...and always laughing

 

"In a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, 'holds office'; every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities.  

We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve."

~ John F. Kennedy, U.S. President  (1961 - 1963)

________________________________

____________________________

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

---------------------------------------------

~ a poem by Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic

___________________________________________

I got the idea to look up poetry written by Rumi, from reading Jerry Hall's book, My Life in Pictures -- she wrote about the early days of her romance with Mick Jagger:

------------------ [excerpt] -------------- We really were head over heels in love.  When I first went to Paris to be with Mick, while he recorded an album and I did the catwalk shows...we never got tired or bored or disagreed.  

We were just so in love, becoming closer and closer, sharing our thoughts, our books, our inner fears and always laughing.  

He would read me the spiritual poetry of Rumi and I would read him the humorous poetry of Dorothy Parker. ---------------- [end / excerpt]

Mick's songwriting process:

--------------- [excerpt] ---------- He would keep a diary and write down all his emotions.  Then he would pick through his notes and work them into songs.  

He would also take stories from what was going on in the world and craft powerful, haunting lyrics.  

He had some of the same books that Bryan Ferry had used for song writing:  rhyming dictionaries and the French poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

-30-

so let us begin anew

 

Under a movie review in The Guardian a Reader Comment says of President John F. Kennedy,

-------- He did have some greatness, but he was very very flawed.  His image was greater than the substance.  He benefitted from the times he lived in, that feeling of euphoria that ran through the early 60s, the sense that anything was possible. ------------------

Was there a sense, in the early 1960s, that "anything was possible"?

_______________________________

________ I had been thinking about two things:

connection

and

deception.

Connection, because learning about, or meditating upon, one subject may lead a person to another subject.

And Deception, because sometimes we can be going along thinking things are one way, and then find out later that they were a different way.

        In one of Jane Austen's novels, the main character thinks she knows The Way Things Are, and further along in the story she (and we, the readers) are shown the true situation, which is different from the original picture.  A metaphorical "curtain" is drawn back to reveal the truth.

Connection -- I became interested in Jerry Hall's life-and-art observations and stories, because she became Mick Jagger's girlfriend and partner, and since I like the Rolling Stones' music, I noticed when there was a magazine article about her.  That was how I came to notice her, and the stories she recounted.

        (If I had been a more informed student of fashion, I would have known who she was before my introduction to the Stones.)

Interest in one thing may connect you to something else you may be interested in.  Then that might lead to another connection and Journey Of Study.  A series of connected topics may create a path...

_______________________________

And back to Kennedy -- was the image of him and his presidency greater than the substance?  Maybe that's true for a lot of people.  Or not.

        Did JFK benefit from "The Times" he lived in?

        Do we all benefit from the times in which we live?  (Would people look at us differently if this were 1744, instead of 2022?)

that feeling of euphoria

the sense that anything was possible

the early '60s

-30-

"I love to take a photograph" ♫ ♪

 

a photograph by Arthur Elgort

Yesterday, seeing how many of those photographers I had heard of before, I was thinking -- Irving Penn... is he a film director, too?  Checking with Google, I learned the director I was recalling was Arthur Penn, who directed Bonnie and Clyde (1967) -- and -- Arthur Penn and the photographer Irving Penn are brothers!

small world

________________________

Another photographer Jerry Hall highlights in her book is Arthur Elgort.

----------------------- [excerpt -- Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.] ---------------

Arthur Elgort was an American photographer who was a master of the use of natural light.  

He'd find empty buildings with sunlight coming in through doors and windows and use them as his sets.  He loved sunlight streaming in through dirty windows.  

He didn't tell you what to do, he'd just show you the light and let you go and then snap away while you moved about.  

I enjoyed that -- so few people use natural light and I love it -- studio light is so flat in comparison.  You had to move into the best possible light, so I did crazy things like climbing up a door frame in my bare feet to reach a beam.  

We took these pictures in Italy.  

Elgort never worked in England because the natural light there was just too unreliable.

-30-

delicious lunch in Paris; quick sandwich in NYC

 

In Jerry Hall's book, she mentions an artist named Ed Roche.  Canadian.  Above is one of his paintings.

_____________________________

--------------------- headline today:

GOP lawmaker attended gay son's wedding 3 days after voting against same-sex marriage

______________________________

                -------------------- [Jerry Hall -- My life in pictures excerpt] --------------------------------------

New York

In Paris I had worked with the great photographers such as Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Jeanloup Sieff and Sarah Moon.  This was the fashion world's equivalent of graduating from Yale with honours and I went straight to the top of the agency's list.  There were no more 'go sees' for me, I was booked every day.

