I wanted to chronicle my weekend because it was very enjoyable. I did a lot of different things than I have been doing lately, and it felt really good.
On Friday night, I got home and my housemate Brent asked me if I wanted to join him to watch a movie. That sounded like a really good idea, so we headed upstairs. He had not picked anything out yet, so after some fits and starts we both decided we wanted something not too taxing on the brain, and fun. He recommended a Japanese animated movie called My Neighbor Totoro, and from the opening credits it was obvious that we had made the right choice. It was made by the same guy who did Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki. Totoro is about two little girls whose mother is sick with tuberculosis in a hospital and who move to the country with their college professor father. In their new home, they encounter soot sprites and bunny-rabbit spirits and they find the shamanic world tree. Deep in its trunk, the littlest girl Mei meets Totoro, a huge and benevolent, if inarticulate, nature guardian. The world of the movie is very like a Shinto folktale with animated dustballs and an overlapping of imagination and reality. I really enjoyed watching it and went to bed happy.
For my first stop on Saturday, I participated in an Earth Day sale event at Buffalo Exchange on LaBrea. The store has vintage and resale stuff, and they were putting a bunch of items out for $1 each with all of the proceeds to benefit a Galapagos tortoise habitat rehabilitation foundation. I thought there would be a big crowd, but it was a really weird scene. I parked around the corner and walked up and there were about twenty people milling around on the sidewalk. At first I thought they were at the restaurant a few doors down for a brunch waitlist, but as I got closer I realized they were indeed at the store. The way the sale was being handled was that one bin at a time of the cheap goods were being brought out from the back, and the people were hovering in wait for that. As soon as a new bin was carted out and set down, they were on it like piranhas. I’ve literally never seen anything like it. I’ve done my share of thrift-moshing, and I’ve seen grown women scream at each other at the Barney’s sale in Manhattan, but this was something else. There was even a sign on the wall saying “Cash Only” and “No Fighting!” Apparently there was a physical altercation the year before; way to get into the charitable spirit of the event, guys. There was some stuff that no one wanted, a few picked-over bins that I rooted through, and I found one faux tortoiseshell (how ironic) belt that I liked, with a sort of rune pattern on it. I paid my dollar and left so I could go eat something and find parking for my next stop, which was the highlight of the weekend. Amoeba Music in Hollywood participated in Record Store Day, the event designed by indie music retailers to ask for support from fans and to give back to the music community. Amoeba had bands coming in all day for guest DJ spots, and the 2 pm slot was occupied by Daniel Ash and David J from Bauhaus and Love Rockets. I LOVE those bands and I got gothed out in a long black dress and arrived early to stake out a good place near the stage. It turns out there was not much of a crowd specifically there for them (besides the usual weekend frenzy at Amoeba) because the set wasn’t promoted very widely, but there were a handful of other black-clad fans there who must have responded to the email blast like I did. I was looking at CD’s around 1:45 pm near the front of the store, and turned to head to the back of the store for the set. There was a dude walking right in front of me in black knee-high boots, leather pants and a wool military coat, with long black hair. I thought for a second, the way he's dressed, he must be here for Bauhaus. Then I realized, no, he IS Bauhaus – it was Daniel Ash. Yaay! He was walking in with a box of vinyl to spin, and vanished into the backstage area with an Amoeba employee, a lady whom he seemed to know well. David J showed up a few minutes later, wearing a really nice black suit. I hung out by the small but expertly-curated media book section until Brently Heilbron came out to announce raffle winners and Bauhaus. David J spun for the whole hour, starting with the famous whistling song from A Fistful of Dollars and segueing into dub reggae and electronica. He’s very proper and professorly, and seemed a little rattled by the rapt attention he was getting from fans grouped around the stage, including me by that point; I had picked up an armful of books and was camped out by the country music bin. He stepped up to the microphone and gave a “nothing to see here” announcement to reiterate that he was spinning and not performing, but only a few people trickled away. He then announced that he had a stack of stencils designed by an artist friend of his free for the taking, and put them and a bunch of stickers on the stage. I went up to get some, and a friendly audience member handed me a stencil, which depicts the angel from the Go Away White album cover along with the Bauhaus face logo. Daniel Ash came out a few minutes later and started a surprise autograph signing. He was very sweet and personable, talking to everyone and signing as many stickers and stencils as anyone wanted. I got in line and when it was my turn I told him I was very glad they have a new record out. I stepped back toward the book section and kept reading the stuff I had pulled out while absorbing the music and general vibe. One book I looked at was Gothic Lolita, a collection of hundreds of photos of Japanese kids, most of whom dress like china dolls or Marilyn Manson. One girl was my Japanese soul sister: her apartment looked exactly like mine except her books were in Japanese, otherwise it could have been decorated by me. She is a clothing designer and I loved the self-made velvet suit she was wearing. I also read an astrology book called Rock Your Stars! which was sort of enjoyable in a dumb way. The last book I looked at was a photography book by David Byrne of Talking Heads. I saw some of his work in a Soho art gallery in New York City a few years ago, and this book was really cool. A lot of the photos were from Mexico City and featured things like a booth full of cherubs and Baby Jesuses for sale in an outdoor market. The last pieces were a series of photos of books on topics of spirituality whose titles when strung together seemed to point out a pathway to paradise. I could feel all of the images working on my subconscious and combining with the music, and it was all very creatively stimulating. I was done with all the books I wanted to look at, so I put them back and then I went over to the Goth/Industrial section and wandered around there for a few more minutes. The set finally wrapped up and Daniel Ash disappeared, but then I noticed that David J had stepped downstage and was also signing things and talking to people, so I hurried back over. Mine was the last autograph he signed, and I had to duck under obnoxious people with a digital camera to get to him, but he was very gracious and waited for me. I wanted to get him to sign the stencil, too, as well as Daniel Ash so I’d have a complete record of the event, and so I could hang it up on the inspiration board of images I keep hanging over my desk at home. (It's in good company there, because the idea board already has a lot of angel imagery alongside other music stuff. It's like superconcentrated creative energy that I use to help me write.)
