A week ago, in the wee hours of the new year’s dim beginnings, a girl was murdered.
She was a friend of many of my friends, and it’s likely that we had even been introduced,
at a show or a house-party. I definitely remember seeing her around town: her petite frame,
her amazing face – both radiating a crackling energy, a vibrance. Tomorrow is her funeral.
Her name was Esme Barrera. The man who killed her is still out there. He has attacked other
women, and will continue to unless caught. Until then, my city and community is riled up like
a nest of bees: mobilizing, sharing information, entreating each other to stay safe from the
man who did this, and hopefully – to help find him and make sure that he is prevented from
hurting any more women. Memories of Esme, stories of good times with her, and reflections
of grief at her loss are making the rounds, and this line from a poem by Jim Harrison that I
read recently keeps coming back to me – “Death steals everything except our stories.”

Photo of the memorial altar set up at Helen Hill’s doorstep by Infrogmation

I’ve lost a lot of loved ones over the years, so unfortunately I am am more experienced than
I would like to be in the ways of grieving – the long, dark process that wrings your soul out
like an old rag shredded in the teeth of a big, black dog. Until a few years ago, though, no
one I’d known had died because another person took it upon themselves to end a life.
Murder is different. It requires a whole different set of tools for coping, for processing,
for coming to peace. It’s the hardest to reconcile, because the thought of another human
taking that kind of action – willingly pulling the trigger, or wielding the knife or their hands
and just snuffing out someone you loved – it’s just so inconceivable, so fucking wrong.
What’s even worse, is that the people I’ve known who were murdered were the brightest stars,
the most shining examples of what a good friend, a good human it was possible to be.
I know that in retrospect, after someone has died, it’s usually only their very best characteristics
that get remembered or brought up at the memorial. Those who have died are rarely referred to
as “just okay”, nor are their flaws generally brought up or remarked upon. It’s so easy to saint
someone who’s not around to remind us of how messed up or annoying they might have been
sometimes. That being said, I have to say that the friends of mine who were murdered – well,
they truly were like saints in my eyes, and to many others as well. I’m not exaggerating or
speaking with the slightest hyperbole when I try and explain their goodness: they really were
that good. Through and through: just extremely kind, generous, warm, ALIVE people. Until
someone came along and randomly chose them to kill. That’s the part I don’t get, I guess.
Why them? Why these beacons of light, these people who were so well-loved, so active in
their communities? Why people who were always doing things, making things, and helping others?
It should be known that I’m not always universally altruistic in my view of humans as intrinsically
good or even worthwhile, so when things like this happen, I can’t help but wonder – if this was
just some random act of senseless violence, why couldn’t it have happened to some shitty person,
some mediocre jerk with a bad attitude. We all know they’re out there. I’m not saying that anyone
deserves to die, or be murdered, but why take away from this world the ones who add the most to it?
I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Esme, but I can tell from the outpouring of love
from her friends and from their stories about her that she really was the real deal:
a tiny dynamo of good energy and light. Austin is a darker place without her here.
Five years ago, when my friend Helen was shot in her house by would-be robbers, I wrote this:

“Recently, I’ve been overcome with
thoughts of how dense we’ve become-
our overpopulation choking what
beauty is left in this world,
thinking how the herd needs thinning,
and thinking that the apocalypse
needs to hurry it on up
and get here already.
Then this- and what do you say?
I didn’t mean it like that!
Don’t take the good ones!
Not her! Not the sweethearts,
the innocents, the helpers,
the music-makers..
Don’t extinguish the bright lights
who worked tirelessly to make
change, to make it better..”

and this:

“Helen was such a kind and open person-
bursting with enthusiasm for life and her myriad projects,
always smiling, always excited about being in the world.
I know everyone’s eulogy begins like that,
and we all think, “Oh, sure..”
but honestly, I can’t think of a more loving soul.
I am not understanding life’s lessons today.
It makes no sense to me why or how this could have happened.
I have no words of wisdom, no peaceful sentiments
to impart regarding the destruction of goodness.
If someone could explain it to me, I’d be all ears.”

Memorial outside Helen Hill’s home on Rampart Street, Marigny, January, 2007 – also by Infrogmation

I think back to my grief and confusion then – Helen wasn’t by far the closest friend
I’d lost, and yet – her death just destroyed me. I couldn’t come to terms with it, for
the longest time, until after awhile I had to force myself to think about it like this:
when the most wonderful people we know are taken away from us, a void is made
by their absence in the fabric of our communities. It’s up to us to emulate them, to
step it up, and try and fill that space where they did their good work, to shine our light
twice as strong, to be better, to be kinder, to be more involved in each other’s lives.
In some ways, I think that’s why the idea of saints and martyrs exists: to inspire us to be
more like them, to make good in the world, because they were taken away from it, from us.
And so we must. It feels so fucked to begin a new year with a murder, with the loss of someone
so special. I remember feeling like that when Helen was shot on January 5th. To think of that
darkest and saddest Twelfth Night New Orleans had known in a long time, feeling the sharp
loss of one of its best children when the year was so young, so new. Jon Flee was killed in winter,
too – on Christmas Eve. I think of his family, of Esme’s, never being able to celebrate those holidays
again without the pain of remembrance that your beloved child, sister, brother died on that day.
Now, our New Year’s resolutions take on a sharper poignance: to do right by the memory of our
friends, to be more like them, so that the bad guys don’t win. We cannot let them win.

So: stay positive, stay safe. Be brave, dream big. Help kids, help your friends, support
your community, feed the hungry, and if you want to be like my friend Helen, write and
send a postcard to someone every day. Isn’t that a good idea? Let’s try and do it together.

