Twenty Third & Seventh

Cohen on PBS

Leonard Cohen was on PBS Newshour today Australian time.  Yes, we see it slightly delayed here and I'll watch it if it's on.  The timelag means that I watched the US episode screened 'yesterday' with a few hours delay, late 'today'.  [If you're confused you just sampled what it's like to live in my head]

Aside from keeping me conversant in American politics,  it often rewards with the cultural pieces and occasional Gore Vidal essay.

The interview can be found in MP3 format at the Newshour Leonard Cohen Page.

The following URL might be helpful? 

http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/rss/media/2006/06/28/20060628_cohen28.mp3 for downloading the interview.

No mention is made of unmade beds or waiting limos.

from the PBS site:

Thousands
by Leonard Cohen

Out of the thousands
who are known or want to be known as poets,
maybe one or two are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts,
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say,
I am one of the fakes
and this is my story.

Chelsea People in the News- Ed Hamilton.

Ed Hamilton, frequent contributor to the corporate crypto-propaganda blog Living with Legends has had his remarkable piece on Stormé Delarverié and the New York drag summit published at the Huffington Post.  If you haven't read it yet, hop on over.  It's a clever little piece that picks up on many of the dilemmas facing GLBT populations today.  I was left contrasting the living legend that is Storme with the recent assault on Kevin Aviance and wondering if we've really come as far as we would like to think.   

Aviance

Dylan Thomas's Ink Stain

The moral to the story is---- never lend clothes to Dylan Thomas.

Dylan's ink-stained suit handed on

May 4 2006

Claire Hill, Western Mail

A STAINED suit that Dylan Thomas borrowed and wore days before he died has been donated to the nation by the owner's widow. In the days before his 1953 death, Dylan is thought to have got the suit from artist Jorge Fick because he had run out of clean clothes. The suit, said to have an ink stain on the trouser pocket, has been donated to the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea by Fick's widow Judy Perlman. Thomas was taking part in his fourth lecture tour of America and was staying in New York City's Chelsea Hotel when he met Fick. Fick, an American abstract painter, was storing his clothes in the Chelsea Hotel and frequently visited Thomas's favourite American drinking den, the White Horse Tavern. The suit has wide legs and huge cuffs and was bought in New York by Fick. It still bears specks of red paint after he wore it while working. However, the centre expects that the ink stain on the trouser pocket will prove to be of most interest. No-one knows whether it was Thomas's pen that stained the suit, but many fans may choose to believe the mark came from the writer's ink. The suit will go on display at the centre this summer.

New Craig Highberger film comes to NY. Jack Mitchell: My Life is Black and White.

Craig Highberger, biographer and friend of Jackie Curtis is to be back in Gotham soon.  He'll be screening his new film about Jack Mitchell, Jack Mitchell: My Life is Black and White.

I've been unaware of Mitchell as a boldface name but his images are strikingly familiar.  He choses fascinating subjects to photograph, artists of every hue, and has Hotel Chelsea connections everywhere.  Included in the film are some favoured 23rd & 7th boldface names; Patti Lupone, Ed Albee and Ned Rorem.  Amongst many others Mitchell photographed Gloria Swanson, Keith Haring, Philip Glass and Truman Capote

Jack Mitchell: My Life is Black and White has been selected to screen in NewFest, the NY Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Film Festival.  Screening dates are yet to be confirmed, the festival takes place in June.  As ever, we will keep you up to date.

Meanwhile, Highberger continues to tour and lecture on the Jackie Curtis documentary, Jackie Curtis: Superstar in a Housedress.  I can think of worse days at school....

For more information, a preview trailer and gallery of Mitchells photographs click here.

Superstar in a Housedress- the Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis. Extract #2

A shorter entry for this week, on rare occasions I flirt with the concept of brevity. 

These quotes, they might even be considered epigrams, summarise the layers of contradiction and complexity that made Jackie Curtis so very compelling as an artist and thinker.

I want to hit the heights. I want to be a Broadway star. I don't want to be just a cheap lady of the chorus who is always yearning for a star on the door and a dressing room full of red roses. I feel like a superstar in a housedress, because all I really care about is my work.