        ...Work New York-style was a shock to the system after Paris.  In Paris we all considered ourselves artists and didn't start work till 11am, and then had big breaks for proper, delicious lunches.  In New York, it was early starts and a quick sandwich for lunch.  The work was much harder and the clothes were often less glamorous.

        I soon realized that being a model in America was more than just producing beautiful pictures; it was selling a dream.  And it was a ruthless business -- I was told I would last five years if I was lucky. ----------------------- [end / excerpt]

___________________________

She lists photographers who were "the best of their generation."  I scanned the sentence, thinking Which of these names have I heard of?

Francesco Scavullo    (heard of him)

Richard Avedon    (heard of him)

Irving Penn    (heard of him)

Bill King    (had not heard of him)

Rico Puhlmann    (not heard of before)

Hiro    (not)

Helmut Newton    (heard of him)

Norman Parkinson    (had not heard of him before reading this book)

Arthur Elgort    (not heard)

Albert Watson    (not)

________________________________

-30-

road-trip art

 

I could not stop blogging Jerry Hall's book!  I love the spirit with which she writes about getting started in the fashion-model business.  Her enthusiasm and focus are inspiring.

        When she mentioned in her book that she had watched French movies in school, including some by filmmaker Luis Buñuel, I remembered being taken to see a Buñuel movie during my freshman year at college:  I Googled list of his movies to see if I could remember which one I saw.  The two titles that are familiar to me are That Obscure Object of Desire, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie -- it must have been one of those.

        I liked how she called mashed potatoes "mash potatoes."

        Modeling:  it's kind of like acting, only you don't speak -- so -- like being a mime, sort of.

        When she wrote about meeting Antonio Lopez and she remembers what she was wearing, and what he was wearing, too.  This was 35 years after that meeting, when she was writing this book.  I wondered if she remembered what everybody was wearing right from memory, after so many years, or maybe she kept a diary and wrote down what they wore -- and then when she wrote her book she could consult that record. ...

        And boy, did she meet the people!

Salvador Dalí

King Vidor

Jean-Paul Sartre

Simone de Beauvoir

Andy Warhol

You'd have to have your wits about you, to make conversation with persons of such prominence in the world of arts and letters.  As a teenager (!)

        It seems like Jerry Hall has natural curiosity and eagerness to learn, as well as a magnetic personality.

        The group of photographs at the top of this post are some of the pictures Antonio Lopez took of Jerry during their car-trip from New York City to Texas.

-30-

fashion is instant language

 

Jerry Hall, Antonio Lopez

----------------- [continued-Excerpt from Jerry Hall book] -------------------

Antonio always brought a lot of originality and humour into his work.  He never stopped drawing and experimenting with different styles and he produced hundreds of drawings.  Some of the drawings he did of me, Grace Jones, and other models went into his book, Antonio's Girls, which came out in 1982.  

        A few years after we met we went to Jamaica with Norman Parkinson to shoot pictures for English Vogue, Parks photographed Antonio drawing me on the beach.  I loved the way he drew me, he was the only person who ever got my mouth just right.

When we were living in New York I took Antonio to my cousin Jo-Nell's wedding.  We drove right across the US to Texas and he took dozens of pictures of me in front of the signs we passed along the way.  I think they're wonderful -- very artistic and very American -- they remind me of paintings by Ed Roche.  Antonio was brilliant; his drawings appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times and his work was exhibited all over the world.

We were only lovers for a short while, but we stayed close friends and I was devastated when he died in 1987 at the age of only 44.  [end, excerpt] --------------------------------------------

When she mentions Ed Roche -- I had never heard of that artist:  had to research him on Google....

___________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

camp chic

 

----------------- [continued-Excerpt from Jerry Hall book] -----------------

Antonio Lopez:  My Mentor

I first met Antonio in the Club Sept in Paris.  I was wearing gold satin with lots of glitter and feathers and he was wearing a white satin jacket and a red beret.  Antonio was a brilliant fashion illustrator, he asked me to pose for him and we became very close.  Then after my sister Terry went back to Texas I moved in with Antonio and we became lovers for a while.

        Antonio knew everyone, and everywhere we went he introduced me to people from the world of fashion, film and art.  He was friends with Andy Warhol and when he came to town we had dinner together at the Club Sept.  Andy had been a very successful commercial artist and fashion illustrator, who had won awards from the Art Director's club, before he had become the Pop Art media superstar of the sixties.