From Helen’s Jazz Funeral, photo by Derek Bridges

✶ For.Our.Esme.B. is a place where you can donate to help Esme’s family pay for her funeral service.

✶ Missing Esme: Making sense of loss in the new year

✶ From her friends at Waterloo Records – In Loving Memory of Esme B.

✶ In Memoriam – Esme Barrera

✶ Homicide victim was teaching assistant, camp counselor, music fan, friends say

✶ After the death of beloved Esme Barrera, does Austin need a head check?

✶ Esme Barrera Tributes, Benefits

✶ Helen Hill – R.I.P.

✶ Epiphanies

✶ Jon Flee – R.I.P.

“The Water Is Rising” by Amy Earles
Amy sent this to me after the storm, because it made such a huge impression on me.
It was such an amazing thing to receive in the mail, especially from a total stranger –
and it marked the beginning of our friendship. It captured so much of what I felt then,
the ominous feeling of leaving, knowing the water would rise, and that so many would
stay behind, and be trapped in their houses. I don’t dream of tidal waves anymore –
now I dream of floods, inexorable, consuming water that just gets higher and higher.

Glory At Sea! from Court 13 on Vimeo.

A group of mourners and a man spat from the depths of Hades build a boat from
the debris of New Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea.
Just in case you never saw this, or even if you did – it’s so beautiful, it bears
watching again. I cry and cry every time I see it. Keep an eye out for their
new film, set in the swamps: Beasts of the Southern Wild

My Katrinanniversary was spent in the following ways:
I escaped New York and the Hurricane Irene fear-fever by the skin on my teeth, at 4am
in a hail of bullets & falling corpses, our valiantly diving through the swiftly closing doors of the last
train out of Armageddon (in a rubber jumpsuit, natch.) Okay, not really – but it was pretty crazy.
I just barely made my train out of the city because of a shooting at the stop before mine & a suicide at
the one after. End times were preemptively in the air, making everyone extra crazy. The air was a sodden
fug of unease – dead still & flat, so heavy and too quiet for that big city. Having evacuation flashbacks in NYC
was surreal and unpleasant – packing hurriedly to steal away in the wee hours, remembering to breathe and
hoping that everything would be okay for all the people who were sticking around to see what the storm brought.
Every grocery store that day was crammed with people buying provisions, the check-out line vibrating with tension
and talk of taping windows. It was kind of like waiting in line for a super-scary haunted house with a bunch of first
graders rather than the juvies you’re used to. No offense meant by that at all, mind you – it’s just a matter of experience.
The day before I evacuated for Katrina, I went to the Matassa’s, the bank and out to Mona’s for Lebanese. Not one person
even mentioned it – and I had chatted with people everywhere I went. I had no idea that a massive storm was headed our
way until I went in to work the next day, and found my employers packing up the shop and getting everything low off the floor.
Usually, the storm warnings I got in New Orleans were one of the old-timer stoop-sitters in my neighborhood reminding me
to take my potted plants in off the balcony. I remember sometimes wishing that people would freak out a little more,
especially when the minor tropical storms and depressions got nasty and knocked out my power. I guess you just
got used to it after awhile – six months of hurricane season every year, constantly punctuated by threats and fizzles.
As tense and weird as Irene’s approach was making everyone around me, I also continuously stunned by the kindness
and helpfulness so many of the New Yorkers I encountered – especially the cabbie who picked me and all my bags
up and took me to the next stop so I wouldn’t miss my train, and the sweet felon who helped me haul my crap through
the turnstiles. He told me he worked in “telecommunications & debt collections”, and complimented my “Italian-girl ass”.
It was hard to leave New York this time – I felt we’d resumed our love affair that seemed so sour last time I had visited.
This time I found her brilliant and silvery, a beautiful and mercurial beast with a sharp, serendipitous kiss. Her back is
ridged with spikes of glass and metal and thronging with people like shining like stars. I can feel her grit lodged into
my tongue, and I let it stay, knowing it will one day become a pearl. I fell in love with the city again, and hope to find
myself rambling around her golden grid again sooner than later. We’ve got big things to do, she and I. Soon, soon.

(A deer wades through floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene on August 28, 2011, in Lincoln Park, N.J. Photo by Julio Cortez/AP)

I ended up riding Irene out in Philadelphia, in the company of two very inspiring ladies, Tabatha and Nyx
of < • le MONDe Primitif •>, and a bottle of Wild Turkey. We spent two days doing nothing but eating,
sleeping, talking and cutting up old Soviet Life and Art in America magazines for collage. I needed that
sweet respite so much after a week of running and hustling non-stop. Just to sit and watch the wind and
rain out the window and breathe. I lay in bed and watched the maples thrash and prayed to Oya to be kind.

– Photo by Ted Jackson / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

August 29th this year found me in an aisle seat on a Greyhound bus for six hours, struggling to write something about
Katrina for the Austin Chronicle, and getting frantic texts from my friends in New Orleans asking if they could come evacuate
to my house because the poisonous gasses emanating from marsh-fires were making them sick. So bizarre to be living in
the post-apocalyptic nightmare of terrible droughts, storms, fires, oh, and – earthquakes! I was riding the train to brunch
and honestly didn’t think too much about it when the subway car jolted and shook us all for a minute or two. I remember
wondering if that sort of turbulence was common, and then thinking nothing more of it until I got out onto the street.
Everyone had come out of their offices and were crowded on the sidewalk smoking and looking pensive and freaked out.
Apparently, there’s a fault line right under 14th St., which was my stop. People don’t like to talk about it being there, but
it’s there all the same. Earthquakes terrify me more than hurricanes. A hurricane you can prepare for, run away from.

