A Curiousity

Cat Killer

Compulsion

Composition

The polymars performed their role admirably. The adhesive held. The future became present and the present opened up into a party. And the party was plentiful.

Good and plentiful. Land of plentiful. And the plentif plead for the wisdom of the dead and the dead rose up and so aroused, sought the santuary of souls in the solice of summer.

Hot stuff. Heady and rough, it was good sex.

Colonizing the Colonials (some more)

You can make a world of difference!

National Clandestine Service Career.

The work of a nation. The center of intelligence.

CIA

Only the police seemed to mistake the New Langton and the Colony Room for a party. They appeared in their lumbering slow insistent investigative way to break up what they thought was an illegal rave. A quick look into the nearly empty space with a modest sound system and nary a glow stick in sight revealed their error and they moved on down Folsom toward the loud pulsing sound of parties permitted or not.

Not an underground club or even an edgy location in the now mostly lofted South of Market, New Langton is assuredly an art space (gallery, performance space, studio, whatever). The rough walls can't disguise the planned artifice of this reenactment/restaging of the infamous London drinking club. The "raw" quasi nineties performance art space only heightens the artifice of this self styled performance of social scene and milieu and at the same time deflates it a bit.

Being in a performance space prevents the kind of forced dialogue between social staging and performance that might happen if this project were to be put into a real bar or club, say the old Press Club on Post or the Redwood Room. In that setting the artifice would be another layer put on the artifice of the existing space with its own organic life. Of course those are not spaces of social and artistic discourse where art and alcohol and all intertwine. San Francisco is difficult that way. The social scenes are disparate, the watering holes unrelated to the arts patrons make or don't make. Despite best romantic efforts at restaging or inventing we have neither the pub/club drinking culture nor the gentle salon society to tie together a like scene.

But then this was before Emily Wilson appeared. (That amazing event's description coming in the fullness of time...)

Colony Room Distilled

The week before Emily's reading, she and I attended the Colony Room to scope out the scene. After a delicious dinner of Sushi and something not quite yet tofu at a delightful hole in the wall Sushi place in the Castro we slid down 18th to Folsom and other to New Langton. Baffled at first by the space (I thought we were in the same New Langton I knew but that it had received some kind of extraordinary renovation stripping out the bare fittings it had had) until the director explained it was new and the old space was adjacent and accessed through a barely finished hole in the wall I was none the less enchanted by the corrugated walls and vertigo inducing ceiling.

Despite the huge volume of space, the scene felt warm and intimate. A trick of the red glowing light perhaps but a welcome feeling none the less.

On the back wall a video projection, universally ignored. Scattered through the room, a spare crowd. On the left a bar light by hanging barrels turned lamps (my mother with her passion for electrifying everything would appreciate the work) on the right the Alice in Wonderland passage to Langton past, behind a red Toyota pick up truck with a white camper roof housing a portable still, the source of that evening's special cocktail. A kind of anti-moonshine (or anti-freeze), it was Makers Mark bourbon run through the still until it lost all color but retained that sickly sweet bourbon flavor. Vaguely reminiscent of holiday sweet, it would turn out to be a drink that stayed with me well into the next day.

More social than performative, the evening turned into an unexpected delight. Perhaps it was the smallness of the group or the moonshine but somehow the we're all in this together feeling led to an easing of some of the usual art/social anxiety and awkwardness. After admiring her from afar I had a wonderful chat with Ann Colvin..

This week's suggested strategy for prying out a story or some such:

Celebrating the collapse the consumer economy and the fall of finance, tell a story using the tools, devices or artifacts of commerce. Tell a story of buying, selling, paying or getting paid. Or tell a story using the ephemera of commerce (receipts, credit card slips or statements, bank statements, price tags etc) to be your form or anchor or inspiration. Keep it to a page or a little more and bring it to share.