        Antonio taught me so much about make-up and style.  When I got to Paris I was wearing blue eye shadow from eyelash to eyebrows, pink right up my cheeks and pink lipstick.  Antonio would spend two hours making me up, with eye-liner, false eyelashes and plucked eyebrows.  After that I always made my eyebrows arched, the way he drew them.  

        I used to sit for hours with his drawings of me and copy the make-up.  He taught me how to pose, what to do with my hands and how to stay still and look graceful and elegant.

        He used to laugh at my poses and my outfits.  I was still wearing my mother's Frederick's of Hollywood outfits -- I thought they were chic, but Antonio taught me that they were camp instead.  

I'd been camping it up all along and I didn't know it.

______________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

p

everyone and everywhere

 

----------------------- [continued-Excerpt from Jerry Hall book] --------------- Antonio knew everyone and everywhere we went he would introduce me to extraordinary people from the worlds of fashion, film and art.  One of the people I met was the artist Andy Warhol.  Andy loved Antonio's fashion illustrations and would come to the studio to admire his work.  Andy was sweet and gentle and we became lifelong friends.  He was always with his sidekick, Fred Hughes.  

        Fred was Texan and, with his slicked back shiny black hair and fitted, elegant suits, he was a beautiful dandy and one of the funniest men I have ever met.  They both said I must come to New York and they would help launch my career there.

        I had been in Paris less than a year and a half when Newsweek did a story with a photo of me, saying I was the new model taking Paris by storm.  By then I had changed agencies and was finally starting to make money.

        I was so surprised at being famous and a little bit frightened too.  People had always looked at me, because I was tall, but now strangers kept recognizing me and kept coming up and talking to me.

        With all the attention I was getting in Paris, word spread to New York.  Eileen Ford, who owned Ford Models, invited me to dinner one night.  She asked me to come and model in New York and said I could live in her house.  I accepted.

Becoming a Model

The agent who signed me up in Paris -- I always called him 'The Tunisian' -- gave me an advance on my earnings.  He took the money out of his sock, that's where he kept it!  He paid me 1000 Francs (about 200 dollars) for a seven year contract for the world; models nowadays would be getting paid millions for that kind of contract.  But in those days there were a lot of crooks and sleazy types in the modelling world and I was very naive....

        In the early days I pounded the pavements and used the metro all day on model 'go-sees', meeting people for jobs.  And within a week, I had my first -- a poster for a petrol station in which I posed in a suggestive manner holding a petrol pump!  My next job was my very first magazine cover shoot, although it was only a knitting magazine.  

And after that I started getting better jobs, and made the covers of Elle and Vogue.  I couldn't believe how quickly things took off and how lucky I was.

_______________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

The 

total artifice as a way to the truth

 

-------------- [continued-Excerpt from Jerry Hall book] -------------------------------------------------------- It was such an exciting time.  Wherever I went with Antonio, everyone would look and whisper my name, which I found unnerving at first.

        Everything was about how you looked.  I often hated the ruthlessness and shallowness of some people, but I found I could rise above it by making my exterior my own work of art.  I threw myself into studying art, fashion, and beauty.  I became obsessed and ruthless about my creation -- me.  

I tried every shape of eyebrow, until I finally got the right one; I had Marlene Dietrich's thin pencil line, Joan Crawford's thick brush-up brows, until I settled in the end for a high-arched brow, thick at the beginning and finishing in an elongated line.  

I found that with practice I could train my face muscles, suck in my cheeks, drop my jaw and arch one eyebrow; I became an expert at the haughty look.  I was obsessed with Italian film director Luchino Visconti's films and the way he used total artifice as a way to the truth and I tried to emulate that.

        I worked with great make-up artists at Yves Saint Laurent when I started doing his fashion shows -- Jose Louis and Jacques Clement -- and I watched and copied their make-up.  I felt like a painter with my easel, painting my face meticulously and trying to imitate what they had done.  

I also worked with the famous hairdresser Alexandre de Paris.  He had done Elizabeth Taylor's hair for the film Cleopatra.... He was a magician who sculpted my hair into the most wonderful shapes.

        Antonio knew everyone and everywhere we went he would introduce me to extraordinary people from the worlds of fashion, film and art.

________________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

Paris was everything I wanted

 

----------------- [excerpt from Jerry Hall's book] ------------ Terry and I kept getting kicked out of hotels for making too much noise.  The Hotel Crystal was followed by Le Montana and then La Louisiana.  Whichever hotel we were in, we always had breakfast everyday at the Café de Flore, the place to be.  