A year or so before Katrina, I was given the amazing gift of a taxidermied peacock from my dear friend Ilya.
It was one of the things that I was most pained to lose after my roof blew off. That whole side of the parlor
had been destroyed – the walls had crumbled, and blackly viscous curls of moldy fiberglass insulation had
peeled down over chunks of plaster and debris. I pretty much left everything on that side of the room alone -
the kitchen table and everything on it, the dvd player and all our movies, and the poor sodden peacock,
who had fallen on the wall and was pinned by a large part of the ceiling. I was so allergic to the mold, that
I feared to take most of my taxidermy collection from the rubble, and once the trailer was totally packed with
whatever else I could salvage, sticking a wet, gross, dead bird on top of it all seemed like a bad plan.
It was the one thing that I mourned above all others – above my records and tapes, all my shoes and boots,
clothes and costumes, photos and other treasures. I couldn’t imagine ever being gifted another peacock in
my life, and had never come across one for sale that I could even begin to afford. About a year after the storm,
I heard that for a short time, my peacock had resurfaced in the briefly reincarnated ramshackle version of Z’otz
Coffeeshop that happened at the old Siam. I was told that the mighty bird had been spray-painted black, and
decorated with broken mirrors. After that, I lost track of it again – until recently. My friend Miss Angie texted me
the photos below from her phone, asking “Is this your peacock?”. There was no doubt that it was. I called up the
dealer who had brought it in, and luckily, he was willing to let me have it back, provided I paid him the $30 bucks
he had paid for it. So, things come full circle. Sometimes. I have my fucked-up, moldy-ass peacock back from the
rubble, delivered to my door by my friends who were escaping from marsh fire sickness. That fire is the size of
City Park right now, and NO ONE is even talking about it. All my friends who haven’t gotten out are sick in bed,
and the whole thing is getting whitewashed by the media. No one is talking about why a marsh would catch fire
and keep burning for days. No one is talking about BP’s oil, or how completely fucked Louisiana’s ecosystem is.
Friends who own houses there, businesses there, who’ve stuck it out all this time are finally talking about leaving,
because they’re afraid the city will kill them, one way or another. Heartbreak on top of heartbreak. Oh, New Orleans…

The other night, I got into a discussion about New Orleans in a bar in Pittsburgh.
The bartender asked me, “If I had to choose between Austin and New Orleans,
which one would I choose?” I explained to him that it didn’t really work like that,
but that my aversion for natural disasters had grown to a point where I’m no longer
willing to knowingly put up with or prepare for them. A strange drunk man at the bar
interjected to ask me if at some point I had been into natural disasters but only decided
I didn’t like them only after I had been “divested of my belongings.” I told him that seven years
of constant evacuations and fear culminating in the eventual destruction and loss of my
city, home, belongings, lover, job, community and friends, and just my whole life as I knew
it was enough to do the trick. I had to go into how I felt about all people who patted my hand
to make themselves feel better by telling me it was “just stuff”. I’m afraid I ranted a little bit in
a sazerac-induced way about people who buy everything they own at Ikea, and have no
emotional attachment to objects. I went off for a bit about how most of the things I treasure
most were passed down to me by loved ones who have died, and how those objects represent
the only tangible, physical artifacts left of them for me. I apologized, explaining that the day before
had been the six year anniversary of the storm, and that I was feeling pretty raw, as I tend to when
the end of August rolls around. He responded by saying “Happy anniversary?” and that was it.
No, dude. Not happy. Wrong answer! He tried to back pedal, but I had to shut him down, saying
that I had just taken the time to speak to him from my heart about experiences that are still very
painful for me, and that he had just taken an opportunity to connect with another human being
and instead thrown it away being drunk and dunderheaded and letting callous bullshit fall out
of his mouth. It was weird. Weird and fucked up to still be getting into it about Katrina in bars with
people who find it more comfortable to stand on the outside of a tragedy and look in on it coldly,
thinking they’re being objective, when really they’re just afraid or incapable of empathy.
Or maybe they’re just assholes. Right after the storm I ended up getting in a few near-brawls
in bars with that sort of guy. I was so, so, so fucking angry and anyone who said the wrong thing,
or just wasn’t getting it needed to be educated as far as I was concerned, and often my version of
doing at the time only ended up getting me nearly kicked out of a few watering holes. PTSD and
whiskey are a bad, bad combination. I try to stay calmer about it these days, but it’s still hard when
people don’t want to get it, don’t really want to try to understand what it was like to go through that.
I remember getting booted from the Longbranch Inn one night for giving a homeless lady money
and then freaking out on the owner when he told me I couldn’t do that. I stood on the sidewalk,
weaving with drink and trying not to cry when the old man who worked at the bar came up to me.
He wore a big cowboy hat, and was a good dancer. He had been showing me moves all night.
His face was the color of dark oiled wood, and his eyes were misty with blue cataracts.
He told me he was The Man With No Name (I found out after he died that he was known as
“Fast Black”, but his name was Carl Miller.) He took my hand, and looked deep into my eyes,
and he said, “Forgive those who do not know.” It was the one piece of wisdom that
helped me through that time – the only thing that helped soothe the rage that kept threatening
to bubble over in barrooms and kept me pacing the floors of my tiny house every night.
Forgive those who do not know. It’s a hard thing to do, but I still try. I try and keep dancing, too.

✸ Susannah Breslin nails it once again – I never really believed in or understood what PTSD was before it happened to me.
Reading about her experience with it really helped me. After Hurricane Katrina, Years of Post-Traumatic Stress

Everyone Forever Now – “Stoop Sitting” from Everynone on Vimeo.

EFN 03 – “Stoop Sitting”
By Will Hoffman & Daniel Mercadante
EVERYONE FOREVER NOW is an episodic motion-based media project.
It is an examination of the collective wisdom and expression of human actions.

