--- Office Muzak for Monday,

--- Office Muzak for
Monday, October 6, 2003 Just made a copy (courtesy Mr. H.) this
weekend, so I have not listened to it fully, but just from the little
bit I’ve heard, it sounds damn
good. Concrete Blonde is one of those bands that it’s worthwhile to
shell out the money for a ticket to one of their shows. They are one of
those bands who love
to play for an audience. I caught one of their performances at First
Ave. last year and, honestly, it was one of the best shows I’ve ever
seen. The music was good, and more importantly it sounded good:
they spent the time and the effort on making sure it was a worthwhile
experience for their fans to come out on a cold February night to see
them and for that I appreciate them. Nothing cheeses me off more than
spending perfectly good money on a concert ticket to see an artist who
could not effing care less about the audience’s experience (Axl Rose
knows who he is). From what I’ve heard, this CD catches the whole
Concrete Blonde ambience rather nicely. Check it out if you get the
chance: Johnette whales. And there’s your double entendre homonym for
the day.
--- We had a busy weekend at the Cake Eater Apartment. I haven’t read
the Sunday paper yet. And it’s Monday afternoon. Rather pathetic, eh?
We had seven people over for dinner yesterday---a multiple birthday
celebracion---so shopping, cleaning and much finding of pots and pans
for the cook of the evening was in order. Strange thing that. Handing
your kitchen over to someone else to cook dinner is somewhat nerve
wracking, especially when the cook of the evening is a voodoo goddess.
Now, don’t think we had a witch doctress over for dinner and that the
meal was interrupted periodically by the sticking of pins into dolls.
Our friend V. came over and made chicken mole…from scratch. And it
only took her an hour and a half. She also produced a ton of tamales,
of which a Ziploc was forgotten in my freezer (poor me). Wench. I’m
not insulting her, actually. It’s a compliment and she’d take it
like that, too, because she is also possessed of what some
would---charitably---call a “quirky” sense of humor.
Best damn meal that’s ever come out of my kitchen. Heavenly.
Orgasmic. Wonderful. Can’t say enough good things about it. Mmmmm.
And it was topped off with lovely limey margaritas and a chocolate
espresso cake covered in fudge. Damn. Mr. H and I also went to an
opening on Saturday night here.
Another V. related activity. V. is quite the impresario: voodoo goddess
in the kitchen, singer, painter, mother…she’s one of those people
with a serious zest for life. She likes
living---with a vengeance; she likes not only seeing what’s out
there, but experiencing it as well: she has very little fear and it’s
all centered on protecting her priorities. She’s managed to figure it
out. I envy her. Anyway, V. is a big supporter of this gallery, her
band played and she also exhibited one of her paintings in this Erotica
show. We went out to give her some of our support because she’d
asked. The show was interesting, to say the least. Not so much because
the erotic art was, in fact, erotic. It wasn’t. It didn’t trip my
trigger, that’s for sure. But it was fascinating in the sense that
what most of the artists considered to be erotic was pretty much the same as you’d find in Playboy, Hustler
or any and all pornography---hard or soft core. In the early 21st
Century, we, as a society, seem to have this notion ingrained in our
heads that everything that is erotic also has to do with the genitalia
of both sexes. The majority of the artists seemed to assume that the
only thing that’s erotic is what provokes the most visceral arousal
in their bodies. If you’d walked around the gallery, you would have
seen half-naked women in full body paint wandering around, ala Goldfinger (although, there wasn’t one who was actually wearing gold paint, but you get the idea). One woman was done up in a Cats
motif; another was painted to look like a peacock, with the feathers
attached in strategic places. They, of course, had the straight men
swirling around them, like hummingbirds to lilies. It wasn’t
precisely jaw dropping, but was still an interesting mix of the mundane
and the extraordinary: naked, painted women drinking cheap wine,
smoking cigarettes, while the men who milled around them tried not to
drool. It was, as I suspect, as the organizers had intended it to be:
just enough shock to make you think twice about the incongruity of it,
but not enough to turn you off of the whole show entirely.
The paintings weren’t remarkable, on the whole, but there were a few
notable exceptions. V. was one of the few artists who seemed to look
beyond the whole notion of “boobs on display” to actually explore
what lay beneath eroticism, but she was definitely the exception to the
rule. For the most part, there were paintings depicting S&M,
threesomes; lesbian lurve (which is always a crowd pleaser for both the
lesbians and the straight men that happen to be around); nudes up the
wazoo; there was even some prison love and one painting with a very
anatomically correct devil overlooking two bikers “enjoying” each
other (their facial expressions showed more surprise at being watched
by the devil than actual pleasure). But it was all the same as you’d find in a Penthouse.
In fact, I would not be surprised at all to see that biker/devil
painting as an illustration in gay porn. I got the impression that
despite the leanings of the crowd---these are the people who choose to
live in the world outside of going to church on Sundays to atone for
the mundane Saturday night screw--- they still held the idea that
anything erotic is still something that---for whatever reason---is
considered to be relatively dirty. Except that they take it to the
opposite end of the spectrum: they’re not going to hide it, but
celebrate it instead. It’s surprising to me that, despite their
openness about all the things they consider to be erotic, how universal
it all is. The same art they had hanging on the wall in this gallery,
celebrating eroticism, was the same art you’d find in a porn mag that
a preacher in the boondocks pulls out of a box hidden under the
floorboards when he feels the need. The idea of eroticism seems to
universal. Whether you’re a Bible thumper or a multi-pierced,
multi-tattooed, mohawk sporting, leather daddy, chances are that you
probably like the same things: the same things turn you on; you just
react to them differently. The modern idea of eroticism seems to aim
directly for the groin, and for me at least, there seems to be
something wrong with that notion. Eroticism should be about more than
just arousing. It should be a celebration of sexuality, and if you’re
somewhat enlightened, erotica should show that there is sensuality everywhere,
not in just what causes your body to forget it has a brain. I find it
highly interesting that at a party where a penis piñata was hanging
over the doorway (and I still don’t get why the testicles were
green), I didn’t find anything that showed me being open and
enlightened about all things sexual meant you had a different notion of
sex and erotic art than the most conservative of people. The idea of
attending an Erotica art show doesn’t bother me: I’m not scared of
sex, as some people are. I’m sure, after reading what I wrote above,
some people are thinking I’m repressed; I’m also sure that some
would be surprised that I think they have a secret stash of porn in
their nightstand. Whatever. It just seems to me, that in this day and
age, we should be beyond the notion that our groins dictate what is
sensual and what is not. There is sensuality and eroticism all around
us, and in that, I think we’re cheated when someone just slaps a nude
onto the wall and calls it erotic art. It’s not, for me, at least.
Erotica that aims for the lowest common denominator doesn’t expand
the idea of what is erotic: it just arouses---viscerally. And to me,
that’s boring, and tells me we’ve moved no further in this debate
as time has passed. Caligula would have enjoyed the show; he would have
enjoyed the painting that were on display, as would any other number of
men and women throughout the ages known for their sexuality. And while
it’s all well and good to argue that this shows we are still human
beings and that definition hasn’t changed much during the ages, it
also shows us that we haven’t progressed further than what causes
much jollity when it comes to eroticism. This showing didn’t raise
the level of the debate, and that’s sad. It could have easily done
so.