I've Been...

Still Adjusting. Still capital A.

Enjoying the cold beverages and dessert treats of summer. Mmmm.

Returning to my beloved Detroit. It's home.

Making my own breakfast cereal (thank you Fran!)

Road-tripping it with Lance! (including chasing a stranger off the road, and a trip to Frankenmuth Christmas Wonderland...)

Returning to Interlochen Arts Camp. "Sounding the call" for the first time in 8 years! I am, and will always be, an Interlochen LIFER— and bleed blue.

Weekending in Conneticuit. (Fine) and spending that time almost exclusively in a hammock.

Adventuring to the beautiful Bershires for the first time, and indulging in picnic-ing to Mahler 4 at Tanglewood

Meeting my idols: (ummm Barbra Cook anyone?!)

Having crazy 'New York' days. Example:

1. shot a commercial 
2. came home and went for a long run then 
3. discovered I had locked myself out of my apartment... so I 
4. crashed a party on the first floor of my building and 
5. climbed through their window to 
6. climb fire escape 4 stories and
7. BREAK IN to my apartment.  
8. BOOM! I AM A NINJA!!

...Consequently doing a celebratory Ninja dance.

IN. MY. CAVE. (So sorry friends, it is how I cope with difficulty! So appreciative of everyone's patience!)... but really getting to the bottom of some nitty-gritty stuff.

Celebrating 27 years in classic Silber-birthday-induced-anxiety mode.

Enjoying what can only be called Team British Invasion at the very chi chi Bar Centrale. A grand early birthday tête w/ Alexander Hansen, his gorgeous talented wife Samatha Bond, Ruthie, and our shared friend and manger Jeff. [w/Cheno, Lapaglia, Lane, Hayes SJBlock sightings]

...Only to enjoy an incredible cab ride home. The driver drove me "close enough," stopped the meter, then gave me loving, informed tour of Astoria. "Love your home" he said. What a gift.

Loving new friendships (Jill, Kudisch, Brooksher), and renewing old ones (Alley, Dane, Nick, Ari, Alex...)

Booking and filming that commercial babaaaaay...[*celebratory club dancing*]

Journeying by bus! (Ahhhh Americana at it's very... cheapest...)

Enjoying correspondence. (Always a good day when The Bantock drops you an email...)

Celebrating Bastille Day singing at The Metropolitan Room (“Ne Me Quitte Pas” anyone?)

Honoring the journey: One Year. I lived.

Planning and planning Feinstein’s solo cabaret debut. (More information to come!)

Trying to stand.

She gathered her breath and tried to stand. The muscles in her legs screamed with agony and gave way beneath the weight of her soaking clothes and spiritual depletion, but she fought on. She didn’t stop to think about it, she only worked her way upward, sweating. Clinging to the stones on the wall, she fought and wrestled her way up, and though she was heavy, and staggered when she finally lifted herself, the physical burden of her body was oddly gratifying in comparison to the agonizing weight in her heart. Victory. She gathered her posture and began to walk.

Burdened so, she made her way down the backstreet. I must find a place to rest for the night, she thought. She turned one corner, then another; made her way past the back of a putrid café, a seedy depot; throngs of rodents and the cretins of society leering at her coldly as she scrambled along. When at last she stood at the gateway to a busy street, she joined the flock of pedestrians. Each inhalation froze her soft-palette with silence and savage cold. The city consumed her; and for a little while she ceased, entirely, to think.

She leaned, forlorn against a weathered wall and thought, I am not what I was. Indeed. She was nothing, and now at least she was the possibility of something. And this she would defend.

*

She returned to find him waiting by the window. How long have I been away? she thought to herself. She recounted her journey to him, a seeming stranger after all that had passed.

“But was it not rough?” he asked after a time.

“Certainly it was rough," she replied. "Certainly I was in danger of my life! The ocean of despair, as it were, reached out for me! The impatient foam required my body for its satisfaction! I believe I enraged it by continuing to exist!” she said with a rich, dark humour, “But I am inextinguishable, it seems. I am beyond the reach of temper or of climate," she uttered, "and like a flimsy scrap of cork still bobbing in quiet bays long after the ship has floundered, I have endured…” she let out a profound sob. “Why?” she cried, “What is it that gives me this… this perpetuity?”