I'm not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a transsexual- I'm just me, Jackie.
Jackie Curtis

Jackie Curtis isn't a drag queen; Jackie is an artist, a pioneer without a frontier.
Andy Warhol

NYT obituary for Jackie Curtis



Excerpt from "Superstar in a Housedress" by Craig B. Highberger (c)
2005, used by permission.

Superstar in a Housedress, the award winning film [DVD] and book documentary set is available through amazon.com or look in the sidebar links for lots of fabulous Jackie Curtis material including posters signed by Highberger and Holly Woodlawn.

The Singing Sphincter Calls Again

Regular readers might recall an intervention made at this blog by somebody called  B K Lisenbee.  Mr Lisenbee arrived in my inbox a few months ago full of self-righteous bluster and threats of legal action because I had reproduced 'his' photos of Jane Bowles.

Mr Lisenbee's demand that the pictures be removed was met.  That, apparently, isn't enough attention to satisfy him.  He now wishes to edit my writing also.  He has, not to waste time on reaching a point, no chance in hell.  Unless he wants to spend the money to engage international lawyers, he is stuck.

Just as I said before, if Mr Lisenbee had sought a negotiated outcome or even been polite, everybody would be better off today.  Instead he came barreling in breathing fire and threatening lawyers.

I do not endorse or tolerate that kind of behaviour.  It is called bullying here. Perhaps it's considered normal behaviour in the US?      

For one so keen to deploy lawyers, Mr Lisenbee is surprisingly ignorant of the laws around publishing.  If he is too uneducated to know that he gave me implicit permission to post his email, I can't really be held to blame.  Letters to the editor not intended for publication need to be marked as not for publication.

The game is playing out by the rules invoked by Mr Lisenbee- the law and nothing but the law.

Ignorant of his passion for the strict adherence to the law, Mr Lisenbee has refused my requests that he stop his on-going harassment.  I have now forwarded his latest assault to his server and the Australian Federal Police's new 'cyber-crime' unit.  Under local law at very least, Mr Lisenbee is unambiguously guilty of harassment.

Those of you who know me, know that I will go to great lengths for a consensus outcome on most things.  Mr Lisenbee left no room for negotiation.  He arrived bearing threats like any impotent bully would.  Now he wants me to remove that truth from publication for his convenience.  Sorry, buttplug, the world doesn't work that way.

Again, I'm left wondering who has benefitted from this and how Jane Bowles would feel about so trivial a squabble going on over her memory? 

p.s. if anyone can find where the disputed pictures have been hidden to lie in waste I'd love to hear from you.  It took me well over half an hour.

you can contact Mr Lisenbee at [email protected]

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
                -- Robert Benchley

Superstar in a Housedress- the Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis. Extract #1

It is with a proud humility and deepest thanks to the author that we finally present the first in a series of extracts from Superstar in a Housedress- the Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis.

It is very rare indeed to find a book that one loves so much that it starts to integrate into your DNA and become a part of you. Superstar in a Housedress- the Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis has become one of those books for me.  The relative absence of mention here reflects a deep relationship that I have developed in my little fantasy world.  Jackie Curtis has become a friend to me in a lonely and dark time.  His story empowers me to keep surviving. What would Jackie Curtis do? has become a truly useful analytical position when I am stuck for answers. 

My CSB [Curtis specific bibliophilia] has extended to carrying the book whereever I go as a talisman against the mundane and drab.  I have found the confidence to start writing the play that I have always wanted to from Curtis's example.  This outcome is absolutely related to 'the Chelsea effect' and everything I learned there.  The distilled example set by Curtis has helped me to work out how to deploy those lessons.

Curtis was, very simply, no less than a genius. 

That Curtis will always be remembered for the Morrisey made Warhol films and as a name in Walk on the Wildside is a mixed blessing. History will carry forth his name, we can rest certain of that.

