He Knew All The Words

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Well, we’re six weeks into what was once a new year. On December 31 I threw a party like I’ve never thrown before. It was, by some accounts, the best new year’s eve ever. I don’t know about that, but it was pretty special. As usual, I had some serious collaborative help in making the party so great. Evan designed a wonderful invitation. Paula made insanely amazing ice cream sandwiches, and Michael accepted my invitation to create a photo project documenting all the guests through portraiture.

Early last year, Michael Dunham published pictures he’d taken in Paris to Facebook. He shot the City of Lights on film that had expired in 1949, and the results were these grainy, mottled, enigmatic, and original views of Paris. Quite a feat. I was so taken with the pictures that I bought a large print of one of the images and it now hangs framed just here beside my desk.

When thinking of some kind of entertainment for my New Year’s guests, I wondered if Michael might turn his expired-film lens to portraiture, and shoot the faces of the partiers. He loved the idea, even though it meant he would be joining the ranks of “party host” — meaning he would both be the center of attention and not be able to just relax and carry on like the other beautiful guests. He devised a program of shooting two portraits of each person, a bust and a close-up of the face, eyes closed. I created a little portrait studio in my guestroom, moving the bed out, and painting the far wall a nice rich gray. Michael brought the lighting, his camera, a cache of 35mm film that expired in 1946, and his considerable charm to explain to his sitters what would happen.

I printed up little tickets, and as each friend arrived for the party they were given a ticket, an explanation, and an introduction to Michael. Once he got going, Michael didn’t leave that little impromptu studio for hours. We brought him drinks and spaghetti and guest after guest.

Not every partier made it in for a portrait. But 51 of us did. Michael was number 51, and I took his pictures under his direction. Here is everyone, in the order they were shot (click on these square thumbnails to see the full-frame images):

Moving from the past and film that expired in 1946, I visited the future by buying a bunch of Impossible Project film for my old Polaroid. I shot some pix in the portrait studio, but I shot more of the party itself. 64 in total, though one went missing. If you are the partier who stole that picture, please return it! (I recommend going full-screen with this slide show — the pix turned out great.)

ZAZA NEW YEAR’S EVE 2011/2012
BY THE NUMBERS…

60 partiers, ranging in age from 20s to 50s
2 guests bounced from the portrait studio for bad behavior
2 downstairs neighbors who encouraged the noise and partied right along with us
0 crying girls

16 bottles of champagne + 1 magnum drunk
8 full bottles of whiskey drunk
10 bottles of wine drunk
1 bottle of gin drunk
1 bottle of vodka drunk

50 meatballs eaten
6 pounds of sausages eaten
4 pounds of spaghetti eaten
3 baguettes eaten
40 homemade ice cream sandwiches eaten
4 baked treats brought

102 formal portraits taken
64 Polaroids taken
1 Polaroid stolen

150 party poppers exploded
25 noisemakers spun
3 solid days of clean-up after
120 glasses washed by hand
42 spaghetti bowls washed by hand

1 shawl and 1 epi-pen left behind
0 damage to the bathroom — a first!

Thanks to Stas, Jim, Mark, and Doug for the following photos that really capture the fun fun fun.

Invitation and portrait project tickets

Well well well, look who finally got his face in some society pages (scroll down a bit). The book we published about Romain de Plas was the cause for a lovely celebration at Archivia Books. This is a fantastic independent bookstore on the Upper East Side, a real gem of a place, run by the wonderful Cynthia Conigliaro. She did it up right for us and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

In related news, I am quoted in this article about de Plas in The Lo-Down, an online magazine about the Lower East Side, where de Plas lived and worked for a good amount of time. He spoke in an interview of not knowing what to make of Downtown, having spent much time abroad and most of his New York time to that point Uptown. Personally, I can’t think of a better place for an artist than Downtown Manhattan. But he had a true artist’s soul, which lived in its own world and by its own rules. I’m glad the show and the book are beginning to get a bit of press. It’s a project I’m very proud to have had a hand in.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tonight I had the most wonderful conversation about poetry with Scott. I hope this poem will one day be as important to him as it is to me. And by important, I mean it is the best piece of poetry I have ever known. Click the play button above to hear me read it.