As an aside, this was my third close encounter with Daniel Ash. I saw Love and Rockets back when I was just a teenager, and I stood right in front of him in a small club in Austin, TX. We sort of stared at each other because I was only about four feet away from him on the front row. I clearly remember I was wearing cool black leather lace-up boots that were new and that I was very proud of, a black t-shirt and red tartan pants, and my mother's old black cashmere cardigan sweater that she bought in Scotland. My second brush with him was when Bauhaus opened for Nine Inch Nails on the With Teeth tour. Daniel Ash ran into the audience playing guitar, and came and stood right in front of me. I also reviewed his solo album a few years ago for a music newspaper on Long Island. As for the rest of Bauhaus, I met Peter Murphy once long ago in New York City and he seemed very, very strange. I think he is a brilliant performer, but I also think from my brief observation of him that he is the kind of artist who has a very challenging demeanor, not a mean person, but not approachable in any sort of normal way. It's very difficult to interview someone like that; I did not interview him, I was just sort of around after one of his solo shows, and watched him interacting with fans. I'm not sure I would want to interview him, although I love his music. I could be completely wrong about him, there is also the issue that after a show, the artist is often emotionally tapped out, or supercharged and ready to hit the town, yet that is when everyone wants to talk to them, and it's not fair to judge them solely on how they present themselves in that moment. They've already given it all up on stage and just want to get away, and who can blame them? But also factoring in the difficulties Bauhaus had that caused them to break up in 1983, and the interpersonal issues that apparently arose during the making of this new record (this is absolutely fascinating, see the last paragraph under "Reformation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus_%28band%29), I think that there is something about Mr. Murphy that is indeed complicated.
After Amoeba, I decided to go back to Buffalo Exchange to see if the crowd had dispersed. It was on my way home, and I still wanted to contribute more money to the turtles, and as I had been leaving before, I had heard the guy working the sale say that the bin they had just brought out was the last one. I swung back by, and the pandemonium was gone. It was just me and one girl who worked there in some awesome shades and an ‘80’s sweater. I found four things to try, and gave her a five and told her to keep the change for the charity. I ended up giving one of the t-shirts I got, for an L.A. skate and surf store, to my housemate Dave because he moved out here from Florida a few months ago with a light load and he needs clothes. I also got a cool polyester ‘70’s shirt that I may resell somewhere else, not sure yet. I like it but am not sure it’s me.
I love thrifting because I love clothes and I always notice them, and one girl at the Bauhaus event stood out to me because I was so impressed with her personal style. She was wearing all white except for a black waist-length cape decorated with a vintage brooch, and she was small and very pretty with long dark hair sleekly pulled back into a ponytail. She was subtly goth and very elegant in an understated way. I was also happy with what I was wearing, a long black handkerchief-hem cotton skirt with a lacy Mexican dress layered over it, with sheer ankle socks, an unstructured jacket, also black, and a gold purse and flat shoes I bought at Target that are made from richly patterned and multicolored ribbons (http://www.target.com/Xhilaration-Sable-Ballet-Flats-Tapestry/dp/B000PW502G/sr=1-2/qid=1208823777/ref=sr_1_2/602-3825320-7192648?ie=UTF8&index=target&rh=k%3Aribbon%20shoes&page=1). I’ve been trying lately to update my style while keeping true to my roots, and I really liked that outfit because I felt it looked both classically goth and modern. I’ll have to remember it.
On Sunday, I just did chores around the house and worked on my manuscript rewrite for The Flower of Knighthood, and that was all good, too, because I was a little tired from the rest of the weekend. I said in my last post that I wanted to get out more, and this was all awesome. I really have been holed up in a cave writing my Parsifal book and it feels good to introduce some more energy flow. Stay tuned for further adventures.
For more on the Galapagos tortoise charity drive: http://www.buffaloexchange.com/bulletins_det.php?Bulletin_ID=787
For more on David J: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J
For more on Daniel Ash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ash
For more on Amoeba Music: http://www.amoeba.com/
For more on My Neighbor Totoro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totoro
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