Eventually Terry and I got our own apartment and for our first dinner party we invited all our friends, and served instant mash potatoes and frozen oven-baked French fries, with lots of red wine.  Our friends laughed so much at our awful first attempt at cooking.

        Our apartment was on a street with a large graveyard across the road.  Three Iranian students lived upstairs; nice guys who said 'hello' if we passed them on the stairs.  One night after a dinner out, we took the metro home.  That meant walking past the graveyard which always gave us the creeps.  

When we realized a man was walking behind us, Terry and I picked up our pace -- and so did the man.  We ran through our front door which had no lock, and up the winding metal stairs and the man followed us and grabbed at our ankles.  We screamed and I took off one of my high heels and hit him with it.  Our Iranian friends came out and chased the guy off, but we were so shaken we decided to move out.

        Terry didn't like modelling and only stayed a few months before she went back home to Texas.  But for me, Paris was everything I wanted.  By that time I had got a good agent and been introduced to Helmut Newton, who gave me my first big break.  

        I was appearing on the covers of magazines like Elle, 20 Ans, Stern, French Vogue and Italian Vogue, and getting a lot of pictures in the fashion news.  I was always amazed when I passed a news-stand and saw my face.

        I was also catwalk modelling and doing several of the big couture fashion shows -- for Yves Saint Laurent, Madame Grey and Valentino, amongst others.  I became a favourite of the catwalk photographers because I would often stop a few feet before the end of the runway and pose for them.  Bill Cunningham, who was a friend of Antonio's and a great reportage photographer, would shout, 'Go get 'em, Tex'.

        It was such an exciting time.

__________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

Paris must be wonderful

 

[excerpt from Jerry Hall:  My Life in Pictures] ------------------- I went to see a model agent in Dallas, and she got me work at a fashion show; it was my first catwalk experience, but she said I was too tall and exotic for modelling in Dallas and told me that I should go to New York or Europe, where she thought I would get more work.

...When I arrived in Paris I was overwhelmed by a combination of panic and exhilaration.  I didn't know a thing about France, except what I'd learned from the films I had watched with my French class at school, amongst them those by the legendary filmmaker Luis Buñuel.  I adored his films; they were so stylised and dark and interesting, and totally unlike the Hollywood fodder which was being put out by the American studios in the early seventies.  I was sure that if it was anything like the films, then Paris must be wonderful.

        It was a sunny May morning when I took my first taxi ride through the city.  The streets were still wet from a light shower and I rolled down the window and breathed in the heady smell -- a mixture of rain, dust and chestnuts being roasted by the sidewalk vendors.  As we drove up to the Arc de Triomphe, I took out my Kodak instamatic camera and started taking photos.  The beauty of the impressive buildings, and the sensuous statues and fountains that we passed thrilled me.

        I checked into a youth hostel, unsure what to do next.  A few days later, with my backpack and my Euro rail pass, off I went to Saint-Tropez.  I was excited about heading to the South of France as my mother had told me the Riviera was the place to go and I had spent way too much money buying a beautiful pink metallic crochet bikini and a pair of ridiculous, giant pink and silver platform shoes with cork wedges.

        On my first morning on the beach, I must have stood out from the crowd; 16 years old, six foot tall, long blonde hair and in my shocking pink ensemble!

        I lay on the beach and when mid morning came, I went off to the bathroom.  On the way back, a man stopped me and asked, 'would you like to be a model in Paris?'  I tried to play it cool, and took his card.  I phoned him that night and he offered to pay my fare back to Paris where he said he would put me in an apartment with some other models.  And that's how it all started.  I couldn't believe I'd been asked to be a model on my very first day on the beach.

        I went back to Paris and moved into a flat with a couple of other girls and the agency started sending me for modelling jobs.  One night my flatmate Tom Cashin introduced me to the fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez.  Originally from Puerto Rico, he had lived in the States and then come to live in Paris, where he was doing illustrations for magazines.

        Antonio became a great friend.  He taught me how to model and a lot about fashion and photography.  His drawings intrigued me, and I developed an interest in the history of fashion and photography.  I read up on the subject, studying the many fashion and photography books in Antonio's studio.  

I was captivated by the models' poses and copied them for hours, using a full-length mirror.  Oddly, my naivety increased my confidence for I imagined that I could be the best model in the world, if there was such a thing!

        I led a hectic existence, going to see people about modelling jobs, posing for Antonio and studying my craft, as well as going out at night a lot.

