the problem with Proust....

...to begin with, i was always a reader. mostly before college, of course.
actually, between elementary school and the time i dropped out of high school. and then, while i dragged myself through 10 colleges over the next several years, these beautiful books were a thread, leading back to my real self. and still....

in elementary school, i read all of the Greek myths. obsessively. and, of course, fairy tales, Grimms brothers, Arabian Nights, anything that had a weight to it, a big binding and the smell of old paper. I often stumbled upon paper backs at the thrift shop and read them, only later realizing that they were classics. before i reached middle school, i read Atlas Shrugged, Siddartha, Trout Fishing in America, Notes from the Underground, the Tao Te Ching, the Tropic of Cancer...basically anything that came my way.

college, work, kids, life....somehow so many natural passions get rubbed out along the way through. maybe it's just the those things that are so dear. the part of one's soul that can be taken for granted, the easy self that gives way quickly to demands of daily chores....?

anyway, what i'm actually writing about is Proust, and my current lack of...well...words.

BlankVerse. we named our company after a poetry term because Jane and i are both crazy about poetry. originally, we spent many nights curled up in Jane's cozy bed, reading each other's poems out loud. we haven't done that since we became such serious business gals ( hmmmmm), but we do still spend time reading out loud in the studio when ever we come upon a piece of writing that we are inspired by.
lately, for me ( when we're not listening to Twighlight on cd ) it is Proust.
and....
the problem with Proust is....well, the problem is that there's nothing else to add.
and....there's nothing i would rather do than sit in my bed and read Swann's Way all day. ( well, unless someone wants to read it to me...in french...)

i find so much inspiration in these rich, tangled, run-on pages, so full of every thing human, that when i sit down to write, i feel just dull. not self effacing, but rather, spent. and also a little bit loopy with admiration and love for this long dead guy that summed up all of life with intense, brilliant insight, from inside his solitary room.

Ceremonies...

Ceremonies...

" i don't mind going to weddings ...as long as they're not my own.." Tom Waits

our latest assignment: to create a collection inspired by weddings.
hmmmmmm..a wedding collection. weddings.....
we love white. yep. we love traditions. yep. weddings are cool....
but.... how can we take a word like that and make it into a piece of art? what are weddings? what's the deeper meaning? why do people get married? people everywhere, for all times have had weddings...

after some thought, Jane got to the bottom of it. weddings are ceremonies. weddings are ceremonies.....and ceremonies are universal. and there is an innate connection between people and ceremonies and culture. and the objects and adornments of these ceremonies belong to a very special category of things....things that hold substantial significance because of a deeper, intrinsic, historical, cultural and personal symbolism.

stepping back....viewing ( as we did )many pictures of ceremonial jewelry, de-contextualized by our distance, both in geography and in understanding, it became clear to me that no matter what the occasion, people bring out their rockin'est shit for ceremonies.

there is so much beauty in the wonderful, archaic, reverential treatment of symbols.
and, for me, there is equal beauty in the ornaments themselves, which, without even understanding their intent, can still be seen to carry the burden of meaning. maybe the weight of extravagance itself can imply meaning..?

a long, elaborate white dress? 100's of colorful strands of beads? body paint? veils and flowers?

we are inspired.

saturday made sunday feel like it would never come...