terms are. Ask others if they pay their freelancers.

At the end of the day it is about balance--how to see saw between business and artistic tasks. I enjoy copy writing because I can take the time off to go to an art colony, or travel.

I am such a freaking dork!

2008-11-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

I made a political LOLCAT of Sydney on icanhascheezburger.com! I was sitting at my desk typing and he looked at me, and I was like, oh why don't you try on this nice sticker I got at the polls (anything to avoid doing work) and all of the sudden it was lights cameras action!

A Pre-Election Round Up of Fun Obama Things

2008-10-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Barack O'Lantern

Yes We Carve (click this link to go to the site, not the pic) has free stencils:
What could possibly be scarier than four more years of Republican BS?

Yes We Can (Hold Babies):

He definitely has experience holding babies.

Emo for ObamaWe will cry if he doesn't win.

Thereminists for ObamaThis is just rad.

The bottom line is that if Obama wins, we can all support ourselves making Obama swag. And if you are at a university, just think of all of the academic papers you can write about Obama. It's like having Madonna in her peak (think mid to early 1990s gender identity and feminist theory classes), but political, and black. Welcome to the next phase of the culture industry.

And for all Californians, today is the last day to register to vote. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Wall Street, What Have You Done for Me Lately?

2008-09-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

Wow, news of Janet Jackson in the hospital AND Wall Street in the toilet.

We all know that economics are extremely flawed. That you can not live in a society where one of the main producers of wealth gives absolutely nothing back to the society from which it reaps its rewards. We all know that an Icarus-like economy will end up burning its wax wings and tumble. That cognitive dissonance of a newspaper where the editorial is all economic fire and brimstone and the ads are all for diamond encrusted watches and 3 thousand dollar handbags. We aren't living in a free economy but an Escher drawing of staircases that go to nowhere, fold back in on themselves, mirroring into eternity. Capitalism eats itself. It has been gnawing through constraints and has only the ethic of cronyism and destruction. Capitalism in its purist form will eat your grandmother for breakfast, and for an extra fee, let you watch. It is basic human nature to take what you can get, to steal before stolen from, to hoard and protect. Without safe gaurds (and Ralph Nader) we would all be bathing in pesticides, with flippers for arms due to Thalidomide, and taking Effexor to make it all not seem so bad. All of these things, dangerous for society, heartbreaking, and very profitable. (Okay maybe not thalidomide, which might be better categorized as extremely misguided and sad).

And I don't know if there has ever been a fortune made that was completely ethical. The passing of Paul Newman pushes me to consider Newman's Own, where all profits after taxes were given to charity. There has been a rising awareness of co-opting capitalism for statement-based buying (Obama t-shirts, organic cotton, Priusi, locally grown fruits and vegetables, ethically farmed meats). But sadly, in the wake of Wall Street bailouts, ethical buying is almost chirpy and fey. So you, Mr. CEO made 20 million dollars in 10 months for being a failure? Well I just bought sustainable harvested, shade grown coffee! Ha! Take that corporate America!!!

And it is the Anarchist's Paradox, always so sticky---can you work within a corrupt system for good? Are we in some sort of Victor Hugo Le Miserable kind of horror (and throw in a bit of the film Brazil for bureaucratic flavor) where you go to jail for stealing a loaf of bread while starving yourself on paperwork and convoluted laws?

Capitalism is not about justice. It is about being the one smart enough to find the loophole, and exploit it. In its worst, it is Enron and The Smartest Guys in the Room. It is the sad, long, king of the world days of living in an ivory tower on top of a pile of rot. Capitalism will tell you that there is no profit in civic duty. And there isn't unless you count that without a sense of social contract all bets are off. Why do anything when with a gun you can steal it? Its easier, cost effective, and with the right guns you can minimize risk. It is civic duty and a social contract that gives us hope that we are not living in a feudalistic society but have evolved.

Not sure about that one.

All I know if that Wall Street takes more than it gives. It exploits dark areas and consciously makes decisions that are bad for society at a whole (knowingly). As citizens, we are supposed to revere these institutions that provide capital, but what they do is not heroic, and only in their best interest. So the payback is that we cover the expense of their greed, so that they can continue to do their business, propping up an economy that I don't think anyone truly understands. A secret: the economy is so large and interdependent we might as well be talking about global warming.

And what would I like to see? Banking and investing given the same amount of attention as health care, education and the arts. That if I am expected to spend 7 grand bailing out bankers then I would like it repaid, with twenty to thirty percent returns. Why should I do for Wall St. what they wouldn't do for me? Sounds like a sucker's deal.

Another good book to piss you off, is What We Could Have Done With the Money by Rob Simpson who I am sure is at work on new books about how America makes f*ed up decisions.
It is a brilliant piece of metaphor, alternate history, statistics, and it is likely to make your blood boil.

And a final thought, for any of you worried about the Depression and financial armageddon try reading The Happiness Myth. Those Rolexes and Mercedes won't keep you off of the therapists' couch. Hear that, Wall St.?

The Narcissism Report: 23 and Me

2008-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

I just read a New York Times Style piece about "spit parties." Ms. Wojcicki and Linda Avey, co-founder of 23andme.com a site that seeks to "democratize personal genetics" for $399.00.

What I laughed about in the article is this passage:

But Roberto De Mitri, director of product management for a software company, was there. He stood at a computer playing with a 23andMe demonstration.

He said he and his fiancée had talked about how it was scary that someone might insist on seeing a potential mate’s DNA test before moving ahead in a relationship. But his curiosity had been piqued enough that he was spitting into a vial. After all, he said, the sharing of test results would not be that different than vetting a potential partner’s finances before forging ahead.

“You check that now,” he said, clicking on an icon. “Unless you fall completely in love.”

What does one get for the guy or gal who has everything? How about a product filled with TMI (too much information)? That way you can figure out whether you really love your potential mate after finding out a propensity for obesity. Or cancer. Or stupidity. But what I really enjoyed about the quote is how it plays science vs. emotion. Data vs. love. Have vs. the holy horror of have not.

You might take a risk and marry someone au naturel, not having a prenup, not knowing their genetic makeup, maybe not knowing every last detail about them and having them tailed by a private investigator. In other words, without data we are mere animals, drawn to pheromones and muscle bulk. God forbid we wake up one day and not know our odds that our partner may be...ahem...human? Mortal?

I realize the Style section of the times is really a vanity production, a bit of old fashioned Vanity Fair. I am attracted to it. As I said on the plane yesterday coming back from Portland reading Business Week, "Reading about energy sources and oil production is bor-ing." And I am pretty geeky, and it was like an epiphany to me.

Narcissism is really entertaining. Ouch. I said it and it hurts. It doesn't make it right, but rubbernecking appears to be in my genetic makeup. I can only wonder where it would show up on 23andme's test, because I bet everyone at their spit party had it. And while we are at it,
I would like to start a company that democratizes narcissism. We will call it Me and Me.

Rest in Peace David Foster Wallace

2008-09-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

I went to see David Foster Wallace read in San Francisco in 2006 and wrote this post about the experience here: David Foster Wallace in Stereo.

He seemed slightly tortured even then, but I thought his great humor and success would see him through. I half-considered it might have been an act, perhaps it was just his schtick and way of expressing his literary persona. His hall of mirrors type performance editing and responding to his own conversation. Nothing was simple, no thought stayed still for even a millisecond, the world moved to quickly to be understood. The thoughts, words and signifiers just wouldn't quit and everything was endlessly unpacked.

Who trusts a good looking well-adjusted writer? Who hasn't asked themselves if they wouldn't be a better writer "if only something epic-scale horrible had happened to me?" I would rather be mediocre than miserable. David Foster Wallace was a darling, and even with the kind of reception most people would kill for, inner turmoil took him down. I doubt fan mail, electroshock therapy or lithium really could of done the trick. And in the end to hang, like a guilty man, is symbolic in itself.

I hope he is resting safely in a state of white noise. Somewhere in the ether or in the light.

