Oh my lovelies, it seems lately I’ve been a deep sea creature-
swimming far beneath the photic zone, lost in dark blue folds
of water- oblivion lit only by my brightly bobbing lantern lure.
I’ve been trying to fight my nocturnal nixie nature, and mostly
failing miserably. One day, I will get paid to stay up all night
writing and wandering and wondering, but until then morning
comes far too soon. Voices in the dark, heard from high
on the hillside, sought in dreams- I keep waking with my head
wrapped in seaweed, in strands of stinging tentacle.
I don’t need a card reading to know I’d pull the moon.

Oh Lulu. I can’t recall if these are from Pandora’s Box
or Diary of a Lost Girl, but I’ve been thinking of her so much lately.
Have you ever read her biographies? So fierce, and so sad.
Her mother’s name was Myra Rude. She was a talented pianist
who played the latest Debussy and Ravel for her children,
inspiring them with a love of books and music.
She also determined however, that any
“squalling brats she produced could take care of themselves.”

Lost girls. Midnight blue. Fathomless oceans.

I found the snippet below from my friend Nate Tabor,
who is a luthier in Vienna (or maybe it’s Milan now)..
He composes music for harpsichord and clavichord
and is a terrible womanizer and lovable lout.
I hope he won’t mind this affectionate slander,
but when I met him he was a cultured brute
with a motorcycle and a dishwashing job
at the Thai place near our coffeehouse.
I’d see him smoking on his breaks, absorbed
in some amazing book. Sometimes I’d interrupt him
and we’d talk about studying Russian together
and going for a motorcycle ride, but we never did.
The last time I saw him here, he played my mother’s
violin in the kitchen, surrounded by beer bottles,
the music so beautiful my eyes filled with tears.
He is always writing about his lost loves,
and the very mysterious European women
he encounters on his travels.
It’s always very randy and absorbing.
He will also write for pages in German,
and he thinks no one ever reads his journal,
but he’s wrong. Nate, if you read this-
I hope you won’t mind me sharing..

“The thing that strikes me most is the confrontations in the half-lit corridors
in the middle of the night, with other people you remember, but do not quite know.
Their names are tastes on the tongue, or resemblances of sounds heard during
a scant intruduction at a party. But on that night the shadow of her moved,
and I was walking to the refrigerator to get a beer, when I saw the evening dress,
but first heard her laughter from behind the iron door.
The doors are thick iron near where the key is inserted to insure security of my violins.
I just caught a movement of her head and it was slow motioned through the lights glowing
from the floor and in the half-lit hallway. She was in the middle of laughter just as I passed
from the hallway into my room, and the sight burned itself into my head. I stood on the
other side of the thick iron door nearly trembling; what was she doing here so late by herself,
sitting in the foyer, drinking and laughing alone? The idea thrilled me to no end.
The idea of a beautiful girl dressing up for no reason but to sit alone in an old factory
and laugh to herself, for herself, with a bottle of champagne, no men or fawning flunkies
to coddle her or observe her beauty. I waiting there and heard depression era music
sunken within the hallway behind the door. It was a crooning music, which told of stories
of doomed love, the voice itself dead and yet so alive with longing.
I stood there and removed her dress in my head,
traced the shape of bone under her collar with my finger,
and dissapeared inside the wonderful laughter
which was meant never to be heard at all.”

I need to see this movie again, soon.
I’ve been reading about David Lynch’s Fox Bat Strategy project,
which I can’t wait to listen to. He was twertering recently about
one of the songs, “Almost an Angel” about “a girl I had only heard about
who broke up with her boyfriend & overdosed. It takes place as she’s dying
in some unknown part of the world.”

I really must go to Guangxi soon. Anyone up for it?
Do you have a special assignment you’d like to send me on?
An elegant junk boat, a teapot, a good carpet and a lute?
I’m all packed and ready, just let me know.

廣西壯族自治區
I was thinking we could go to:
Chengdu
Xingping
Guilin
Yizhou
and then
Vietnam
+ Cambodia
oui-oui?

✷ Melodies + Desires – Lykke Li
This is a perfect song to fall asleep to, or wake up to.
Happy full moon! There’s an eclipse on somewhere
far from here, and it’s in my sign.
Get out there and gaze at her
before she goes to bed..
I think I’ll do just that now.