Everywhere I went I seemed to meet famous and interesting people.  I used to have tea with Salvador Dali and his wife Gaia.  He asked me to do a film with him at his house in Spain.  He wanted me to be nude with just a white veil over my head, running through his sculpture garden.  

I said 'no' as I had promised my Mama I wouldn't pose nude.  

I had dinner with King Vidor, the former movie director, and his daughter one night.  I used to have lunch at La Coupole; it was the in place to eat.  I once went there all dressed up in Mama's sexy glam clothes, borrowed my agent's Great Dane and put a rhinestone collar on it.  I was having coffee and got talking to an older couple sitting next to me.  

        They turned out to be Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  I knew who they were, because I had watched their programme about existentialism on TV and I also loved his book Being and Nothingness, exploring our inner and outer selves.

Jean-Paul and Simone invited me to lunch, along with my twin sister Terry, who had come over to stay with me for a while.  They loved hearing about our small town and the rodeo.

        By that time we were living in a little hotel called The Hotel Crystal and Grace Jones moved in with us for a while.  We shared a room; it had twin beds on one side and a single bed on the other and was divided by a curtain.  

Grace had just arrived in Paris hoping to be a model and she didn't have much money or a place to live.  We thought she was fun and told her to move in.  We also used to hang out with Bellina Hall and Pat Cleveland.  Bellina was singing and dancing in transvestite cabaret, and Pat was a model -- I thought she was the best there was.  

We used to put on little cabaret shows for friends in our hotel room, singing songs like, Three little girls from Little Rock.  

Terry and I kept telling Grace that she should be a singer; she had such a beautiful voice.  Antonio introduced Grace to Jean-Paul Goude, the photographer.  He took wonderful photographs of her, amazing iconic images that celebrated her African roots, and Grace eventually moved in with him.

        Terry and I kept getting kicked out of hotels for making too much noise. ...

--------------------- [end / excerpt]

____________________________

{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Written by Jerry Hall.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

-30-

catwalk woman

Jerry Hall

------------------------------------------------------------------------

a Mick Jagger Capsule

Mick Jagger:  born in 1943 in Dartford, Kent, England (18  miles south-east of Central London)

Mick's father was a teacher, who did not want Mick to become a musician

band:  The Rolling Stones

        Known since the 1970s as "the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world"

Rolling Stones essential albums:

    Beggars Banquet

    Let It Bleed

    Exile On Main Street

    Sticky Fingers

essential songs:

    Brown Sugar

    Honky Tonk Women

    It's Only Rock and Roll

    Tumbling Dice

Mick Jagger's current age:  78 years

current activity:  Rolling Stones concert tour of Europe

------------------------- [end / Capsule]

________________________________

____________________________

I became aware of who Jerry Hall was, only because of her relationship with Mick Jagger.  However, she is an interesting person, too.  Back in the 1970s, you would hear of people going off to Europe to become fashion models.  That was what Jerry Hall did.

She was born in Gonzales, Texas, in 1956, and grew up in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas.  The dad had anger issues and there was violence in the home, so all five daughters left as soon as they could.

        As a teenager, Jerry was in a car wreck, and at the hospital they gave her a drug and she had an allergic reaction:  they paid her some money to not sue them (or something) -- she took that small amount of money and bought a ticket to Paris, France.

From Paris, she went to Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera; her first day on the beach wearing a crocheted pink bikini, a man approached her and asked if she would like to be a model, and gave her his card.

And that's how her whole modeling career got started.

I first read this story of her life in the early '80s, in a magazine -- maybe Vogue, or Vanity Fair.  Unique and haunting, I never forgot it.  Plus she was Mick Jagger's girlfriend, one could not forget that, either.

        The idea of someone who is a fashion model made an impression on my mind and imagination, but it was a light impression.

        Someone who makes great music -- Bob Dylan; Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones, etc. -- they made a much more profound impression on my thoughts than fashion models did, but over time my interest in the visual arts has increased somewhat.  I'm interested in that, too.  I have Jerry Hall's book, and I'm glad to learn what she can teach about aesthetics and art and fashion.

        Part of it is just her own enthusiasm for the art-forms she gravitates to naturally.  You read, or listen to her talk in an interview, and then say, "OK! -- I'm in!"

-30-

how come you dance so good

 

Mick Jagger

♪ ♫

Drums beatin' cold, English blood runs hot

Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop

House boy knows that he's - doin' all right

You should have heard him, just around midnight

[ba-da-bommmmm -- bom-bom-bom-bom -- uuhhm!] -- Brown sugar!...