Sunset Junction, The Modern Carnies Are in The Crowd

2008-08-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

The Semi was at Sunset Junction last night, the local music faire in Silver Lake. It started out strangely. I was in line to get my pre-paid bracelet to get in and the guy behind me was frothing at the mouth like someone had injected steroids directly into his larynx. He was scary and freaking out because his friend had inconvenienced him by going to the visit the latrine. He pushed his friend, and he bounced off me, and I suddenly wished I had guns for arms like some sort of Transformers character. But it mellowed out, I headed through the crowd, with other polite people mouthing "sorry!" when we bumped into each other. Broken Social Scene is one of my all-time favorite bands, but they were so far away that they became a muted soundtrack to walking around the carnival games. Darts in a balloon. Rings around the bottle. Ping pong balls in little candy dishes. The prizes: stuffed animals made in China, a rock n roll t shirt, illegal tiny turtles or a goldfish. The families who run the stands were mostly Mexican, it reminded me of a shabby church bazaar and I missed some of the ones from my youth: the cakewalk, the clown with pockets filled with toys, face painting and hair braiding. Not much has changed, but I expected something edgier, more like Coney Island, but the carnies were middle-aged family people and even the crowds were ho-hum. A tattoo here, a western shirt, two out of place S & M bondage guys, girls in their holly hobby wear. Maybe it is time to go back to Iowa when nothing seems transgressive anymore. The only thing that bothered me the whole night was the frothing man, high on himself, probably middle class road rager, probably a pharmaceutical salesman or something else easy but well paid and corrupt. I would want to put a mirror up to that ugly face, but he would probably try to grab it away from me and snort something off of it.

Please let Karma be real.

Wired Magazine, Creative Pandering

2008-08-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

In the latest issue of Wired, which I love to read for how it relates to my macho geek side, I was particularly annoyed with the article (above) "Particle Physics: The Greatest Reality Show Ever." Really? The Higgs Boson is Kelly Clarkson? Gluons are the Tyra Bankses, and Donald Trumps of particle physics? This article made me want to cry, it was so bad. Here are some other metaphors that perhaps Wired magazine could just have easily have used:

Particle Physics: The Greatest Fruit and Vegetable Stand Ever
(Gluons could be blueberries packed with antioxidants! The Higgs Boson is a pomegranate!)

Particle Physics: The Shoe Store in the Mall
(Gluons are the steel-toed workboot. The Higgs Boson is a trendy pair of Croc sandals.)

Particle Physics: The Greatest Medicine Show Ever!
(Gluons are like penicillin. The Higgs Boson is Viagra.)

Yeah these are ridiculous metaphors, especially since the Cern collider is actually interesting. The Semi does not like top read articles and realize she learned absolutely nothing and almost beyond that, was fed a few teaspoons of pseudoscience wrapped in bullshit.

NOTE: The Semi is watching TV again. Watch for some new posts on when writing goes wrong!

My Favorite Schwag From BEA (Book Expo of America)

2008-06-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

Last week the Semi visited the Book Expo of America in Los Angeles' convention center.

I showed up to a rather strange scene. The pirate band was playing full force at 9 AM and some "Suicidesque" Girls were passing out flyers for a signing later that day with G&R man, Slash.
Between the wenches and the lack of rum at that early morning hour, I was getting a headache.

I first went to the small press area (be still my beating heart, I am still a believer) and ooh'ed and ahh'ed over many new books coming out, but also of a few companies that have made it a point to support the arts with a series.

The first of which is the 33 1/3 series from Continuum press. What a gorgeous series that treats music writing and fictionalized reaction to aural artistry in a series of hymnal shaped volumes. It could be bathroom reading, or late night with a flashlight fare. On a greyhound bus leaving Akron, Ohio for the tenth time. A few chapters to inspire before sleep.

Next, Dame Darcy, one of my favorite cartoonists/graphic novelists/anachronistic wonders is coming out with a new book called, "Gasoline." It is a post apocalyptic goth fairy tale and I am really looking forward to reading it.

This is a shot glass ring from Kheper Games and a prayer memo from Knock Knock. Also San Francisco based Chronicle was giving away notepads. Fun!

Three repeated words like a mantra, Taschen Taschen Taschen. Say it in any situation and fabulous art will rain down from the ceiling. I wish I was a wealthy German publisher able to say screw convention, give art to me raw and transgressive.

This pencil is from someone. I love it. Yay pencil!

My button and galley from Tor books where I started in publishing many years ago. Now if I can just find my pinky ring and SFWA photos.

My anticancer book. This is wonderfully well written and ties together diet, environment, nutrition, post 1940s pollution, and agriculture in one book--with ideas about how to fight it all. In a nutshell: eat only grassfed meats, organic poultry, filter your water, eat foods high in antioxidants, stay away from plastics and other materials that give off hormonal inhibitors and keep chemicals away from your children.
Other big news is that I am now officially a literary scout for the fantastic Veritas agency. I am excited to be able to look for good book ideas rather than be sent proposals (the difference between agenting and scouting).

Cats and Racks and Labs with Abs

2008-06-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Since I thought porn and kittens were the yin and yang of the internet.
The site Cute Overload has an entire gallery of cats and racks. Then there
is the brilliant Labs With Abs series by Andrew Jeffery Wright. It is available
for the curious, at BlueQlabs for $5.99. I highly recommend this site for a good
laugh or a purchase. They also sell the "Book of Whale Insults." Salty, I bet!

Unexpected delays, Pit stops, Miscellaneous Ad Hoc Expenditures

2008-05-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

Dear friends of the Semiotician to the Stars:

Sorry that I have been out of commission, and it has been for many reasons, some good and some bad. For the sake of brevity, and positivity, I will stick to the good.

First off, I adopted two Maine Coon kitties from a family in Chicago. They flew into a LAX and have been charming me, pushing things around, playing with feathers and licking my head (more on that).

Sydney is my 22 pound Alpha male. He owns your ass. Your apartment. Your bed, and your head. He is very vocal and we have a lot of conversations that usually end with Syd procuring treats. He's a handsome looker!

George is about 18 pounds and is a soulful tabby who is in love with his feather. Every day, all George wants is to go crazy on this toy. He has a permanently surprised look on his face and knows his name, which if you say it he will run up to you and give you a head butt. He is a sweet little lover.

So I now have two fur babies. I love them. It has really changed my life around. I used to just talk to myself, but now I have two cats to listen to me. Just kidding, but, I now understand the entire crazy old cat lady thing. Maybe some day I can live up to that cliche, but for now, I have a cat baby-daddy. He's my man who is going by the code name "Arion" on this blog. I can understand the need to have a code name, as I do too, as The Semi. So what does this name signify? Arion...well stellar to begin with..lover of music and rider of dolphins. Definitely seaworthy.

Anyways, in addition to the kittens, there were trips to Santa Barbara, San Francisco,
Santa Catalina, Eastern Europe, and to the grocery store. Friends were on the front of magazines (check out my fave artist, Albert Reyes on the front of Giant Robot Magazine!) Friends opened up the Poetic Research Bureau in East Los Angeles (Glendale) and I recommend checking it out for all your chapbook/ literary reading needs.

Catnip gets spilled. I need to get back to my writing. But at least my fingers are moving, the sun is shining, and all is well on the West side.

Porn and Kittens: the Yin and Yang of the Internet

2008-02-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

Or is it Porn and Kittens: the Yang and Yin of the internet?

Since I have finished up my contract at Google I am no longer in the stormy seas of the information superhighway. Or to be specific, I am not online all day constantly being IM'ed the good, the bad and the ugly of the internet. There are things I have seen I wish I could go back and erase, but yet I am a realist and I always knew those things were there. I just didn't think it would be my job to find them. Many of them. Sometimes over and over in different iterations that would make your toes curl and you would scream, "eww that is SO WRONG" and then laugh, a gallows humor kind of heh heh (imagine Beavis and Butthead went to Yale or Stanford,) and then keep going on. Then there is the other side of the internet which is fixated on the intense twee--the fuzzy kittens and OMG LOLS. Google was great, I miss the camaraderie.

Yes, Porn and Kittens are the Yin and Yang of the internet.

So I have been out of work for a week and starting to drum up some freelance projects, and get back to working on the second draft of my novel. Gotta get back inside the world, open it back up, jump in, see if I can kick start it again...set a pace, and keep going.

Well happy 2008, and thank you for your comments and ideas about my new Web site!

:) The Semi

It's my birthday, and I got...

2007-12-29T10:51:00.000-08:00

A brand spanking new Web site that showcases my poetry, fiction, journalism, playwriting and ability to write professionally for your business. Check it out and tell me what you think!

