UPBEAT BI-POLAR BLUES

My incredibly talented pals 2boys are presenting their gorgeously bent brand of opera-influenced-multimedia-drag-extravaganza in San Francisco. The show is called Zona Pellucida and it's a hallucinatory eyegasm. I swear you will love it!

A one-woman show created and performed by two boys…

"Such a pretty name for a disease, sounds like a rare flower doesn't it, "night-blooming dementia praecox". Madness, obsession, memory... she lacerates herself with memory!”

Within an absurd adult puppet theatre, combining the disparate elements of Alfred Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn, ZONA follows an "actress" as she struggles to find her genuine voice whilst descending into madness.



Pierre & Gilles meets Kenneth Anger meets Whatever happened to Baby Jane.

August 6 - 31, 2008
New Conservatory Theater Centre
25 Van Ness Avenue
www.nctcsf.org

something behind me ticks maniacally. filing cabinet reverberating with wash machine spin cycle. also strange: my cursor has a brim... but i am not here to type out words, i am here to apple-v.



here friends: some glorious hippy churchy sing shit with the fashion of original brit new wave arty pop.

yeah.

Wow, i haven't posted in months!!!

i'm back in montreal after 2 great months in central europe
i've been recording & playing the bass & singing my heart out...
enjoying the summer, loving the prodigious virginia creeper on my porch
damning the squirrels who completely decimated my sunflowers (i know, too tasty!)
riding my bicycle, waiting for dusk so i can run up the mountain
squeezing limes for mock & cocktails, keeping the freezer stocked with bananas & berries
gigging here & there, welcoming the goddess lakshmi's graces (heeeee)

but anyway...

thought i'd let folks now, waay in advance, that I'll be doing the HOWL fest in NYC in september
the last time i crossed the US border was April 2006!!

i'll be in NYC Sept 2-8

so flavorpacket my darlin, in response to yr sweet msg, you get me in person soon-ish!

I am back in Austria for the few weeks. Kimm joins me on the 27th, we play a show on the 30th and then head to Paris, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, Marseilles, London, Liverpool, London, Berlin for a Mankindtour. Springtime in Central Europe. Poor us.

The residency is full so they put me in the common suite, which rocks. Unlike the other studios, it has a living room with TV & DVD player, enough room to take five running steps and slide across the hardwood floor and, best of all, a bathtub.

Thursday I teach a workshop to 20 17-yr-olds, I'm told they understand English. I hope it's not too ambitious to plan to guide them through the creation of audio versions of short stories in 5 hours...

I've got a lot of work to do, of course, but i'm letting myself ease into it. For example, yesterday I studied the sound software they have at the high school (Audacity) then napped, walked along the Danube, bought groceries and convinced the non-english-speaking folks at the video store to give me a membership. Their collection is pretty damn paltry, I'll be catching up on H'wood schlock, it seems. On the menu tonight: Alpha Dog.

I also started the Wild Rose cleanse. Why not? I experienced a lifetime's worth of shnitzel and strudel when i was here in Ocotber. plus I've got no friends here and drinking alone is so very maudlin. No wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol or fun for the next 12 days. Whenever I do one of these things, i am confronted with the realization that some people actually do this all the time . My best friend is a hair stylist and one of her clients, a kept woman, admitted that she only eats one full dinner a week, the rest of the week she eats only salad and rice. Yikes.

I'll be alone here in Krems for a few weeks and as such will likely be online a hell of a lot more than recommended usual. So, hello LJ, it's been a while. Feel free to comment, folks, you'll do a girl wonders...

My nearly two year, excruciatingly precocious niece loves musicals. Her present favorite is, as she says, "The Sound of Mucus."

hello ljers and sundry lurkers...

I had to disappear for a while. I was feeling annoyed at my online life. I'm not sure it's any less annoying but i'm back... In a few weeks I'll be changing my website, perhaps killing Dyslex6 dot com once and for all. I suspect that the presence of an 'x' and a '6' in an url invites more spammage than normal. I'm looking at alexisohara dot com even though i wish i could come up with something more clever. We'll see, there's still a bit of time for me to develop cleverness. I may axe this blog in favour of an in-site one or switch over to blogger. i dunno. it's been a while since a computer died, or a hard drive fried and I have to do something to lose track...

We had a doozy of a winter pre-xmas, pre-official-start-of-winter. it was a lovely white merry birthday for me, complete with snowsuits, photoshoots, stuffing sandwiches and cocktails in the hot tub. I'm getting older as are you. Innerestin, inn't?

A while back i quit my day job (which was actually a night job) to devote myself fully to the task of watching streaming video online being a working artist. The money is not yet rolling in tho I am fielding a number of interesting offers and at this early date of 2008, know that I will be away from Montreal for at least 6 months (2 mos in central Europe and 4 months in Mexico D.F.!). If you'd like to come to experience the bohemian Mile End experience next fall, have I got the sublet for you.

Been decorating the house, making it my own again after subletting it last summer-fall. My bedroom is now just like a real lady's bedroom and the living room is very living roomy. I have a recliner arm chair and all is right in my world.

Happy New year to you all. I rang in the year in an unexpected way, was thrown off kilter for the first few hours of the year and then managed to recover my balance on heels. Despite my stunned surprise, life goes on and on and on...

xx

good bye
take care

These days, it's better not to express any of the thoughts going on in your head. They are as dark as the long nights. It's best to huddle indoors and make good smells out of cooking and try not to speak at all. If you must speak, say things like "I'll get back to you on that."

