29 flames lit
dispersing your soul
into us all 
it's these thousand 
peroxide curls 
straightening 
into smoke strands 

I'm dragging my gown
against the asphalt 
worship is not
working on holidays 
its ruining the 
things you love;
it's weary valentines 

a secret cannot be found
inside the body 
perform your autopsy 
your murder 
rifle through the carnage 
I can't tell you 
what you don't know

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Like how some people will go to open houses for homes they will never own, me and my friend one night decided to peruse the Sotheby’s Luxury Real Estate website to decide which house we would live in together. The windows in our apartment with the crooked floor were open and rolling thunder was passing through the city. An electric charge from the outside made its way into my room as we lay on my bed (still on the floor at this point) looking through the photo galleries.

The places we looked at were in Italy, France, and Greece. Countries known for their extravagant villas, mansions, and refurbished farmhouses. Many “homes” cost upwards of thirty million dollars. After scrolling through such expensive listings you see one that says five million and you throw your hand up, “Only five??, and wave it hand back and forth, “That’s a steal!” How accessible life must feel when you have that much wealth. Or how absolutely violating. Exposed is how one must feel; life, opportunity, and eventualities practically singing at you—screaming in unison! An operatic burden of possibility burning under the sun! What the hell do you do with all that money anyway??

Well. You buy an incoherent home with dozens of rooms, cut the phone cord, and go absolutely mad. There’s no turning back. You’ve hit the finish line baby. Aside from the option of cutting a check containing all your riches to the nearest ocean cleanup, the only alternative is to pillage yourself. You’ve caught the blood-borne disease called affluence.

The current Powerball Jackpot is at 119 Million. Is there really any practical way to spend a hundred million? Save some of it for investments? Inheritances? Assets? No! I’m—we!—are going to squander it, act precisely with the reckless abandon that God does watching over the Holocaust and famines and bombings of schools and hospitals in Palestine! That’s the good aristocratic way! So hopelessly absorbed in the infinitude of life!

We decided to dream up some sort of romantic, EFIList sequence of events. Some plot line combining A Rebours, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas…and Confessions of an English Opium Eater? Maybe something from D’Annunzio? He was Italian! Say, we won the lottery and had the means to purchase any home of our choosing on the Sotheby’s website; we would buy the house, gather up a sizable stash of drugs, go looney-tunes, and kill ourselves. We thought, in one of these monstrosities, suicide is inevitable; it’s the only way to dispose of the detritus we will become. From the moment we walk through the double doors, death will be our only graceful gesture.

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Symbolically the oasis, much like an island, is a sanctuary and center of spiritual energy. The tranquil waters of the oasis hold wisdom, induce regeneration, provide sustenance, and sometimes, disappear when one has come too close. The desert surrounding it is the undifferentiated, primordial state from which we seek refuge.

The Oases is a bi-weekly column dedicated to sharing isolated incidents of beauty and their intrinsic value to the soul.

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Dear Dolly,

Today is my birthday, and I have just received the news that you’ve passed away. So many of our beloved celebrity icons are approaching their time, or have crossed over, willingly or not. George Michael and Hugh Hefner stung, but I haven’t truly cared about a celebrity death until today. You, Dolly Parton, should have been spared. It was just a year ago that I heard you say “I ain’t dead yet!!” I haven't been able to stop crying for long. If it stops, I need only glance over at my saint candle on the stove, to your high-heaven-hairdo, your pink bedazzled costume, and full, unbelievably straight set of glowing teeth, and my eyes begin to sting again. The candle is something I purchased at a local stationary store three years ago and have always kept it on my vanity—kept you close to me—your wisdom and perseverance and laughter right there next to Las Vegas call-cards, my press on nails and cheap perfume. You fit right in, an honorary guest.

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did my dream life 
rent me
for a few months?
I'm asking to be
put back on the schedule 
a few more weeks
and it won't remember my name 

blood for severance 
a few drops
like words 
to mitigate 
while dark eyes peer
from over shoulders 
and through doorways

over hills and 
crosswalks 
through red lights 
and no turns 
my thighs ache with the future 
unburdened, unforseen 

So! I hear Spring Breakers 2 is officially in the works. I think it’s time to talk about one of my favorite movies. (!!!) SPOILERS AHEAD. Watch the film, it's on HBO currently.

The first time I watched Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers was at 120% speed on a pirating website a few weeks after its premier. It was squished into standard formatting though it’s a widescreen film. Everything sounded and appeared off-kilter, but I didn’t care. After my parents went to bed, I smoked a small joint out of my window (back at the time when this was enjoyable for me) and put the bootleg on. I was 15 and this was the golden period where no one had negative things to say about James Franco, when political correctness was still at the margins, and the era when Party Rock, grimy Dubstep, and EDM continued to have a vice grip on the club scene discography.