WWW.ERINJOURDAN.COM

Erin aka The Semi Reading December 8th

2007-11-30T13:02:00.000-08:00

A N I M A L S T Y L E

29025 EVENINGSIDE DR. VAL VERDE (Near CalArts)

Sat. Dec. 8th at 8 PM

GRIZNAR
ANNA OXYGEN
BEN BLOCK DJ
YOUNG MARLS DJ
SAYRE GOMEZ
NIKKI PRESSLEY
ERIN JOURDAN
MATTHEW KEEL
KARA TANAKA
BIANCA D’AMICO
SIDONIE LOISELEUX
MILLER UPDEGRAAF
QUINN GOMEZ-HEITZEBERG
ALEJANDRO SANCHEZ
MARLEY CARROLL

A Hot Dozen of the Semi's Favorite Things

2007-11-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

Raindrops on sloths and whiskers on lolcats;
Bright colored condoms and disturbed ninjas;
Frightened tamanduas rearing up on hind legs;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream-colored kangaroos and George Washington rapping;
A cupcake for Stringberg and body painting;
Hot chicks that pose with douchebags and rings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

1) Sloth Video

It all started with the "Three Toed Sloth Escort" and it spoke to me. On a very deep level. It is like rooting for the underdog, but instead of an underdog it is a sloth!

Then, this video where the sloth appears to be swimming, backwards. That is like, negative slow.

This video is called "Threatened Tamandua" which is another word for anteater. But what is threatening this anteater? Nothing less than a sloth. I have a feeling at the end of the video (not shown) the anteater eats ants off the sloth in a sign of peace.

In this delightful video, the sloth is playing dead. Sneaky guys, these are....my favorite is when someone says, he looks dead, and then the woman tries to prop his head up like the sloth is a muppet.

This video is called "Slow Sloth" duh....they aren't going to be fetching your slippers for you.

Anderson Cooper
Sloth Release gone awry. The hubris!

2) The Neeley Brothers

Washington, Washington got stuck in my head. I would walk around with friend screaming,
"He'd save children..."
and someone would yell back
"But NOT the BRITISH children."

Note: this appears to have disappeared off the net! Check YouTube (maybe it has resurfaced), Superdeluxe.com or Creased Comics. :(

SO here is "I am Baby Cakes" which is pretty rad too!

3) Strindberg and Helium
4) The Boxing Kangaroo: the Killer Willard!

5) Hot Chicks With Douchebags

6) LOLCat Wasteland / The Lolinator
Below is the last entry I did, Lolinized!!

erin jourdan iz semiotician 2 star

prettee fountain uv righteous indignation. if bernini sculpture spit txt in form uv marble tablet. discernin sine qua non. rollerskatin razor-thin wire between glam n nerd whilst listenin 2 old school r & b.

monday... novemba 12... 2007

excitin news= collaboration

i has received sum fantastic news in form uv invitation 2 collaborate wit manfred fischbek (1 uv my colleaguez frm djerassi) on retellin uv orpheus myth which wil include my spoken txt... danca... music n multimedia. manfred iz artistic director uv group motion dance company

i look forward 2 wurkin wit such amazin talent n pushin my prose in directionz. which haz been in existence (out uv philadelphia... pa) since 1989.

7) Ask a Ninja--"Shel Silversword actually rhymed the arms off of a squidwolf."

8) Body Painting
9) Paintings done by Trees

10) Someecards if you need a card that says something like, "Sorry two unicorns and I fucked you silly in my dream last night."

11) My Favorite online Tarot deck by Sepulchritude
Frank N' Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show is the Hierophant!

12) The Telugu Condom Song!

Exciting News: Collaboration

2007-11-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

I have received some fantastic news in the form of an invitation to collaborate with Manfred Fischbeck (one of my colleagues from Djerassi) on a retelling of the Orpheus myth which will include my spoken text, dancers, music and multimedia. Manfred is the Artistic Director of the Group Motion Dance Company which has been in existence (out of Philadelphia, PA) since 1989.
I look forward to working with such amazing talent and pushing my prose in new directions.

Poem for Djerassi

2007-10-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

THE SUN IS MY HALO, I SHALL NOT WANT

For Djerassi

oh my little life
my petite soul
slight in the face of it all
one in a chorus of miracles
in cricket song
in an army of heroes
to live to be 1200 years old
to have a space inside, a knot
not a flame but an altar
a promise, in the burned out
hollow of red
a scrimshaw of branches
a canopy of nature-tatted lace
root systems enough for a million dreams
the unconscious in soil
a dream over spilling in fog
the sun is a halo bright
a divine aureole, circling
each and every life

San Gregorio Beach Photos

2007-10-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Moody photos from the beach at San Gregorio. Really fantastic lighting, and the structures are eerie. A bit like children's jungle gyms gone sinister. Sky over the beach and algae.
Another one, the colors came out fantastic.
White cliff of some sort of porous, chalky stone.

Hardly, Strictly

2007-10-07T08:42:00.001-07:00

Drinking a Peroni at the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco.

Mr. Car just looks to adorable hanging out on this hilltop that I just had to take his photo.
The forest through the trees...

Naked Ladies are in bloom! I cut a few for a bouquet in my room and they smell sickly sweet.

And that is it, back to writing for me, Thursday is my last day at this fantastic place.

To the Lighthouse

2007-10-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

I woke up last night to the howl of a coyote. Then this morning at 7AM there was the delightful image of these two ladies off to breakfast.

It was incredible dramatic, and I slipped out of the house in my pjs and socks to take some pictures of the fog enveloping the hills. Below is the artists' barn.
The shopping cart on the hill looks absolutely surreal.
The fog had a lovely blue tint, like cotton candy at the fair.
Today an outing down the coast towards Pescadero. This is the sign for the Pigeon Point Lighthouse.
La Lighthouse, I think it was built in 1891.
My friend Carina Rodney, wearing my new hat taking in the sea overlook.

Autumn pictures, Love, Annie Dillard

2007-09-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

As I dip back into my novel for the re-write, I picked up an Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life" and this paragraph sung to me,

"Your work is to keep cranking the fly wheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair."

A pumpkin growing next a mass of lavender.

Mia and I on our hike of the Djerassi grounds. She brought a killer Gouda. Mia also managed to have short lived relationship with a caterpillar named "wheatabix."
Funny boys, Ben and K2 enjoying the creek bed.
Some yellow hot love going on between banana slugs. They sort of lick each other in their puddle of goo. Fascinating and sort of gross.

Vanishing Ships & Dahlias in Bloom

2007-09-28T09:54:00.001-07:00

The bouquet below was picked from the garden outside my room. The yellow dahlia is larger than the full span of my hand, and the lavender adds a delicious aroma. I don't believe I have ever had a dahlia of my own before, although I have collected their names, when they are on show in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. My favorite name is "Skipley Moonglow."

After dinner on Wednesday there was a full moon, and I headed out for a solo hike. It was so much fun just to run around in the woods alone, with my flashlight and ipod. I think music was essential because if I fixated on every bit of brush and twig crackling I probably would of been scared, but instead I listened to Andrew Bird, Black Mountain, and Brightblack Morning Light and stared up at the stars and the moon. Oh, and I also hassled this frog who lives in a old feed tub down by the barn. Poor guy, me with my camera, and s/he is just floating there enjoying a bit of moss.
On Thursday a few of the residents went into San Francisco to the MOMA for the Olafur Eliasson show. While I do like his work, I felt that the show was a bit truncated. Perhaps I am spoiled by the immensity of retrospectives in New York such as the Matthew Barney and Nam June Paik at the Guggenheim or Bill Viola at the Getty in Los Angeles. I enjoyed looking at the books about Eliasson but felt that the show did not do his work justice, the way that it was split up between floors and had a poor quality of "flow" from piece to piece.

But, on a positive note, I completely shrieked when I saw this piece across the street from the MOMA in Yerba Buena park. It is a similar sculpture to the one here at Djerassi by John Roloff. This is one of his Vanishing Ships, and me, saying goodbye before it completely disappears.
Art or nature, you decide. Looks a bit staged, but who am I to critique?

Full steam ahead for me with my work, time feels short, soon I return to Santa Monica.

Oceans of Love

2007-09-24T17:20:00.001-07:00

I went into San Francisco over the weekend and made a stop off at the De Young (my first time) and saw the last day of the Hiroshi Sugimoto show. One of his photos, Sea of Buddha, was taken at the temple of Sanjusangendo in Kyoto, which I visited when I was an exchange student to Chiba, Japan at the age of fifteen. Seeing the Sea of Buddha again, I was amazed by the spaces in-between the deities. As you can tell by this prose poem in progress, or perhaps just a bit of my notes on the feeling of seeing this:

SEA OF BUDDHA
For Hiroshi Sugimoto

The place where my halo touches yours. Where our holiness crosses into one, an ether floating above a divine eye, a ceremonial headdress, a polished bronze. The kiss of the eternal on our pillowed lips. The negative space between deities. The place where hands are held. The form our love takes. The space between body and soul. The microcosm in our breath. The space between in and out. God in all directions, without language to define presence. A diorama of the space between halos is a delicacy, a picture of the horizon over the sea.