        I was thinking about how I was kind of enthralled with the glamour of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall dating back in the early 80s or late 70s, whenever it was...  And how I automatically, without thought, imagined that it must be just great to go on dates with Mick Jagger, front-man of the Rolling Stones.

        I ask myself now, Why did I think that would be great?  Because I loved the music the Rolling Stones made:  it expressed some things that I felt, and could relate to.  But does that translate into -- you want to date someone in that band...?

        It really doesn't.

        The positive emotions and sense of connection that we feel from an art-work -- whether it's music, a movie, a play, a painting, etc. -- are between the art-work and the audience.  Performers are just presenters of it.  They bring it to us.  They bring us art that speaks to us, and while we may know every lyric to their song, we do not know them.

        I might love a song; it doesn't mean I would enjoy the company of a person who sang the song.

It's similar to that phenomenon of -- a facial moisturizer is named after a beautiful, confident actress that I admire -- and so I should buy that moisturizer and put it on my face every day.

        It really doesn't make sense in a practical way, but a person's emotions can make that connection.

Again, on the theme of thinking we "like" a person because we like the art they created:  there's even an expression, or saying, that has been invented to address this emotion the audience feels:  It says, "Never meet your heroes."

I might say casually, in a moment of enthusiasm, "I love Bob Dylan!"

But the fact is, I love Bob Dylan's music.  I don't know Bob Dylan.

-30-

first-world problems

 

a Capsule about Elizabeth Taylor:

She was a movie actress.  Born in the United Kingdom, she lived from 1932 to 2011.

She starred in many Hollywood movies, including

National Velvet    (1944)

Little Women    (1949)

Father of the Bride    (1950)

A Place in the Sun    (1951)

The Last Time I Saw Paris    (1954)

Giant    (1956)

Raintree County    (1957)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof    (1958)

Butterfield 8    (1960)

Cleopatra    (1963)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?    (1966)

The Taming of the Shrew    (1967)

The Comedians    (1967)

A Little Night Music    (1977)

--------------------------------------------- When I was a child, Elizabeth Taylor was often in the news -- like today's celebrities are, now -- and not so much for her movies, but a lot for her personal life:  when she turned 40, who she was married to, who she was getting divorced from.  

She was married eight times, to seven different men -- during her first marriage to Welsh actor Richard Burton, 1964 - 1974, it would make news when Mr. Burton bought her a gift of jewelry.  

        I remember my dad saying once, each time Richard Burton buys expensive jewelry for Elizabeth Taylor, they donate the same amount of money to a charitable cause.

______________________ [end of Capsule]

Yesterday's post-title,

"these have always brought me luck"

was from a commercial for White Diamonds, a perfume with Elizabeth Taylor's name on it.

Wikipedia / excerpt:

White Diamonds is a perfume created in 1991 by actress Elizabeth Taylor.  The perfume, advertised with a cinematic TV commercial starring Taylor, was an enormous and enduring commercial success, with total sales of $1.5 billion as of 2018.  

Though not the first celebrity fragrance, the unprecedented success of White Diamonds popularized the trend of celebrity-branded perfumes which accelerated in the following decades. ------------------------- [end / Wikipedia excerpt]

        I started thinking about "White Diamonds" because I was writing about beauty products with famous people's names on them.

        Make-up and skin-care "lines" that are supposedly "developed by" actresses or singers, I'm pretty skeptical of, but fragrance is a different thing -- to me, anyway.  Because the factors that matter for perfume are:

Do I like the aroma of it?

Is it comfortable on my skin (no itching or irritation) - ?

Is it within my budget?

A fragrance is not tasked with as much as we need from skin-care.

        Yesterday I was speculating that a "celebrity" probably uses a face-cream that costs $180... maybe I'm wrong, but it's my belief that no product of that type is really worth that much -- it's an option for ladies who have some money they need to get rid of.  

Psychological:  you pay that much and you feel like you've bought for yourself the best there is.  (And there are face creams that cost much more, even, than $180 -- I just tossed that number out...same principle, anyway.)

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The whole psychology behind getting plastic surgery must have many convoluted twists and turns.  Someone on the Internet showed three photographs of a singer / actress:

First photo on the left showed her original nose at the start of her career

The second photo in the middle showed her after she had a "nose job"

and

The third photo at the right, showed her after another (!) nose job.

I was just flabbergasted that someone (who was beautiful in the first place) would have this operation -- twice.  It's horrifying, to me.

