i have the most badass passwords you could possibly imagine
silly meta meta shit that makes me grin each key

 

my safe word is 'no thanks'
this is not a punchline

 

 

You're Surrounded, It Won't Get Any Better

other half

 

new thing in progress that might be called You're Surrounded, It Won't Get Any Better, or some variant on that, or some different thing

alex kapranos photo by bob hardy
charles guislain photo by sacha dumain

other half now complete

 

by samuel wagstaff

 

 

 

The Last Time You Saw Me Alive

 

9 songs that trigger specific memories
in chronological order

1
Lady Godiva's Operation by The Velvet Underground, on White Light/White Heat. i'm 13. i've copied my cd onto a cassette to play it on a cheap Radio Shack Walkman. i'm in the computer room at my mom's real estate office in La Cañada- at the time, Dilbeck on Foothill. i have nothing else to do so i give this song a good close listen. within whatever vocabulary i have at that time, i think something like, 'well ok then. that's some very specific documentation of some totally different sexuality that i have definitely never heard of before. i guess there are plenty of options out there. that's good to know.'

2
Gardening at Night by R.E.M., the 'different vocal mix' on the Eponymous comp. i am 14, in my room on Harmony Pl, stereo volume as loud as possible. i am sobbing about nothing specific: just being 14 and stuck in La Crescenta and wanting so much more, jesus, fuck i I Don't Know What To-

3
Fox on the Run covered by Sweet, i dunno, it's on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. i am listening to it in the sun in Golden Gate Park, on a Sony Discman, on a trip to San Francisco with my father when i am 15. i have already figured out that i can be in college within months through a special program at USC. i hate this fucking trip because i love this fucking city and this trip is SOOO lame, my dad is drunk and ranting about Mexicans [that's sort of his thing, in general, to this day]. but, life is ok because i like this song, i like the sunshine, i like Golden Gate Park, and i'm counting the days 'til i'm out of my house and on my own. i'm not bold enough yet to feel cocky about the situation. looking back, i wish i had been. i could have totally felt like a badass, because i was about to make several clever moves that would totally change my life for way better.

4
I Won't Share You by The Smiths, on Strangeways, Here We Come. 2001, hot day. i'm walking down 2 Ave in Nyc with my first iPod, listening to the song. its ending: 'Life tends to come and go / That's ok as long as / You know / Life tends to come and go / As long as you know no no no no know know no no...' i'm lost in the slippage between 'no' and 'know' and it feels like i'll never need anything else, ever.

5
Vicious by Lou Reed, on Transformer. New York City, Bleecker St apartment [rent paid w/ student loan money], 2002. my lover Steven tells me he just read that Andy Warhol actually wrote the first line of the song- that to Lou Reed, Warhol said, 'Why don't you write a song called Vicious. Like, you hit me with a flower.' Steven is grinning. colors flood the room. life is as gorgeous as i can remember. i go out and buy flowers and trash them by whipping them all over everything. the habit will stick forever.

6
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths, on The Queen Is Dead. Los Angeles, April 2003, the Wiltern, Morrissey's You Are the Quarry tour. Jose Maldonado [lifeguard, marathon runner, and lead singer of L.A. Smiths/Morrissey tribute band the Sweet and Tender Hooligans] literally picks me up and throws me at the stage during this song. i swear to god, Morrissey catches me with one hand [by the wrist, as security grab my feet]. for anyone interested, Morrissey in 2003 is an incredibly physically strong person. he yanks me onto the stage with the one arm while keeping hold on the microphone with his other hand [i do weigh about 98lbs at the time]. for two seconds as Morrissey leans backward and pulls, i see unmistakable, deliberate effort on his face. i think 'wow, he wants to pull me up here.' i find myself upright on the stage; i more or less shit myself; i yell something private into Morrissey's ear; i get dragged off stage left by actually pretty nice security who let me right back into the audience. the event is later recounted in the British music weekly the NME.

7
Kiss Me with Your Mouth, one of the covers... Tintin? i'm at the Ruby/World at 7070 Hollywood Bl on a Sunday for Beat It, an 80s club. 2004. there's this skinny, fey 17 year old boy with a pompadour who's been around for a few months. he's the best dancer i've ever seen. he makes me so hot, my very presence makes him uncomfortable. the first time i ask for his name, i mishear 'Chris' as 'Grace'. i do my best to chill out around him and he can tell, so he's friendly with me even though he's kinda freaked out by how much i want him. the club has just opened and a few people are dancing to this song, me among them. i know i'm going to see Chris later that night. [fast-forward: we never end up doing anything together except kiss once. i will forever refer to him as 'the teenager who won't sleep with me'.] 'Kiss me with your mouth, your love is sweeter than wine, but wine is all i have.'

8
Sometime Samurai by Kylie Minogue, remixed by a DJ whose name i don't remember. it's last Thursday, um, 3 Dec. i am on mdma around 6pm and wander into the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts after a full day at SFMOMA. the back room is decked out like a rave, with beanbags on the floor, DJ-mix music playing, and video art projected. it also looks kinda blacklit. nobody is even in there and i'm pretty blown away by the whole thing. i crash into one of the beanbags. i watch a video: two guys run around a city- San Francisco i'm pretty sure, but maybe it was Nyc or L.A.; i just remember thinking 'home'- so these two guys run around the city, stealing markers and videoing all this with a small DVcam. they write lyrics from the song all over the city as graffiti, especially the refrain 'sometime samurai'. they steal some paint and start to spraypaint the lyrics and the refrain. then they get on what look like European motorscooters, ride a bit, and then the video ends with them at a stoplight for a long moment. i think it's so perfect. sometimes you're a samurai, and the rest of the time you're waiting for the traffic light to change, or for some other signal, or just for a change in the light.