My manuscript, The Blind Spot Chronicles aka a picture into my addled brain. Spots of light on the floor of the barn.
The barn in all of its splendor.
A deer at sunset, right before a mist of rain.
Another sculpture of interest, which I saw elsewhere (perhaps the MOMA) which has been purchased by the De Young (fantastic idea, this piece is absolutely what the pinnacle of sculpture can be). The piece, by Cornelia Parker is called Anti-Mass (2005) and is the remnants of a Southern Black Baptist church which was destroyed by arsonists. She has reconstructed what I would call "the ghost of the space" into a perfect square, a haunting.

All for now...off to write more.

Three Hour Tour

2007-09-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to go on a tour of the Djerassi grounds with Sarah, with Skip acting as our tour guide. Most of the lands here are extremely hilly so some of the trails and artwork are hard to get to on foot.

I believe the sculpture below is Mygon by Ron Fondaw.
Sarah Perry, an extraordinary artist and friend. Her sculptures blow my mind, I highly suggest you check out some of her work on Artnet.
A paracosm in burnt out wood.
Green and leafy moss, an acorn, some of nature's bric a brac.
Turkey tail mushroom, but I think they look like shells or butterfly wings.
Texture of a redwood, burnt, becoming the home for some green moss.

Obviously this a visually rich place. I arrived back to the house to get to work, once again my fingers at the keyboard contemplating, contemplating.

Upside Down Spiders and other Types of Procrastination

2007-09-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Cottontails in the garden.

My pine cone.
Redwood forest.
Daddies Longleg.

Cloudy day in the hills of Djerassi, and I think I am reaching some sort of critical mass. I have been away from the city for long enough that I am hearing my thoughts, and they are pretty loud.
A list of things:
reliquaries
charnel houses
ossuaries
detente
confabulations
The Black Page by Frank Zappa (seriously check this out!)
primordial forests
rat laughter
tickle skin

(These are mostly taken from reading the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Times and various novels I am rotating between here).

Otherwise, all is well. I took some more pictures, but never have my camera in the moments that are most deserving. Such as when you step into the shower which has a thin film of ants. Or when Skip gave Sarah Perry a tiny bat skeleton. Or when I tickled a garter snake with a long whisp of wheat until it finally got annoyed and slithered away.

Wild Noises, More Photographs

2007-09-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Here at Djerassi, literally surrounded by wildlife. I have decided to let the two daddy long legs in my corner stay, as I am hoping they will kill anything much more sinister such as mosquitos and spiders. I am surrounded by ants and the last border's attempts at creating cinnamon barriers. It reminds me of a prose poem I wrote in San Francisco a few years ago called "Ant Rant" reproduced here:

ANT RANT
The ants are invading my house again. First just a few wanderers, wayfarers and vagabonds then an entire army, a posse, a procession. They come in and tell me what to wear. They say pleats make my stomach look fat. They tell me my cuff is too high, and that I shouldn’t wear brown shoes with a black coat. They like my perfume. I ask them not to drink it because it is from France. They know about fashion because they are in everyone’s closets looking for trends and advising people on astrology or cooking methods for a pot roast or what kind of birth control is effective. They tell me to make my bed with hospital corners. They tell me to break up with my boyfriend, and I said, but he’s nice to me and he’s cute. The ants said he had to go, and to bend like the willow so that I don’t snap like the oak. I sometimes find the ants very threatening because there are so many of them and they are so smart. Even if they are a tad bit unemotional and hard to tell apart. I have tried many times to get them to leave. I have been told that ants will not cross a line of cinnamon, and I sprinkled barriers and battle lines and exploding mines of cinnamon but these ants are tenacious and they keep on coming and they march through my lines of cinnamon and climb into my refrigerator, past the white squishy cold air sealant and into my freezer where they die happy eating my semi-sweet dark chocolate bar. The ants are like the Wizard of Oz behind my life pulling the levers. They are the secret society informing my decisions. Sometimes they hide in my pants and come with me to school and feed me the right answers. Sometimes they do my homework and are very talented prose poets. Sometimes I wake up and they have written an ode or an opus or free verse and I turn it in as my own work. Sometimes they edit my work with a big red pen because they are relentless and focused on success. Sometimes they sit at my computer drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and writing till dawn wearing my hot pink chenille robe and sending email to their friends. Sometimes they run up my phone bill and I get mad. Sometimes the ants put curlers in my hair and I wake up and my hair is frizzy. I told them not to quit their day job. They tell me to just surrender to them, to clean up the cinnamon, because it could never come between them and me, our friendship. They tell me to clean up the cinnamon because I might have visitors and people might think that I have dirt all over my floors. And I try to stand up to the ants and tell them if I was to march into their house and eat their food and wear their pants and make love to their wives I would be a lot nicer. They told me to shut up, shut up or else they will climb into my computer and chew on my wires and eat my motherboard and delete all my files and then I will be at their mercy.

There have also been really weird noises. I was heading up a hill and off to the side I heard a noise that sounded like a donkey and a goose locked in mortal combat. Last night I awoke to the sound of a doorstop, the kind that is made of a springy cone with a rubber tip, boinging every minute and a half. I closed my sliding glass door and went back to bed, at night there would be no way to figure out its origin.

I have transferred my right shift key to my left in a delicate operation that probably deletes any sort of Apple warranty I might have.

Here there is a lot of talk about coffee, love, books, loss, projects, sleep, types of birds. Here is the view from the artist's barn to the artist's house (where I stay):

This sculpture below makes the most interesting noises. I shot a one minute film of it and will upload it at some point.
Below is just a simple little plant, growing in the field but I like the texture.

Back to work for me, more soon!

Djerassi Residency

2007-09-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

After a seven hour trip in my car, and a Moon Over My Hammy sandwich at Denny's, I arrived at the Djerassi ranch. After miles of serpentine single lane roads, only one word came to mind for the setting--spectacular. Settling into my studio and meeting the other artists has been really fun. Maybe too much fun, as I woke up at 4 AM wondering what to do....

So I picked through the library and found the excellent David Markson experimental novel, Vanishing Point. It is the perfect read when you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the tasks at hand. It's basically paragraph after paragraph of notes he has collected in which the trials and tribulations of different artists are rendered in somewhat humorous irony.

For instance:

One hundred and sixteen thousand viewers had strolled past "le bateau" the upside down Matisse without comment before it was hung correctly.

Karl Marx never in his life saw the inside of a factory.

Aaron Copeland, on listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony:
Like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.

And it just goes on and on. No matter how weak or great, I suppose we are all misunderstood.
(Sorry, I am trying to keep my deepest, highest quality insights for my work right now!) Also, believe it or not, my left shift key just cracked in half...(does anyone know how to pop the keys off? If so, email me, because this right hand side shifting sucks!)

Here are some pictures from the day's hike of the grounds and a few site specific pieces that are there.

Reading at The Smell, August 26th

2007-08-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is true. An in-the-flesh appearance by the Semiotician of the Stars at a reading series co-curated by none other than current world traveler Joseph Mosconi. I will be reading for approximately twenty minutes, hopefully from a new story that involves a golem.

Doors open at 6:30, the reading usually starts at 7 ish.
The Smell
247 South Main St, Los Angeles 90012
Enter through alley in back.

Experimental Fiction Conference: The Star Nosed Mole of Fiction

2007-08-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Semiotician spent last weekend in Portland, OR for the 2nd annual FC2 conference at Portland State University. I had heard about the collective from fiction writer Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville, a fine post-apocalyptic novel for which I wrote a review a few years ago which can be accessed here on the SFStation.com site.

As someone who is attempting to write in all forms, or perhaps more accurately, just write and let the form come from the work, I appreciated being amongst like minds. It is wonderful to not have to begin every conversation tabula rasa, since at the conference most of the attendees had read at least part of what most would sneering-ly call the "Experimental Canon." (Of which, I will leave the definition to others, since if it was up to me I would provide a link like THIS just to be cheeky.)