✸ A LOVE LETTER TO NEW ORLEANS – written by Sarah Jaffe, illustrated by Molly Crabapple.

✸ What I’m going home to: 3 heartbreaking photos of desert-like Lake Travis during the Texas drought

✸ As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles
Drought restrictions are forcing homeowners to quit watering their gardens,
even as thirsty fracking operations help themselves to the agua.

IRMA THOMAS – “It’s Raining” – maybe if I play this over and over,
it will bring rain to where it’s needed and away from where it’s not.

If you’ve still got it in you, here’s some collected writings
about my experiences with Hurricane Katrina,
in reverse chronological order. Dig in:

✸ Storms – 5 Years

✸ Hurricane Katrina: Four Years Later

✸ New Orleans in August

✸ One Year

✸ Lower Ninth Aftermath

✸ MARDI GRAS APRÈS L’ORAGE

✸ AFTERMATH: REVELATIONS

✸ JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT CAN’T GET ANY WORSE

✸ Calamity

✸ The Triumph of Death

✸ What can you do?

✸ Katrina

This last winter solstice, I had a profound vision during a ceremony:
an old black telephone appeared before me, hunched in celluloid,
with a rotary dial. I could feel the weight of the heavy receiver in my
hand – it was that real. I realized that I could call anyone in the world
on it, and I pondered for a minute, trying to think of who I’d like most
to talk to at that moment – one phone call, to the person whose voice
I’d most want to hear – until it hit me. My mama, of course. To talk to
her again, to be able to have even just one conversation with her –
I think sometimes I’d give almost anything to be able to do that.
My vision faded, and I can’t really recall being able to actually get
through to her – but it was almost more the radical notion that such
a thing could actually be possible that was amazing. That, and the
raw beast of my longing for her, long buried, suddenly so close to
my face, breathing rough right next to me – a wild, savage desire
just to have my mother back with me, even if only for a moment.

Here’s my mom talking about her favorite country songs on the radio (KUT Austin) with her friend Dan Foster.
I hadn’t heard her voice for twenty-five long years, until the day I got this recording.
Her voice is the most beautiful sound in the whole world.

Maggie Cook Polacheck – KUT by Angeliska

To receive the gift of this recording, a few months after that experience,
was such a balm to that deep wound. Her voice is orange-blossom honey
and tabasco, it is the sudden flutter of bird wings, it is soft as owlet’s fluff,
or a mimosa blossom. Her singular country accent: those long a’s and
dropped g’s that I hear in my aunt’s voice – in my own when I get drunk
or go back where I came from. Her cadence is one I used to carry, too.

So, my mother was obsessed with Hank Williams. I mean – really, truly, deeply.
Our first and only family vacation was to go to his grave in Montgomery, Alabama.
She became penpals with his sister. I think she was in love with him, in a way –
in love with a lanky gray ghost, with a crooked smile and a voice that hits you
like bourbon on an empty belly – raw guts churning with lonely lost love.
I inherited her predilection for tall, skinny men with cruel lips and sad eyes,
for wastrels with hearts full of song, careening through life wearing the albatross
that is an incurable awesome death-wish around their scrawny necks. Luckily,
I got over all that a while back. I’m not sure if she ever did. Beautiful disasters
don’t really turn me on anymore – too much damage done, too many old scars…
But oh, those star-crossed troubadours! How compelling they can be.

In the same week that I received the gift of her voice, I also took a horrible blow:
I found out that the works of art she had spent the last months of her
life creating had been lost, irrevocably. It was about this worst news
I could imagine hearing – almost like losing her all over again.
This includes the painting of Hank Williams above, a work I consider her masterpiece,
the pinnacle of her creative life – her swan song. I remember her painting it, vividly.
The vintage print she took the background from, with the sheep in the moonlit pasture
hung in our kitchen. Those cactus flowers bloomed on our back patio – I remember her
photographing them. The tie Hank’s wearing is one of my dad’s – he has it still.
His hands are so beautifully done, so articulate and perfectly rendered – and his face,
his face… Rarely does any artist capture the sensitive angles and gaunt beauty that
was Hank William’s gorgeous sad face – and now to think of all that lost, to know
that it probably ended up in some dumpster, never to be seen again – it kills me.
Her dear friend who she sold them to moved cross country, and discovered upon
unpacking that the movers had somehow overlooked them. I mean, who knows –
they could be hanging above some dude’s ugly couch in a ratty trailer somewhere
in Utah. You never do know. I won’t give up hope that they’ll turn up one day,
and make their way back to me. I can barely begin to describe how badly this
discovery crushed me. For many years, I have been trying to put back together
the puzzle pieces of my mother’s life – to write about her, and to work through
this tangle of briars her death made of my heart. I’ve been fighting through that
thicket since I was a child – searching for clues, for shreds of her legacy.

When I listen to these old country songs, it’s like a message from beyond:
each one is so heartbroken, and totally unashamed. I think that’s what I love
about country music – it’s not self-conscious about coming off as maudlin –
it’s just genuine feeling, even if that feeling is crying down in a ditch,
or being blue because your son calls another man daddy. It’s having the gumption
to pick up a guitar and sing a song about it, through the tears, through the pain.
All this music that she loved so fervently, all her life – it feels like she knew
somehow, that I’d need this music one day, too. Just the song titles, even:
“When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels”
“Alone and Forsaken”
“Don’t Go”
and oh, “Crying Heart Blues”

Crying the blues
I’m crying because I have lost you
Blues I can’t lose
I guess it’s too late now to try
I’ve tried to chose another to love but it’s no use
Crying heart blues, there’s nothing that’s left but to cry

I’ll always remember I love you
My teardrops won’t let me forget
Each tear is a wish to be near you
They started the day that we met
A trail of tears will lead you to me if you want me
And from my fears, how hopeless, my crying heart flees

Yesterday I happened across this bit of wisdom from Dear Sugar, (who is beyond amazing)
responding to a woman who had miscarried her baby daughter, and found herself consumed
with grief. Her advice rang true for me, and came to me at the perfect time, so I’ll share it here:

This is how you get unstuck. You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved,
but so you can live the life that is yours—the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter,
but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her,
but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her. That place of true healing is a fierce place.
It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have
to work really, really, really fucking hard to get there, but you can do it, honey. You’re a woman who can
travel that far. I know it. Your ability to get there is evident to me in every word of your bright shining grief star of a letter.