9
Dirty Dream Number Two by Belle + Sebastian, on The Boy with the Arab Strap. 5 Dec, Oakland Airport. it's around 8:20pm and within the hour i'll be in the air, on the way to JFK. i've heard this song recently on my iPod, which is now battery-drained. i think about my lover Steven, who's having a bad time right now although i think he's getting better. he has horrible trouble with nightmares. [me, i hardly ever remember my dreams at all.] i'm walking through the terminal carrying literal 'heavy shit' [my bags], having been up for 2+ days. i hear Stuart Murdoch sing in my head 'Why is this happening to you, you're not a child / Why is this happening, you've too much on your mind'- and it's just one of those moments where all the mirrors make me start to cry cuz they are mirrors. there's no point in trying to list them all. who the fuck sits down and makes a list inside a hall of mirrors?

well Dennis, apparently. props to him for making the only 'memes' on the internet that are actually worth doing.

 

I'm Alive and Know it

--
right here

also deviantart.com can blow me

 

I'm Alive and I Know It
[024 / 100]

--
Glasgow

 

In the first place, I'm writing this without the magazines at hand. I'm in a room where musical instruments are scattered upside-down, empty glass bottles crowd every surface, and a busted trampoline faces me directly: my view. Not exactly how I planned it but at least Storz+Bickel are present.

I encountered this girl in the apparently final print issue [2001] of Propaganda Magazine, an enterprise of Fred H Berger, a dude whose cultural role I have never quite gleaned. He takes photographs [which are pretty good]; reviews minor music releases. For a time, I guess, he was behind a print magazine called Propaganda. I always find that the most unexpected people know Propaganda Magazine, so if you know it, you know it. If not;

Early issues were goth-oriented and 2 steps above Xerox. As years passed, it grew into a reasonably glossy... 'scene magazine'? 'Fictional photoessay' magazine? Basically, these really hot, androgynous boys and girls would pose for clearly made-up Life Magazine-type photojournalism pieces. Or would you call the pieces porn? The narratives were similar. The pictures were generally sexual, but didn't have nudity.

For example, in the photographs below, The Girl, dyed blonde in black leather looking like a boy, is acting the part of 'Dmitri', a Russian street hustler. Dmitri's words are briefly quoted; he mentions his girlfriend 'Zosia' [the other girl below]. He actually says 'I'm not a faggot' with reference to his invented profession, and this gets a block quote. Seriously... at whom was this magazine aimed?

So yeah: The Girl. I don't know her name. My feelings for her are singular... unlike, unlike, unlike...

One time I tried to explain it by saying I didn't know whether I wanted to fuck her or to be her. It wasn't a flippant expression; it was an honest attempt to reduce the conflict, to aim it at a 'central tension', chill the situation out. I asked other people, who is it for you? You can't decide whether you'd prefer to be or fuck who? And I mean really, like if you actually gave it a lot of thought?

I got gorgeous answers: Egon Schiele, Kim Gordon, Morrissey. But I realized that my friends played the game differently. To the names that attracted them, enormous lives and myths were attached. No one proferred an anonymous photo and said, That One. Instead, they felt a pull, more or less, between Fucking That and Having That Career / Having Made That Art.

It's true that with the girl in the photos, I don't know if I'd rather fuck her or be her. I know that I'd say yes to either and both. The former, of course, is unremarkable: you can all see that she's boyishly cute, self-aware, and involved in some kind of weird art project. But as for being her, I don't know what her daily life is like now, or what it was ever like; I don't know where she lives; I fundamentally don't know what she does. Further, if I were to be her, it wouldn't be so that it was me in these photos in Propaganda Magazine. It's not that I wish I had been the one to make that art- art that's totally unobjectionable and quite sexy at turns, but not the sort that makes me jealous.

I guess I see: The Surface of The Girl. If she walked toward me, in a mirror or on the street, and said, Do You Want To Switch?... and she would become me and I'd become her and we'd walk away, each into a new life formerly belonging to the other... I Would Say Yes. No doubt, I would probably try to fuck her too. So basically this makes her... a point of entry? I see the other side already.

Some people want themselves. Some people want you. Some people want boys or girls coaxed halfway into existence; some people want light; and some people want the whip. Me;

I want Two I want Twice

2 more photographs

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, shot by Andy Warhol, 1983 [left]
self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1975 [right]

both Polaroid
Robert's vanilla
Warhol's a Polacolor ER print

 

Hard, 2004

Soft, 2006

 

the one on the right in the top one, and on the floor in the bottom one, sent me two of the most amazing letters, once, before he got famous. just look at him; imagine what getting a letter from him must be like; you don't know half of it.

Virginia Puff-Paint by Jeremy Laing, 2004
Jeremy Laing and Will Munro, shot by Bruce LaBruce

 

Ryan McGinley and Kent somebody, 2006
shot by Amy Kellner

 

all other entries are in the directory. some questions are answered at return the ring.