Experimental writing is, to paraphrase Lance Olsen, "fiction which asks 'what am I' while it is being written."* Meaning that it is fiction without form considerations or structure as it is being written. It is about lack of conformity, mistakes, writing outside the comfort zone, and the urgodic. It is about work and fun, and in my mind an iterative process. To me, it is like being on Iron Chef and being asked to prepare snails in fifty different ways in the timespan of an hour.

* Or Jean Francois Lyotard says experimental fiction is, " art that looks for the rules that define the art, but the rules do not exist."

We looked at pieces of architecture and wrote what we thought the structure would have as a narrative. After looking at a White Castle restaurant, I wrote, "Yeah Caesar, tattoo my name on your bicep, big boy. Happy fucking 4th of July, asshole. I died for your freedom."

For Frank Gehry's Disney Opera House here in Los Angeles, " A playground for dead opera singers. The acoustics in Heaven are fabulous."

I would definitely try this exercise again. It reminds me of what I tried to do here in Santa Monica, writing short narratives based on the names of apartment buildings. If you want to check it out, the link is here.

There were also fantastic workshops with Lidia Yuknavitch, Lucy Corin and Brian Evenson.
(Which I would totally comment on, but I am in the middle of doing laundry and attempting to clean my apartment while I write this...)

The other fascinating thing I was exposed to was a book Lucy Corin won at a bar by answering a trivia question. It is called Creative Aggression and the Art of Assertive Living and it is hair on fire wild! It was published in 1975 and I swear it is practically a work of groundbreaking language poetry. In this text, you break down niceties in your relationship with something akin to scream therapy. One type of this exchange is "The Vesuvius" where each person gets a three minute turn to scream at the other. Another one is referenced as the "Virginia Woolf" where you get to have a no holds barred insult exchange with your partner and then agree to never discuss it again. Another method of therapy is called "The Haircut" where you ask your partner..."can I give you a haircut?" and if they say yes, you get to scold them and then offer some sort of penance which is called, "The Doghouse Release."

It is relationship science fiction and made me want a strong martini while watching the film version of The Ice Storm.

Jaguar Heart

2007-06-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

Hello, and welcome to the Semiotician to the Stars.
This prose poem was originally published in Reed Magazine, the literary journal of San Jose State University. I decided to publish it here, since it was the original point of embarkation for the Bear Heart prose poem.

Also, I have been getting a lot of international traffic to my Web site. Greetings to all...

-Enjoy.

JAGUAR HEART

Gunpowder kohl lines your eyes, powdered sugar on alabaster skin, I watch you devour a jaguar limb to gristle. Spots fly and stripes flay, I sit at your table for the semi-divine meal. I have a red raincoat, I have clove scented smoke, I have intuitive reason, I have heartbreak, and I think of that day, the collective dream of the earthquake, of children’s pencils drawing jagged lines on paper, of cartoon figures shaky limbed. You ripped out my still beating heart and showed it to me, a bestiary of blood and pump, a carved shell with obsidian blood. Seven deities watched from the sky and shook their heads, no, oh no. They tried to tell you, they would have stopped you, if not for the limp in my eyes and the white of my soul gleaming. You placed the jaguar heart in my rib cage like the winding of a clock. The seven deities shook their heads, she will grow stripes, she will move too fast, and she will growl with hunger. I return home: girl body, jaguar heart, clove smoke, red raincoat.

New Prose Poem

2007-04-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

BEAR HEART

I thought I had a jaguar heart, a fast heart, but I was wrong. I had a bear heart, as furry as a French woman’s armpit. It was a heart that knocked over trash cans looking to fatten up for winter. It was a heart that went into hibernation in a cave and slept through snow. It was a heart that wore pink tutus and danced the laika. It was a circus heart. It was born to amaze and perform magic feats of daring. My heart was born to jump through circles of flame. My heart may singe but it itched for applause. My bear heart wonders of the conditions of your cage. Tidy, ept, strong bars, serious and mustachioed guard staff. That cot over there is mine. You can have the bunk beds. That gruel is delicious. Of course I will make your license plates. I will growl for you, I will grow fur for you. I will honey your bed, paw your sheets, lick your fish bones clean.

We IS!

2007-04-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

And for more information.....

2007-04-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

The deliciously delightful dj satifaction pony has been struck by the mystery of twee animal language AT THE EXACT SAME TIME as the semiotician. Freaky, man! The lighting strike/sweet spot of cultural anthropology, signs and signifiers trines in the bow and arrow that is the internet. We can band together to make sense of this perverse phenomena!

Or perhaps we should just take photos of each other and add wacky kittah phrases!

Be on the lookout, pony.

What is this phenomena?

2007-04-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Recently I have come face to face with something rather strange. There are a slew of internet sites that take fey or twee pictures of animals and then adds misspelled bold headlines. There is a good example at I Can Has Cheez eburger. Visit it at your own peril. Here are a few below:

I guess what I find shocking is there is a proliferation of sites like this on the 'net. It appears that fluffy animals and internal monologue is a hot and ridiculous commodity. It reminds me of a mix between the famous PSA about cats and masturbation. As seen below, it has spawned (ok, so yeah, maybe the pun is intended) forums on the Web about this popular, and silly, urban myth. I mean when was last time you saw a fudgesicle with dentures chasing a kitten?

It appear that there are people out there who have taken anthropomorphism of animals to a new dimension. A picture of a fuzzy animal that seems to be emoting (or in some cases, have weird fur that looks like a toupee, or perhaps in a situation like being stuck in a glass vase) and then read their minds, in some sort of scruffy-anti-intellectual-grammatically-incorrect bold headlines. It is like tag-line writing, or scripting caption copy. But has its own totally unique genre, as if could animals talk they would be feckless hillbillies, forever getting into silly, silly trouble.

Puppets exist for a reason, and I think this is it.

Four Echoes

2007-04-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

Some information about Four Echoes, the play I worked on with three other fantastic female writers from San Francisco State University. It was staged for the first time a few years ago at the Shotgun Theatre Lab and seeing the Web site again reminds me of the absolute exhilaration I felt working on this project. Check out Shotgun Theatre's 16th season!

FOUR ECHOES

Pioneering a process of exchange between short fiction and drama, Shotgun Theatre Lab presents FOUR ECHOES; a dark comedy that weaves an emotional tapestry confronting loss, god, fate, love, and confinement. Spread upon the framework of four intensely personal autobiographies, FOUR ECHOES in an exploration of lives across four eras that range between 1920 and 2096.

The culmination of an experimental development project, FOUR ECHOES present four characters that ricochet, repeat, chorus, and echo one another in an attempt to realize and resolve their own life stories. A pastor's wife realizes the truth behind her husband's doctrines; a woman awakening from a coma follows the journey of her trauma; a burlesque dancer waxes poetic with her lofty dreams and otherworldly secrets; and a girl from the future is literally arrested by debt, left to float in a timeless confinement, a criminal stuck in a science experiment.

The production, an original work embodying the Shotgun Players collaborative spirit, brings together the unbound creativity of four authors from San Francisco State University's Graduate Creative Writing program in an exciting foray into the developmental process of collaborative playwriting. Pioneering a process of exchange between short fiction and drama, each author has taken a character from her own literature and melded that character's narrative with the narratives created by the other three writers. The result is a complex performance that transcends individuality and comments upon the human experience.

Written by Rebekah Anderson (Ecstatic Monkey Writers Collective), Erin Jourdan (Kitchen Sink, Watchword, Laundry Pen, SF Station), Vanessa Kulzer (Women Behaving Badly), and Margaret Rodriguez (EM Literary), Directed by Molly Aaronson-Gelb.

The Shotgun Theatre Lab is a program of the Shotgun Players committed to fostering the creation of new works through the mentorship of emerging theater artists. In providing an explorative forum for theater artists, we also create a showcase of dynamic and experimental work that opens new avenues of learning, imagination and form for audiences and artists alike. The Shotgun Theatre Lab removes the emphasis on succeeding financially, and instead promotes alternative models of successful theatre.

