A.S.

Camp Marlene: Representation Trumps Reality, or My Favorite Character of All

In Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film Morocco, a handsome Marlene Dietrich fitted in a men's tux and top hat performs for servicemen and their wives at a dinner club in that far-distant desert locale of the film's name, exoticized by this director just as any movie set feigning a foreign setting would be in early Hollywood. Midway through a number, meandering through a sea of white linen and evening wear, Dietrich plants a kiss on the lips of woman in the audience, in front of the lucky lady's husband, and leaves with the woman's sweet-smelling rose. This scene marks one of the first overt sexual displays of lesbian desire in cinematic history, released before the MPAA ratings system was established that successfully set out to censor, restrict, and reverse the art of filmmaking forever, and before audiences and actors became so damn sheepish about sex.

If they happen to see it, many people ask what made me choose the one tattoo I have. For those not in the know, a highly realistic black and gray bust portrait of Ms. Dietrich herself, almost a third the size of my arm, sits on my right bicep. The image is identical to an old publicity shot of Marlene in her days of posing for cigarette ads. While the cigarette doesn't appear in the tattoo, Marlene--with a classically stoic, striking gaze, leaning forward in a men's suit, spotted tie, and flashy cuff links--is at her best.

My typical, shorthand response to strangers' queries about the tattoo is usually some nonsensical babble about a love of old movies, stylized black and white pictures, and (if they're lucky), Marlene's proto-feminist fashion and fiery fury of the early 20th century. But there's more. I swear. And it's really not about me at all.

As a young girl, I read Boy George's biography three times on babysitting gigs. I was fascinated with the idea, the intellectual concept (before I understood it as such), and the image of drag queens, figuring they could be my best friends for life, and that one day, I'd meet the very best friend queen of my dreams, who would never drop me like the cliques of pretty, rich, or at-risk girls in my sixth grade class might. Boy George topped the list, but Hedwig, Andy Warhol's Factory crowd, and Dee in The Crying Game closely followed, each representative of otherness at its most grand. Though I didn't recognize the connection at the time, the meaning of my love for BG was the same as what I felt for Marlene, Greta, Audrey, Katherine, and Bette back in the day.

What I couldn't have known until years later, post-queer theory and art criticism and film studies in school (not to mention the accumulation of my wildest real-life moments, which might pale next to yours), was that Boy George then, and Marlene now (just two years old on my arm),
have been my favorite characters, in all senses of the word, my favorite representations of representation, presentation, and performance. And this is a personal choice, for Marlene is just one of many screen icons of her day, and ours, whose posed presence stands for more than life itself, the bigger than life quality of camp that never fails to intrigue and seduce me, the very effects every dollar paid for her was meant to induce.

To unpack this a bit, though basic for many of you: the performative, stylized, staged, campy, sharply contrasted images of screen sirens and glorious starlets of old Hollywood are fantasy made visible and then reinforced, decadent desserts to consume in one gluttonous bite, though never, ever to touch or to be. These women were objects now re-appropriated, beautiful and unmistakable and unattainable, made for photographs, stages, and cinematic languages. Theirs was an unreal presence, one fit for delicious biographies and tabloids, their personal lives extraneous.

This is not to say that Marlene sits on my arm despite what we know of her outside of movies. To the contrary, the life she lived only strengthens her allure for me--her dark, dry wit, bisexuality, cutting humor, gender-bending style, and private dismissal of conventional
domesticity. That aside, she was never known to be an exceptionally caring, compassionate, or altruistic celebrity--no Audry Hepburn was she. If in theory Marlene could be more admirable, why would I want a tattoo of her on my arm? But that's just it: why would I? May as well have Mother Theresa. It's obviously no fun.

It was Marlene's sharp edges, her moxie, her unapologetic attitude that reveals itself in every photograph, that turns me on to her greater meaning, and what turned me on to drag queens from the start. The clash of glamor and imperfection creates a stunning spectacle, an explosion of embellishment, tour-de-force of being.

Neither high nor low art, the best tattoos are designs, objets d'art, decorative adornments of lush, rich stories and skillful, delicate craft. They carry weight and history and breathe an inessential layer of life into the body. Far from necessary, they don't always add to one's beauty, and are rarely perfect. But just like the starlet film's early days, they queer the human landscape and heighten curiosity, two things art and people should strive to do for each other.