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

—Wallace Stevens

Now I know
my blindness.
I won’t go
without help.
Stumbling down
Twenty-third
the wrong state
of mind skews
souls from the
wrong counties.
Brooklyn’s kings
abdicate.
Queens’ queens lie.

I’ve never
lied to you.
I’ve only
marked spaces
between us
with noises.
Weightlessness
infiltrates.
This crush of
loneliness
penetrates.

Fine. I lied.

The sounds of air cross time
In poems or sighs
Nathan types, his periods emphatic
And his immature voice
Raised by song.

Everything hurts eventually.
It always did, but later
We realize and admit it.

Autumn is the purest tonic.

Proud to have protesters showing up on my site. See below!

I wish Sen. Sanders a long, healthy, and politically active life.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The folks over at GetEqual used one of my tweets in a video pushing for President Obama to come out in favor of marriage equality. The last few days have seen a serious increase of pressure on the president, because of his previous statements about his views “evolving.” His arrival here in NYC today just as the Republican-controlled State Senate is turning itself into a pretzel trying to decide whether to vote on the marriage bill is causing a good number of his supports to push him harder. At the beginning of his term he asked us to hold his feet to the fire. Well, we are. The Advocate has a report on some US Senators calling on the president to get on the right side of history on the marriage question. And there will be a protest rally outside of his fundraiser tonight. I have no illusions that he’ll change his official view or announce anything new tonight. But it’s good to see the pressure build.

My tweet comes onscreen just after the 20-second mark of this video. And now the waiting for the State Senate continues….

UPDATE
Okay, so how’s June 23, 2011 gonna turn out? Let’s see what’s happened so far:
1. President Obama addresses an LGBT fundraiser and repeats everything he’s ever said — he understands our impatience, we deserve equal rights under the law, blah blah blah. Nothing new at all. He acknowledges the fight for marriage equality currently going on in Albany — and doesn’t even say he hopes we win. Then I see this tweet from a Huffington Post reporter:

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

2. Defense Secretary Gates delivers some LGBT news. He will NOT be certifying the repeal of DADT by the end of the month, when he steps down from his post. Incoming Def Sec Panetta has not given any indication of when certification might happen.

3. We are in a holding pattern, waiting for REPUBLICANS in the New York State Senate to bless us with our god-given rights. A vote may come tonight. It may not. If it does, it may pass. It may not. We’re relying on Republicans here, so, you know, you do the math…. Here’s hoping they prove me wrong.

The new Okkervil River album, I Am Very Far, is killer. All the songs are great — but get a load of this one: Lay of the Last Survivor. It’s a stunner, with Will Sheff’s typically poetic lyrics stretching over one of the most elastic melodies you’ll ever hear (one stanza near the beginning has 17 syllables; later in the song another stanza sung to the same melody has 25 syllables) — and all of it filled with internal rhymes, assonance, and more than its fair share of beauty.

Lyrics posted below to read along:

Lay of the Last Survivor

She went out and found
her father face down on the ground
out in the cold.

Walked her way around
a hill with the sun sinking down
into the snow.

All the whitecaps of the waves slap
like last handclaps,
and the dark water dies in a crash,
is sucked back with a moan,
smoke on the coast —
oh, piled fathers,
soft, sighing daughters,
where does it go?

It’s a dream, now, I’ll describe:
let your mind drift on down,
like so,

to when the world was young–
A big sky, blue of a dead bachelor’s tongue.
A bloom on the rose.

So some line someone told
says even light can get old.
Oh, slobbering lovers,
drink-clinking brothers,
they don’t have to tell us, because we know.

What a way down.
What a ride.
What a slide spin-around.
What a life to have known.

What a time, and how I was singing out
in a crowd of the thousand
most frightening faces I’ve known

and when the lighthouse
lending us sight finally went out,
what a fright we felt
in that night, friends.
Let’s just shout it out,
all the whys and don’t knows,
all the cries in our throats,
and how right we felt,
with our eyes tightly closed,
holding something we broke–

and then, whimpering sisters,
sobbing well wishers,
well it’s over. Just let my hand go.

Buy it here.

Moving piano version of one of Gabriel’s best songs.