In a power vacuum, anything is possible

2007-04-15T16:27:00.001-07:00

The Semiotician has been thinking about the state of publishing and the literary cabal. Once sitting in a class on feminism and history, the teacher said we are currently in a state of chaos where most rules have broken down and there has been very little decisive ideology to take the place of the old structures. That moment, we were in the power vacuum and anything was possible.
And she didn't mean this in a viva la revolucion kind of way. She just was trying to reassure her class that while many things are debate-able, American (and perhaps world) culture is currently so rapidly moving and amorphous that the debate will have to continue. Also, I think what she was trying to impart is that there is some hope in a power vacuum...that this is when new paradigms emerge, and that chaos is a chance for hope.
So, I have been working at Google, and occasionally I have conversations with my co-workers about how we are in "the wild wild west" of technology. A sort of piece together the rules while you are moving forward. Interpretive dance as business. Visionaries plotting possibilities and technologies opening up entirely new ways of communicating. The fall out from this, I believe is that small independent literary journals are obsolete. Sure, I would like to be published in an esteemed publication but the truth is that I don't read them. An attractive Winter/Spring 2007 issue sits by my bed, interesting cover, probably filled with great work. But it is, and quite generously, the tenth thing in my pile of my things to read. Let's see...there is The Known World, a novel by Edward P. Jones. The New Yorker. The New York Times. My friend Bruna Mori's lovely chapbook, "Derive." Deepstep Come Shining by C D Wright. And A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield always deserves re-reading.
Literary magazines get a quick thumb through for me, in the end, because they are so poorly edited. Jury process does not a good journal make. Most often they are lumpy, boring, far-out, and a bit like stone soup--a mishmash that feels more schizophrenic than satisfying. That is where I think technology succeeds...a self-editing meander based on my own desire for exposure to new literary work.

I think back to the many literary journals I have been in, and if they are not the mouthpiece/lovechild/boondoggle of a university they are having a hard time. I am a big lover of the independent press, I love Cabinet, Kitchen Sink Magazine, Other, too many to count. But the pure literary journal, to be bold, sucks ass.

Why? Because technology and the Web have made literary journals obsolete. I am able to read blogs by every poet and bob & weave through many different writers finding my taste, exploring things I may not have seen, read what others think is important, catch the general zeitgeist. I have seen so many lovely publications that I have been in, who have closed with my ultimate respect for their time and heart. But in these modern times, and excessively capitalistic times, (hello, according to Newsweek magazine on April 9, 2007, "the share of national income going to corporate profit, than, say, labor is hovering around a 50 year high.") I think that the arts that are beloved in spirit but no one is ever going to pay for (love, poetry.....the only high-concept symbol people seem willing to pay big bucks for is the ubiquitous "war.") I think that the new literary movement is a flotilla of blogs, with a few shining points of decentralized power, where people who have MFA's or do not have MFAs can clan together and experiment, post, respond and grow. And in age where there are very few jobs in the humanities, and for professors with MFA's, bulking up the old Curriculum Vitae with lots of literary publications means very little. And as an American, lots of effort, for very little acknowledgment, and piecing together funding when it is probably easier to sell guns on the street=art.

So what are we waiting for? I'd like to see more poetry readings posted on YouTube. I would like to see gallery shows uploaded, piece by piece into the Picasas and Flickr's of the world. I know some of this is already happening, and I love what I see. I would like to see more funky web zines like the Octopus. I would like poetry delivered straight to my phone once a week (once a day is too often for anything except coffee and sex). I would like a ring tone that sounds like Alan Ginsberg howling or maybe Yoko Ono having her dress snipped off by an audience in Carnegie Hall. I would like to have the brilliance to know how to make art relevant, revolutionary and more readily accessible.

How Many Trees Make a Forest?

2007-04-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

Technorati Profile

Dear Readers:

I am coming on 100 posts (okay, I am being generous with myself, I am only at 93...) but as far as I can tell, there are only two links to me on the internet. I am afraid my wildest dreams have come true, I am toiling in obscurity. Yeah, don't get into it with me about irony. And yes, it is probably my fault as I have treated my blog as a "red headed step child."* So, I have signed up for Technorati, which I assume is kind of a dating service for blogs. Where my blog can hang out and drink martinis with other blogs. Maybe after a few wild nights have some bloglette children.

As with my title question, how many trees make a forest*, and how many entries make a blog? We shall have to see...

Off to Boston, more soon!

The Semiotician to the Stars

* one of the funniest pseudo insults, no flame mail from my flame haired friends, please.
*I have also realized my spelling skills are going down the drain. Maybe this is a cry for help?

Recent Obsessions

2007-03-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

1) My obsession with sloths seems to be growing faster than sloths can actually move. There is something about the sloth that really gets to me. They look like mini sasquatches. They are so slow to move and sort of helpless that I find them really relaxing and soothing. I have no idea where this fixation came from, but they work about as well as a full glass of merlot for making me feel mellow.

2) Being a listmaker and working at Google has trianglated to make me start to keep lists and lists of interesting words, urls, and concepts. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all of them. (Also, a quick shout-out to my co-workers whom I think collectively we are either an encyclopedia or a parliament of owls.)

Here is a sample:
Isle of Sark
fonts in other languages
monkey butler
erin du jour
oblique widget
concertina wire
the mad max version
olly olly oxenfree
zeitgeist ricochet
sham trends

3) The Oblique Widget is based on the work of Brian Eno.

4) lipstick, to be honest.

5) Gardenias, jasmine, oranges.

6) Ping Pong championships. I have been working on my spin!

7) The Deja Deck, because suffering is hip!

8) Animus & Anima

9) A web site that discusses how to "learn to become soul mates." Precious, that.

10) My bike, the *sweet* two wheeled chariot.

Prose Poem For Norman Morrison

2007-03-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

The Whole World is Watching

(protest chant during the Vietnam War)

MO RI XON

Enflamed, engulfed, passion
Say goodbye, to Emily
Children give such peace
A vigil, a comparison
Gasoline, shared pain
Those who come back legless
Soulless, a human tear
But, the monk does not move
A light blue car remains
In the name of God, stop the war.
Public outcry
Self-immolation has no effect
But to burn away innocence
There are no images intense enough
to change
The course of history
Only the passion that frightens
and mouths left in awe
Ten years passed by before the war ended
Most beloved, all
And to you, the one with the war hawks
Men masked and ready to hunt
Do you know the meaning of sacrifice?
The whole world is watching.

COMING AT YOU FROM VERMONT

2007-02-28T07:56:00.000-08:00

A new prose poem in process I workshopped yesterday that got a good response. Why is it that I am suddenly healthy, vibrant and inspired when I only have two days left...oh, the irony. Back in Santa Monica this weekend and I am going to rock a t-shirt.

CHANGE YOUR NAME

Hope change your name to desire and only be an owl if it pleases you. Ask who and where and why and when. Put your hosannas on a rosary string. Ask who and where and why and how. Put the hope away and sting with desire, fly with flame, clasp at life with clawed feet. Draw yourself a new face. Ask who is this new face? What is this beak, these eyes that shine gold? Let desire falcon sharp in your mind. Cut off your right breast and call yourself an Amazon, but do not cry over your clipped wing. Let a cuss spit out when passion reaches pitch. Nightbird for whom do you pray? Look at your heart from the rafters. Funnel the sounds of your beloved. Remember you only have to be an owl if it pleases you.

Vermont Studio Center: New Prose Poetry

2007-02-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Here at the Vermont Studio Center for my two week residency, and I am overjoyed. I think I may become an artist colony junkie. It is like being in a parallel universe where art is actually considered a full time, viable job. So far I have been writing on and off, after my first few days here fighting my jet lag, finding my luggage, and coming down with the flu.

Here are a few new prose poems in process:

What Happens to Poetry in a Black Hole?

It becomes more intense because neither matter nor energy can escape. Black holes eat words, organized matter, and spit out random noise. Black holes are made of poetry, and snow smuggled from the North Pole. The information held in a poem is a paradox. It cannot be destroyed but neither can it exist. Confident supergenuises are convinced they are right. But Physicists are skeptical that poets can discern the singularity at the heart of a black hole. Some people reverse their words, or fall into a singularity and get lost. They become poetry, until their information begins to leak out, though no one can explain why or how this happens. The universe sometimes follows the rules of a Baseball Encyclopedia, where information can be retrieved at will if you choose to understand it. The poetry that becomes white noise tends to be accepted grudgingly. Scientists read it and stated in their report, “It is possible to be wrong more than twice.”

How Come Poetry Can’t Regrow Body Parts?