By this definition, Marlene is the perfect tattoo. Beyond her gender-bending beauty, subversive sexuality, camp-icon status, and unquestionable performance power, she represents a resilient fantasy that refuses to loosen its grip on me as it matures. Like a beloved comic-book character who forever remains a heroine on and off screen, or in and out of a book, Marlene serves as my ceaseless site and space for thinking, looking, and imagining that--if I keep doing things right, and occasionally peer at my arm--will never lose its magic.

Gods and Monsters: Jackson Solo

Jackson Milgaten is best known in the tight-knit but ever-expanding San Diego music scene as Action Jackson, his alter-ego who just happens to organize, promote, and distribute some of the best musical experiences in town, from well-known touring acts (or those undiscovered by everyone but him), to the best of the locals and even their benefit concerts, to Single Screen Records, the indie label he co-manages with friend and fellow musician Craig _________.

Over the last few months, Jackson has bravely been performing solo the bittersweet music and lyrics of his longest-running band, The Vision of a Dying World. Last night, I was privy to a rare show of his played for an intimate community of people confined to the less desirable parts of the southern California desert. These folks just happen to be the next generation of Jackson’s first true fans. They have inherited the loving, gleeful, even adoring support shown him in his early days in this very same space, as friends and foes witnessed his transformation from whimsical folk-pop teenager basking in the faded neon of the Las Vegas suburbs to the now devilish demigod of apocalyptic folk rock and the San Diego creative community at large.

Last night, crouched in an eerily subdued room with overstated architecture, understated fashion, and a bevy of pretty, unkempt people lounging respectfully on a dirty floor, we waited patiently for an old friend. I found myself wondering what on earth this wild and crazy, elaborately simple music of such a ruckus of a band would sound like with a single voice and classical guitar. As I looked about the room, I realized no one could predict what it might do to the songs we had known now for so many years, the sounds that so insidiously remind us of how much time has passed too quickly, who we were then, and where we are right now.

Jackson played old songs and new, reminders of The Vision of a Dying World in its myriad incarnations over time and place. And truly, Jackson and the Vision write stories, not songs, stories set to music, more tattoos than scars. In that grand and awkward warm room, we heard desperate pleas for help and hope in the early “Travis Wayne,” youthful fantasies of pirates in “Barges,” syrupy sweet but tainted romance of “Not a Place,” and clever but pained protestations in new work.

But while these songs are rightfully those of the full band, tonight they were inspired by The Vision, as if Jackson were playing a brand new repertoire that could have been The Vision’s, only it all sounded just wrong enough--that is, just completely original enough--to be its own. It was as if Jackson were softly cursed, instructed to play his own songs that had once left his hands for bigger and better days, now curiously returned to him, a gift he could only give back to us in return, a strange exchange of sounds and stories moving between early days and early people to an artist and audience that could only be the present.

What these solo sets engender in the work of this remarkably unique, ever-dynamic, and far-from-finished band is the simplicity of its origins and and the complexity of its inspirations. Never so prominent when performing with the full group, the subtlety of Jackson’s unusually affected voice bends over and brushes up against dirty, demonic, yet terrifically endearing lyrics, somehow connecting and finding the beauty in starkly contrasting themes of fear and insanity, a mother’s lullabies, god and the devil, lost lovers, and friends not forgotten. I have heard these songs many times over, but never has every syllable been so crystallized, sticking softly to my ears, and drifting achingly over my heartbeats.

With the ability to mesmerizingly connect with his audience, Jackson had everyone singing softly, then stirring, startled, in the seething intensity of a few shrill moments. Not unlike the difference in his subjects, the experience of his whole sound shifts dramatically, moving us with it.

Save a spot for this manifestation of the Vision, and give a chance to any solo set by a member of a band you love, if only to feel the familiarity of it all become unexpectedly and exhaustively enriched and oddly blessed, belonging utterly unto itself.

Rosé: An Homage to Hedwig and What She'd Despise

I was driving back from San Diego, or it may have been Tijuana, or Riverside, or Santa Barbara. I vaguely recall the Wall Street Journal culture columnists being interviewed by Terri Gross say that Spain is experiencing something of a renaissance in decent, hella cheap wines. They may have said full-flavoured, very, and affordable. At any rate, I'd like to think that this bit of witty sophistication and trivia runs through the multitude of reasons why I sit here drinking $3.99 rosé on a Tuesday night. Enough of it has gone to my head that I clearly believe it's as untouchably vapid as the queen of all cheap thrills: '80s pop. The Smiths deserve the book I'll one day write. This is the rest of the '80s.