        Especially since the third picture was inferior to both the others.  She had too much done -- the end of her nose is too "pointy," now.  It's as if they get in a mind-set of "The smaller my nose is, the better."  And that is not true.  People are supposed to have a nose.

        Remember Michael Jackson's transformation over the years?  No--no--no.  Some of these people lose perspective.

The actress / singer in the Three-Photo display:  if she had asked my advice, I would have said, leave your nose, and the rest of your face, alone.  You can create different looks with make-up and lighting.  And the most important thing is your talent and charisma, for which you do not need any surgery.  (Ughh.)

Best:  the picture on the left.

Second best:  the middle picture.

Worst:  the third picture.

If someone has the belief that a narrower nose is better, then the middle picture could be named the "prettiest" one.  But that standard of beauty depends upon discounting and devaluing an individual look, and using surgery to "erase" uniqueness, individuality, and ethnicity.

        My standard of beauty is not erasing stuff and creating someone who looks like a lot of other pretty people.  That isn't beauty, it's conformity.  I guess my standard is -- Does the person look good?

(Maybe I'm too simplistic -- lol.)

(me as Hollywood casting director) -- "Yeah, they are all beautiful and talented, hire 'em all."

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"these have always brought me luck"

 

When I listened to some You Tube videos reviewing skin-care product-lines and make-up product-lines with the name of a famous person on them, I was interested to see what they would say, and my basic theories on these topics remained unchanged, though I was open to changing my mind.  I just wanted to -- see....

I simply don't think "celebrity-lines" are legitimate.  I don't want to "slam" them -- it's just how it seems, to me.

        A.  They're too expensive.  Not because of any ingredients, but because they want their customers to believe that this line of products is "that special," because the celebrity is already special, in the mind of the consumer.

        B.  I think the factory just mixes up the same old basic line of crap that they would make for any other celebrity or new company that wants to sell stuff, and then slaps the Celebrity's Name onto the fussy, over-decorated containers that the products come in.

        Because the Name is the Point.  The product is not the point.  You give the money; you get the Name.

I can see the name of my favorite singer-songwriters or actors and actresses on the music CD, and in a book, or in a magazine and / or on the Internet.  I don't need to see their name on my facial moisturizer (A.M. or P.M.).  

Why should a celebrity suddenly be an instant expert on skin-care?  Just because they look good?  The person has spent their adult years (and sometimes part of their childhood and teen years) -- basically their life -- getting really good at acting or singing or dancing, etc.  

        Good for them.  And good for us -- we get to watch, and listen, and enjoy their sitcom, movie, or dance-show... but Why would this suddenly translate into:  they are good at face cream and foundation (for all skin types!), and good at having it manufactured and manufactured properly, up to standards, and kick some ass when expensive mistakes are made -- things don't always go perfectly.  

(Trying to picture Jennifer Aniston giving a plant manager what-for because the mascara wasn't right....)

But seriously, I'm relatively confident that none of the Jennifers -- Aniston; Lopez; Garner; etc. -- ever have to do any battle in the Manufacturing - Delivery - Supply Chain world.  Or even give it a thought.  That would be worked on by their "team."

I would imagine there's a whole sort of "Industry in Itself" where any celebrity who wants to "make"

skin-care

make-up

accessories

phone cases

perfumes

[etc.]

to sell to their fans, they can just plug in their specs and beauty products etc. will pop out the other end.

And it's probably the same Celebrity-Stuff-Industry that makes them all.

I guess the reason that I won't buy it is because I want a cleanser that really works for my skin; moisturizer that works for my face.  The companies that make skin-care where the product is the point (not someone's Name), put in research and trials to create products that will work for different skin-types -- oily; dry; younger; older.  

I feel like -- they put in the research, they are focused on making a product that works so the customer will get the result they want, and buy it again.  

That's a fair bargain.  

Olay; L'Oreal; Aveeno; AVON -- those are companies that aren't trying to sell me an idea that I should buy their product to look like an actress; they are trying to sell me something that will work for me.  And that's what I want.

And if these over-the-counter drugstore products cost $40, and the celebrity-name products cost $14, it would be worth it to me to buy the drugstore one because I used it before and I know that it works.  But ironically, the drugstore one that works is the one that costs $14, and the Celebrity-one which I suspect is generic in a fancy jar is the one that costs $40!

Sometimes the better product is the less expensive one.

(And some people would say $14 is too much for a moisturizer -- in that case, in Walmart anyway, there's an Equate version of it, right there, for $7 or $8.)

