Virgo 19° (September 10)

Today was a mental health day for sure. Not only did I nap, but, after doing a month’s worth of shopping and such yesterday, letting ideas bubble up instead of forcing myself into my office, I needed another day of getting my head around what is about to happen over the next three months. I determine this to be a very fruitful time. I made a lovely linguine clam sauce while the evil farmer made noise—saws and hammers—until nearly seven thirty this evening, trying to unnerve us. I put a wee speaker outside and listened to tunes while S. finished a seminar and practiced letting the abuse roll off my shoulders. I am getting my bird brain around what to do on all fronts. I have located a former counsel whom we will call upon if need be. I have my brain around my personal routine and my professional one. I am ready to rock the reentree. We heard from the Parisians who were passing our old corner, willing us back to the neighborhood. Sounds good to me. Little by little I will be turning the lower level into an art space and one from which we will be selling off items. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 821-825. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

We used to live in Cambridge, on Mass Ave, just past Harvard and the Cambridge Common. In the 80s we both worked at the Harvest restaurant which was already so 70s, blond wood and shutters, everything covered in Marrimekko, from the cushions on the banquettes to the curtains to our ties, and then rag-yarn, you know like the mat brought to school and sat on during snacks and reading time (or was that just me?). There were these giant poles, columns in the Bauhaus inspired architecture, indeed the restuarant was owned by a prominent architect called Ben Thompson and it was all Mies or Corbusier in the dining room and rag-yarn covered columns, poles this big at which I used to run and launch myself and jump and grab the rag-yar covered pole and just stick to it, as if I were velcro’d. Just out of nowhere just to freak people out. It likely would have been frowned upon if a manager found out but, maybe they did, who remembers. I was pretty hyper active even through my twenties but I’ve slowed down, if not completely halted all together.

So it’s funny to be back in Cambridge, creating and curating series and festivals at the American Repertory Theater. It’s an ironic trajectory and actually it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t producing a festival already in Provincetown, which now enters its seventh year, and then, after the second year festival, we performed, Stella and I, here, with Justin Vivian Bond and Nath Ann Carerra, there, so I truly owe my introduction to Oberon to them. We then had our own S+C show there with Matt Ray, who wasn’t yet playing with Vivian. So it’s cool that Matt and Vivian and Nath Ann (and Claudia Chopek) are all performing the first ever Glow festival on Thursday. Meanwhile I started producing shows here for others like Bridget Everett before we created the Glowberon series, a terrible name, which is entering its third year.

I still get a great feeling being in Cambridge and in Boston in general although it is limited. I’m not yet nostalgic for New York City, I suppose, where I lived for twenty years. Why is that I wonder? For some reason I was always a little skieved out in New York. Actually I still am. Not because it’s dirty which it often is; but because the whole energy of the place just feels like a landfill. I can’t explain it. But Manhattan has always felt to me like a part of New Jersey swamp that chipped off. When I’m near the river I feel like I might as well be in Seacaucus on some level. I’m sure none of that makes sense and I don’t need it to. I’ve always had an affinity for New England. I love California and would live there as a second choice. But living near Boston and the Cape and Maine and Vermont and Montreal even feels like all possibility. I feel the same for France. All of it.

I know I’m in the last third of my life probably (already—they were right when they said it goes fast) and it’s humbling. But I also have to move it. To finally launch a design for living. The good news is that I’m not coming from nowhere. I’m building on a lot of experience and I can honestly say I probably feel happier now than at any other period in my life. Pretty cool, right?

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So I really expected to make quite a splash with fundraising for this new festival I’m launching tomorrow. But, excepting Joanne Chang of Flour and Myers+Chang, not a single other professional connection came through for us. Go Joanne. She’s a good egg. It makes me really wonder about the people in Boston. I don’t know many people but the people I do know mainly work as designers or event planners, or in media or PR; and wow, I’m pretty awstruck at how ungenerous even folks I know can be. It’s one aspect of being conservative I didn’t anticipate. Boston people are cheap and stingy. At least that’s my experience so far. I realize this Blague might run counter to the previous entry wherein I sang the praises of all things Boston-Maine. Well not all things. I didn’t actually write that much. There is a quantity of writing I need to feel comfortable before a Blague is complete, and even if I’m just writing about what I’m writing about I enjoy the pure bulk of black letters on white space.

But back to the Boston people. What’s wrong with them? I think they have a bit of a chip on their shoulder because they’re not even Chicago? I don’t know. I love Boston and Cambridge and the whole damn place; and I do find the people nice, but…I remember back to my early twenties when I lived in Boston. I held New Yorkers in a bit of comtempt for being so obvious while being from Boston made me more of a sleeper, classier, less needful of the material things in life or fame and glory. I was demure. Yeah right. That lasted about a year and then I moved to New York where I really did infiltrate, but not too much. I hit many marks but none too hard. I wrote for the Times, I was on Broadway, I traveled as a fashion journalist sitting in on runway shows at a time when it was Naomi and Kristy and Cindy and Kate and Tatiana and Helena and Claudia and all those true supermodels. I produced segments of a TV show. I took acting classes with Uta. I killed it in Improv. I became a “celebrity” booker for events (I set up a d/b/a/ called Ufficio, which means office in Italian and I “specialized” in Italian actors. This was before The Sopranos by many years. I would get people like Christina Ricci, Lorraine Bracco, Vincent Gallo and Michael Imperioli…and Lauren Hutton who doesn’t fit this framework…to host or attend events either for a big fee (I would take half—yes, that’s right Lauren I took the same amount I paid you LOL). I became a feature writer doing celebrity interviews with folks like Helena Bonham Carter and Jean Reno and Peter Greenaway and others. And then I got a book deal and became Quinn Cox and bought a house on Cape Cod.

Best thing I ever did. I still kept my apartment for ten more years in the West Village and occasionally I would be my old self. As him, I continued to write for the Times and the Globe and Stella and I moved to London to co-executive edit Wallpaper magazine, under our given names. And New York caved in around itself. The West Village became a mall of shops on one hand and a wasteland of closed shops on the other. The Meatpacking District which bordered us was filled with stupid people, loud fratty Hoboen types and self-objectifying girls in too-tight too-short dresses with too-high heels, drinking Champagne on the street, throwing bottles into the street, going to stupid clubs and lounged in stupid hotels. The same happened to the East Village only the death has been slower and more severe.

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To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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