Barbara Campbell is an Australian artist doing a fairly laborious durational project called 1001 Nights. Every day she picks a turn of phrase from a newspaper article related to the middle east and makes a painting from it. The phrase is given to a writer who has 8 hours to write a 1001-word or less story related to the phrase but not necessarily the article. Barbara then reads the story as a webcast. She found me through a friend and here is the story I wrote. I really hadn't written a short story in forever, it was fun to do so.

( Read more... )

Some inspirational thoughts for your friday

Granted, I am a soft cookie; this made me tear up. A dwindling congregation decides to save their 100 year old church by moving it to another area where there are more Lutherans. From the National Geographic documentary "Monster Moves".

...not to read my press. I'm not that much of a shit disturber. If anything, i've been wondering lately if I"m just a bit too charming for my own good. It's the polemecists who get people talking. I read what people write about my live work (the very rare instances when this happens) and even when it's favorable, it feels like they get it wrong. Unweildy ascription of meaning. Incorrect details about my musical technique. Reviews are almost always more about the reviewer than the reviewed. Oh well. I'll just keep on keeping on and try to remember to NOT read the reviews.

In the absence of a summary of last week's adventures in performance art, train rides and workshop-giving, I offer you, oh 7 readers of my blog, the top 7 things i've eaten this week.

Kurbiss soup at Salzstadt - the most delicious pumpkin soup in die welt. Creamy, slightly sweet, topped with crushed toasted pumpkin seeds, liquid happiness.

Spinach Burek from the Ljubljana market - The balkan equivalent of poutine in it's greasy goodness. Is it a pastry? Is it a noodle? Dunno. Don't care. Yum.

Vanilla Kaki (a.k.a. Persimmon) - how did it take me so long to discover this fruit? A cross between a mango and a pear, so delicious.

Appel Strudel from café at Stift Göttweig - Perhaps it was the arduous climb up the mountain to the monastery that made this all the better, no matter: mmmm.

Shnitzel Sandwich from train station: It was moving to Europe that made me return to carniverous ways after 5 years as a veg and Shnitzel is one of the reasons that carnivoracity rocks.

Sonnenblumen pumpernickel: chock fulla seeds & seeds, add butter and you're good to go.

Dark Chocolate with Lavender from Curkcek: This was meant to be a gift but I ate it all.

There are these days when you have a hard time coming up from the clouds but you do what you can to stay above the sink line, gathering all that you are born to do to deliver and be and give forth the bounty of your given gifts... and then later that day Diamanda Galás kisses your forehead and says :"I fucking like you." and you know that you are doing okay and life is good.


amen.

Hello Livejournal, I haven't been paying much attention to you lately but now that I am away from all the distractions that fall under the category of NON-VIRTUAL LIFE, I thought i'd get back to the business for which this journal was originally created, that is the accounting of my experiences as super art-star jet set vagabond.

( Berlin/Barcelona/London/Norwich/Kilkenny/Montreal/Toronto/Krems in FF )

It is easy for me to get trapped in my head. It's a labyrinthine place to hang out with as many creepy as cosy corners; it may be frustrating but it is not boring. I can get so caught up with trying to control the universe from the confines of my mind's command central, I forget about the body, the body.

You can't forget about the body.

Friday night I parked the car (two blocks away from my destination as my dyslexic brain had mis-translated the numbers of my destination) on a very busy street in Montreal. I am generally very good at parking cars. I checked to see if i was too far from the curb and decided I was fine. I was in mid-sentence, elaborating for my passenger some fresh conundrum that had been playing in a loop inside the labyrinth. I opened the car door and a second later a massive, horrible thud occurred and a human body was propelled along with her bicycle to the middle of this very busy street where an SUV did all it could to brake in time to barely hit said bike. Eternity passed in a flash. Had I just killed someone? Had my carelessness and silly thoughts caused lives to end or change forever?

The driver of the SUV was an ambulance driver. So lucky. I called 911 and the friends we were meant to meet. It ran through my blenderized mind to flee. I did not. I waited to give a statement, handed over documents and when the woman was taken away on an inflated stretcher, I made sure the cops took her bike and promised me they'd give my number to the victim.

Trying to turn off the brain, trying to stop this new loop, so much more real than the last neurotic one: a thud, another, a screech, silence. a thud, another, a screech, silence.

What could we do but continue to live and try to think miraculous cell regeneration thoughts for this unlucky door prize recipient? smile, dance, pray, let it go.

I feared today. Returning the car with its useless door. Repercussions. But I had insurance. It was an accident. I did all I could. I was witness to the universe unfolding. Then, at 1pm, my phone rang. A bright voice. "C'est moi, la fille au vélo." She assured me that she was fine, a bit bruised but fine, that even her bike was ok. And then, she THANKED me for being as concerned and sorry as I was. And that, dear readers, is when I finally burst into tears.

Oh, sweetheart.

Oh, we are so lucky.

The universe is mysterious but not very subtle at all.

I hate writing bios. I never know what kind of tone to take. American style I-am-the-best-bombast? Cutesy fantasy fiction? Dry facts only? Ugh! So i love it when presenters take my bio and turn it into something I could never have come up with on my own...

Canadian musician Alexis O’Hara is a permanently transforming sound sculpture of flesh and blood on the verge of absurd grotesque and paradox severity.

i'm not sure that "paradox severity" makes sense but i still like it!