The film follows four coeds (Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith) who go on spring break after robbing a local diner. After being arrested for doing drugs, their bail is paid by the white rapper and hustler, Alien. We watch as three of the four turn into what Korine called “gangster mystics”, and the black sheep Faith (a Christian notoriously played by Selena Gomez) returns home after becoming uncomfortable with their new lifestyle. The remaining bikini-clad babes enjoy their version of total fantasy: the American Dream as interpreted by Atlanta rappers. “Big booties and money fallin’ y’all”. Such a dream would also be supplemented by a consistent schedule of violent crimes seemingly for the thrill.

Spring Breakers is set in Florida, which is not only the appropriate place for a film about spring breakers, it’s the perfect place for a film about exploring unadulterated freedom. Florida’s history is checkered with zealots, vigilantes, bootleggers, mafias, smugglers, and sociopaths. It is this environment and culture which convincingly lands SB in the category of “beach noir”, ie: Miami Vice. As Michael Sorensen of Horses made very clear in his documentary on the state, in Florida the rules are different. Home to outlaws, it is a godless place. So you better pray. Pray super hardcore. SB projects the idea of paradise really only being something outside of the law, and therefore the dominion of God.

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spin me around
break my nail 
a round of drinks 
and a triple blonde
buy your way 
into the fantasy 
and love her better tonight  

ice like it could
sit on the band 
I dont see any diamonds 
falling from the sky 
but oh they're heavy like em
the sky is heavy 
tinkering on the roof

have you ever aged 
20 years in 20 hours
try it in the car 
sunburn's for the plane 
tartare is for birthdays 
and doing a u-turn in front of a cop
is for idiots 

four days of hell 
for a few blinks of an eye 
you know
what your dad said is
true
no good deed
goes unpunished

lets call you argentina
your little farm house
with its spiral steps 
theres no blue 
bluer than 9pm 
5 miles away
from the bare beaut

die happy 
die vibrating 
pilsner in hand 
a bra and hair tie 
growl baby 
on dirt roads 
all up in smoke 

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Symbolically the oasis, much like an island, is a sanctuary and center of spiritual energy. The tranquil waters of the oasis hold wisdom, induce regeneration, provide sustenance, and sometimes, disappear when one has come too close. The desert surrounding it is the undifferentiated, primordial state from which we seek refuge.

The Oases is a bi-weekly column dedicated to sharing isolated incidents of beauty and their intrinsic value to the soul.

Share

You haven’t ridden a motorcycle until you’ve done it without a helmet in a denim bikini through western South Dakota. Road laws in the midwest are the kindest and most hospitable to the seatbelt off, no helmet, joy riding, hose water drinking survivors astride their Harley’s and Indians respectively. These are the sort who attend Sturgis, the largest motorcycle rally in the world. Every year, half a million people from all over the world swell up a small town of 7000 people, bringing with them exhaust, crisp hundred dollar bills, and Busch Lite in their saddle bags.

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J. G. Ballard’s “What I Believe”:

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I feel like I'll burst
these encased pyrotechnics 
lovers talk by harleys 
fire glows from flutes 
smoke mingles with pine
and dark grace enters
through an open doorway 

sticky tables in the mountains 
and a fine layer of dirt  
their tails stay clean
blowing from head and chin 
the health inspector can piss off
I'll roll you one
get me another Ferrari, will ya?

there's love in the attic 
only I know about
a bacchanal down below 
silver, chrome, steel, and gold
coronating the kaleidoscopic black
bare heads are legal in this state, 
right?

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It would be easy for you to walk into Cole’s show “snowing” and brush it off as some conceptual nonsense. In fact we have had many an argument/discussion over the perceived emptiness or overcompensation of such art; I on the offense and he on the defense. And though this kind of work is new territory to me, I never want to be so arrogant as to forget to use my own eyes. While immediacy in art or beauty can be wonderful, this unquestioned display of skill, it can just as easily have the opposite effect. Things which expose upfront all they are, can seem garish, contrived, or even one dimensional. We can forget the quiet things in the art world, things which exist on a different sensual plane than we are used to. Perhaps having him as a friend, and observing how he moves through the world, lends more context to this work than it’s worth. But when I tell you that I simply do not think that’s the case, know I mean it. This is actually a show I thoroughly enjoyed, and it didn’t require I bloviate or exaggerate Cole’s competence in order for the work to be a success.

The exhibition is called “snowing”—yeah, lowercase s. It’s on view at AFK Gallery’s downtown location. Cole’s full name is Cole Modell, and when I asked him what kind of artist he was, this is the message I received in return:

The gallery occupies the first floor of a derelict, emerald tile facade mid-rise from the 1900s known as the Sauer Building. As you walk in, the first thing you notice aside from the smell, are two Bausch and Lomb chart recorder paper rolls that descend from the ceiling like heavy streamers. “Regal” was the first word that came to mind. Cole would confirm a few minutes later that this word was not unfounded. He explained the show was about excess, and so far, this was the largest scale he’s ever worked at.

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