Slice though your finger with a piece of sharp poetry, or nail yourself to the wall with a bon mot and chances are that pieces of your body will become gangrenous and fall off. Poetry is no match for the salamander, who can grow new parts with very little fuss or concern. Why is poetry so weak in the face of science? Why are words no match for immortality? When poets are wounded, skin, muscle and blood vessels revert to their undifferentiated states. They form spongy masses and their cells go back in time to retrace their memories to assemble a new sentence or group of words. As embryos, poets grew arms, legs, lungs, and a heart with no problem whatsoever, yet they are unable to truly repair damage. Only the liver, sometimes abused in a state of angst, or pickled by patronage to a local watering hole, shows any flexibility. But on the whole, poetry does not have the regenerative pathways to assemble new body parts. Poets think that the reason for this is that sprouting new words at a rapid rate looks a lot like cancer. The longevity of our words makes poets vulnerable to accumulations and roadblocks. Scientists need to work with poets to figure out to override language in order to divert stop signs without sparking a malignant rampage.

Ain't No Houellebecq Girl?

2007-01-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

OF FRENCH LITERATURE AND GWEN STEFANI

I know, it's a bad headline, but it made me laugh.
Michel Houellebecq, the enigmatic French author, on the other hand more often makes me grimace and sort of contort my brain into all sorts of rediculous pretzels. I am in the process of processing "The Possibility of an Island" his most recent novel translated from the French and published by Knopf. Houellebecq is the kind of man you want to keep his hands on the table, and out of his pockets, if you know what I mean. He is very clever, and the structure of the book is quite ingenious. The story of the narrator, Daniel, is told in segments that are written as "commentary" or "personal history" of his life and involvement with a religious cult that looks to clone its members in order to give them a semblance of eternal life. Interspersed within these chapters are commentaries written by clones who are living in a future dystopia where evolved "neohumans" have separated from humans who have devolved back into a primal state and are living in small tribes. The Earth's climate has gone through several stages, on of which being the "Great Drying Up" and "The Second Decrease."

I WANT CANDY

The main character, Daniel, is a very loathsome character. Sort of like if you took Borat and made him a nihilist. He is a comedian of shock value, and is quite effusive about his success and money. He feels little outside of his own self-centered world that is mostly a meditation on his own personal pleasure. He has no sense of any of the more positive sides of humanity, the sort of man who falls in love for the first time at 40, and even then, lust is a more intense emotion he could feel that any sort of fleeting love. Daniel is obsessed with his sexuality and what he can no longer get: younger women. Thus, upon aging and being dumped by his young actress girlfriend, his life is over and he commits suicide. For him, if there is no possibility of sex with young girls, there is no reason to live. Obviously he is not a character who is a hero, or even an anti-hero. He is simply endemic of human foibles and an extreme extension of what I believe Houellebecq is positing as the male ego. It was difficult to read, sort of like being stuck inside of the narration of an extremely self-indulgent child who sees the whole world as an extension of their ability to get their desires met.

DISSING DYSTOPIA

The chasm between European and English language fiction is vast. Suprisingly so, for me. Reading "The Possibility of an Island" felt sort of like Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" streamed through a science fiction prism (and I am not sure which one, as nothing in my mental library is adding up). English language dystopias are most often fixated on the tyranny of corporations and organizations. Think Orwell's "1984" or Huxley's "Brave New World." Both contemplate how science, social engineering and the hegemony of power structures can subvert the human will. Houellebecq's novel does not deal with politics, or social organizations. Perhaps this has to do with the long history of Christian religions in Europe that Houellebecq's dystopia is ecological and religious. His cult, called "Elhomites" are never disturbed by the goverment and there is a general lack of paranoia you see in American fiction, such as in Pynchon. His narrator, Daniel, is fixated on Sex and Power, instead of the American obsession with Money and Power. It is interesting how our societies create different perversions.

FRENCH FRIED

Perhaps the way I am reading this book had to do with the fact that I just watched two French films. One was, "The Beat that My Heart Skipped" you may watch it expecting a story of violence as the movie is about a thug. But not just any thug, a thug who wants to be a concert pianist who is decent and kind. The movie is never about the plot so much, it is about the soul, always about the soul. God bless, them, cinema is still art and a potential meditation on philosophy.

But back to the novel, love in Houellebecq's novel is survival of the fittest. As the character of Daniel states, "love makes you weak, and the weaker of the two is oppressed, tortured and finally killed by the other, who in his or her turn oppresses, tortures and kills, without having evil intention, without even getting pleasure from it, with complete indifference. That is what men, normally, call love." The life and death struggle of two souls trying to join in an anihilation of the individual. Not exactly the Americanized Hallmark greeting type of love. It's not "You're Special!" or the Hollywood type love, boy meets girl, boy disses and loses girl, boy become a bit more civilized and less of an asshole and wins the girl back. As the French would say, "vive le difference!" It seems, one takes love too seriously, and one doesn't take it seriously enough.

FEMME FATALES

Reading Houellebecq I could see women growing quite disgusted. The main character's first wife turns forty and basically puts herself out to pasture to die alone. Once desire is gone, love is gone, for this character. I would not say it is a misogynist novel though, only due to two factors, first the commentary of one of Daniel's clones who because they are neohuman, can see how the original Daniel's perceptions are archaic. Secondly, there is a portion of the book that shows Daniel's weakness and the sadness that comes with his aging, and how in the end he is at the mercy of culturally-held ageism, too.

In the end, and after only one read I took "The Possibility of an Island" to be extremely clever, but it did not move me in the same way that Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" did. I think it had something to do with the main character being such a jackass that it was hard for me to empathize with his troubles, and after a while his whining about the state of growing older grew old itself.

Childhood Regression

2007-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

I spent the first of this year driving from Portland to Takilmah, Oregon with my good friend Mia (aka the Business Casual Backpacker). It has always been a fantasy for me to stay in a house in the trees: maybe primordial, maybe a past life to animal regression. It wasn't the kitsch factor, or some sort of log cabin lust. Although I do think it had a bit to do with the literature of my youth: Caddie Woodlawn, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe. At a very young age I was familiar with how to make pemmican and weave a mat out of reeds. Part girl scout, part restless mind. There are certain types of air: moist, grassy, pine scented, mineral rich dirt particles, fresh oxygen and chlorophyll that strikes deep into the soul of my child-self. I also associate this state of mind with a certain type of cloud cover, as a child growing up in MIssissippi, when it would rain an epic storm in the afternoon and then the sun would come out between still charcoal clouds, I named this God Sky. The rays of sunlight that broke through the gray blue bruise of a storm was a message from God. (The message: "Hello, little girl") A caress, a reminder. My earliest bouts of curiousity were with the bend in a creek, what the air would do next. When the sun is hot and the grass under my feet is cool, is a delicacy I can almost taste in my mouth.

So, I had wanted to go to the "Treesort" in Takilmah for about a year, it was one of the mental boondoggles I am prone to, the research and then the addition to a pie in the sky list of things I want to do before I die. Many are simple (riding horses again, and maybe taking some small jumps), some too far away (tea in the sahara), staying in a treehouse was precisely on my path. With a wonderment of luck, I rejoiced. Hallelujah for houses in the trees!

Some photos:
The Foresttree, which shook in the wind, and the rope bridges made me almost hyperventilate.

The Peacock Perch, which Mia and I stayed in after our harrowing encounter with the Forresttree. The owner called us wussies. But hey, we wanted a good night's sleep.

View out of the window was quite mossy:

Moody morning in Oregon, but quite beautiful:

This Studebaker was left with papers and one glove in the front seat.

Horses eating breakfast.

Overall, a totally wonderful experience which I would recommend to anyone. They also do ropes courses, but if I were you I would wear a helmet.

The Semiotician: working overtime

2007-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers of the Semiotician to the Stars:

Do not fret, or feel abandoned! There are many new posts in the pipeline, so be on the lookout for:
*Marxism and Hipsters!
*Angelina Jolie, the Virgin Mary, and WalMart (I know, it sounds like a bar joke!)
*The Treesort
*Travels: The Semiotician and The Business Casual Backpacker hit the road!
*New poetry, yes, it's true!

Happy 2007, now scroll and read about John and Yoko!

xoxox
The Semi

Personal Semiotics: The Ballad of John and Yoko

2007-01-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

For years I always thought of love, at least for me, as a spark. What most characterized this was the myth of the meeting of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Yoko, mounting one of her genius art shows. One of the pieces was the ladder in the gallery. John Lennon climbs the ladder and looking through the spyglass sees the small script affixed to the ceiling.

“Yes”

And he knows he has met his soul mate. The affirmation of the word, to travel up to the highest point only to receive the simplicity of her statement. In 1966 the word “yes” was a manifesto. It was enough to be an entire worldview. It could be the answer to any question the climber might possibly be thinking as they ascend the steps.

That is exactly what I thought love was. At the most basic, love was like two circles of thoughts, ideas, emotions that find a common space. It was two thought bubbles bursting into one.