So, this is me reaching.
These are too:

Foxes in the Rain

Triumvirate Lemniscate

Gustav + Mama – August 8th

For this month’s Exquisite Corpse, we will be dedicating the evening’s festivities
as a special memorial to some of our friends and heroes who have died this month:
Ramon, crazy-cat extraordinaire, Leonora Carrington – the surrealist sorceress,
and to Nefairia Devi, Bharatanatyam dancer and true gothic beauty. Bring something
to add to the altar for them if you wish, and come prepared to dance and celebrate their spirits.

Ramon and I. This is one of my favorite pictures of us together. He was very protective of all the ladies
of Swan Dive – acting almost like a dad (albeit a crazed, over-protective one!) A few weeks before he
died he told Amelia, “Ain’t nobody gonna be messin’ with you – they would rather be walking through hell
wearin’ gasoline drawers!” He was so great. We had a beautiful Second Line Jazz Funeral for him the other
night, and following the procession of friends playing “Just a Closer Walk With Thee”, something just broke in
me. The wall of weariness crumbled, and the numbness that has reigned in the face of losing so many amazing
people was replaced by waves of grief. Tears flowed down my face as we marched in a crowd packed with
people who knew and loved Ramon. It was the music, and being surrounded by such a beautiful community of
friends who would gather together to celebrate the life and mourn the death of one of our own. Ramon was
basically homeless, a veteran whose health (both physical, emotional and mental) had been severely
damaged by what he went through in the war, and in his difficult life – and he carried demons with him,
no doubt. Despite all that, his huge heart won out – he was a loving person, a good man. It’s just not going
to be the same without him. Lots of the fellas who work at the bar have gotten tattoos of his main motto:

Truth. One that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Amanda Stone and Marshall LaCount (of the Mudlark Puppeteers and Dark Dark Dark, respectively.)

Beautiful Norah

Devi cracks the snake!

Laurel and I worshipping the gilded skull.

Monika Hakkinnen

Monika + Colin

Stunning visitors from Germany. They wandered into the party and were much delighted.

Amelia was so beautiful that night that I was inspired to say some downright naughty things to her!
Luckily, she’s a tough dame who can handle my dirty talk. Must’ve been that vicious absinthe/tequila combo…

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, Naomi Elliott performed an incredible Aztec dance ritual that involved a watermelon being disemboweled! So beautiful.

Les Surrealistes

Nefairia Devi (Elizabeth Emily Mincho)– December 7, 1976 – May 14, 2011
Photo by Solvej Jordahl

Strangely, I never actually had the chance to meet this amazing woman, though we came from the same town,
and had many friends in common. She left for London when I was still a blooming wee gothlet, and somehow
our paths just never crossed, even though she had moved back this way for a few months before her untimely
passing. When I lived in New Orleans, she started sending me sweet parcels: gifts of books and music, and
even this incredible heart-shaped floral arrangement, accompanied by an actual honest-to-goodness telegram!
Both were delivered to Sideshow, where I was working at the time – and I remember my boss teasing me mercilessly
about my admirer. Nefairia was like that: someone who would shower affection on you, just because she could.
I love how the card on the flowers reads “Angel M. Gorgeous” – what a sweetheart! It’s truly bizarre that’s she’s
gone – just like that. A freak car accident resulting in a severe brain injury, and in a flash the world has lost one
of its shining lights. It makes no sense to me. I hope her journey across the river is easy, and am lighting candles for her
and sending love to her family and friends. Nefairia, I wish we’d been able to meet in this life. Perhaps in the next.

We also lost Leonora Carrington – (6 April 1917 – 25 May 2011) last week.
Oh death! I wrote a piece about her life and work for Coilhouse.

LEONORA CARRINGTON by Pamela Robertson-Pearce from Neil Astley on Vimeo.

This video is an excerpt from the film GIFTED BEAUTY – directed by Anne Kjersti Bjørn,
with music by Maia Urstad and animations by Gustav Kvall. (Ragg Film, 2000)

New York Is Killing Me (Chris Cunningham Remix)
Damn, and Gil Scott-Heron too? The afterlife is being populated with poet angels
wearing tarnished silver halos. The beating of their flaming wings is deafening.

I was one of those kids once, actually. I was an obnoxious spare-changing, dumpster-diving,
sidewalk beer-swilling gutterpunk brat. I was homeless because I refused to live with my parents,
in the middle of nowhere, in a situation where I was utterly miserable. I couch-surfed, and slept on
floors in houses where roaches crawled on my face at night. I met a lot of the friends I still love and
cherish at Project Phase, a free service for homeless kids where you could get tested for STDs and
clothes and food. Most of my friends were travelers, and some of them still are – though many grew
out of riding the rails, and came to appreciate a different kind of freedom, that of having a place to truly
call home. I respect and admire all my train-hopping friends, my hard-working, hard-partying, beet
harvesting, harmonica-playing, spray-painted butt-flap sporting friends. It fucks with me to see them
fucked with, treated as less than human. It makes me wonder what it is about their wildness, their
feral freedom that make them so threatening to people who have settled. Settled for banality, I mean.
All this reminds me of reading about my mom’s experiences in the 60′s and 70′s, when she and
her friends were treated like filth for having long hair and beards and for not wearing makeup.
It was a regular thing to see signs warning “NO DOGS OR HIPPIES” in restaurants, or to have
people not want to rent to you. It’s a weird hysteria – the loathing of the caged for the free.