So while Spain dabbles in economical vinification, I've lately been dabbling in one-hit wonders and a few classics that made it to three or five because of their hair and the fact that '80s pop might as well be cocaine. Tiffany, the Go-Go's, The Cure, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Berlin . . . they all make the cut. A-ha's Take On Me takes the crown. Where on earth do I find the desire to seek out, download, listen to any of this, my Victorian Ernie asks?

It's pure sugar. Actually, it's more decadent than that. Not at all rich, but there's some consistency, some buttery texture running incredibly low, along the surface, encased in plastic and pleather. Just unzip. Hear it again and again and for each instance, bliss Enough of it, and you have a downright juvenile tummy ache. After a dose of my '80s mix, I often find myself sporting heart-shaped sunglasses and a red lollipop a la Kubrick's Lolita, driving the 1 in a red convertible, white powder dribbling down my upper lip.

But I shouldn't make light of something so dear to my heart. The '80s pop machine was downright transcendent, and incredibly empty in that it didn't even serve the higher purpose of disco (the quest, the conquer, the glorious revolution of gay men's sexuality, and the antithesis of Vietnam, hippie faux intellectualism, and mediocre protest-rock). They weren't even rebels without a cause. Parelleling, perpendickularing, crossing over punk (The Pretenders, anyone?), it was good, utterly unclean fun.

Good.

And precisely because it was only good at best, and often terrible, it was brilliant in its own right. A formula for a high and a childlike camaraderie. Not to mention a dance-crazy nation. I can't help falling half in love, but mostly in lust, with my companion if we are privileged enough to serendipitously hear "The Tide Is High" in the grocery store together (I wish it were still the radio these days). And we dance our way to that imaginary club in Manchester, where the "better" music of the '80s was born (no doubt, I'm a fan, but Joy Division ain't joyful).

As I said, I'll rightfully save the genius of The Smiths or the like, with mono-note Morrissey's grand tongue-in-cheekiness, theatrical demeanor, and pan-sexual pitter-patter, for my bestselling tome. It's sugar pop's lack of those very qualities that makes it ripe for toothy grinning rather than sheepish crying, that fine line between profoundly romantic angst and undiluted British comedy.

I still can't bring myself to enjoy escapist cinema, but '80s popular composition really had it going on.

And how did '80s pop become this irresistable shooting star, while the '90s quickly congealed into a puddle of sticky drool? The crispness of the synth, the androgyny of the highest pitch, and the hedonistic hair. Formula. Zero originality. Machine.

Ignorence is bliss.

Next chapter: '80s pop as fascism.

She Put a Spell on Me

Someone asks a question I don't remember, but I say something like "it's some kind of sexual sort of thing." And I mean what we love (not who), we find incredibly sexy, hot, erotic to the nth degree. For me, art. For anyone, art. For - it is what they want to touch, even when it's ugly, even more when it's ugly, piss-stained and blood-splotched, emaciated with a pot belly. If it's fashionable, let me fuck it. If it's ancient, let me swoon. If it's revolutionary, let's make out. again and again. with days passing by in the night, in between, if the texture is right, i'll never leave your side, but open your pages night after night, with days passing by in the afternoons. The evenings, I leave for raindrops and wine.

I know you don't know what I mean, and it's not your fault, it's that I'm not trying to make sense right now. You see, I can't because it's love, it's chaotic, a crystal. there are no facts to be figured, no graphs to be grasped, no charts to be chartered. It's that I love you dearly, dear, this thing called art--the more vague, the more lovely, the more precise, the more penetrable. I'm not a bad feminist, you see, i just want to take a dildo to the documenta.

sleep next to me and let me dream, lush lollipops and horney honeycomb and dagger-stabbed fairies on deathbeds of cream, red around the edges, lolita at the door. i don't know, what, fuck, i am waiting for everything.

Chet Baker

I looked for this because of Dave Hickey's essay. 

The Loneliest Time of Day

I despise dusk . . . . when

the light has almost faded, and you lie alone on a loveseat beneath the last low glow of the sun, a blank television screen reflecting your shadow as you try to decide whether or not to turn on the lamp in the living room.