I waited for this to happen to me. Sending my writings and thoughts off into the void. Into the dusky crevices of bars, trading my own writing to hopefully get a “yes” in graduate school. Embracing strangers as if they had caught me from a fall off of a ladder. I believed.

ART AND THE WIKID

Then one day, I looked up Yoko Ono on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono) . I had seen her exhibition “YES” in San Francisco at the SFMOMA. I had bought her thought sculptures or heuristic conceptual art book, “Grapefruit” for friends in art school as a map. I had bypassed all of the conjecture about her place “breaking up the Beatles” or “being imperious.” I figured her as being a very political woman, who lived, and still does live, in the midst of many strong characters in music and history. I didn’t know much about her, beyond that she had found the moment I was looking for, and that it had been mythologized. Two brilliant people meeting, falling into an understanding that surpasses culture, time, space, and even perhaps language.

Perhaps I was naïve, or maybe just self-aggrandizing, that I believed that there was someone out there who would hear my words and understand deeply. They would climb my ladder and hear my eternal yes.

On Wikipedia I got a dose of something different than my lovely little perfectly folded origami of a story. Wikipedia had another version of history, that states that Yoko Ono had been working hard to pursue John Lennon, and that there was no “yes moment” as I had imagined, and that instead he thought she was interesting but did not climb that ladder and have a massive love epiphany. Two years later they got together, and like most lovers, their story springs from a moment of fiction that has importance only because of the fact that their narrative carried into the future.

There is also an aspect to Yoko’s art that alters her meeting with John Lennon. For an artist interested in “happenings” and “events” it seems that connection for her is art, and perhaps in the topsy turvy way that art is self referential, her meeting and subsequent relationship with Lennon is in itself an artistic event, unable to be separated from the “yes” moment.

And this is not to dis on Wikipedia, but it would be similar to looking for the Tooth Fairy and having the entry state that it is your mom and dad.

HEARTS OF GOLD--CUZ WE'RE GETTIN' OLDER

No one will ever know the truth, since whatever happens between two people is contentious even between those two. For months I missed my Yoko and John story, the elements so clean and tailored. An artists’ version of, "I saw her across the crowded room, and I knew that eternally s/he would be mine." I loved my John and Yoko story because it was deeper that the story of, “let me tell you the story of how I met your mother.” It was deeper than, "I read her profile online and she seemed interesting. Or like a decent person." Or more and more accurately of late in our modern society ,“he didn’t seem like a psycho killer.” Or "I saw her across the bar, and damn, I have been looking forever for a woman that good looking who had a Heart of Gold.” Ok, so I obviously hate Neil Young. Not Neil Young but the song “Heart of Gold.” If I ever get that on another mixed tape from a man, it is a no go.

DON'T READ THIS PART IF YOU ARE A NEIL YOUNG FAN:

The song Heart of Gold is about a jaded ass-baboon who wants his idealized version of a pure heart. It is this kind of man who loved under aged girls (so innocent, so untainted!) and who loved the movie “Leaving Las Vegas.” Yeah, there are so many hookers with large breasts and even larger snow white hearts who want to watch your sorry ass drink itself to death! Because you are so troubled, and we are just very happy to have attention without getting paid for it!!! (I also hate the movie The Unforgiven, but I shall save that for another post.)

LOVE IS LIKE A TIGER IN THE ZOO

So where does it end? Am I, god forbid, “jaded?” Not really. I think that most of the truly amazing moments are dependent upon what moments are: temporal. And that connection continues to happen in this world, not just at the top of ladders. I think in writing this my motive is persuasion. That everyone who reads it looks around for their own “yes” moment and holds it dear---as the strange little exotic animal it is---an eye to eye understanding that perhaps we only see on safari through this modern culture of ours.

Google's Spam Recipes

2006-12-03T09:00:00.001-08:00

Every time the Semiotician checks her email...and clicks the "SPAM" folder to make sure nothing important is being deleted without her knowledge, Google serves up a very funny spam recipe at the top of her Gmail page. Some delicacies:

*Creamy Spam Broccoli Casserole (I didn't know Spam could become "creamy")
* Spam Skillet Casserole (you are supposed to broil this until it is golden)
* Spam Primavera (toss with linguini, serve immediately!)
* Vineyard Spam Salad (the mouth watering combo of grapes, spam, peapods, and onions!)
* Spam Imperial Tortilla Sandwich (not sure where the "imperial" comes from, maybe some sort of spamquest in S. America?)
* Spam Swiss Pie (Is it for dessert, or more like a quiche?)

Spamilicious!

The Semiotician on the Celebrity Sandwich: Gotham to Santa Monica

2006-12-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

The Semiotician to the Stars just got back from New York where she had the opportunity to hang out at the Gotham Film Awards celebrating Tim Robbins, Kate Winslet, and Edward Norton. I had an all access pass and a sneaky little black dress on, and delighted in the fact that I was neither there to work or schmooze, but instead was able to stand back and watch the spectacle with my trained semiotic eye. But as I learned, just as the shoemaker's children are barefoot and the doctor's kids are sick I have more to say about image than celebreality. Go figure.

What I Learned:

(1) The red carpet was actually baby blue, but everyone still calls in the red carpet.
(2) Most of the press were nice and very bored, I mean it's not exactly breaking news on Iraq.
(3) The stars are able to morph into photogenic plastic face, like an instant mask for the camera as they are shot on the "red" carpet. It's eerie!!! I sort of want to learn how to do it for christmas photos. Say cheesy!
(4) In order to get a photo the press yells the person's name over and over like a dog. "Here Isabella, here, here Isabella." It is really demeaning.
(5) There is really no reason to ever speak to a celebrity, unless you changed their diapers or are sleeping with them. Everything else just sounds like freaky small talk.
(6) It is weird to catch a celebrity staring at you, and you catch their eye. Yeah you know who you are.
(7) The starlets want to be liked. Brittany Murphy and the Japanese actress from Babel Rinko Kikuchi smiled at me so big you would think I was a New York Times reporter. And they are smart, because I could be, that is the fun of it, if you are there you could be anyone.
(8) I almost got stuck in a Kate Winslet/Brittany Murphy sandwich in the bathroom.
(9) EVERYONE IS SHORT except Tim Robbins and Edward Norton. The actresses were tiny, not skeletal but diminuitive.
(10) The Latin American directors who were in my UCLA film class were there--Innaritu and Del Toro, and it was strange seeing them behind the scenes. I spoke to Del Toro and told him that I really enjoyed his talk after the class. But I got the feeling that after the full press junket they had been on since my class they were probably more "leave me alone" than "we are all connected" and "disobedience is a virtue." See the quotes from my last post, then imagine every quote put through an Academy Award speech translator.

Cinematic Widsom, Revealed

2006-11-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

As many readers of the Semiotician know, I have been seeing a lot of films and having the great opportunity through UCLA to participate in talk-back sessions with the directors and screenwriters. Here are a few quotes from Jean Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children, Amelie), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, Babel), and Guillermo Del Toro (Mimic, Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth).

"There is no new art, it is a mix you put in a blender and get a new juice that you can mix with other juices."
--Jean Pierre Jeunet on novel art forms

"I wanted to use all of my notes, the whole box, but I needed a story."
--Jean Pierre Jeunet, on keeping all of his inspiration on scraps of paper in a box.

"Words are floating boats in an ocean of emotion."
--Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

"Most dangerous are the ideological borders...our inability to express subtlety in politics, even in intimate politics there is a lack of connection--- a Disneyland reality instead of the horrible reality we are actually living."
--Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

"The human deserts are the most difficult to survive."
--Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

"The age of reason is the age of horror."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"I thought Hollywood would be like a tidal wave, it would come at you but you could swim against it. Instead it is more like mildew or humidity."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"Form is content, in fantasy."
--Guillermo Del Toro, on keeping illustrated notebooks.

"Life sends the letter, but not the dictionary to interpret it."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"Fantasy is the main barometer of human culture. There are always two kinds, those that are against the system and those that are for it. One is spiritual and one is cynical."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"We live in a time when cynicism has usurped intelligence."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"The last vestige of spirituality is in genre."
--Guillermo Del Toro

"Disobedience is a virtue. It is a product of responsibility and true choice."
--Guillermo Del Toro

**disclaimer:
All quotes here are written down exactly as heard, but I can't claim perfection...so you may want to contact Anne Thompson, the moderator of the series, for transcripts/ video of the event if you want to repost.