Since I don’t have pictures or names to properly mourn the eight unlucky kids who died,
I’m posting instead these polaroids taken by Mike Brodie that have long captivated me.
Some of them are of friends, or friends of friends. All of these faces are familiar, beloved
somehow. Mike is one of them, and you can see the love and trust between him and the
people he photographs reflected in their eyes.

Farewell, farewell – Fairport Convention:

Farewell, farewell to you who’d hear
You lonely travellers all.
The cold North wind will blow again
The winding road does call.

No I will never cut the cloth
Or drink the light to be,
But I’ll swear a year to one who lies
Asleep alongside of me.

More photos here: The Aesthetic Poetic – The Polaroid Kidd
and here: POLAROID KIDD AT NEEDLES + PENS

✶ Mike Brodie’s Glimpses of the Under-Underclass – by David Forbes at Coilhouse

✶ Also, this piece from New Orleans Slate – Just Kids moved me.

Darling Amanda Stone – this is my favorite picture from the whole night.
Her wings seem to be fluttering with light! What a beautiful + loving elf.

La bella Alita!

Pandora and her beloved Auntie Doreen made beautiful lanterns
to carry the memories of their muertos, which they set aflame by the river.

Ladybabymiss aka. Miss O.

Ryan Rossi representing Krewe du Poux!

Calamity! So divine.

I have forgotten this lovely beastmaiden’s name,
though I was so captivated by her ensemble.

Isn’t she amazing? Here’s the view from the back.

Calavera girl down by the water…

At the river we sang a dirge for all the loved ones lost,
and people cast their memories and ashes into the great
Mississippi. Some brave fools waded in, and crossed over
to a sandbar, looking for all the world like dead souls dancing
in the mist, on the other side of life. It was surreal and magical.

This dogpuppet danced on the drummer’s shoulders all night.
A kinetic effigy built in honor of his departed canine companion.

Kozmo + Boo

Me + Jay (Rusty Lazer)

Oops + Grapetta

My love + I drinking hot toddies at Pravda.
My teeth had all rubbed off from snot-faucet nose blowing,
as I was sick as a dog! I ignored it, and kept on trucking, though!

Johna Goldenflame, Colin and Ratty’s disembodied head!

(Photo byRachael Eastlund)
Jonny Flee’s last Dia de los Muertos. Next year we dance + mourn for him.

(Photo by Sasha Kopfler)
So happy and full of life. Beautiful and defiant in the face of death.
Now he’s one of that bony krewe, waiting for us across the river.

The last photo of the night – because a good laugh will do us all good.
It was a booty-pumpin’, animal-screamin’, jambalaya-clutchin’ kinda time
at the Hi-Ho Lounge that night. I think this image just about sums it up.

I wanted to say that I’m sad that we hadn’t gotten to sit and talk in such a long time.
Every time I ran into you over the past few years, it was a quick hug in the middle of
a parade – you looking stunned, and me rushing back so as not to lose my companions
in the flood of revelers. Just the other day, a bunch of your pals and I sat in my warm
kitchen, admiring these photobooth self-portraits you made, and telling stories about
you. I asked them to give you a big, sloppy kiss for me, and I dearly hope they did.
You might not know this, but I’ve treasured this little strip of photos for years, and
loved seeing your face every day on my refrigerator. Now you’re on my altar, candles lit.
I wanted to tell you thank you, again – for being so good to me when I first moved
back to Austin right after Katrina. I remember that night outside the Carousel Lounge,
at the benefit we’d put together. You came up to me, so determined to help me with
whatever I needed. You offered to bike over with dishes and silverware the next day.
You showed up and put in the elbow grease when few of my old friends made any
effort to help. You came over almost every day to lend a hand with painting, moving
furniture, and later, cleaning mold off of the treasures I was able to salvage from my
house in New Orleans. You were there with me when Myrtle called to tell me that she’d
been in my house, and that the roof had blown off. You held me when I fell apart, steered
me to the movies to see Mirrormask, in hopes of distracting me from my despair. You put
me to bed and sat silently near me, solid and full of empathy. You went to New Orleans
later, and brought back a bag of mix tapes I’d bemoaned leaving behind. You shimmied
up my rickety, blasted balcony and busted into the ruins of my old apartment to retrieve them
for me. You were the only person I know who would do stuff like that, selfless, dedicated and
sometimes foolhardy acts of love. Thank you for being so beautiful, so kind, and so good.

Wolf-eyed brother. Stray puppy with the hungry face. You tried to look tough, but anyone
who knew you will remember how your pale face would crack in two with that crooked
little boy grin of yours. Your busted up teeth later proudly replaced with silver, now soon
to be ash. That terrible-ass tattoo you got on your skinny white chest – a gnarly pirate
sneering beneath the words “If you ain’t a pirate, then you ain’t shit”. That’s the kind of
tattoo guaranteed to make a mother weep, though I know now she’d give anything to
see it again, to see your face. I feel so heartbroken for your family to get this news on
Christmas Eve. Anytime would be bad, but this? It’s just not right. How can this be?