(And one other irony -- while some of us select between a $14 product and one that costs $40, the beautiful celebrity selling us the $40 one probably uses on her own face a moisturizer that costs $180.)

------------------------- Celebrity beauty product videos led to plastic surgery videos -- not by my request, they just started popping up.  Plastic surgery grosses me out, I didn't think I'd click on any of those, but I did listen to some videos on a channel named "Lorry Hill."  

Her channel's mission is to educate viewers about which specific plastic surgery procedures actors and actresses may have had, because she believes it's unfair that celebrities have "work done" on their faces and bodies, and then deny it and want the public to believe that they are just naturally physically superior and more beautiful than everyone else.

Quite a mission! -- right?  She seems very sincere:  she tells you, each video, that she doesn't know what procedures they have had done, but by looking at photographs from different time periods, she makes guesses.

        So many comments on these videos echo my own thoughts about some of these "Beautiful People" -- they say, 'She was beautiful in the first place, why did she mess with her face?'

        One male viewer typed in the irate answer -- 'Because women are never satisfied with their looks -- or with anything else!'

-30-

where to find a star movie

 

I watched a movie on Amazon Prime where I could easily pick up on two influences:  the style of the movie was trying to be like The Sopranos, and also borrowing some methods from a modern classic mob movie that I could recognize right away.

        Then I realized the movie I was watching and the mob movie I was recalling were both directed by the same person.  Ah! - there's the connection....

        Being louder and dirtier does not make it a better film.

        Sometimes I think what makes the difference between an outstanding movie and a movie that really isn't very good is something we can't even define -- cannot put our finger on.

        There's a scene in The Sopranos where this phenomenon is discussed, only it's with music rather than a movie.  Hesh (played by Jerry Adler) explains when you listen to a song, "There's good and there's not good.  This [referring to a song by the knockabout band discovered by Adriana] -- is not good."

        The interiors in the 21st century movie I saw on Amazon Prime:  regular people's houses have some ugly decor; the super-rich people have some really ugly decor.

        So -- that's the difference.

What is beautiful?

What is good?

How to invent a movie that is, itself, a star...?

-30-

to get there you follow Highway 58

 

There's a You Tube channel called

"The Big Literature"

-- one can listen to All the King's Men being read aloud there.

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        When I listen to the Cleaning videos on You Tube, I notice that the narrators are always saying that they are "wiping" things "down."

        I grew up learning to say, "wipe it off."  I'm going to "wipe off" the table...etc.

But all of the modern You Tubers that I've listened to, say "wipe down."  They never seem to wipe anything "off."

"I'm going to wipe that down."

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-30-

hard pass

 

        Big thunderstorm yesterday.  Branches and trees scattered.  96-mile-per-hour wind; big pile of rain all at once.

        It was somewhat stressful.  Felt like a lot.

        A man who is from Puerto Rico described to me how they have storms there with 150 mile-per-hour winds, and the coconut trees bend clear over to one side, during these gusts, with the coconuts touching the ground, and then the trees straighten back up.  The roots, apparently, are long and strong.

        I repeated this description to someone else today, and his eyes widened in amazement:  "Really?!" he said.

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storming tension

darkening, darkening,

an airborne blanket

of damp warmth and 

edgy fear with

nameless worry --

apprehension hidden behind

the facades of our faces;

we read

snack

look on our phones

wait

for the storm to 

hopefully not wreck our lives

and please pass by

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-30-

talking to our vacuum cleaners during slivers of time

 

        You Tube is awash in -- or should we say "a-rinse" -- in Cleaning And Organizing Videos.  Made mostly by young ladies who all have long hair, the videos tell us about cleaning methods, and products that work, and how to "stay on top" of housekeeping.

        One that I listened to recently had a round thing that is a vacuum cleaner that does it by itself, without you pushing it around -- a Roomba.  There was one young-lady-with-long-hair who has a Roomba where she can voice-activate it -- she can tell it what to do, and it will do that.

        (Can you imagine if one of these things got loose and -- I don't know -- crashed a school board meeting, or something?

        If people can talk to the automatic vacuum, can it talk back?  Can it make a motion in the meeting?...)

In her video, she also discussed Staying On Top of home things...she said a lot of times it's hard to start a big clearing-out or sorting project because we know we won't have time to finish the whole thing.  She said we have to do as much as we can, in "Slivers Of Time" that we have in between Other Stuff that we Have To do.

(When are people supposed to smoke?  During a Time-Micro-Sliver - ?)

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