It remains that Jackie Curtis was so very much more than a court jester in the Warhol circus. Thanks to the work of Craig Highberger we can now also rest certain that the depth of eccentric brilliance that was Curtis's life will remain intact and stored for those yet to come.

Coming face to face with Curtis's life over the past few months has given me so much insight into who I am, why I am- all those existential kinds of questions.  I don't have an answer, I do have a lot of clues where to look next.  It has been a long voyage from being a child in a car in suburban Sydney wondering what the hell Walk on the Wildside was about and why a girl would think she was Jimmy Dean to feeling that I know that 'girl' as a soul-sister.

Without further editorialising, from Craig Highberger's: Superstar in a Housedress- the Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis

How Warhol and Curtis Met

There are several versions of how Warhol and Curtis first met.

According to an interview that Jackie Curtis gave to Patrick Smith for the book Andy Warhol's Art and Films, Jackie first met Andy Warhol in 1965 on 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue when he was staying at the YMCA across the street from the silver Factory.

The other version is Andy Warhol's recollection. He remembered first meeting Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling in 1966 while walking through Greenwich Village with Fred Hughes on his way to pick up a pair of leather pants at the Leather Man.

Jackie was about nineteen, tall and gangly with a Beatles mop top haircut. Walking with him was a tall, sensational blonde drag queen in high heels and a sundress with one strap falling onto her upper arm.

Jackie introduced the blonde as Hope Slattery (the name Candy was using in those days - her real name was Jimmy Slattery and she was from Massapequa, Long Island).

Jackie recognized Warhol immediately and asked for his autograph on the shopping bag he was carrying. When Andy asked what was is in the bag, Jackie pulled out several pairs of red satin shorts and told him they were for the tap-dancing scene his new play, Glamour, Glory and Gold. Curtis promised to send Warhol tickets to the opening night performance.

[picture: Jackie Curtis in Americka Cleopatra]

Excerpt from "Superstar in a Housedress" by Craig B. Highberger (c)
2005, used by permission.

Superstar in a Housedress, the award winning film [DVD] and book documentary set is available through amazon.com or look in the sidebar links for lots of fabulous Jackie Curtis material including posters signed by Highberger and Holly Woodlawn.

A play that really gets on your goat - Arts - Entertainment - smh.com.au

Link: A play that really gets on your goat - Arts - Entertainment - smh.com.au.

Oh, hooray!  We get too see Ed Albee's most recent work, the Goat or Who is Sylvia, at last.  It would be just fabulous if Sally Field would come out to do it, she rocks for a Nun, even a flying one.  She didn't even blink when I told her I wanted to grow up to be a Nun because of her at the Tonys afters. 

Arriving in NY to see Kathleen Turner do Virginia Woolf was a piece of timing for which we shall remain eternally thankful.  And we were in the room when Albee quietly confirmed his sexuality. 

Now I just need to find $80- drifting in the breeze and we're all set.

Writer's life as fake aids novel: Carey

Link: The Australian: Writer's life as fake aids novel: Carey [April 01, 2006].

Amongst my favourite contemporary Australian novelists, Peter Carey ranks very highly.  I find his work particularly interesting as he is an example of the common phenomenom of Australian artists and thinkers who have to go into exile to understand this country or to be at peace with their Australian-ness.

"THANK heavens for James Frey," Peter Carey declares of the shamed American author of the made-up memoir A Million Little Pieces.

It has been a while since anyone has thanked Frey, whose admission he fabricated parts of his Oprah Winfrey-promoted book generated global publicity.

Children of the Chelsea- Rebecca Miller

A fasinating profile of Rebecca Miller [daughter of Arthur] at the UK Guardian. 

Rebecca's childhood was, in her recollection, 'very normal' - loving parents, growing up on a farm, going to school, no limos or first-class flights. But it took place in a context that was anything but normal. So a visiting Henri Cartier-Bresson would read to her as a baby next to the Roxbury pond from the memoirs of an 18th-century French courtier. And for part of it, she lived with her parents in suite 614 at the fashionably rundown Chelsea Hotel in New York, home also to Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer and 'a man with a very large snake who lived upstairs'.