It hasn’t really sunken in at all that you’re gone. That I won’t run into you at the St. Roch Tavern,
or here in Austin. The pieces don’t fit. You worked so hard to do right by people, and this is what
you got from humanity in return. It’s really hard for me not to be bitter right now. I don’t understand
what is happening in New Orleans, but it kills me that so many people I love are bearing the brunt
of this cycle of violence. I’m so scared for our city, for all of our friends. Please watch over them.
I know how much you loved it there – how at home you always felt in New Orleans.
It’s your final home now, and although I hope you can pass smoothly onward into
being part of everything, a part of me hopes that I’ll see a shade of you sitting on
a leafy back-stoop like this again. I love you, Jonny Flee – thank you for loving me.
Imagining you being dead isn’t really the hard part, you know. I just always
thought that if it happened, it would be some gory train-hopping incident,
or a bike accident, or, I don’t know – pirates or something. Not murdered.
Not shot in your house right before Christmas. I’m sorry you went this way.
I was hoping to see what kind of old man you’d make. Now you’re a lost boy,
forever – waving a wooden sword and swinging from vines in Neverneverland.

Jonathan Hall – “Flee” – May 2, 1983 – December 24th, 2010

To everyone else reading this, and feeling sadness and fear for the violence in New Orleans,
please – whatever you do, don’t write the city off. It terrifies me to think of any more loved ones
being made victims, but at the same time, I don’t want them to abandon their home. After Helen
was murdered, I had to stay away for a while. The fear and despair overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t
be there to celebrate Mardi Gras because of all the dark dreams I kept having. I regretted not being
there, and promised myself I would never miss another one. I’m keeping that promise, and I hope that
things will change soon, somehow. If you live there, please be careful, be canny, be safe. Make sure
that your house is secure. If you plan on getting a gun to protect yourself, please learn how to use it responsibly.
I can’t help but agree with friends who are wondering if the police turning a blind eye to the rash
of robberies, rapes and murders in the 8th Ward recently aren’t somehow in cahoots with the thugs
who are doing this shit. Sounds crazy, but when you look at this video from last month, and then look
at all the violent shit that’s gone down, it’s hard not to draw lines. These attacks have all been on our
friends – punk rock kids with nothing, no money, really, to take. So why are they being targeted? To get
them out? Or maybe it’s just random. Maybe the ten dollars from a bike-delivery kid on a shitty night
is worth it to them. Worth murdering for? It doesn’t make much sense. At the very least, the cops and
the city aren’t bothered that people are being predated on, especially since those people are “transients”
and “rowdy punk kids” who they don’t want here anyway. Much stranger things have happened in New
Orleans, where the city government and police force are so mind-bogglingly corrupt it’s hard to believe
it’s not Juarez. Watch this video and tell me there’s not something wrong with this picture:

“Cops call them a nuisance. Residents say they’re dangerous.
Now, some are wondering why transients, or gutter punks as they’re
often called, congregate in the St. Roch neighborhood.”

I call bullshit.

Turkey buzzards overhead as Amethyst Deceivers played (our traveling
soundtrack was nearly exclusively Coil, both before and more poignantly,
after we learned of dear Unkle Sleazy’s passing…) I saw a giant carrion
bird gleefully gnawing on a smear of roadkill while listening to these lyrics:

Pay your respects to the vultures / for they are your future

I felt happy remembering that – that we are all one day fine feasts
for vultures and worms. I love the completeness of these cycles.
I wish less was wasted – time, material, energy. I wish sky-burial
could happen in Texas as well as Tibet. I’m happy that Sleazy’s
shell will be treated in accordance with his wishes in Thailand.
It is my dream that one day, we will all be able to complete that
cycle with our bodies, and feed something else with what we
leave behind. Our systems for dealing with death, and our grief
and burial rituals severely need massive restructuring, and soon.

Thanksgiving feast for a lone butterfly…

…and also for me!

I love how persimmon trees look festooned with bright ornaments on cold days.

Despite what might seem like morose maunderings, my Thanksgiving was
remarkably sweet and filled with good company, and much comfort and joy.

I am extremely blessed to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving twice,
with two amazing families – (both my own, and Colin’s) and to be
able to enjoy caffè corretto alla grappa and discussions about nuclear
physics in the parlour with Colin’s papa, and stay up until 3am talking
about everything under the sun with his mama. They are so lovely.
My own folks also just blow me away with their strength and positivity -
my dad’s dealing with chemotherapy right now, and he’s been taking
it all in stride and maintaining his jovial nature. Send him a good wish,
won’t you? He’d be very grateful to you. I am so thankful to be a part
of such good families, and to be surrounded by so many amazing
friends. I love my life. I am so glad I chose it, and that I get to share it.
Thank you for reading, thank you for being a part of it. Goodnight!

Related posts:
Huexoloti Honey
Russet + Bone
Lone Grove Lullaby

Eulogies for Sleazy:
From Coilhouse – So Long, Sleazy
From John Coulthart – Peter Christopherson, 1955–2010

(l’araignée, la maîtresse et la mandarine)
Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine

“My emotions are inappropriate for my size. My emotions are my demons.” – Louise Bourgeois

“I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.” – Louise Bourgeois

“It’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

what did you do
once
you
knew?”
-Drew Dellinger, “Hieroglyphic Stairway”
From “Nature and the Human Soul”
by Bill Plotkin