She laughed bitterly, her face almost imperceptibly contorting with pain and amusement. Shura did not know it at the time, but she intrinsically possessed two elusive human qualities: one we call beauty, the other called identity. And although the standard notions of disfigurement were not evident, her disfigured spirit endured a terrible sense of tragedy. And it alone articulated, and would continue to articulate, that pain was a necessity. For Shura, as for us all, pain was no accident, nor was it malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding. It was integral to her human character, both in its inflicting and in its suffering.

This is pain's role, she thought to herself, it makes beautiful.

Bastille Day at the French Embassy

Kit was invited and needed a swanky guest (me!). Knightsbridge. Embossed invitations. Full security detail. SWANK!

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called la Fête Nationale. It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution. I know this because I received a full colour handbook about the event in both French and English. Bon. C'est fantastique.

Highlights included an Eifel Tower made of baguette.
A Tour de Triumph made of mereigue.
SO. MUCH. FOOD. that was very very small.
Red, white and blue flower arrangements (blue flowers = dyed carnations)
Many many women with perfect hair.
And many many men who shrugged Gallic-ly.

Verrrrrry civilized.

Then I got caught at the food table with a very boring Englishman who wanted to discuss the American deficit.
Then he wanted to talk about how much he loved squash, and how all people that didn't love squash were stupid.
Then I excused myself as politely as possible by pretending I knew someone across the... tent.
And whilst running away from him, I then proceeded to accidentally ambushed the Ambassador's wife in the WC.
"Pardon! Pardon Madame! Je suis désolé!"
Then Kit saved me from certain death and we hastily left.
Coffee.
Laughter.
Lovely. As usual.

Vive la France.

Conversations with Kandinsky

Murnau Street with Women, 1908. Oil on cardboard

Lonely today.

Went to the Kandinsky exhibit opening at Tate Modern with Kit. The Exhibit was stunning, stirring. But the truth is, I am still unbearably scattered, broken, sucked under by the black water. The sky outside the large, imposing windows of the Tate's main gallery was decidedly menacing.

I am pleased to know Kit. He has brought serious meaning to my life at present. Totally different to any other person I have ever known. We manage to attend some wonderful artistic events together (from Orfeo to Fuerzabruta to Avenue Q), and talking with him is an indescribable pleasure. Sometimes I think the universe sends us people, and Kit and I seem to need one another in the midst of a sometimes cruel and faceless London. We've found our "guide," if you will, for this part of the journey.

I love Kandinsky. I like everything about him. His life, his birthplace (December 4, 1866, Moscow), his personal choices, and artistic integrity (in the form of the group Der Blaue Reiter at the Bauhaus).

He was often called the "Father of Abstract Art." Kandinsky trained as a lawyer in his native Russia, but discovered his true calling was in visual art. When and his wife moved to Germany, he studied art, while Mrs. Kandinsky filed for divorce. He went on to found the group Der Blaue Reiter and taught at the Bauhaus, always writing prolifically on the connections between art, music and spirituality (and found time to marry again). Much of his work was destroyed, as "degenerate", by the Nazi party.

He has some brilliant quotes:

"Every artist, as creator, must learn to express what is personally characteristic."
-- (The element of personality.)

"Every artist, as a child of his era, must express what is characteristic of this age."
-- (The element of style in its interior value, consisting of the language of the times and the language of the people.)

"Every artist, as servant of the art, must express that which is characteristic of art generally."
-- (The element of pure and eternal art, found among all human beings, among all peoples and at all times, and which appears in the work of all artists of all nations and in all ages and which does not obey, as essential element of art, any law of space or time.)

I fell in to his paintings. My limp, flimsy spirit fell head first into his spiritual world, in to his connection to something greater despite extreme adversity. And Kandinsky lightened me, lifted me up, released the burden, even if only for a moment. There is hope, there is always hope...