Tonight, I’m up late. Like Drew, I cannot sleep —
though I am very tired. I’ve never felt so helpless
to do anything useful in the face of such a vast
spoiling. I’ll re-shave half my head, my lover’s head,
my fluffy dogs and bag it up and mail it in hopes that
a part of me and those I love might soak up a tiny bit
of that poison. The poison that fuels my world, that
gets me to work everyday. I sit here hallucinating that I can
smell a whiff of crude on the breeze, knowing that folks
in Mid-City (NOLA) already can. The fertile delta is being
getting kicked in the cunt, repeatedly. Have you ever been
to the coastal wetlands? Do you know what a flock of egrets
looks like? White-white shaded red against the black and twisted
cypress castles in the sunset, the sound their wings make rising up
from the swamp, all at once. Rails, gallinules, and snipe slathered
in oil, eyes blistering. It makes me think of the first trip I made to the
Gulf when I was small. Port Aransas family vacation desperation,
scrappy sad sea-town with sad sea-shell shops that stunk of brine
and pina-colada. Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory on every radio, stirring
the first throbs of pubescently painful longing. I was the fetal shark
stuck in the jar at the front desk of the scab-hole, flea-bag motel we stayed at.
Noisy old mold-smelling air-conditioner and sand in the carpet, MTV on every
minute. Walking the apocalyptic beach every day, and finding nothing
but death. Sting-rays, countless fish and birds, and the pulsing, hypnotic
cobalt jellyfish. All rotting, rotten. I was thinking something must’ve happened,
but no one could tell me. I tried overcoming my fear of something sharp touching
my leg in the water and then tugging me down, and let myself be carried out far.
The brown water too warm, like salt-coffee, mud-sea. The bobbing and tar-smell
made me nauseous, but the sight of men fishing off the pier nearby reassured me.
Later, I walked up to see what they were catching so many of. Hammerheads, big ones.
The most pre-historic and vicious of fishes, pulled up from right were I had been
dumbly treading water moments before. Blackout Beach is what I’ve been listening
to over and over while writing this. The perfect soundtrack for my heart’s bleak moments,
and for dark nights in general. Really, really good stuff. It’s Ass Saw the Angel on Ketamine.
Carey Mercer‘s lyrics make me wish he wrote books as well. More albums will suffice
for the nonce, though. I’m doing what I always do in times like these: I stay up late reading
everything I can find, poring over diagrams, fretting, wishing I had a whiskey, being glad
I don’t smoke anymore (because I’d be through a pack by now) and trying desperately to
write. To get it out of me, and out to you. An exorcism, and a hope that even through some
awareness, there could be a chance at helping. So, here’s a slew of what I’ve been reading
and looking at. Check it out, and at the very least, focus some of your consciousness on what’s
happening right now — and while you’re at it, please spare a thought for poor Tennessee,
seeing the images prickles my neck, it’s so familiar. Drowned cities. This earth, she’s a snake.
She’s being pierced with arrows, curled into a ball, biting her own tail from the pain, and now
rising up in anguish, her back rippling and knocking askew settlements nestled into her corded
muscles. Her hips buck up, and she’s thrashing, drooling and panting, tears and blood streaming
out in great gouts and overflowing the banks. How long until she shakes us off for good?

✸ Deepwater Horizon Response – Gulf of Mexico-Transocean Drilling Incident

✸ New Orleans Journal – As Oil Spill Looms, a City Plays the Waiting Game Again

✸ The Gulf oil spill blame game
“If you are searching for the perfect metaphor to describe humanity’s 21st century plight —
an energy-hungry and energy-dependent civilization occupying a resource-constrained planet —
then you need look no further than at a satellite photo of the giant spreading oil slick in the Gulf
of Mexico. That massive hydrocarbon stain is our collective scarlet letter, the price we pay for a
lifestyle of extraordinary affluence and comfort — at least as compared to most of the humans
who have ever lived.” – from Salon.com

✸ Sierra Club: “Oil spill is America’s Chernobyl”

✸ Sunset, Mississippi Gulf Coast near Waveland, 2008
“Katrina. The plight of poor working people. The Great Recession. The BP oil spill.
These aren’t just incidents, or accidents, or unfortunate circumstances.
I’m not saying they’re a conspiracy either. I’m saying they’re all a byproduct of a system
which is deeply, fundamentally broken, and increasingly can produce no other results.”
-from Clayton Cubitt’s amazing blog

✸ Photographs of the oil spill approaching Louisiana coast

✸ Just in case you can’t quite get your mind around it (I know I can’t),
the good folks at GOOD have provided us with this horrifying bit of perspective –
Infographic: The Size of the Oil Spill

✸ BP using toxic chemicals to ‘disperse’ spilled oil

✸ Black Death: Will Fisheries Survive the Oil Spill?

✸ Tracking the Oil Spill
A map of the extent of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, day by day.

(Photograph by Karen Glaser)
from her breathtaking Springs and Swamps collection)
I can’t stop myself from thinking about what’s going to happen when this shit permeates
the bayous. No more crawdads, man. Looking at these gorgeous underwater shots from
Karen Glaser makes me weep for places that were far from pristine a month ago — now
soon to be poisoned beyond all saving. I’m really not sure if a lot of people are comprehending
how majorly fucked we are. This is going to have far-reaching, and long-lasting effects,
and the ripple’s going to touch you at some point. Next time you put a piece of seafood
into your mouth, consider where it came from. Consider the water it lived in. Even if you
don’t eat animals (which I respect, but can’t quite manage), or never considered the Gulf
of Mexico or its wetlands as important (they are), this is going to affect you. A good friend
of mine drove down to the Gulf coast the other day, to see it with her own eyes, and to
say goodbye before it’s ruined forever. She says denial is the general state of mind of
the people she’s met down there. What are the 5 stages of grief? When are we going
to get angry? I’m there, but what will it do? Help me write all this out, I guess.

Or, here’s some things we can do to help:
✸ Oil Spill Volunteers

✸ GREATER NEW ORLEANS FOUNDATION OPENS GULF COAST OIL SPILL FUND

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none–
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.

- The Walrus and The Carpenter
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)